This first catalogue of Chinese documents in the Archives of Propaganda Fide offers not only an annotated list of its invaluable resources, but also reproduces the full text of a few rare or unique Chinese Christian texts. The Catalogue (Dudink; eds. Zhao, Raini) is preceded by an essay (Menegon) that gives a full explanation of the entire structure and contents of the Archives pertaining to the China missions, and sketches the activity of Propaganda Fide missionaries in China up to the early 19th century: “the Chinese documents catalogued here open a window on the daily life of the Chinese Christian communities and their pastors, and the reaction of Chinese society to Catholic activities. Read together with the letters and reports sent from Asia in European languages to accompany them, they offer a corrective to a Rome-centered vision of the missions” (Menegon).
Autori e Curatori
AD DUDINK (1947, Ph.D. 1995, Leiden) is a researcher in the Department of Sinology at the University of Leuven (Belgium) since September 1996. He studied theology and history of religions in Amsterdam, in addition to sinology in Leiden (minor subject) where, under the direction of Erik Zürcher, he studied Chinese Christian texts of the 17th century. For several years (after his master degree in theology, in 1979), he researched and translated an early Celestial Master text (c. 357 CE) present in the Daoist Canon (for a long article about it, see Linked Faiths: Essays on Chinese Religions and Traditional Culture in Honour of Kristofer Schipper, 2000). In Leuven, he worked with Nicolas Standaert on Chinese Christian texts and wrote several entries for the Handbook of Christianity in China, Vol. 1: 635-1800 (Standaert ed., 2001) and published widely on Christianity in China during that period and contributed with quite some material to the Chinese Christian Texts Database (eds. Standaert and Dudink).
EUGENIO MENEGON received his initial training in Chinese language and culture at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice (Italy), and earned an M.A. in Asian Studies and Ph.D. in History from the University of California at Berkeley (USA). He teaches Chinese and World History at Boston University. His book Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China (2009) centers on the life of Catholic communities in Fujian province between 1630 and the present. His current book project is an examination of the daily life and political
networking of European residents at the Qing court in Beijing during the long eighteenth century. He is also co-investigator for the digital humanities project The China Historical Christian Database (https://chcdatabase.com/).
EMANUELE RAINI is Research Fellow in Chinese Language and Literature at L’Orientale University of Naples. He holds a Ph.D. in Asian Studies at Sapienza University of Rome. His research focus is on Chinese missionary linguistics and the history of Chinese language learning and teaching.
ZHAO HONGTAO is Research Fellow at the PUU Centre for Chinese Studies and adjunct professor at PUU faculty of Missiology. He got a Ph.D. degree in Missiology. His research focus is on the history of Christian missions in China (missionary pastoral strategies and lay role as main topics) and Chinese Buddhism.