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Subject: Re: China and Matteo Ricci Re: Japs can't pronounce L's (the Japanese convert L's into R's)
From: nospam@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J. Lodder)
Reply-To: jjlxa31@xs4all.nl (J. J. Lodder)
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2024 11:50:54 +0200
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Tilde <invalide@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> Peter Moylan wrote:
> > On 05/07/24 06:28, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> >> bertietaylor <bertietaylor@novabbs.com.invalid> wrote:
> >>
> >> [on the Dutch]
> >>> Amazing lot, going to the ends of the Earth to grab whatever they could.
> >>> Active!
> >>
> >> As far as Nagasaki, anyway.
> >> The Dutch didn't grab anything there, they traded.
> >> They were succesful in that, precisely because
> >> they did not try to grab anything.
> >> (that's what the Spanish and the Portugese were kicked out for)
> > 
> > That was part of the reason. Another important part was that the Spanish
> > and Portuguese tried to convert people to Christianity.
> > 
> > One bit of information that the Dutch brought to Japan was the fact that
> > there was more than one Christian religion, and that the Christians did
> > not agree amongst themselves on religious questions.
> > 
> > (In the long term, the accumulation of more and more religions is a path
> > to atheism.)
> 
> 
> Recently read "A Jesuit in the Forbidden City:
> Matteo Ricci, 1552-1610". Worth plowing through.
>  From the book and the wiki page on him, it
> appears that China kept things pretty well
> contained:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matteo_Ricci
> "At the time, Christian missionary activity
> in China was almost completely limited to
> Macau..."
> 
> Ricci did an amazing amount of work learning
> Chinese, both speaking and reading:
> 
> "Once in Macau, Ricci studied the Chinese
> language and customs. It was the beginning
> of a long project that made him one of the
> first Western scholars to master Chinese
> script and Classical Chinese. "
> 
> Not much mention of Ricci in this group
> from what I see in google.

OTOH Ferdinand Verbiest has been mentioned here some time ago.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Verbiest>

Verbiest was a Jesuit astronomer and missionary of Belgian origin
who succeeded in surviving at the Chinese court
by being the superior astronomer in a contest of prediction
against the Chinese court astronomer.

He brought Copernican astronomy to China.
Those Jesuits didn't care about papal bans on it.
The bronze instruments he had cast still survive
in Beijing centre, on what was once the city wall.

Jan