Eugenio Menegon

Child bodies, blessed bodies: The contest between Christian virginity and Confucian chastity

In late imperial China chastity of a widowed or betrothed woman, rather than virginity per se, was considered the core female virtue in social practice, in literary discourse, and in law. However, religious chastity as offered in Buddhism and other Chinese religious traditions was a way for women to evade the strictures of married life. This helps explain why, when introduced in the seventeenth century by Spanish Dominican friars, the concept of virginity as a prerequisite for consecrated religious life found enthusiastic acceptance among some women in Fujian province. To legitimize virginity as a virtue and a perpetual state of life for some Chinese women, missionaries and their converts ingeniously revised the meaning of filiality, claiming a place for Christian filiality within orthodox boundaries of filial piety (xiao), while suggesting that Christianity offered a truer meaning of filiality, subordinated to the divine prerogatives of the Christian God.

Christian Loyalists, Spanish Friars, and Holy Virgins in Fujian During the Ming-Qing Transition

迄今為止，相當多的研究者主要關注耶穌會在中國的活動，而忽略了方濟各 會、多明我會及其他來華修會在華活動時所產生的大量史料，這些史料為我 們描述了天主教在民間底層的鮮活畫面。盡管從十六世紀末起，耶穌會士也 活躍於相類似的環境，但是在歐洲出版的該會報告中，主要描繪的是耶穌會 與上層知識精英的關係，如此一來，耶穌會士與儒士及帝國文化的相遇問題 ，理所當然成爲許多當代的歷史研究者熱衷於討論的對象。在本文中，我將集中探討清軍橫掃東南時期閩東北福安縣地方多明我會的活 動。這些多明我會神父目擊了明清王朝更替，為我們留下了衆多反映這場劇 烈社會變動的史料。然而，對於本文來説，更重要的一點是，這種明清轉變 為我們提供了一個深入研究基層處境中天主教群體與地方社會之間實質關係 的絕佳歷史結合點。清軍的進逼，引發了地方紳士之間的分裂，由此也進一 步惡化了自十七世紀三十年代中期以來愈演愈烈的教徒與非教徒之間的社會 沖突與緊張關係。這類沖突是在地方宗族爭奪社會控制、對婦女的夫權支配 以及宗教信仰分歧等背景下發生的。本文之目的並非僅限於討論教會史，而是試圖結合中西文獻史料，從福安這 個邊緣地區入手，對下層天主教文人與婦女信徒的生活進行初步探索，從而 有助於推進明清基層天主教這個目前仍然有待深入的問題的研究。

Wanted: an eighteenth-century Chinese Catholic priest in China, Italy, India, and Southeast Asia

Abstract This essay explores the life of Cai Ruoxiang (1739–1806), alias Pietro Zai, a native of southern Fujian, China, who was trained as a priest in the Chinese College of Naples in Italy. After returning to China, Cai quietly worked there for over a decade as an underground missionary, but in 1784 became the ‘number one’ on the list of wanted criminals in an empire-wide anti-Christian campaign launched by the Qianlong emperor and his governors. Cai was able to avoid the imperial wrath by sailing to Goa (India). From there he travelled back to southern China under a new name, Giovanni Maria Ly, passing through Siam, Malaysia, Batavia and Tonkin, and spent the rest of his life working again in central China. Cais sixty letters in Italian archives reveal how a native priest born in China, transplanted for his education in Italy, and then again back in his home country, interpreted his own evangelical work, communicated with his superiors in Naples and Rome, and participated in a global network extending from Italy to China.