Matteo Ricci—— the first “Western Confucian”

       意大利来华传教士利玛窦（Matteo Ricci, 1552-1610）是利马切拉塔（Macerata）城的名门之后，1582年8月和罗明坚（Michele Ruggieri, 1543-1607）一起从澳门来到了肇庆，成为最早长期居住在中国内地的传教士。1601年1月24日利玛窦以向万历皇帝进贡的远夷使者身份进入了北京。万历皇帝看到利玛窦所献的这些贡品，倍觉新奇。收下礼品，利马窦暂时留在了北京，住进了会馆。

       利玛窦是最早向中国介绍西方科学的人。他的《乾坤体义》是传教士们第一本关于西方天文学的著作，他初步把托勒密（Ptolemy）的“九重天说”，亚理士多德的“四元行论”介绍了进来。利玛窦和徐光启合作翻译的《几何原本》。人们认为《几何原本》是利玛窦向东方所介绍的最好的纪念物。

       利玛窦去世后由他的弟子金尼阁带回欧洲并出版的他的《天主教传入中国史》一书在欧洲引起极大的轰动，一时洛阳纸贵，这本书开启了对中华文明的介绍，在书中他对孔子和儒家给予很高的评价。谈到孔子时他说“中国最大的哲学家莫过于孔子,他生于公元前551年,享年七十余岁,一生授人以言行与文辞,人们都把他视为世间至圣至贤的人,旷古未有,因此非常受人尊敬。说实话,他所立之言与他合乎自然的生活方式绝不逊色于我们的先贤古拉,甚至还超过了我们很多古人。”

       通过利玛窦的书，一个文明的中国，富饶的中国，礼仪的中国呈现在欧洲人面前。

  Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), a descendant of a famous family in Macerata, Italy, was a Jesuit missionary to China. In August 1582, together with Michele Ruggieri (1543-1607), he moved from Macau to Zhaoqing and became one of the earliest missionaries residing in Chinese mainland. On January 24, 1601, Ricci entered Beijing as an envoy from a remote nation. He offered Emperor Wanli some presents which gave the emperor a pleasant surprise. He was then allowed to stay in Beijing for the time being and took residence in a hostel.

  Matteo Ricci was the first person to introduce Western science to China. His book Cosmological Epitome (Qiankun Tiyi, also translated into The structure of Heaven and Earth), was the first book on Western astronomy written by a missionary. In this book, he briefly introduced Ptolemy’s hypothesis of “nine layers of heaven” and Aristotle’s theory of “four elements” into China. Mathematics is closely related to astronomy and calendar. Ricci and Xu Guangqi jointly translated Euclid’s Elements of Geometry, which is considered the best present that Ricci brought to the East.

  After Ricci died, his student Nicolas Trigault published his book About the Christian Expedition to China Undertaken by the Society of Jesus in Europe, which was extremely popular and caused a sensation. This was the first book that described Chinese civilization. In his book, he spoke highly of Confucius and Confucianism.

  When talking about Confucius, Ricci said: “Confucius is the greatest philosopher in China. He was born in 551 BC and died at the age of over seventy, his whole life devoted to teaching his students how to be a good and how to read and write. He is regarded as the greatest sage ever born, and is very much respected. To be honest, his sayings and his natural way of life didn’t fall behind our sages and are even better than many of them."

  Ricci’s book presented a rich, civilized and well-mannered China to the Europeans.

“文化互译，沟通世界”