Reading Chinese in Oxford - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 45

TheJesuitsreasonedthatConfuciuswastoberevered,forwithouthimtheChinese
would have drifted into polytheism and been for ever estranged from their primit-
ive Christianity. The Christian religion was not a foreign import that had to be im-
posedontheChinese,then;itwasmerelysomethingtheyneededtoberemindedof
andbroughtbackto.Accommodation,notconquest,wasthepaththatmissionaries
should follow.
Confucius caused a lot of excitement when it appeared in May 1687. Couplet in
his introduction reminded readers that the topic was not intended simply to satisfy
idle curiosity, yet the buzz around the topic, like the buzz around Michael Shen,
was surely not unintended. The topic was important enough for Jesuits to present
James II with a copy, and for Hyde to have acquired a copy for the Bodleian as
soon as it came out. *
Once the topic was in production, Michael was sent to London to meet Jesuits
there and, should the occasion arise, to charm the king. The strategy worked. The
king was indeed charmed, to the point of commissioning the royal portrait painter,
Godfrey Kneller, to do Michael's portrait (Fig. 9). It is a fine work. Kneller could
havedashedoffagenericChineseface,andthereisaFrenchengravingofMichael
that does only that. Instead, the painter has lit the face carefully to suggest an in-
dividuality of person and devotion. Its customary title is The Chinese Convert , and
it certainly stages that idea. Michael declares his piety by raising a large crucifix
bearing a crucified Christ in his left hand and gestures to it with his right. He has
turned his head well to his right and is looking up towards heaven. Behind him to
hisleft there isatable draped inanOriental carpet, andonthat carpet rests arichly
bound tome. On top of that lies what looks to be a sheaf of manuscript. Conven-
tionally it has been assumed that this is a Bible, the pole star for the new convert.
But the tome I believe I see in Kneller's painting is not the Bible but Confucius
Sinarum Philosophus . If I am right, it lies there as a quiet reminder of the accom-
modationist position that argued for bringing Chinese to Christianity without for-
cing them to abandon their own culture. Beside it stands Michael Shen as living
proof of the argument.
But there may be something else going on, if we allow Michael to have had a
say in the props that went into his painting. Confucius was a major undertaking
thatdemandedathoroughknowledgeofChineselanguage,philosophyandculture.
Couplet was a man of great talent, skilled in the Chinese language, but he would
have needed a native informant to complete the work of fact-checking, filling in
missing details and going over the Latin translation against the Chinese original.