Xu Guangqi

The Jesuit account says that Xu was born at Shanghai, took first place in the provincial examination at Beijing in 1597, met Matteo Ricci at Nanjing in 1600, and in 1603 came to the Jesuit house there, read the catechism in manuscript overnight and was baptized as Paul after eight days of instruction (Ricci and Trigault, De Christiana expeditione 4.19 (pp. 471–473)). In 1604 he took the highest degree and was chosen for the Hanlin academy; he later persuaded his father, who was over seventy, to be baptized (Ricci and Trigault, De Christiana expeditione 5.3 (pp. 492–494)).

According to Ricci it was Xu who insisted on translating Euclid and who wrote the Chinese text down as Ricci explained it (Jihe yuanben, Ricci’s preface). In his own preface Xu says that Ricci’s learning has a greater part, the cultivation of the self and the service of Heaven, and a lesser, the study of things, and that he is publishing the lesser first because it is easier to believe (Jihe yuanben, Xu Guangqi’s preface). When the Board of Rites accused the Jesuits in 1616, Xu told the emperor that he was himself one of the scholars who believed their books; he argued that their teaching could strengthen that of the Confucian scholars, and he offered to share their punishment if an examination of their books went against them (Xu Guangqi, Memorial of 1616, Chinese Repository 19, pp. 118–120, 123). See Matteo Ricci at the Court of Beijing.