Special Collections- Vatican Film Library : Rome to China

RR, Plate 184: This letter was written in 1621 by Japanese officials who identify themselves as being from Gokinai, a word that referred to five imperially controlled districts around the capital at Edo, near Tokyo. The signers would have been speaking as functionaries, not as residents of a town. They offer praise to the Catholic religion. A Latin translation is given on the same sheet.

RR, Plate 185: This rare and beautifully executed portrait of Matteo Ricci reveals how European and Chinese pictorial methods contrast. Chinese portraits developed out of centuries of brushed calligraphy and the subdued treatment of human figures, on one hand, and Buddhist and Taoist depictions of humans and divinities on the other.

RR, Plate 186: This is a rare, ink-squeezed rubbing of the top portion of a 9th century stone monument discovered in 1625 in a Christian graveyard in Sian (Xi`an). This stele caused a sensation in Europe on its discovery in 1625. The tablature seen here (which capped the nine-foot monument) reads: "A Memorial Stele [honoring] the Flowing into China of the Illustrious Religion from Great Ch`in." Great Ch`in was a traditional Chinese term for the Roman Orient.

RR, Plate 198: Adam Schall was the first European ever to have been a member of the court bureaucracy in Peking. As part of his duties as head of the Office of Astronomy, he produced this large and truly spectacular six-part cosmological map, accompanied by pictures of astronomical instruments.

RR, Plate 194: This elegant and finely engraved Chinese book on Western hydraulics by the Jesuit Sabatino de Ursis reveals both the importation of specific techniques and constructions to China and the eagerness with which many Chinese accepted European technical learning. The list of sponsors, a preface by a well-known convert who was the most skilled of all his peers in mathematics, and the textual breaks before Christian appellations are all evidence of the warm reception that Western technology received. Shown here is a traditional European force pump.

RR, Plate 195: The cover board used for the entire colection of fascicles in which de Ursis's "Hydraulics" was preserved is wrapped in blue silk and carries the B.A.V (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana) seal on the lower left.

RR, Plate 196: Matteo Ricci's technical explanation in Chinese of European astronomy was no doubt written with the help of his friend Li Chih-tsao, who contributed a preface. Notice the main circle's division into the twelve houses, and their polar projection. The work contains a preface by Ricci, as well as one by Li Chih-tsao, with a postscript by another Chinese friend. The prefaces give only the rough date "the end of the Wan-li reign" (i.e. ca. 1610- 1620).

RR, Plate 197: Here Euclid, rendered in Chinese by Matteo Ricci and Hsü Kuang-ch'i, describes the postulate for the existence of parallel lines. The entire book is well-larded with similar illustrations, essential to any presentation of Euclid.

RR, Plate 199: Adam Schall von Bell introduced the new astronomy of Galileo, including the telescope, to China. This single-sheet printed map with explanatory text shows the stars visible in the sky of northern China.

RR, Plate 210: This three-part manuscript catalog shows the books published and owned by an unidentified branch of Jesuits in China. It is believed that Couplet, an important biographer and historian of the mission as well as sponsor of important Latin translations of Chinese classics, supervised its production.

RR, Plate 211: The first chüan (a traditional Chinese style of chapter) of 'Po-ku t'u-lu' (an illustrated register of antiquities) shows an ancient cast-bronze ceremonial vessel. This famous work is finely executed and is an example of the great improvements to illustrated printed books and their popularity in China.

RR, Plate 212: Antonius Montucci created his own Latin table of contents, with Chinese characters. This display is evidence of the way serious Jesuit knowledge of literary Chinese and Chinese styles of reading and exegesis had inspired amateur study in Europe, especially Protestant Europe.

RR, Plate 213: Verbiest pondered questions of the Chinese I-ching and geometric form. Aside from being a fortune book, the I-ching was the mainstay of an ancient philosophy of number and symmetry. It deals much with the numbers three and six, as seen in Verbiest's hexagons and triangles. This pull-out page is one of many working notes that were bound together with Verbiest's printed eclipse predictions and his apologia of western astronomy for the Manchu court.

RR, Plate 214: This is the title page of the presentation piece, an explanation of western astronomy and its power as an art of eclipse prediction.

RR, Plate 215: Examples of the exacting arts and tools of astronomy that Verbiest conveyed to the court in the latter half of the 17th century are seen in the illustrations in his work.

RR, Plate 216: Illustrations of an armillary sphere and a celestial globe are among those found in Ferdinand Verbiest's work.

RR, Plate 187: Abraham Ortelius's "New Map of Asia," of which a detail is shown here, was printed in 1567 on two flat sheets and shows the state of European knowledge of Asia before the Jesuit mission. Ortelius included traditional terms and images drawn from Marco Polo and other old sources, Tartar and Scythian place-names, renditions of the desert tents of Mongolian Great Khans, and the locations of Inner Asian states, such as Tibet and Tangut.

RR, Plate 188: Matteo Ricci, the first Jesuit missionary to become adept in Chinese, produced a map of the world in Chinese. The Ricci map went through several versions from 1574 to 1603 and profoundly influenced western cartography. Sometime in the 1620s Giulio Aleni had this abridgment of Ricci's map printed and hand-tinted. Aleni's name is in the left-most column of Chinese on the upper half, above the Jesuit seal.

RR, Plate 189: The Jesuit Michael Boym based his album of eight maps of China on his own experience of the country and on Chinese gazetteers. The opening page of his impressive album features the entire East Asian subcontinent. Although it does not depict the Korean- Japanese configuration with scientific accuracy, it does give details of China's river and mountain systems.

RR, Plate 190: This map from 'Magni Catay' features the administrative region of Peking. Note the mineralogical coordinations, as well as degree coordinates. Here Boym also gives a sense of the political culture of Peking, showing the forms of ceremonial dress of the highest rulers and featuring the emperor at the top.

RR, Plate 191: Giulio Alen supervised this wood-block printing of a book on the wonders of the western world, titled literally "An Illustrated Explanation of Geography." Here we see the Colossus of Rhodes, guarding that Mediterranean harbor, an image quite familiar to westerners from both classic and popular archaeology. The Chinese book shown here does not represent the best of Chinese wood-block engraving but appears to be a cheap printing.

RR, Plate 192: Another page from Aleni's "Illustrated Explanation of Geography" shows a wood-block illustration of the Colosseum in Rome.

RR, Plate 193: In a work called 'Questions about the Western Regions Answered' Aleni and Diaz instruct their Chinese audience concerning geography. In catechetical style, the reader learns that China is, in fact, only one of five continents. This helps demonstrate that the Jesuits did not always bend knowledge, theology, and arts beyond their acceptable limits just to appeal to Chinese notions.

RR, Plate 200: Giulio Aleni brought western iconography to China, where it was incorporated in a genre that the Chinese themselves recognized, especially in the context of Buddho-Taoist teaching. Here we have an intricate block-printed book of illustrations used as an aid to proselytization. Numbers in the text portion at the bottom of pages refer to figures and arrangements in the scenes of Christ's life.

RR, Plate 201: The inside front cover of Aleni's picture-catechism displays the finely engraved Jesuit logo.

RR, Plate 202: This Chinese-style map of Jerusalem illustrates the story of Christ's last days, indicating the stations of the cross and the location of Calvary.

RR, Plate 203: From the Latin inscription on the inside of the back cover, we learn that Aleni's book of iconography and explanation was presented to the Vatican by the Jesuit Francisco Vello.

RR, Plate 204: A group of prominent men in Canton gathered to produce a formal letter of respect to Father Tseng (the Jesuit Alvaro Semedo), calling him "Great Teacher and Priest, Master Tseng, Great Person Removed from Office." The last phrase refers to Semedo's imprisonment and banishment by the court in 1616, along with other Jesuits.

RR, Plate 205: The addendum to Varo's 'The Art of the Mandarin Language', "Brevis methodus confessionis instituendae," is by Father Basilis of Glemona. The addendum is an important piece of evidence of missionar practices. Its romanized version of the common spoken Cantonese conveyed easily to new missionaries a way to perform rites and sacraments for potential converts; this tool was a Dominican answer to the Jesuits' method of long preparation in literary Chinese.

RR, Plate 206: On the opening page of the prologue to Varo's 'Arte', the Chinese block carvers have done a magnificent job with a foreign script.

RR, Plate 207: This printed Manchurian pamphlet is a short summary of Ricci's famous catechism of Christian doctrine.

RR, Plate 208: These illustrations from an anonymous and undated work of preaching ad consolation represent a less-well-designed and non-sacramental work but one that would have been useful to missionaries nonetheless.

RR, Plate 209: A Chinese-language book of sacraments.