similar privileges were accorded to the adherents of the Lama temples.

By their scientific attainments and their services to the state the Jesuits had at last obtained legal, if incomplete, toleration for the work of their Church. It was a triumph for the policy inaugurated by Valignani and Ricci, and the rapid growth of the Christian community seemed assured. The edict, however, had not been issued without opposition in influential quarters and specifically stated that the government had nothing to fear from the new religion. If Christianity should ever seem to prove subversive to the state the opposition would be quick to seize the opportunity to renew the attack. The position of the Church remained precarious.

QUIET AND PROSPERITY, 1692-1706

The fifteen years that followed the edict of 1692 were marked by the steady growth of the Christian community. Accurate statistics for all China are probably not to be had, but incidents and incomplete figures show that the Church prospered greatly. We have already seen the provision made by Rome in 1696 for the supervision of the enlarging constituency. Reënforcements came in rapidly. In 1698 fifteen Jesuits entered China and in 1701 sixteen more arrived. These were banner years: from 1694 to 1705 inclusive eighty-eight joined the ranks of the Society in China. A few of these were Chinese, but the large majority were Europeans. In 1697 the Propaganda sent out at least ten missionaries, including two Lazarists-the first of their congregation to arrive in China-and six Franciscans.133 The Propaganda wished one of the Lazarists, Appiani, to found a seminary for the training of a native clergy, but opposition seems to have been raised by some of the other missionaries, and Appiani, abandoning the project, settled in Szechwan.134 In 1700 four Franciscans arrived who had been sent by the Propaganda and who had come by way of Poland, Russia, and Persia, and thence apparently by sea.

135

132

132 Catalogus Patrum ac Fratrum e Societate Jesu qui . . . in Sinis adlaboraverunt, pp. 20-33.

133 Civezza, Histoire universelle des missions franciscaines, Vol. 2, pp. 262 et seq.; Demimund, Vie du François-Régis Clet, pp. 97-104; Cordier in Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, p. 675.

134 Demimund, op. cit., pp. 97-104.

135

Civezza, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 267.

Just how long the average length of missionary service was we do not know, nor are we able to say certainly how many missionaries were in China in any given year, but one estimate says that in 1695 there were in China seventy-five priests, of whom thirtyeight were Jesuits (thirty-two European and six Chinese), nine Spanish Dominicans, five Spanish Augustinians, seven representatives of the Missions Étrangères, twelve Spanish Franciscans, and four Italian Franciscans.13 Another estimate contemporaryplaces the number of Jesuits in 1702 or 1703 at "upwards of seventy" and says that this was more than the total of all the other orders. Still another account states that in 1701 there were in China fifty-nine Jesuits, twenty-nine Franciscans, eight Dominicans, fifteen secular priests (nearly all of the Paris Society), and six Augustinians, a total of one hundred and seventeen. In 1703, so one missionary reported, Canton had seven churches-one belonging to the Portuguese Jesuits, one to the French Jesuits, two to the Missions Étrangères, two to the Franciscans, and one to the Augustinians. One of these was said to be the best building in the city."

138

137

140

139

Between 1692 and 1707 there were, we know, missionaries or native Christians in all of the provinces but Kansu.11 Five hundred adults, it is said, were being baptized each year in Peking, *** and in Kiangsi a missionary estimated that with the aid of a catechist a similar number could be won annually by each priest. Some of the Chinese were active in reaching nonChristians and we read of an organization of lay Christians for the spiritual oversight of their less instructed or less earnest fellow believers, for the baptism of children, for the care of the sick, and for the extension of the Faith among pagans."

136

143

144

Maas, Cartas de China, 2d series, p. 120. Conde de Villa Humbrosa, Memorial Apologetica, p. 149, says that in 1664 the Jesuits had 30 priests, 41 houses of residence, 159 churches, and innumerable oratories.

137

Report of Francis Noël to the General of the Jesuits, 1703, in Lockman, Travels of the Jesuits, Vol. 1, p. 447.

138 Servière, Les missions anciennes de la Compagnie de Jésus en Chine, p. 55. 139 Letter of Fontenay, Jan. 15, 1704, in Lockman, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 205.

140

Pere du Tartre to his father, Dec. 17, 1701, in Lettres édifiantes, Vol. 3. 141 H. Cordier in Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, p. 675; Civezza, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 262, 267; Pourias, Huit ans au Yunnan, p. 19; Launay, Mission du Koung-si, p. 18; Maas, op. cit., p. 115; Cordier, docs, pour servir à l'hist. ecclès. de l'Extrême Orient, pp. 24-27; Lockman, Travels of the Jesuits, Vol. 2, p. 11; Hering, Roman Catholic Missions in China, 1692-1744.

142 Noël in Lockman, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 448.

143 Premaire to Gobien, Nov. 1, 1700, in Lockman, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 80. 144 Huc, Christianity in China, Tartary and Thibet, Vol. 3, pp. 226-229.

146

The Christian community was still most numerous in the lower part of the Yangtze Valley."" How many Christians there were in all China we do not know, but by 1705 the total was almost certainly not more than 300,000 and it was possibly very much less. Few Christians came from the educated classes, andexcept for those attached to the astronomical bureau as assistants to the Jesuits-only a scanty number of officials had embraced the Faith." The missionaries found trouble in reaching the women, for Chinese proprieties could not be ignored and separate chapels and churches had in some instances to be provided. Numbers of women were baptized, however, and some proved very zealous.1 The rapid progress, however, was, after all, only a beginning.

151

148

The missionaries entertained great hopes for the future. They were enjoying the favor of the Emperor and this seemed to presage continued prosperity. In addition to the aid which he had given at Peking, K'ang Hsi contributed to the rebuilding of the church in Hangchow-in some respects the finest Christian temple in all China-and sent a personal representative to worship in this structure and in one in Nanking." He commissioned some of the missionaries to undertake the mapping of a small section of the Empire,100 and in 1708 the project was extended to the entire country.' This increasing imperial patronage appeared to give assurance of quiet and growth for years to come. However, as we have observed, the position of the missionaries remained insecure. They were foreigners and numbered less than one hundred. They were still looked at askance by most of the educated and official classes and for such tolerance as they enjoyed were dependent upon K'ang Hsi. His death or a change in his sentiments might at any moment bring swift disaster. They were, moreover, as we have often said, preaching a faith which, if it were adopted, would work a revolution in China and would 145 Report of Noël in Lockman, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 447.

148 This figure must be at best a rough estimate. Noël (in Lockman, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 447) says there were "upwards of . . . 100,000 Christians" in "the province of Nankin." This was in 1702 or 1703. Flores (Maas, op. cit., pp. 152, 153) says there were in Shantung in 1686 3,000 Christians.

147 Report of Noël in Lockman, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 449; letter of Chavagnac, Feb. 10, 1703, in Lockman, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 309.

148 Report of Francis Noël in Lockman, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 447; letter of Chavagnac in Lockman, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 302-309.

145 Letter of Bouvet, Nov. 30, 1699, in Lockman, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 75.

150 Lettres édifiantes, Vol. 3, pp. 156-160.

151 Mailla, Histoire générale de la Chine, Vol. 11, pp. 314, 315. Mailla was himself engaged in the project.

overthrow or transform some of the most cherished institutions of the country. It is not strange, then, that the brief period of success was followed by several decades of disappointment and adversity, and that the growth of the Church, for a few years so promising, should suffer retardation.

CHAPTER VII

THE BEGINNING OF RETARDED GROWTH: THE RITES CONTROVERSY

WHILE all this growth was taking place and while outwardly the future of the Christian mission in China was bright, a controversy was in progress which was to bring reverses and persecution. From what was said at the close of the second and third chapters and at the conclusion of the one just completed, it is obvious that if the Catholic missionaries were to see any large proportion of the Chinese accept their faith they either would have to obtain extensive reënforcements over a prolonged period-a missionary body sufficiently large and working long enough to win at least a substantial minority of the nation from their existing religious practices and social institutions-or they would have to wait until other agencies, internal or external, had so influenced Chinese culture that it would offer less stubborn resistance to the entrance of a revolutionary religion.

Now reënforcements could not at that time be had from Europe in very large numbers. Distances were great, transportation and communication were uncertain and slow, and the home resources of the orders and societies were inadequate for an effort much greater than was already being made. The Europe of the eighteenth century, rich and growing though it was, did not have the means to send thousands of missionaries to China and, even had it possessed them, it was too distracted by wars and too lukewarm toward its professed faith to concentrate upon such an enterprise. Even if the impossible had been achieved and missionaries had in a few decades been multiplied ten or twenty-fold, the entrance of so many foreigners preaching a revolutionary doctrine could not have failed to arouse the active opposition of the Emperor and the ruling scholar class. No force was yet in sight to join with