Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
ancientChinesehadaprimitiveknowledgeofGodandonlylackedChristianrevel-
ation. It was a controversial position, especially with Protestants, but the comment
seemed to agree with James, who nodded. There the king ended the conversation,
although when he glanced up at the manuscripts on the shelves high above him in
the gallery, Hyde was so bold as to inform His Majesty that they were the donation
of the late Archbishop Laud - whom we will meet in a later chapter. Shortly there-
after the king rose, and the food fight began.
The 'little blinking fellow' who came up in the conversation between the king
and the librarian was Shen Fuzong, as the name would be rendered today. Hyde
wrote of him as Michael Shin Fo-Çung, placing his Christian name on one side
of his surname and his Chinese given name on the other. It was more than James
could be bothered to remember. No wonder he resorted to calling him the 'little
blinking fellow'. A king couldn't be expected to keep all that in his head. Hyde
used 'Michael' when he spoke to him, but Shen, conscious of their difference in
ages - Hyde was fifty when he met Shen and Shen not yet thirty - addressed his
elder as Hyde, never as Thomas. I shall do the same.
____________________
Michael Shen's appearance at the court of James II is part of a longer tale, heroic
in some eyes and reckless in others, that tells of the missionaries of the Society of
Jesus, known as the Jesuits, going to China to convert its people and its emperor to
Christianity. The Jesuit project to convince Chinese to give up their indigenous be-
liefs for Christian ones had been under way for a century between the entry of the
first Jesuit into China and Michael's arrival in Oxford in 1687. Michael's connec-
tion to the mission was a Flemish Jesuit by the name of Philippe Couplet. Couplet
arrived in China in 1659 after a harrowing voyage by land and sea that left the
leader of his team, the senior Jesuit cartographer Michael Boym, dead on the bor-
der between Tonkin (Vietnam) and China. Having arrived safely in China, Couplet
was despatched to work in the Yangzi Valley, where he travelled extensively for
thenexttwodecades-exceptforthesecondhalfofthe1660s,whenallJesuitmis-
sionaries in China were banished to the southern city of Canton. It may not have
beenuntil after thebanwaslifted in1671that Couplet met amedical doctorbythe
name of Shen in Nanjing. Couplet inspired the doctor's son to study the Christian
faith, gave him his Christian name and diverted the boy's life course by taking him
to Europe.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search