Michele Ruggieri

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Chinese name
Luo Mingjian
Hanyu Pinyin
Luó Míngjiān
Wade–GilesLo Ming-chien

Michele Ruggieri, SJ (born Pompilio Ruggieri and known in

sinologist
.

Life

Early life

Pompilio Ruggieri was born in

Goa.[2]

Missionary work

A page from the manuscript Portuguese-Chinese dictionary created by Ruggieri, Ricci, and Fernandez (between 1583–88)

Ruggieri left Europe with a group of missionaries which included

Chinese mission
.

Ruggieri was assigned to Macau to study the Chinese language and customs, arriving 20 July 1579.[2] He landed at the Portuguese trade centre and started at once to learn to read and write Chinese. In the process, and aware that several would be following him, he set up Shengma'erding Jingyuan ("St Martin House"), the first school for teaching Chinese to foreigners.

Ruggieri's and Ricci's intent was to settle somewhere in "real" China – not just Macao, and to that end Ruggieri made trips to Canton (Guangzhou) and Zhaoqing (the residence of the Governor General of Guangdong and Guangxi), making useful contacts with the local authorities. He is one of the first Christian missionaries to have entered

Ming Dynasty Mainland China. After several failed attempts to obtain permission to establish a permanent mission within China, such a permission was finally obtained in 1582, and in 1583 Ricci and Ruggieri finally settled in Zhaoqing, the first stage on the Jesuits' "long ascent" to Beijing.[1]

In 1584 Ruggieri published the first Chinese catechism.[2] Visiting villages in the region he baptized several families that formed the nucleus of further Christian communities in mainland China.

During 1583–88, Michele Ruggieri, with

Jesuit Archives in Rome, and re-discovered only in 1934, by Pasquale d'Elia. This dictionary was finally published in 2001.[5][6]
To Ruggieri is attributed one of the first collections of handwritten maps of China, translated into Latin from Chinese sources (atlases and maps), dating back to 1606, or nearly fifty years before the manuscript maps of the Polish Jesuit
Michael Boym and the Novus Atlas Sinensis of the Trentino Jesuit Martino Martini
(printed by the publisher Johan Blaeu in Amsterdam in 1655 and immediately translated into several languages). The manuscript is now preserved in the State Archives of Rome, ms. 493.

Ruggieri was accused by Cai Yilong (

w Ts‘ai I-lung) of adultery with the wife of Lo Hung in October 1587. After trial, the judge ordered Cai to be severely punished, to the point he died of his wounds.[3]
: 182 

Return to Europe

In November 1588, Ruggieri left China for Rome in order to get the pope to send an embassy to the Wanli Emperor. This plan had been proposed as a means to allow Jesuits to reach Beijing and to be received by the emperor. But nothing became of it, the frequent death of Roman Pontiffs, and the deterioration of his own health, preceded the weary Jesuit's retirement to Salerno, where he died in 1607 without ever going to China again.[1][7]

In

Four Books[citation needed] (the classic Chinese introduction to Confucius’ philosophy), wrote poetry
in Chinese, and circulated copies of Chinese maps he had brought along with him from Zhaoqing. Ruggieri was also a much sought after spiritual guide and confessor in the school of Salerno. He died on 11 May 1607.

References

Citations

  1. ^ a b c d (in French) Biography at the Ricci 21st Century Roundtable database.
  2. ^ a b c ""Michele Ruggieri", Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity". Archived from the original on 2015-04-09. Retrieved 2015-04-04.
  3. ^ a b Yang, Paul Fu-Mien (2001). John W Witek (ed.). The Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary of Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Richi: An Historical and Linguistic Introduction. Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History (University of San Francisco) and Biblioteca Nacional Portugal, Instituto Português do Oriente.
  4. ISBN 978-0-19-156167-2
    .
  5. ^ Yves Camus, "Jesuits’ Journeys in Chinese Studies" Archived 2015-09-24 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ISBN 972-565-298-3. Partial preview available on Google Books
  7. De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu, Book Two, Chapter 12, "Father Ruggieri goes to Rome to arrange for an embassy from the Pope...". Pages 193–194 in the English translation: Louis J. Gallagher (1953). "China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matteo Ricci: 1583–1610", Random House, New York, 1953. The original Latin text can be found on Google Books
    .

Bibliography

Further reading

External links
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