The Macau Ricci Institute Journal

A Visit to the Graveyard at Zhengfusi Church

Dongfeng Chen — 2023-10-01

Altazimuth

MRI Editorial Team — 2023-10-01

Ferdinand Verbiest and his Chinese books according to his correspondence

Noël Golvers — 2023-10-01

In view of Verbiest’s central position in Jesuit contacts with Chinese authorities and
calendar specialists in the period 1660-1688, it is worth collecting the few precise title
references he gives in his letter corpus, which was recently extended and revised (132 items) to include the Chinese works and authors he was acquainted with and which he apparently used. Their number is rather low, and the titles are stemming from expected libraries and collections, and are for obvious reasons mostly found in letters to his European colleagues in China, as European readers were unacquainted with Chinese. But even this low number - which certainly covers only a small part of the real number of books he used - contains some revealing titles; at any rate, it suggests a various, composite reading, and in addition it reflects some unexpected, and rather surprising assessments, with regard to the (absence of) logical structure and of (technical) illustrations.

Ferdinand Verbiest in the TV series of Chinese Court Dramas

Bingquan Li — 2023-10-01

In recent years, due to its frequent appearance in “Chinese court dramas”, especially in those focused on the Kangxi emperor, the image of Verbiest has moved from historical documents to the proscenium and gradually entered the sight of the contemporary public. Compared with the “historical Verbiest,” the image of Verbiest in popular culture is without doubt scattered, incomplete, or even distorted. This article first intends to raise the question of “who is Verbiest” from the viewpoint of popular culture, and then examines the main characteristics of the image of Verbiest presented in the dramas and the identity constructed based on contemporary experience. Finally, the paper attempts to reflect by way of analogy on how the image of Verbiest relates to contemporary Chinese cultural context.

Sextant

MRI Editorial Team — 2023-10-01