European Missionaries

During the fourteenth century, the facilitation of trade and communication throughout Eurasia caused the Mongols to unintentionally expedite the spread of the bubonic plague in South- western China causing the disappearance of Christianity. However, in the sixteenth century, when the world economy began to stabilize, Roman Catholic missionaries made their way throughout Asia to win converts and set up churches, monasteries, and Christian communities by using European science, technology, and mechanics to piqué Chinese and Japanese curiosity. Without any adaptations of Proselytism “off limits”, it ensured the rise of Christianity in Asia after the demographic recovery of Europe. Missions conducted by notable Jesuits, such as, Matteo Ricci made Christianity both accessible and more appealing to the culturally and ethnically diverse population of Asia through language and technology while St. Francis Xavier, another missionary, took a similar approach but focused more on the arguments placed against Christianity. Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit priest, traveled from Portugal in trying to persuade China into adopting the Christian doctrine. Ricci and his cohorts were the first missionaries to make significant progress in China during the seventeenth century. Although he failed to evangelize all of China, his method of introducing Christianity created a significant cultural impact. These impacts required him to learn and be familiar with the Chinese language. Upon arrival to China, Ricci learned “to speak the native language and to read their books,” (Ricci, 271) which helped him to communicate with the locals about European science, technology, and mechanics. The document entitled, “A Discourse of the Kingdom of China” by Matteo Ricci...

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...to convert people to Christianity. While some of the methods were different, most of the underlying factors of Proselytism such as language and knowledge were emphasized which made Christianity more appealing and accessible to the culturally and ethnically diverse population of Asia.

Works Cited

Xavier, St. Francis. Modern History Sourcebook. Modern History Sourcebook: St. Francis Xavier: Letter from Japan, to the Society of Jesus at Goa, 1551

Xavier, St. Francis. Modern History Sourcebook. Modern History Sourcebook: St. Francis Xavier: Letter from Japan, to the Society of Jesus in Europe, 1552

Ricci, Matteo. A Discourse of the Kingdome of China.

Bentley, Jerry H. Ziegler, Herbert F. Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the past.

Saints. SQPN. Jones, Terry H. http://saints.sqpn.com/saint-francis-xavier/ Retrieved on March 12, 2010