Venerable Matteo Ricci (1552-1610)

Macerata and the Jesuit vocation (1552-1571)

Matteo Ricci was born on 6 October 1552 in Macerata, a small town in the Papal States in the Marches, the eldest son of a large family; his father, an apothecary of minor nobility, sat on the town council^[3]. Educated first by an ecclesiastical tutor and then at the college the Jesuits had just opened in his native town, he was sent by his father to Rome in 1568 to study law at the Sapienza^[4]. But the spiritual attraction prevailed: the young man joined the Marian congregation of the Roman College in 1569, then sought admission to the Society of Jesus, which he entered as a novice on 15 August 1571^[5].

Science as apostolic preparation: the school of Christophorus Clavius

At the Roman College, Ricci received an exceptionally rigorous education under the direction of the great German mathematician Christophorus Clavius (1538-1612), architect of the Gregorian calendar reform, who gave him thorough training in mathematics, cosmology, and astronomy^[6]. This scientific culture, exceptional for a religious of his time, never remained an end in itself for Ricci: it became the instrument of an apologetics founded on the admiration aroused by natural reason, preparing Chinese minds to then receive Revelation. Ricci himself summed up this conviction in the preface to the third edition of his Chinese world map, which Benedict XVI quoted in 2010:

"Whoever knows heaven and earth [...] can discover that the one who governs heaven and earth is absolutely good, absolutely great, and absolutely one. The ignorant reject Heaven, but knowledge that does not rise to the Emperor of Heaven as to its first cause is in no way knowledge." — Matteo Ricci, preface to the third edition of the world map, quoted by Benedict XVI, address of 29 May 2010^[7]

Toward the Far East: Lisbon, Goa, Cochin (1577-1582)

In 1577, Ricci asked for and obtained permission to be sent on mission "to the Indies." He left Rome in May, spent nearly a year in Portugal, notably at Coimbra, then embarked at Lisbon on 24 March 1578 with other Jesuits bound for Asia, among them Michele Ruggieri, his future companion in China^[8]. After a voyage of nearly six months, he reached Goa, the Portuguese trading post in India, on 13 September 1578^[9]. There he continued his theology studies and taught Latin and Greek, before being transferred for health reasons to Cochin, on the Malabar coast, where he was ordained a priest on 25 July 1580^[10]. He then returned to Goa to complete his third year of theology, while awaiting a specific missionary assignment.

This wait ended in April 1582: the Visitor of the Jesuit missions of the East Indies, Alessandro Valignano S.J. (1539-1606), who had been his novice master in Rome and had been convinced since his time in Macao that the evangelization of China required a radically new strategy — thorough learning of classical Chinese, adoption of local customs, scholarly dialogue rather than confrontation — ordered Ricci to make for Macao to join Michele Ruggieri, already engaged in the study of Chinese^[11]. Ricci landed there on 7 August 1582^[12]. He would never see Europe again.

Zhaoqing: the Buddhist habit, an acknowledged mistake

On 10 September 1583, Ricci and his companion Michele Ruggieri S.J. obtained from the mandarin Wang Pan permission to settle in Zhaoqing, in Guangdong — the first permanent Catholic residence in China in two centuries^[13]. Since Ruggieri had presented them as religious men come from India, the two Jesuits first adopted, at Wang Pan's request, the habit of the Buddhist monk (heshang). The initial intuition proved to be a mistake of method: the Buddhist clergy enjoyed a mediocre social status in China, associated with popular superstition rather than with learning. Ricci would end up acknowledging this himself without evasion — a trait of humility uncommon in a founder, who preferred to correct his method rather than persist out of pride in a dead-end path.

Adopting the Confucian scholar's habit: a conversion of method

Around 1594, on the advice of his friend the scholar Qu Rukui and with Valignano's agreement, Ricci made a momentous decision: he definitively abandoned the Buddhist habit, associated in China with an inferior social condition, to wear the silk robe and cap of the Confucian scholar, the only attire conferring moral respectability and access to the mandarin elite^[14]. It was no longer a matter of passing for an exotic religious figure, but of establishing himself as a Western scholar worth listening to. Publishing at Nanchang in 1595 his first work in Chinese, the Jiaoyou lun ("Treatise on Friendship"), a collection of seventy-six maxims drawn from ancient and Christian moralists, from Seneca to Saint Augustine, Ricci met with immediate literary success among princes and mandarins^[15].

Nanjing, Nanchang: patience in apparent failure

Expelled from Zhaoqing in 1589, Ricci withdrew to Shaozhou, where hostile young men forced their way into the Jesuit residence one night; he was seriously wounded in the foot^[16]. He then attempted, in 1595, to settle in Nanjing — an attempt that failed in the face of the authorities' mistrust, at a time when Ming China was at war with Japan. He fell back on Nanchang, capital of Jiangxi, where for three years he frequented princes and imperial officials^[17]. This course of expulsions, retreats, and aborted attempts — eighteen years and four cities separate his settlement at Zhaoqing from his entry into Beijing — portrays a man who learned, trial after trial, a virtue of patience that Pope Francis praised in 2023:

"With perseverance and patience, animated by unshakable faith, Matteo Ricci was able to overcome difficulties and dangers, mistrust and opposition." — Pope Francis, general audience of 31 May 2023^[18]

The harshest episode of Ricci's life occurred in 1600, as he was finally attempting to reach Beijing after a first aborted attempt in 1598. Intercepted near Tianjin by the powerful court eunuch Ma Tang, charged with collecting tributes for the emperor, Ricci saw his luggage searched and confiscated on the pretext that he was concealing precious stones^[19]. The incident turned dramatic when Ma Tang discovered among the liturgical objects a crucifix depicting Christ on the cross: he took it for an instrument of magic intended to bewitch men and to threaten the emperor's life by sorcery, and the Jesuits were held prisoner^[20]. Held captive from July 1600 to January 1601, essentially at Tianjin, on the sole basis of an accusation born of ignorance of the Christian meaning of the image of the Crucified, Ricci obtained permission to continue to the capital only in January 1601, when an imperial edict finally summoned him to court^[21].

This ordeal, endured in total incomprehension and under the most absurd accusation imaginable — being held prisoner for carrying an image of Christ crucified — in no way dented Ricci's determination: as soon as he arrived in Beijing, he resumed the patient work of dialogue that had always been his. The official profile published by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints thus summarizes the way he went through those years of trial:

"He was a man of prayer and obedience. He faced with strength and hope the difficult moments during which, with his confreres, he was sorely tried by thefts and violent attacks in his house. He knew how to make bold decisions, which produced significant apostolic fruits and prepared the way for the missionaries to come." — Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, official profile of the Venerable Matteo Ricci^[22]

Entry into Beijing (24 January 1601)

Summoned by Emperor Wanli (reigned 1572-1620), Ricci entered Beijing on 24 January 1601 and had his presents delivered to the court — mechanical clocks, a harpsichord, prisms, paintings, world maps. He would never meet the emperor, secluded in his palace, but the Jesuits obtained permission to remain in the capital and an allowance for their subsistence^[23]. It was through his works, his instruments, and his relationships with the great mandarins that he exercised, until his death, a discreet but real influence.

The Treatise on Friendship: virtue as a common language

Expanded with twenty-four maxims to reach the number of one hundred, then reissued in 1599 and in 1601, the Jiaoyou lun became one of the most widely read Western texts among Chinese scholars at the turn of the seventeenth century^[24]. Far from a mere rhetorical exercise, Ricci presents in it virtuous friendship as the foundation of a morality common to East and West, thus preparing the ground for a more explicit proclamation of Christian charity:

"The Lord on High gave men two eyes, two ears, two hands, and two feet, so that two friends may help each other [...]." — Matteo Ricci, Jiaoyou lun ("Treatise on Friendship"), maxim 56^[25]

"An honorable man worthy of great deeds, if he has no remarkable enemies, must necessarily have excellent friends." — Matteo Ricci, Jiaoyou lun, maxim 6^[26]

Benedict XVI would say of him that he "made friendship the style of his apostolate during the twenty-eight years of his stay in China"^[27].

The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven: a treatise that is also a prayer

Published at Beijing in 1603, the Tianzhu shiyi ("The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven") is Ricci's apologetic masterpiece: a dialogue between a Western scholar and a Chinese scholar demonstrating, by natural reason alone, the existence of a personal God, creator and judge, whose traces the ancient Chinese classics are said to have preserved under the names of Shangdi and Tian^[28]. But this learned treatise is not only a construction of the intellect: in it Ricci confides, in a passage Benedict XVI quoted in 2010 to recall that he had come to China to bring the Gospel, the intensity of his own supplication for the Chinese people:

"For more than twenty years, every morning and every evening, I prayed in tears toward Heaven. I know that the Lord of Heaven has pity on living creatures and forgives them [...]. The truth about the Lord of Heaven is already in the hearts of men." — Matteo Ricci, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, quoted by Benedict XVI, address of 29 May 2010^[29]

This confidence, rare in a man little inclined to spiritual effusions in his public writings, reveals the breadth of a life of prayer hidden behind the most intense scientific and diplomatic activity: twenty years of tears offered for an immense people, of whom he would see only a small portion enter the Church — at his death, China counted sixteen Jesuits and some three thousand Catholics^[30].

The testimony of the disciples: Li Zhizao and Xu Guangqi

Ricci's reputation for virtue rests not only on his own writings: it is attested by those who knew him closely. The mandarin Li Zhizao, who helped him produce the final editions of his world map and was baptized under the name of Leo in 1610, left of him a testimony Benedict XVI quoted in 2010:

"I believed him to be an extraordinary man because he lives in celibacy, does not chase after offices, speaks little, has a regulated conduct — and this every day — he cultivates virtue hidden from view and serves God continually." — Li Zhizao, testimony on Matteo Ricci, quoted by Benedict XVI, address of 29 May 2010^[31]

Ricci's other great disciple, the mandarin Xu Guangqi (Paul, 1562-1633), future Grand Secretary of the Empire, baptized in 1603, became his closest collaborator: it was he, Benedict XVI recalled, who "persuaded and helped Fr Ricci to translate Euclid's 'Elements' into Chinese"^[32]. Their translation of the first six books, published in 1607, is the first Chinese translation of Greek mathematics. With Li Zhizao, he ranks among the four famous converts Benedict XVI called the "pillars of the nascent Chinese Church"^[33].

The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, the matrix of a whole life

Trained like every Jesuit of his generation in the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Ricci often meditated on Christ on the cross according to the first exercise of the first week, which ends with a colloquy at the foot of the Crucified^[34]:

"Imagining Christ our Lord before me and placed on the cross, to make a colloquy [...]. Likewise, looking at myself: what I have done for Christ, what I am doing for Christ, what I ought to do for Christ." — Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, no. 53^[35]

This interior discipline, invisible in his learned treatises intended for Chinese scholars, explains the constancy of a man who went through two decades of apparent failures — expulsions, misunderstandings, unjust imprisonment — without ever giving up or departing from his charity toward the very people who persecuted him.

Chastity, poverty, obedience in a foreign land

Professed of the solemn vows of the Society since 1596^[36], Ricci lived celibacy in the midst of a society where marriage and offspring constituted the most compelling social obligation, the poverty of a religious who owns nothing of his own, and obedience to superiors separated from him by months of navigation. The testimony of Li Zhizao quoted above — "he lives in celibacy, does not chase after offices" — shows that this fidelity did not escape his Chinese contemporaries, strangers though they were to the religious culture that grounded it. The official profile published by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints gives its synthesis:

"He was above all a zealous priest for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. He was a wise, chaste, obedient religious, detached from material goods and humble. Sustained by trust in divine help, he faced with serenity the difficulties and the illness that led him to death." — Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, official profile of the Venerable Matteo Ricci^[37]

"A door open to great merits": the last words

Exhausted by nearly ten years of uninterrupted service at Beijing, Ricci took to his bed at the beginning of May 1610 and sensed his end approaching. Pope Francis recalled in 2023, from the account of his confrere Sabatino de Ursis, the interior dispositions of the dying man:

"In the last days of his life, to those close to him who asked how he felt, 'he replied that he was wondering at that moment whether greater were the joy and gladness he felt interiorly at the thought of the nearness of his journey to go and savor the presence of God, or the sadness that might be caused him by leaving his companions of the entire mission, whom he loved so greatly, and the service he could still render to God Our Lord in this mission.'" — Pope Francis, general audience of 31 May 2023, quoting the account of Sabatino de Ursis S.J. on Ricci's death^[38]

To his Jesuit companions gathered at his bedside, he left a final word summing up his whole method and his whole hope, handed down by Nicolas Trigault S.J. in the Latin adaptation of his memoirs published in 1615:

"I leave you before a door open to great merits, but not without many perils and labors." — Matteo Ricci, words reported by Nicolas Trigault S.J., De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas, Augsburg, 1615^[39]

He died at Beijing on 11 May 1610, at the age of fifty-seven^[40].

The exceptional honor granted by Emperor Wanli

According to custom, the remains of a foreigner who died in China had to be buried at Macao. The Jesuit Diego de Pantoja, his companion since the journey of 1600, nevertheless addressed to the court a petition asking for him a burial at Beijing^[41]. Against all expectations, Wanli granted a plot of land recently confiscated from a disgraced eunuch, at Zhalan, outside the western gate of the city — a privilege Benedict XVI would call "unthinkable for a foreigner"^[42]. A solemn funeral ceremony took place on 22 April 1611; the coffin, placed in the cemetery chapel, was buried in November 1611^[43]. Ricci thus became the first non-diplomat European buried in China, and Zhalan the oldest Christian cemetery in Beijing^[44].

What the controversy does not call into question

In the years following his death, Ricci's method of accommodation was contested, even within the Society of Jesus: this was the beginning of the long Chinese Rites controversy, which culminated a century later with the condemnations of 1704 and 1715 and pitted, until 1939, the defenders of his approach against those who saw in it a dangerous concession to paganism^[45]. This controversy concerned the liceity of the honors paid to Confucius and to the ancestors and the Chinese words used to designate God — not Ricci's personal holiness, of whose reputation for holiness the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints notes that it "was present during his life and at his death"^[46]. The full debate, its protagonists, and its successive, sometimes contradictory decisions are set out in the article devoted to that controversy.

The 1939 instruction and doctrinal rehabilitation

The instruction Plane compertum est of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, dated 8 December 1939 and approved the day before by Pope Pius XII, put an end to nearly three centuries of condemnations by once again authorizing Chinese Catholics to take part in the civil rites honoring ancestors and Confucius. Its opening words give the key to this reversal:

"It is well established that, in the regions of the East, certain ceremonies, although they were formerly connected with pagan rites, no longer retain today — customs and minds having changed over the course of the centuries — anything but a civil significance of piety toward ancestors, love of country, or courtesy toward one's neighbor." — Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, instruction Plane compertum est, 8 December 1939^[47]

The very principle on which Ricci had founded his method — distinguishing the religious act from the civil act, seeking in non-Christian civilizations the seeds of the Word — had, in reality, never been condemned in itself by the Magisterium: it was a specific application of that principle, deemed ambiguous in the context of 1715, that had been targeted.

The Council and the paradigm of inculturation (1962-1965)

Without naming Ricci, the Second Vatican Council enshrined the principle of missionary adaptation he had implemented, in the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963, nos. 37-40) and in the decree Ad gentes on the missionary activity of the Church (7 December 1965, no. 22)^[48]. It was on this doctrinal soil that his own cause for beatification could open two decades later.

Opening at Macerata (19 April 1984)

It was Bishop Francesco Tarcisio Carboni, bishop of Macerata, Ricci's native diocese, who opened the cause for beatification on 19 April 1984, conferring on Matteo Ricci the title of Servant of God^[49]. The procedure, weighed down by the breadth of documentation nearly four centuries old, then lost momentum.

The fourth centenary and the historical commission (2010)

Momentum returned as the fourth centenary of Ricci's death approached. In a message addressed on 6 May 2009 to the bishop of Macerata, Benedict XVI praised in him a Jesuit "endowed with deep faith and extraordinary cultural and scientific genius," who "devoted long years of his life to weaving a fruitful dialogue between West and East" ^[50]. On 24 January 2010, with the agreement of the Holy See, the diocesan tribunal held its first session in Macerata Cathedral; a historical commission was instituted at the same time to gather all of Ricci's writings and documents and the sources concerning him^[51]. On 29 May 2010, Benedict XVI received in audience a pilgrimage from the dioceses of the Marches and recalled that "Fr Ricci did not go to China to bring there the science and culture of the West, but to bring there the Gospel, to make God known" ^[52].

Diocesan closure and the Roman phase (2013-2022)

On 10 May 2013, the diocesan phase closed solemnly in Macerata Cathedral, after three years of work^[53]; on 14 November 2014, a decree of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints recognized its validity^[54]. The Roman phase then opened: the preparation of the positio, the voluminous dossier gathering the proofs of the heroic practice of the theological and cardinal virtues, under the responsibility of the Jesuit postulators of the cause — Fr Anton Witwer at its reopening in 2010, then Fr Federico Lombardi^[55].

The decree on heroic virtues (17 December 2022)

On 17 December 2022, the day of his eighty-sixth birthday, Pope Francis, receiving in audience Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, authorized him to promulgate the decree recognizing "the heroic virtues of the Servant of God Matteo Ricci, professed priest of the Society of Jesus, born on 6 October 1552 at Macerata (Italy) and died on 11 May 1610 at Beijing (China)" ^[56]. Nine theological consultors had previously examined the positio and voted in favor, before the cardinals and bishops members of the dicastery in turn pronounced themselves in favor of the cause^[57]. A few months earlier, on 9 May 2022, receiving the University of Macerata, Francis had described Ricci as "a man of encounters, a man of the culture of encounter, a man who went beyond his condition as a foreigner," become "a citizen of the world because a 'citizen of persons'" ^[58].

Toward beatification: the awaited miracle

For the pope to declare Matteo Ricci blessed, the postulator of the cause must now present to the dicastery proof of a miracle obtained through his intercession, duly authenticated by a medical and then a theological commission; a second miracle, occurring after beatification, will be required for canonization^[59]. No miracle attributed to his intercession has, to this day, been recognized. The Dicastery's official profile nevertheless notes that his reputation for holiness, today spontaneously widespread, "appears linked to a certain reputation for signs"^[60].

The recognition of Ricci's heroic virtues in 2022 came at a time when the Catholic Church is seeking to reweave, with prudence and patience, ties with contemporary China — witness the Marian shrine of Sheshan, near Shanghai, or the situation of the Church in contemporary China. Pope Francis, who devoted an entire catechesis to him in 2023, points to what makes him a model for today:

"The missionary spirit of Matteo Ricci is a model to follow today. His love for the Chinese people is a model, but what represents a present-day path is his consistency of life, the witness of his life as a Christian." — Pope Francis, general audience of 31 May 2023^[61]

The figure of Ricci thus remains a landmark: that of a missionary who knew how to combine total fidelity to the proclamation of Christ with profound respect for a foreign civilization, yielding neither to doctrinal relativism nor to cultural contempt. It is this balance, lived to heroism in failure, persecution, and silent obedience, that the Church today recognizes as genuine holiness.

• Read the full history of the mission he founded in The Jesuit Missions in China (1582-1773), and the doctrinal debate that followed his death in The Chinese Rites controversy (1610-1939).
• Discover other venerables and servants of God: the Servant of God Pedro Arrupe, Venerable Jérôme Lejeune, Venerable Fulton Sheen, and the Servant of God Luigi Giussani.
• Read the life of Saint Francis Xavier, whose unfinished missionary dream Ricci took up.