¹ For a discussion of the composition of the Latin and Chinese versions, see Daniel Canaris, “The Tianzhu Shilu revisited: China’s first window into Western scholasticism”, Frontiers of Philosophy in China 14, 2019, 198–219, at 201–06. When citing either the Latin or the Chinese text, we use Daniel Canaris, Michele Ruggieri’s Tianzhu shilu (The True Record of the Lord of Heaven, 1584) (Leiden: Brill, 2023). We also use, and sometimes adapt, Canaris’ translations. The Tianzhu shilu was subsequently revised and republished as Tianzhu shengjiao shilu around 1640. On this new edition, see Huiyu Wang, “Adjustments to the ‘accommodation strategy’ of the early Jesuit Mission in China: the case of Michele Ruggieri’s Tianzhu shilu (1584) and its revised edition (ca. 1640)”, Journal of Religious History 46/1, 2022, 82–96.

² See Nicolas Standaert, Methodology in View of Contact Between Cultures: The China Case in the 17^th Century (CSRCS occasional paper, 11. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002), 23–49 on the “Interaction and communication framework” of cross-cultural historiography.

³ A partial exception to this will be our reference to Giulio Aleni’s Xingxue cushu 性學觕述 (A Brief Introduction to the Study of Human Nature). While the modern edition/translation we cite is based on the second revised edition of 1646, the first edition of Xingxue cushu was published between 1635 and 1639.

⁴ The original 1605 text was seen in 1934 by Pasquale D’Elia, who provided a description of the text. While this original text is unfortunately lost, later editions similar to the original have been preserved. On the textual history, see Adrian Dudink, “Tianzhu jiaoyao, The Catechism (1605) Published by Matteo Ricci”, Sino-Western Cultural Relations Journal 24, 2002, 38–50. A preliminary analysis of Ricci’s adaptation from Ruggieri can be found in Kika Van Robays, “The Third Space in early Jesuit translations in the late Ming Dynasty: Self-representation and cultural mediation through translation” (Ghent University: MA Thesis, 2020), 44–74.

⁵ For the Summa Theologiae, we use and occasionally modify the translation of Laurence Shapcote, Saint Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. Prima Secundae, 71–114 (Green Bay, WI: Aquinas Institute, Inc., 2017).

⁶ See Mark Johnson, “St. Thomas and the ‘Law of Sin’”, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 67, 2000, 80–95.

⁷ For a helpful discussion of Aquinas’ views on law within the scope of longue durée Western intellectual history, one may consult Leo J. Elders, The Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas: Happiness, Natural Law, and the Virtues (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019), 197–228.

⁸ A brief discussion of this topic is found in Erik Zürcher, “Jesuit accommodation and the Chinese cultural imperative”, in D.E. Mungello (ed.), The Chinese Rites Controversy: Its History and Meaning (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1994), 31–64, at 47–9.

⁹ In the Latin version of the text, it is sacerdos “priest”.

¹⁰ For Ruggieri’s evolution on this matter, see Daniel Canaris, “Between reason and typology: strategies for evangelising China in the writings of Antonio Possevino (1533–1611) and Michele Ruggieri (1543–1607)”, Erudition and the Republic of Letters 5, 2020, 397–426, at 406–10.

¹¹ Elders, The Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas, 210.

¹² Cf. also Elders, The Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas, 209: “Natural law is the order of our tasks and obligations as acknowledged by reason. It is not inborn as such, but only in the sense that its principle is given with human nature. It is also natural in this sense that by spontaneous acts reason formulates its first principles on the basis of the fundamental inclinations and demands of human nature”. See further Martin Rhonheimer, “Natural law as a ‘Work of reason’: understanding the metaphysics of participated theonomy”, in John Berkman and William C. Mattison III (eds), Searching for a Universal Ethic: Multidisciplinary, Ecumenical, and Interfaith Responses to the Catholic Natural Law Tradition (Grand Rapids: William B. Eedrmans Publishing Company, 2014), 142–7.

¹³ To be sure, while the Western tradition has had its advocates for voluntarist interpretations of natural law (see Francis Oakley, Natural Law, Laws of Nature, Natural Rights: Continuity and Discontinuity in the History of Ideas (New York: Continuum, 2005), esp. 63–86, where Ockham, among others, is treated) Ruggieri does not say anything to suggest that he is advocating a voluntarist position in direct opposition to Aquinas’ rationalistic understanding. It is better to assume that he is being somewhat vague and indeterminate in order to avoid getting into rather abstract territory, and perhaps also to accommodate Chinese philosophical ideas (see below).

¹⁴ The allusion is noted in Canaris, Michele Ruggieri’s Tianzhu shilu, 80. For the translation of Mencius, we use Irene Bloom (trans.), Mencius (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

¹⁵ We discuss this further below. Cf. also Erik Zürcher, Kouduo richao: Li Jiubiao’s Diary of Oral Admonitions: A Late Ming Christian Journal. Volume 1 (Sankt Augustin: Institut Monumenta Serica / Brescia: Fondazione Civiltà Bresciana, 2007), 262 and Erik Zürcher, “Jesuit accommodation and the Chinese cultural imperative”, 49.

¹⁶ The same applies to Wang Yangming. On Wang’s notion of liangzhi, see Tzu-li Chang, “Re-exploring Wang Yangming’s theory of Liangzhi: translation, transliteration and interpretation”, Philosophy East and West 66, 2016, 1196–1217, esp. 1202: “liangzhi is an innate, affective capacity for identifying right and wrong”. For Wang Yangming, liangzhi, not liangneng, is the central concept, as moral knowledge in his eyes will necessarily come with the ability to act. Cf. Yong Huang, “A Neo-Confucian concept of wisdom: Wang Yangming on the innate moral knowledge (Liangzhi)”, Journal of Chinese Philosophy 33, 2006, 393–408, at 396. Thus it makes sense that Wang Yangming, in the Inquiry on the Great Learning 大學問, states: 是非之心, 不待慮而知, 不待學而能, 是故謂之良知。 “The sense of right and wrong does not need to think over it and yet it knows, does not need to study it and yet is capable of it, therefore it is called liangzhi”. What Mencius had listed as the features of liangzhi and liangneng respectively, he lists together as characteristic of just the former.

¹⁷ Cf. e.g. David B. Wong, “Feeling, reflection, and reasoning in the Mencius”, in Yang and Chong (eds), Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Mencius, 517–38.

¹⁸ Translation adapted from Thierry Meynard and Dawei Pan, A Brief Introduction to the Study of Human Nature: Giulio Aleni (Leiden: Brill, 2020).

¹⁹ Translation slightly adapted from D.C. Lau, Mencius. Revised Edition (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2003).

²⁰ Cf. e.g. A.C. Graham, “The background of the Mencian theory of human nature”, Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies 6, 1967, 215–71, at 235, who understands li as “order”.

²¹ We leave aside the question of why, unlike in Mengzi 2A6, the heart of compassion, the heart of shame, the heart of respect, and the heart of discerning right and wrong are described as the virtues themselves, not the “sprouts” of the virtues. On this, see for instance Bo Xu, “Mengzi’s theory of human nature and its role in the Confucian tradition”, in Yang and Chong (ed.), Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Mencius, 79–98, at 89–92.

²² For this last point we are indebted to an anonymous reviewer. Also relevant is Wei Hua, “The dilemma of conscience: from Paul and Augustine to Mencius”, Religions 15, 2024, 265. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15030265. While not focusing on natural law directly, Hua compares Paul’s notion of conscience with the Chinese concept of liangzhi.

²³ Canaris, Michele Ruggieri’s Tianzhu Shilu, 142.

²⁴ Ruggieri here elides over Trinitarian distinctions and makes no differentiation between the Father and the Son. For a discussion of how Trinitarian ideas were gradually introduced by the Jesuit missionaries in China, see 肖清和 (Xiao Qinghe), 明清漢語神學研究的可能路徑-以核心關鍵詞 「三位一體」 為例 [A Possible Way to Study Sino-Christian Theology in the Ming and Qing Dynasties: Case Study on the Keyword “Trinity” (Sanwei yiti)], 道風: 基督教文化評論 Logos & Pneuma 50, 2019, 95–129.

²⁵ See for example François Dreyfus, “Divine condescendence (Synkatabasis) as a hermeneutic principle of the Old Testament in Jewish and Christian tradition”, Immanuel 19, 1984/1985, 74–86; Margaret M. Mitchell, “Pauline accommodation and “condescension” (συγκατάβασις): 1 Cor 9:19–23 and the history of influence”, in T. Engberg-Pedersen (ed.), Paul beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 197–214; and Paul K. Hosle, “The didactic nature of Gregory Nazianzen’s Poemata Arcana and the theme of continual, gradated progress”, Vigiliae Christianae 78, 2024, 385–409.

²⁶ It should be noted that the importance of accommodation to the level of one’s audience is also mentioned, with evocations of much the same scriptural language, in the Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent, and so Ruggieri is being consistent with both long-standing and recently emphasized principles of how one should engage in religious instruction.

²⁷ See further Canaris, Michele Ruggieri’s Tianzhu Shilu, ad 10.2, who notes the unusual division into 11 articles and the omission of references to the Holy Spirit and the Catholic Church. Reference to the Holy Spirit would only further raise the Trinitarian question, a topic whose complexities we have already seen Ruggieri try to avoid.

²⁸ See the very brief and selective account of Christ’s incarnation and life in Tianzhu shiyi, §580. Ricci omits, for instance, Ruggieri’s defence of Mary’s virginitas in partu and, more importantly, the reference to the crucifixion, stating only that Christ re-ascended to heaven after his sojourn on earth.

²⁹ The distinction between the ceremonial, judicial, and moral precepts of the Old Law is also expressed in Tianzhu shilu 8.5.

³⁰ On the division of the Ten Commandments, see Tianzhu shilu 12.1: 天主因欲教人, 故立碑二面。第一面之碑文有三條之事, 惟奉敬天主而已。苐二面之碑文, 有七條之事, 惟在和睦世人而已。 “Since the Lord of the Heaven wishes to teach people, He set down a two-sided tablet. On the first side of the tablet are inscribed three commandments about how we should worship the Lord of Heaven alone. On the other side of the tablet are written seven commandments which are only about how we should live in harmony with people”.

³¹ The strategic nature of this accommodation is noted by Canaris, Michele Ruggieri’s Tianzhu Shilu, 168. It is worth saying that this point would be reprised by later Chinese Christians and Jesuit missionaries. In his short text Xiaoluan bu bingming shuo 鴞鸞不並鳴說 (The Owl and Phoenix Do Not Sing a Duet, 1622), Yang Tingyun argued that Catholicism was utterly unlike the native Chinese heterodox religious movements, such as the White Lotus Teaching (白蓮教) or the Non-Action Teaching (無為教). He lists 14 differences between Catholicism and the heterodox sects, the last of these points including the following statement: 邪教始於煽惑聚眾, 究竟圖為不軌。西教十誡中, 以孝順為人道第一。 “Heterodox sects begin by agitating the masses, and in the end what they devise violates the norms. Within the Ten Commandments of the Western religion, one considers filial piety to be the first of the human hierarchical relationships” (translation ours). Yang, like Ruggieri, sees the placement of the Fourth Commandment as emphasizing the importance of filial piety in a manner consonant with traditional and orthodox Chinese moral values. This idea can also be found in Alfonso Vagnone’s Jiaoyao jielüe and later Tongyou jiaoyu 童幼教育 (On the Education of Children), sect. 305. See Nicolas Standaert and Adrian Dudink (ed.), Chinese Christian Texts from the Roman Archives of the Society of Jesus, Vol. 1 (Rome: Procura Generalizia della Compagnia di Gesú, 2002), 160 and Giulia Falato, Alfonso Vagnone’s Tongyou Jiaoyu (On the Education of Children, c. 1632): The Earliest Encounter between Chinese and European Pedagogy (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 188.

³² These works include Vagnone’s Jiaoyao jielüe and Yang Tingyun’s aforementioned Xiaoluan bu bingming shuo. While this was used to appease those Chinese who were sceptical of Christianity as being potentially politically subversive (as in Yang’s case, writing in the year of an anti-Christian persecution), the expansion of the fourth commandment to the political sphere is also firmly based in Aquinas: see De duobos praeceptis caritatis et decem legis praeceptis “On the Two Commandments of Charity and on the Ten Commandments of the Law”, II. cap 4. And see further the Roman Catechism on the topic of the Fourth Commandment.

³³ For what it is worth, this allusion to Mencius is absent from the corresponding passage (14.4, cf. Canaris 2023, 255) in Vera et brevis divinarum rerum expositio.

³⁴ Translation from Matteo Ricci, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu Shiyi 天主實義), trans. Douglas Lancashire and Peter Hu Kuo-chen, S.J.; revised edition Thierry Meynard, S.J. (Chestnut Hill, MA: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2016).

³⁵ For another example of Ricci tacitly correcting details of Ruggieri’s text, see Paul K. Hosle, “A cross-cultural archery analogy in Matteo Ricci’s Tianzhu shiyi”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 87, 2024, 201–07, at 201–02.

³⁶ The variant is noted in Canaris 2023: 169. It would take us too far from the primary focus on natural and divine law to examine how some tried to find greater common ground between Mencius’ and the Catholic view on the difference between humans and animals. A notable example is Giulio Aleni in his Xingxue cushu. See the discussion in Dawei Pan, “One hundred years of echoes: the influence of the Jesuit Aleni on the spiritual life of the Manchu prince Depei”, Religions 15, 2024, 138. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15010138.

³⁷ For a discussion of Yang’s life and conversion, see Nicolas Standaert, Yang Tingyun, Confucian and Christian in Late Ming China: His Life and Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1988) and Yu Liu, “The religiosity of a former Confucian-Buddhist: the Catholic faith of Yang Tingyun”, Journal of the History of Ideas 73, 2012, 25–46.

³⁸ In fact, the original 1621 title of this latter text was Xishi mingbian 西釋明辨 (Distinguishing Clearly between Western Religion and Buddhism), but in 1624 it was renamed Tianshi mingbian. For further discussion of the publication of these works, see Yu-Yin Cheng, “Changing cosmology, changing perspectives on history and politics: Christianity and Yang Tingyun’s 楊庭簿 (1562–1627) reflections on China”, Journal of World History 24, 2013, 499–537, at 510–12.

³⁹ Xiping Zhang (ed.), Fandigang tu shu guan cang Ming Qing Zhong Xi wen hua jiao liu shi wen xian cong kan: Di yi ji 梵蒂岡圖書館藏明清中西文化交流史文獻叢刊: 第一輯, Vol. 23 (Zhengzhou: Daxiang chubanshe 大象出版社, 2014), 121. We quote (with slight adaptations) the translation of this passage provided in Standaert, Yang Tingyun, 129. The interpretation of the name of Jesus that Yang gives is consistent with Ricci, Tianzhu shiyi, §580, although the addition of “the world” is imprecise from an etymological point of view.

⁴⁰ See Zürcher, “Jesuit accommodation and the Chinese cultural imperative”, 44.

⁴¹ Xiping Zhang (ed.), Fandigang tu shu guan cang Ming Qing Zhong Xi wen hua jiao liu shi wen xian cong kan: Di yi ji 梵蒂岡圖書館藏明清中西文化交流史文獻叢刊: 第一輯, Vol. 24 (Zhengzhou: Daxiang chubanshe 大象出版社, 2014), 223. The translation is ours.

⁴² See Archie C.C. Lee, “Cross-textual reading strategy: a study of late Ming and early Qing Chinese Christian writings”, Ching Feng 4, 2003, 1–27, at 19.

⁴³ Xiping Zhang (ed.), Fandigang tu shu guan cang Ming Qing Zhong Xi wen hua jiao liu shi wen xian cong kan: Di yi ji 梵蒂岡圖書館藏明清中西文化交流史文獻叢刊: 第一輯, Vol. 25 (Zhengzhou: Daxiang chubanshe 大象出版社, 2014), 530.

⁴⁴ See Beverley Foulks, “Duplicitous thieves: Ouyi Zhixu’s criticism of Jesuit missionaries in Late Imperial China”, Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal 21, 2008, 55–75, at 69.

⁴⁵ Erik Zürcher, “Confucian and Christian religiosity in late Ming China”, The Catholic Historical Review 83, 1997, 614–53, at 629.

⁴⁶ Cf. Daxue wen.

⁴⁷ For an excellent discussion of Aleni’s life and writings, see Gang Song, Giulio Aleni, Kouduo richao, and Christian–Confucian Dialogism in Late Ming Fujian (New York: Routledge, 2018).

⁴⁸ A recent edition and translation of this latter text is available: Anthony E. Clark, A Chinese Jesuit Catechism: Giulio Aleni’s Four Character Classic 四字經文 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). Unless otherwise stated we will follow this translation. It should be noted, however, that it contains several errors, some of which we point out in this article.

⁴⁹ This last text has been the object of a thorough study by Junhyoung Michael Shin, “The supernatural in the Jesuit accommodation to Confucianism: Giulio Aleni’s Tianzhu jiangsheng chuxiang jingjie 天主降生出像經解 (Fuzhou, 1637)”, History of Religions 50, 2011, 329–361.

⁵⁰ This is self-evident from the very title of the Tianzhu jiangsheng yinyi. The Sizijingwen opens with comments on the nature of God, but the majority of the text is concerned with Sacred History, including the story of the Incarnation and Resurrection, and then also eschatology. Thus, it is rather puzzling that Clark, A Chinese Jesuit Catechism, 17, mentioning that catechetical writings were divided into either the categories of supernatural/revealed theology or natural theology, writes, “Aleni’s four character primer more properly fits into the second of these categories”. Aleni’s Wanwu Zhenyuan 萬物真原 (The True Source of the Myriad Things, 1628), recently translated by Paul K. Hosle and Biyun Dai, Scholastic Metaphysics in Late Ming China: Giulio Aleni’s “The True Source of the Myriad Things” (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) indeed consists in large part of natural theology.

⁵¹ Xiping Zhang (ed.), Fandigang tu shu guan cang Ming Qing Zhong Xi wen hua jiao liu shi wen xian cong kan: Di yi ji 梵蒂岡圖書館藏明清中西文化交流史文獻叢刊: 第一輯, Vol. 26 (Zhengzhou: Daxiang chubanshe 大象出版社, 2014), 522–3. For the English translation of this passage with some discussion, see Zürcher, Kouduo richao. Vol. 1, 261–2.

⁵² For the Tianzhu jiangsheng yinyi, juan 1, we cite the facsimile of manuscript Chinois 6894 available at Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits and viewable online: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9006336t/f4.image# (last accessed 3 November 2024). We cite the page numbering internal to the manuscript.

⁵³ Clark, A Chinese Jesuit Catechism, 67, provides a less suitable rendering: “[God provided commandments] so that nature may be instructed – to be good and avoid evil”.

⁵⁴ Unless otherwise stated, we follow the translations of Clark, A Chinese Jesuit Catechism.

⁵⁵ Clark, A Chinese Jesuit Catechism, 70 renders 世忘性教, 無行善心 as “That generation forgot moral teachings – and did not behave with virtuous hearts”, again obscuring the precise meaning of 性教 xingjiao.

⁵⁶ Clark, A Chinese Jesuit Catechism, 70.

⁵⁷ Ruifang Mao (ed.), Weitian airen jilun: Wang Zheng tianzhujiao wenxianji (Taibei: Ganlan huaxuan chubanshe, 2014), at 17. The point is made by Wang Zheng again on p. 55. For a detailed holistic analysis of the content and literary structure of the Weitian airen jilun, see Paul K. Hosle, “Identifying with Confucius as a Catholic in late Ming China: the case of Wang Zheng’s Weitian airen jilun (1628)”, Monumenta Serica (forthcoming), which includes further discussion and contextualization of Wang Zheng’s views on the Decalogue.

⁵⁸ Zhang (ed.), Fandigang tu shu guan cang Ming Qing Zhong Xi wen hua jiao liu shi wen xian cong kan: Di yi ji, Vol. 25, 530.

⁵⁹ Clark, A Chinese Jesuit Catechism, 70.

⁶⁰ Eugenio Menegon, “The Catholic four-character classic (Tianzhu shengjiao sizi jingwen 天主聖教四字經文): a Confucian pattern to spread a foreign faith in late Ming China”, Idomeneo 30, 2020, 157–70, at 164–5.

⁶¹ Clark, A Chinese Jesuit Catechism, 70 incorrectly translates 復至一千, 五百五十 as “[Moses] reappeared [or “resurrected”] one thousand-five hundred and fifty [years later]”. Also, Clark renders 書教 shujiao vaguely as “the instructions of [God’s] decree”.

⁶² It may be noted that Diego de Pantoja’s Qike 七克 “Seven Victories”, an influential ethical treatise on overcoming the Seven Cardinal Sins, was published in 1614.