RICCI, MATTEO

(b. Macerata, Italy, 6 October 1552; d. Peking, China, 11 May 1610)

mathematics, astronomy, geography, sinology.

Ricci was the son of Giovanni Battista Ricci, a pharmacist, and Giovanna Angiolelli. In 1568 he went to Rome to study law, but in 1571 he joined the Jesuits and in 1572 was enrolled at the Collegio Romano, where he studied until 1577. One of his professors was the renowned Clavius. Ricci left Rome in 1577 when he was ordered to the missions in the Orient. He sailed from Lisbon for Goa, and from there moved on to Macao in 1582. In 1583 he entered the Chinese Empire, settling at Ch’ao-ching (Shiuhing), in Kwantung province. This expedition was the beginning of modern Catholic missions in China. After establishing missions in different parts of the empire, in 1601 Ricci finally settled in Peking, where, under the protection of the Emperor Wan-li, he remained until his death.

The success of Ricci’s missionary activity was due not only to his personal high qualities and to his complete adaptation to China, both in customs and in language, but also to his authoritative knowledge of the sciences, especially mathematics, astronomy, and geography. He disseminated Western science by lecturing, publishing books and maps, and making instruments.

Besides his books in Chinese on religious and moral topics (including Basic Treatise on God; Christian Doctrine; Treatise on Friendship; and Ten Paradoxes), Ricci is remembered for his Chinese works in the sciences, generally translations or shortened versions of works of Clavius. His Chinese pupils helped him with the Chinese literary style. These works comprised the Astrolabe, Sphere, Arithmetic, Measures, and Isoperimeters. But especially important was his Chinese version of the first six books of Euclid’s Elements, also from the Latin text of Clavius. Entitled A First Textbook of Geometry, this work assures Ricci an important place in the history of mathematics. Written in collaboration with his pupil Hsu Kuang-ch’i, it was published at Peking in 1607. In about 1672 it was translated into Tatar at the suggestion of the Emperor K’ang Hsi. The work was completed in 1865, with the translation of the remaining books of Euclid, by the English Protestant missionary Alexander Wylie and the Chinese mathematician Li Shan-lan.

Ricci’s map of the world is important in the history of geography. It was published at Ch’ao-ching in 1584 and at Nanking in 1600; later editions, one issued at the special request of the emperor, appeared at Peking. For the first time the Chinese had a complete idea of the distribution of the oceans and landmasses. Very few authentic copies of the map are known today. The copy at the Vatican Library (Peking, 1602) is entitled “Complete Geographical Map of All Kingdoms.” It is an oval planisphere, on a folding screen of six panels, each seventy-and-a-half inches (1.79 meters) high and twenty-seven inches (0.69 meters) wide, with numerous illustrations and legends.

Ricci’s other important contributions to geography were his calculation of the breadth of China in latitude (three-quarters the breadth assumed by Western geographers) and his identification of China and Peking with the Cathay and Cambaluc of Marco Polo. He shares the latter recognition with another Jesuit, Benedetto de Góis, who made a journey from India to China (1602–1605).

Ricci’s life and activities are also documented in his letters, written in Italian and Portuguese, and in an extensive report, Della entrata delta compagnia di Giesù e Christianità nella Cina. He was proposed for beatification in 1963 at the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. For a bibliography of Ricci’s works, see Louis Pfister, Notices biographiques et bibliographiques sur les Jésuites de l’ancienne mission de Chine 1552–1773, 2 vols. (Shanghai, 1932–1934), 1, 22–42; II, 9*-10*; Henri Bernard, “Les adaptations chinoises d’ouvrages européens: bibliographie chronologique depuis la venue des Portugais à Canton jusqu’à la mission française de Pekin 1514–1688,” in Monumenta serica, 10 (1945), 1–57, 309–388; and Pasquale M. D’Elia, Fonti Ricciane (cited below), esp. III, 239–243.

Modern eds. of Ricci’s works are Pietro Tacchi Venturi, Opere storiche del P. Matteo Ricci S.I., 2 vols.: I. I commentarj della Cina, II. Le lettere dalla Cina (Macerata, 1911–1913), with intros., notes, tables, and a bibliography of Ricci’s Chinese works compiled by Giovanni Vacca, II, 544–548; Pasquale M. D’Elia, II mappamondo cinese del P. Matteo Ricci S.I. (Vatican City, 1938), a facs. ed. based on the 3rd ed. of the map (Peking, 1602), with trans., intro., and commentary; and Pasquale M. D’Elia, Fonti Ricciane (Rome, 1942–1949), the first three vols. of the planned national ed. of Ricci’s works, which contain Storia dell’ introduzione del cristianesimo in Cina.

Tacchi Venturi’s ed. of the Commentarj and the Storia in D’Elia’s ed. reproduce the autograph text of Dell’ entrata …, cited in the text of the article. This MS discovered by Tacchi Venturi in 1910 (Archivio Romano della Compagnia di Gesù, Jap.-Sin., n. 106a), was known in the Latin trans. of Nicolas Trigault, De Christiana expeditions apud Sinas a Societate Iesu suscepta (Augsburg, 1615). There are several eds. and trans. of this work, including L. J. Gallagher, The China That Was: China As Discovered by the Jesuits at the Close of the Sixteenth Century (Milwaukee, Wis., 1942).

D’Elia has edited other works by Ricci: “II trattato sull’amicizia. Primo libro scritto in cinese da Matteo Ricci S.I. (1595),” in Studia missionalia, 7 (1952), 449–515, contains Ricci’s Chinese text, an Italian trans., and commentary; “Musica e canti italiani a Pechino,” in Rivista degli studi orientali, 30 (1955), 131–145, includes the Chinese text of eight songs by Ricci with Italian trans. and commentary; and “Presentazione della prima traduzione cinese di Euclide,” in Monumenta serica, 15 (1956), 161–202, which gives an Italian trans., with commentary, of Chinese texts of Ricci and Hsu Kuang-ch’i.

II. Secondary Literature. One of the most prolific writers on Ricci and his work was Pasquale D’Elia; see the bibliography of his publications (1913–1959), in Studia missionalia, 10 (1960), 90–112. In his Fonti Ricciane D’Elia collected a rich bibliography on Ricci. See also Giovanni Vacca, “L’opera di Matteo Ricci,” in Nuova antologia, 5th ser., 149 (1910), 265–275; and “Sull’opera geografica del P. Matteo Ricci,” in Rivista geografica italiana, 48 (1941), 66–74.

Other sources are Arnaldo Masotti, “Sull’opera scientifica di Matteo Ricci,” in Rendiconti dell’ Istituto lombardo di scienze e lettere, 85 (1952), 415–445; Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1954–1971); and Clerks and Craftsmen in China and the West (Cambridge, 1970), 21, 205, 397. Two recent biographies are Vincent Cronin, The Wise Man from the West (Glasgow, 1961); and Fernando Bortone, P. Matteo Ricci S.I., it “Saggio d’Occidente” (Rome, 1965).

Arnaldo Masotti