François Noël (missionary)

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François Noël, SJ (18 August 1651 – 17 September 1729) was a

ancestral veneration during the Chinese Rites controversy but also opposed incorporating other elements of Confucianism
into Catholic practice. He also achieved notability for translating several Chinese texts for European audiences.

Name

François Noël
Wei Fangji
Hanyu Pinyin
Wèi Fāngjì
Wade–GilesWei Fang-chi

Noël wrote his translations in

anglicization as Francis Noel. He was known to the Chinese as Wei Fangji.[1]

Life

Early life

François Noël was a

Treaty of Aachen. He was a teacher of grammar and rhetoric for several years.[3] He studied theology, mathematics, and astronomy at the University of Douai.[1]

In China

tomb of Xu Guangqi (d. 1633) in Shanghai's Xujiahui
neighborhood
China as known to the Jesuits c. 1687.
China as known to the Jesuits c. 1735.
Further information:
Jesuit China missions

He wanted to join the

Maria, the duchess of Aveiro.[1] He hoped to get passage to Japan on a Dutch East India Company mission, but in Malacca he was assured by "Belgian Catholics from our cities" that this was impossible.[3]

He debarked at

Figurists,[6] the Jesuit missionaries who came to think that Christianity had been the ancient religion of China, brought there by Noah's son Shem
.

Noël learned rudimentary

Macao and traveled to the mainland in 1687. He traveled to Shanghai,[1] then part of Jiangsu and—at nearby Xujiahui—the home of the family of the influential convert Xu Guangqi. After further training, he began his mission on nearby Chongming Island in early October 1688 and reported great success by August 1689:[1] 120 baptized converts in Shanghai, 300 on Chongming, and 800 in regions dependent on Chongming.[5]

From there, he travelled to

Nanfeng in Jiangxi; and Nan'an in Fujian.[1]

A 1703 report to the Jesuit Provincial shows that Noël's work was primarily among the lower and working classes, especially to women and

monks.[7]

First Roman embassy

Charles Maigrot's 1693 Mandate, which reopened the Chinese Rites controversy
Caspar Castner, Noël's companion on his 1st embassy to Rome
Further information: Chinese Rites controversy

On 9 November 1701,

conversion to Christianity.[1]

Thomas's letter reached him in Nanchang on the 25th; he left on 6 December and reached

English ship ready to sail, Turcotti replaced the pair[9] with the Bavarian mathematician[10] Caspar Castner, who was already working nearby.[11]

The English ship departed on 14 January 1702 for Macao, which it reached on the 21st and left on the 24th.

Marseilles to Genoa on 15 December; they finally reached Rome on the 29th or 30th.[11]

In Rome, the pair scheduled audiences, lobbied

Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith on 10 January 1703 and Pope Clement XI two days later.[12] On the 14th, they gave Fabroni the first round of documents: an overview, a dossier of verified testimony, books by De Rocha and Alenio, and a 1664 anti-Christian pamphlet by Yang Guangxian whose complaints proved that the Jesuits were mentioning Jesus's crucifixion to the Chinese.[12] Some of these were rejected on various grounds, and they were forced to hire a lawyer surnamed Ursaia to present them in the proper format around March.[12] The Franciscan Giovanni Francesco Nicolai da Leonessa had been opposing them before their arrival; on 10 March he was joined by the MEP missionary Artus de Lionne.[12]

Despite the Noël and Castner's efforts negotiating the Roman bureaucracy over the next two years, the voluminous Chinese testimony—including an official pronouncement by the

monsoon season in Pondicherry.[15] By 1704, Noël and Castner were forbidden from publishing their arguments, although their opponents were printing their treatises in great volume, and correspondence and treatises shipped from China were confiscated at Livorno.[14] Noël seems to have accepted that there was little to be done or been otherwise occupied for the rest of the year.[14] Castner continued his lobbying, assisted after 26 February 1704 by Jean-François de Pélisson, who arrived with further documentation from the Jesuits in China.[14]

Aixinjueluo Xuanye, the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing (18th c.)

On 20 November

Tournon was to prepare more detailed regulations to avoid "every hint of pagan superstition",[17] and the decree was worded legalistically and carefully—"hall or temple", "sacrifice or offering"—to limit any chance the Jesuits might evade or limit its application.[18]

Noël returned east in 1706, traveling—at Castner's insistence—not via

Chinese characters on the plaque behind the emperor's head[26] but presumed to lecture the patron of the Kangxi Dictionary on the permissible meanings of the character 天;[22]—and stubborn[28] that he had finally been expelled from the country on 17 December [25] and Christian missionaries required to receive an imperial permit (票, piào) attesting to their support of "the method of Matteo Ricci" and their willingness to remain in China for the rest of their lives.[29][25] Finally receiving notice of Cum Deus Optimus...,[29]

Tournon had ordered a

summary and automatic excommunication of any Christian permitting Confucian rituals from Nanjing on 25 January 1707;[15] on 7 February, he had further issued instructions concerning the piao examination—again on pain of excommunication[29] — that precluded its ever being approved.[18] Enraged, the emperor finally had him arrested and deported on 13 June,[30] with the Portuguese then holding him under house arrest for their own reasons.[31]

Second Roman Embassy

The Kangxi Emperor's 1716 open letter to Clement XI, inquiring about the fate of his 1706 and 1708 embassies

About half of the missionaries then in China joined

Tournon in exile.[32] At the emperor's insistence, a second embassy was dispatched to Rome to overturn Cum Deus Optimus... and Maigrot and Tournon's various rulings in 1706; this was apparently lost at sea.[31] Unable to secure a residence permit without fear of excommunication, Noël joined a third embassy. (He has sometimes been said to have been specifically requested by the Kangxi Emperor, although this seems unlikely.)[17]

Noël departed for Europe from Macao on 14 January 1708 on the

Brazil, they arrived in Lisbon in September and in Rome by February the next year.[10] En route, he sent a letter ahead to the pope imploring:[33]

It is all up with this once flourishing mission now collapsing, and rushing to certain ruin, unless Your Holiness should please the emperor of the Chinese by a swift response, and graciously agree to his requests regarding the Chinese rites so long in dispute.

Holy Office was issued on 25 September 1710 upholding all of his rules and condemnations.[34] The embassy may have been enjoined from sending the Kangxi Emperor any notice of that fact, since he never learned the fate of either of his embassies; in 1716, he resorted to providing open letters (the "Red Manifesto")[17] to passing European merchants to try to ascertain their fate.[35] (Noël, however, was not one of those individually listed for the merchants to search for.)[17]

In Europe

Charles-Ferdinand University
, completed in the 1720s

Noël then appears to have moved to

Ex Illa Die
... repeating in stronger terms his condemnations and the incompatibility of Chinese ritual with Catholicism.

On 10 June that year, Noël sought approval to return to China[41] although he was 64 at the time. He was denied permission.[2] He died on 17 September 1729 in Lille, France.[41]

Works

The engraving of Confucius in the 1687 Confucius, Philosopher of the Chinese. Noël's own translations had no illustrations, apart from their floral tailpieces.

Noël published his Mathematical and Physical Observations Made in India and China (

Charles-Ferdinand University's press in Prague, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), in 1710.[36]

Noël's effort to translate the Chinese classics was a generally scholarly one, aiming to present it more correctly on its own terms than previous Jesuit editions like the

works of Mencius were not originally translated because Matteo Ricci disliked Mencian interpretations of the other classic texts, particularly his strong condemnation of celibacy as unfilial.[46]

Noël published his Six Classic Books of the Chinese Empire (Sinensis Imperii Libri Classici Sex) at the same press the next year,

s 四书集注, Sìshū Jízhù).[42][40] Each of the last three were the first European translations of the works.[42] All were rather fairly freely translated from the editions established by Zhu Xi; his preface states the works are "not, so to speak, what the Chinese wrote but, I hope, what they really meant".[42][c] For example, the first lines of the Doctrine of the Mean were rendered "The Law of Heaven is nature itself; the tendency of this nature is the way of acting correctly; the direction of this life is a right discipline of life, or the right precepts for living."[42][d]

At the same time, he published his Three Treatises on Chinese Philosophy (Philosophia Sinica Tribus Tractatibus).

Christian God.[10]

Finally, in the same year, he also published Historical Notices of Chinese Rituals and Ceremonies in the Veneration of Deceased Parents and Benefactors.

Catholicism, it claimed a papal imprimatur for its publishing but was almost immediately suppressed.[41]

He published his Little Poetic Works (Opuscula Poetica) at

Frankfurt in 1717.[57] Its four parts comprise a Life of Jesus Christ under the Name of Divine Love (Vita Jesu Christi sub Nomine Divini Amoris);[58] Marian Letters (Epistolae Marianae);[59] a Life of St Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of the Jesuits (Vita Sancti Ignatii de Loyola Societatis Jesu Fundatoris);[60] and several tragedies (Tragoediae), including Philotas,[61] Herod (Herodes),[62] Love (Amor),[63] Lucifer,[64] Accianus,[65] and Henry (Henricus).[66] An appendix includes the comedy Blind Sight (Caecus Videns).[67]

He also published a popular theology textbook.[2]

See also

Notes

  1. Duchess of Aveiro that Nanchang averaged 400 converts a year during this period.[5]
  2. Macao, and Thailand.[1]
  3. Latin: "...non tantum ut discas, quae Sinae scripserunt, set et ut agas, quae recte senserunt..."[53]
  4. Latin: "Caeli lex est ipsa natura; hujus naturae ductus est recta agendi via; hujus viae directio est recta vitae disciplina, seu recta vivendi praecepta..."[54]

References

Citations

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Liščák (2015), p. 48.
  2. ^ a b c Rule (2003), p. 137.
  3. ^ a b Rule (2003), p. 138.
  4. ^ Rule (2003), pp. 138–9.
  5. ^ a b c d Rule (2003), p. 139.
  6. ^ Lackner (1991), p. 145.
  7. ^ Rule (2003), p. 140.
  8. ^ a b c Rule (2003), p. 144.
  9. ^ Rule (2003), p. 144–5.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Liščák (2015), p. 49.
  11. ^ a b c d e f g Rule (2003), p. 145.
  12. ^ a b c d e Rule (2003), p. 147.
  13. ^ a b Rule (2003), p. 146.
  14. ^ a b c d Rule (2003), p. 151.
  15. ^ a b c d e Ott (1913).
  16. ^ Rule (2003), p. 149.
  17. ^ a b c d e f Rule (2003), p. 152.
  18. ^ a b c d Seah (2017), p. 115.
  19. ^ Zhang (2006), p. 146.
  20. ^ a b c Charbonnier (2007), p. 257.
  21. ^ a b Von Collani (2009), p. 2.
  22. ^ a b Charbonnier (2007), p. 260.
  23. ^ Charbonnier (2007), pp. 258–9.
  24. ^ a b c Charbonnier (2007), p. 259.
  25. ^ a b c Von Collani (2009), p. 3.
  26. ^ a b Zhang (2006), p. 147
  27. ^ Ricci (1603).
  28. ^ Charbonnier (2007), p. 261.
  29. ^ a b c Charbonnier (2007), p. 262.
  30. ^ Charbonnier (2007), pp. 262–3.
  31. ^ a b Charbonnier (2007), p. 263.
  32. ^ Charbonnier (2007), p. 256 & 262.
  33. ^ Rule (2003), p. 153.
  34. ^ a b Charbonnier (2007), p. 264.
  35. ^ Rosso (1948), pp. 307–9.
  36. ^ a b Noël (1710).
  37. ^ a b Noël (1711).
  38. ^ Mungello (1991), p. 107.
  39. ^ Mungello (1991), p. 107–8.
  40. ^ a b c Lundbæk (1991), p. 39.
  41. ^ a b c d e f Liščák (2015), p. 51.
  42. ^ a b c d e Liščák (2015), p. 50.
  43. ^ a b Schonfeld (2003), p. 27.
  44. ^ a b Liščák (2015), p. 46.
  45. ^ Noël (1711), p. xi.
  46. ^ Liščák (2015), p. 47.
  47. ^ Noël (1711), pp. 1–29.
  48. ^ Noël (1711), pp. 31–73.
  49. ^ Noël (1711), pp. 75–198.
  50. ^ Noël (1711), pp. 199–472.
  51. ^ Noël (1711), pp. 473–484.
  52. ^ Noël (1711), pp. 485–608.
  53. ^ Noël (1711), p. i.
  54. ^ Noël (1711), p. 41.
  55. ^ a b Noël (1711b).
  56. ^ Noël (1711c).
  57. ^ Noël (1717).
  58. ^ Noël (1717), pp. 1–86.
  59. ^ Noël (1717), pp. 87–136.
  60. ^ Noël (1717), pp. 137–213.
  61. ^ Noël (1717), pp. 214–255.
  62. ^ Noël (1717), pp. 256–295.
  63. ^ Noël (1717), pp. 296–338.
  64. ^ Noël (1717), pp. 339–391.
  65. ^ Noël (1717), pp. 392–428.
  66. ^ Noël (1717), pp. 429–461.
  67. ^ Noël (1717), pp. 462 ff.

Bibliography

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