Ruggeri, Michele

The future missionary was born in the town of Spinazzola in Puglia , in the south of Italy (the then Neapolitan Kingdom ), and was born baptized Pompilio. He received his doctorate in law from the University of Naples in Civil and Canon Law and worked at the court of Philip II in Naples . On October 28, 1572, he entered the Jesuit Order , changing his worldly name Pompilio to Michele, and began to study philosophy and theology. On March 23, 1578 he left Europe on a ship sailing from Lisbon to Portuguese India, and on September 13 of that year arrived in Goa , the main Portuguese base in India. At the end of November 1578, he was sent to Cochin (southern India), where he immediately began to learn the local language (apparently Malayalam ), and six months later he could receive confession from local Catholics. ^[2]

However, despite his successes in Malayalam - and most likely, precisely because of them - Ruggeri did not work in India for very long. He was soon sent by the Jesuit Order to Macau , in response to a request from the main Jesuit in the Far East, Alessandro Valignano . At that time, the Jesuits and other Catholic missionaries had been operating for several years (since 1563) in Macau, a port town on the southern coast of China, which was under Portuguese control. However, the successes of the missionaries were very limited, because instead of learning the Chinese language themselves and “getting used to” Chinese culture, they wanted the Chinese to learn to speak and live in Portuguese. Although missionaries sometimes visited the Chinese "mainland" outside of Macau (mainly the port city of Guangzhou , where the Portuguese from Macau were allowed to attend regular fairs), none of them managed to settle there for any length of time. Having appreciated the situation, the recently arrived in Macau Valignano considered it necessary that the Jesuits who intend to convert China to Christ would behave like their colleagues who worked in Japan, that is, they should begin by learning the oral and written language of the country where they want to work. For this purpose, he requested the Jesuit leadership in India to send a person with the proper abilities to Macau. It so happened that the man whom Valignano (Bernardino de Ferraris) asked for was already appointed to a managerial job in Cochin , and instead of him, Ruggeri was sent to Macau. ^[2]

In May 1579, Ruggeri left Cochin, and on September 20 of the same year arrived in Macau. He immediately began to study the Chinese language, which, despite the presence of the Portuguese in Macau for nearly a quarter of a century, it was not easy to find suitable teachers. The fact is that although there were Chinese in Macau who were able to communicate to some extent in Portuguese, they mostly came from the lower strata of society in South China, and rarely owned Chinese writing . In addition, the native language of the region’s inhabitants, Cantonese , was very different from the so-called “ guanhua ”: based on the metropolitan dialects (Beijing and Nanjing) of the “ Mandarin language”, which, as Valignano pointed out, the Jesuits would need to successfully work with the ruling classes of China and intellectual elite of the country. Already in 1579, through Valignano and the Jesuit leadership in India, Ruggeri asked to send another sensible Jesuit to help him. However, the fulfillment of his request took a lot of time, and this second man, who became famous in the future, Matteo Ricci , arrived in Macau only on August 7, 1582. ^[2]

By the time Ricci arrived, Ruggieri had already traveled to China outside Macau three times, thanks in particular to the annual fairs in Guangzhou , which the Portuguese from Macau were allowed to attend. Although the Chinese admiral, responsible for relations with the Portuguese in Guangzhou, did not know who the Jesuits were, he appreciated Ruggeri’s education and his knowledge of the language and Chinese etiquette, and allowed him to stay in the house for Siamese ambassadors during his visits to Guangzhou (as opposed to other Europeans who attended the fair, who were supposed to spend the night on their ships). ^[2]

Despite the pessimism of most other Jesuits working in Macau, Ruggeri and Ricci tried in various ways to obtain permission from the Chinese authorities to establish a permanent mission within the country. Although Valignano believed that it was premature to do this, because the Jesuits were still poorly proficient in language, Ruggeri was convinced that only being inside the country, in the Chinese language community and with the ability to communicate with the local intelligentsia (literate and knowledgeable in Guanghua), the Jesuits can achieve what is necessary for them language proficiency activities. ^[2]

During this process, Ruggeri and another Jesuit, Francesco Pasio (1544-1612) were able to spend several months in the winter of 1582/83 in Zhaoqing , in the west of Guangdong province, where the residence of the governor general of the two southern provinces, Guangdong and Guangxi, was located in the Minsk era . Finally permission was obtained, and on September 10, 1583, Ruggeri and Ricci were finally able to open a permanent mission in Zhaoqing . ^[2] Subsequently, after Ruggeri left China, Ricci transferred this mission to Shaoguan in the north of the province, then (in 1599) to Nanjing, and in 1600 to Beijing.

Over the several years spent in Zhaoqing, Ruggieri and Ricci, with the help of their Chinese assistants, they created a series of works designed for Chinese readers, as well as important educational materials that were later used by new generations of Jesuits who arrived in China to master the language and classical literature of the country.

In November 1588, after five years of Jesuit work in Zhaoqing, and still with no prospects of ever reaching Beijing, Ruggeri set off from China to Rome, hoping to persuade the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church to send an official embassy to the Chinese emperor. Ricci and Ruggeri hoped that in this way they could finally infiltrate Beijing to begin to convert the Chinese empire to Catholicism, starting from the very top. However, nothing came of this Jesuit plan: the popes were dying one by one, the health of Ruggeri himself was deteriorating ... Ruggeri died in Salerno in 1607 ^{[3] [4]}

In 1584, Ruggeri created and published the Chinese catechism , Tien Ji Shi Lu (天主 实录, Original Records of the Heavenly Lord; also known in the version 天主 圣教, Tien Zhu Sheng Jiao Shi Lu, that is, “Authentic records of the holy teaching of the Heavenly Lord”). It is a translation of the traditional European Catholic catechism, using Buddhist terminology and relying on the ideas of early Confucianism. ^[5] This work was the first book published by Europeans in China (not including Macau). ^[2] It became the basis for the publication, “Tianju Shi and” (“The True Meaning of the Heavenly Lord”), developed by Ricci in the following years, when Ricci began to rely on Confucian rather than Buddhist terminology, interpreting the meaning of Christianity to the Chinese. ^[five]

In 1934, the Jesuit historian Pasquale d'Elia, who worked with the manuscripts of Matteo Ricci in the Vatican archives, discovered a previously unknown manuscript, which was a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary. An analysis of the document’s litter and a comparison of handwriting with other manuscripts allowed historians to believe that the dictionary was compiled by Ruggieri and Ricci, with the help of Chinese staff (apparently a brother of the Jesuit order from Macau, known under the Portuguese name Sebastian Fernandes), during their work in Zhaoqing (1583-88 g). This dictionary is considered the first ever-created European-Chinese dictionary, as well as the first known example of a systematic Latin transcription of the Chinese language. ^[2] Although this dictionary was first published only in 2001, it is reasonable to assume that in manuscript it played a significant role in the training of new Jesuits during the formation of the Jesuit mission system in China.

It is believed that Ruggeri was also the first to attempt to translate the Confucian Four Books into one of the European languages. ^[6]

• Biography at the National Digital Library of China
• About Ruggieri and Ricci at the Vatican Radio
• Facsimile edition of Tianzhu Shengjiao Shilu
• DUNNE, G .: Generation of giants , Notre-Dame, 1962.
• GRISONDI, FA: M. Ruggieri, Missionario in Cina e primo sinologo europeo , Milano, 1999.
• SHIH, Joseph: Le P. Ruggieri et le problème de l'évangélisation en Chine , Rome, 1964.