The Vernacular and Latin Translations of Confucius

Abstract

By the third quarter of the seventeenth century, the Society of Jesus directly or indirectly dominated the Dutch debate on China in print. Jesuits like Nicolas Trigault and Martino Martini provided many of the eyewitness accounts that were adopted by Dutch authors, translators, and publishers. They, in turn, constructed narratives on the Middle Kingdom that shaped and disseminated images of Chinese religion and philosophy. The Dutch did this by producing printed works of exceptional quality and by utilising their extensive networks of distribution; significantly in this respect, their content was largely free from censure by Church and State. This proliferation of Jesuit accounts had profound implications for the religious and cultural representation of China. In fact, Jesuit publications were instrumental in making Confucius the main protagonist of Europe’s interactions with Asian philosophy: simply consider the fact that ‘Confucius’ is the Jesuit Latinisation of the Chinese title of Kong Fuzi 孔夫子, literally ‘Master Kong’.1 Thus, other potential representations of China, such as Buddhism and Taoism, were generally rejected as the Jesuits were of the opinion that only the ethical and social doctrine of Confucius should be complemented with the metaphysical ideas of Christianity.2 Confucius had become the focal point of the Jesuit missionary policy since they believed that China could only be converted to Christianity from within. After earlier attempts at posing as simple monks from the West, catering only to the lower classes, they began to accommodate the ruling classes who embraced Confucianism as their cultural and intellectual standard. The Jesuits also incorporated local cultural and philosophical traditions into their preaching of Christianity to justify the supposed compatibilities between Chinese and Christian concepts.3 Consequently, they tried to identify the essential