In 1603, Ricci [known to the Chinese as Li Madou] published his key work, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu shiyi). This pre-evangelization dialogue invites readers to escape the prison of a merely natural existence to find lasting joy in God. (Well over a century later, this book came into the hands of a Korean and sparked the first Catholic evangelization of his country.)
Ricci became a minor celebrity at Peking. He was in constant demand at elite dinner parties and candidates taking the imperial examinations flocked to meet him. After a visiting Chinese Jew mistook Ricci for a fellow Jew, he was invited to become the rabbi of a synagogue in Kaifeng. The Wanli emperor may have considered Ricci an exotic pet. The Wise Man from the West simply wore out in his silken harness. He died of a fever on May 11, 1610. His tomb and those of other pioneer Jesuits still survive undamaged in Bejing.
Alas, Ricci’s accommodations with Confucian culture alarmed later missionaries who were hostile to the Jesuits. They claimed he promoted “idolatrous” Chinese rites, a complicated matter debated in Rome for years, until in 1704 Pope Clement XI condemned reverence for Confucius and one’s ancestors. He reconfirmed his decision in 1715. The formerly tolerant Kangxi emperor banned Christian missions in 1721. His successor exiled most of the Jesuits in Peking. Catholic evangelization in China was hampered until Pius XII relaxed the former policy in 1939 to permit civic and familial honors.
Nevertheless, posthumous honors have continued for Ricci. A Jesuit colleague who had worked in Japan praised him for doing “more with his death than with his life.” Peking Buddhists revered him as the bodhisattva (“saint”) Li Madou pusa. Ricci and Marco Polo are the only Westerners depicted in the Millennium Building in Beijing. On January 24, 2010, beatification proceedings reopened for Ricci in his home diocese of Macerata-Tolentino.
Matteo Ricci wrote, “This life is for us but a journey, we are not here forever, nor does our final goal lie here below.” Li Madou’s own path to heaven went by way of Peking. Ten million Chinese Catholics now follow in his wake.
