| During the Ming and Qing dynasties,Catholic Jesuits came to China from foreign lands and made the choice to adapt themselves to Chinese culture,attracting many women to be baptized.Among the Catholic female believers in the Ming and Qing Dynasties,the exemplary character is Candida Xu(许甘第大).She was deeply imbued with a strong Catholic family atmosphere and inherited the zeal of her grandfather Xu Guangqi(徐光启),who helped Catholicism at a critical stage of development and greatly promoted the spread of Catholicism in China.For this reason,most of the Jesuits in the Ming and Qing dynasties had written about Candida Xu.Those materials have made her deeds famous in China and abroad,and has attracted the attention of researchers at home and abroad.It is important to emphasize here that the value of Candida Xu’s account goes far beyond her personal story and provides an important research basis for understanding the group of the Catholic female believers in the Ming and Qing Dynasties which lacked the support of historical materials.In addition to playing an important role in the development of Catholicism in the Ming and Qing dynasties,Candida Xu’s religious practices also deepened the cultural exchange between China and the West in the Ming and Qing dynasties.While the former aspect has been summarized in domestic and foregin scholarship,there is almost no research on the latter aspect.Moreover,there is only one study on the topic of Candida Xu,in which there are problems of scattered discussions and strong religious overtones.Therefore,this paper will take a dual perspective of religious and cultural exchange to look at Candida Xu,and from the historical account to the analytical level,aiming to construct a comprehensive and focused study of Candida Xu.The main framework of this paper consists of five chapters.The first chapter examines the life of Candida Xu and her family figures.Candida Xu lived in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties and experienced the turbulent times of the Ming and Qing dynasties.Since there is little information on her life and it is mostly religious,only four aspects of her life can be summarized: her virtues,her residence,her death,and her church career.This explains the need to write more about Candida Xu’s family and her husband’s family.Of course,as a famous family in Shanghai in the Ming and Qing dynasties,her family figures have been extensively and informatively documented.Therefore,this chapter focuses on the religious atmosphere of the two families and their influence on Candida Xu,as well as their continuity in later generations,as a necessary supplement to the understanding of Candida Xu.The second chapter examines the interactions of Candida Xu.Although there are no studies on her social contact,a review of historical records shows that she had close contacts with many people inside and outside the Church,including Jesuit and Dominican missionaries,female believers,and local officials,because of her passion for religious affairs.Her dealings with the religious were mostly in the form of religious gifts,missionary funds,and exchanges of faith life,while her dealings with the lay officials were mainly through her eldest son,Xu Zuanzeng(许缵曾),who was an official,to seek their help and protection for the missionaries and their missionary activities.Chapter 3 compares the various editions of The Great Biography of Candida Xu.It is a book written specifically for her by the second priest of Candida Xu.There are more than 10 Chinese and foreign translations of the biography,which have been widely circulated and have been regarded as the core historical materials for the study of Candida Xu,as well as the key to Candida Xu’s fame in the East and West.There are two foreign scholars,Gail King and Qin Qilan(秦启兰),who have already examined the foreign and Chinese versions respectively,so this paper adds an internal church version to theirs.These Chinese and foreign translations are all from the French edition of 1688,but their contents vary according to the translator’s choice,for example,Xu Caibai(许采白)removed the Chinese cultural customs and the missionary part of the original French book.Although it is a very comprehensive account of Candida Xu’s deeds,the content of the biography is mainly focused on the Catholic faith and ministry due to the religious identity and position of its author,but it should not be dismissed as valuable.Moreover,this biography covers not only Candida Xu but also Candida Xu,the concubines,and other figures,as well as the"Calendar Casein in Early Kangxi Reign"(“康熙历狱”),which should be further explored and discussed.The fourth chapter summarizes and describes the performance of Candida Xu in religion,that is,her religious practice.This is the most abundantly documented and well-researched aspect of Candida Xu.Therefore,this chapter will cite a new historical source,Adrien Greslon’s Histoire de la chine sous la domination des Tartares and Philippe Couplet’s “Narrasi la morte della Illustrissima Signora Candida:chiamata seconda la favella Cinese Hiu” which is the ninth chapter of Breve relatione dello stato e qualità delle missioni della Cina,and other older documents discuss Candida Xu’s religious practices in the context of,mainly extending from her personal religious life to the entire church enterprise,such as providing necessary funds for missionaries as living expenses or missionary funds,inviting missionaries to teach in many provinces,and also helped Frarcuis Brancati to establish the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,and so on,ultimately showing her important position and role in the development of Catholicism in the Ming and Qing dynasties.Chapter 5 analyzes Candida Xu and the cultural exchange between Chinese and Western cultures in the Ming and Qing dynasties.This chapter applies the new paradigm and new methods in the study of Chinese Christian religions and considers the religious practice of Candida Xu as a part and concrete manifestation of the cultural exchange between China and the West in the Ming and Qing dynasties.First,it discusses the formation of the phenomenon of "half the sky" of Catholic women believers in the Ming and Qing dynasties and their religious space and reveals the collision,adaptation,and influence of Chinese women’s culture and Western Catholic culture.The second focuses on Candida Xu’s practice of blending Chinese and Western cultures,namely the sacrament of matrimony and the art of women’s redemption.Finally,the indirect influence of Candida Xu on the cultural exchange between East and West in the Ming and Qing dynasties is shown,starting with Xu Zuanzeng and the Nursery in Songjiang.These religious practices,and even the group of women believers represented by Candida Xu,became the "in-between" state between the two cultures,have long been removed from the evaluation of cultural superiority and inferiority,and have entered into a more inclusive and open dialogue of heterogeneous cultures,which has certain significance for the cultural interaction between China and foreign countries today.In addition to the main framework,this paper will electronically organize the contents of Xu Zuanzeng’s “Baolun tang gao” on Candida Xu and translate an chapter called “Narrasi la morte della Illustrissima Signora Candida: chiamata seconda la favella Cinese Hiu” which was written by Philippe Couplet from Italian to Chinese in the appendix section.To sum up,this paper takes the primary documents as the basis of discussion,goes from historical evidence to the level of analysis and discernment,breaks through the religious perspective in the previous studies of Candida Xu,introduces the content of heterogeneous cultural exchanges,grasps and focuses on the close relationship between Candida Xu and the history of Catholicism in Ming and Qing dynasties and the history of cultural exchanges between China and the West from a holistic perspective,and provides a reference for a better study of female believers in Ming and Qing dynasties with Candida Xu as the core.Ultimately,the aim is to learn from the past and draw from the experience and elements of the religious practice of Candida Xu that are useful for the Sino-foreign cultural dialogue today. |
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