Kilian Stump

Jesuits (above) and influential Chinese Christians (below) at the Chinese imperial court

Kilian Stumpf (born March 13, 1655 in Würzburg , † July 24, 1720 in Beijing , China ) was a Jesuit priest who played an important role in the China mission . Its Chinese name is chines. Jì Lǐān ( Chinese  紀 理 安 )

Youth and early career

Johann Kilian Stumpf literally grew up in the shadow of the Würzburg Kilians Cathedral , where his father ran a grocer. In 1670, at the age of almost fifteen, he enrolled at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Würzburg . In addition to logic, physics (= natural philosophy) and metaphysics, he also studied mathematics, which at the time included astronomy. In the summer of 1673, Stumpf completed the three-year philosophy course with the master’s examination and shortly afterwards entered the Jesuit order as a novice . After a two-year probationary period, he took his religious vows in July 1675. Nothing in the judgment of his superiors suggests extraordinary future achievements.

From 1675 to 1681 Stumpf worked as a teacher at various religious high schools. In 1679 he was accepted into the class of clergy by receiving the tonsure , followed by minor orders in the following year. At the end of six years he was recognized as having made good progress and mediocre cleverness. After completing his scholasticism, he was allowed to start studying theology in Würzburg. At the end of 1684 he was ordained a priest after his subdiaconate ordination and diaconate ordination. The following summer he successfully completed the fourth year of theology. More years of pastoral care and preparation in Ottersweier (Baden) and Bamberg followed . After nearly 16 years, he finally made the four vows for life on February 2, 1689.

In the course of the past decade, Stumpf had written to the respective superior general of the order in Rome asking for its use in the “mission to the Gentiles”. After some hesitation and further urgent requests, he was accepted to work in China in the summer of 1689.

Drive to the Far East

First he traveled with two other young Jesuits planned for China, Jakob Moers and Bernhard de Wit, in the entourage of the future Queen Maria Anna of Spain (1606–1646) to Madrid and from there to Lisbon . But the fleet to the East Indies had already left, so that he and his companions had to spend in Portugal until the spring of 1691 . While the Dutch used their base at the Cape of Good Hope to rest, replenish supplies and carry out repairs on the long voyage to East India , Portuguese ships called at the port of Mozambique. Stump was unlucky again. Since their ship was delayed, they had to spend almost half a year on the Ilha de Moçambique due to the seasonal wind conditions , where the climate and living conditions were difficult for them. De Wit died of scurvy , Moers of a febrile illness. In 1692, Stump finally reached Goa in India on board the Sanctissimo Sacramento . Here he met Claudio Filippo Grimaldi (1638-1712), an Italian Jesuit who was highly valued by the Chinese Emperor Kangxi (1662-1722) and who had traveled to Moscow on his behalf and wanted to return to Beijing. Once again the wind conditions prevented the onward journey, so that Grimaldi with Stumpf and another seven young Jesuits did not arrive in Macau until June 1694 . Chinese mandarins appeared just two days after their arrival and accompanied Grimaldi and his companions with a hundred servants to Guangzhou .

Beijing life

Stumpf felt the appreciation Grimaldi enjoyed in China. At the same time, the effects of the national differences among the Jesuits of the China Mission became clearer to him than before. The local Portuguese superiors were not enthusiastic about the arrival of the German confrere. They had their problems with the French Jesuits in Beijing and feared that Stumpf would take their side. Stump had to stay behind in canton and undertake not to leave the city. Grimaldi also left behind numerous mathematical and astronomical instruments that he had received in Europe as gifts for the Chinese emperor. The long sea voyage had rendered them unusable, and Stumpf was given the task of cleaning and repairing them as far as possible. He did this with great skill and earned a lot of recognition and admiration. When Kangxi heard about this from officials, he ordered Stump to come to the court. In July 1695 he arrived in Beijing and immediately received an audience with the emperor, who wanted to get an idea of ​​his abilities. Stump was assigned an apartment in the house of the French Jesuits. Only now did the Portuguese fathers find out of his arrival. He never left the city until the end of his life.

Soon he was accompanying the French Jesuits almost every day to the Imperial Palace to be of service. Stump restored hundreds of geometrical and astronomical instruments. In the foundry he set up, he also gave instructions in metallurgical techniques. Presumably, while repairing the optical instruments, he decided to build glass melting furnaces (1697). This first glass workshop in China aroused the interest of the emperor, who selected talented people for professional training. Some products were given to the court in Moscow as gifts from the emperor. At times Stumpf was involved in the land surveys, which the Jesuits carried out from 1708 onwards in order to draw up precise geographic maps. Then he was transferred to the Mathematical and Astronomical Office to help calculate a new calendar. Kilian was in charge of it from 1711 to 1719.

National disagreements among the Jesuits in China continued. The French fathers in particular did not want to obey the instructions of the Portuguese vice provincial. In addition, there was the dispute about the religious content of the terms Shangdi (“highest ruler”) and Tian (“heaven”) and the evaluation of the Chinese worship of Confucius and the ancestral cult, which went down in history as the “ ritual controversy ”. The majority of the Jesuits, including Stumpf, saw only social rites without religious content, which could be overcome through skillful adaptation ( accommodation ), but there were violent attacks from other church groups both within China and in Europe. In 1645 Pope Innocent X considered ancestor worship to be incompatible with the Christian faith. His successor Alexander VII again made concessions to the Jesuits in 1656. After the priests of the Société des Missions Etrangères de Paris came to China in 1683 and the no less rigorous Lazarists came to China in 1698 , the clashes flared up again. The legal disputes that had been smoldering since 1690 over the “Padroado”, the local administration of the Church by Portugal, further complicated the situation.

The Edict of Tolerance issued by Emperor Kangxi in 1692 gave Christianity a lot of leeway and indicated a positive development of mission in the empire, but in the following year the Vicar Apostolic in the Archdiocese of Fuzhou , Charles Maigrot from the Paris Mission, forbade the practice of traditional rites in his Jurisdiction. In 1695 he also sent his personal envoy Nicolas Charmot (1655–1714) to Rome. This submitted an opinion from professors of the Sorbonne , whereupon Innocent XII. in 1699 set up a cardinals commission, which had to review all documents concerning the dispute.

In this situation, each document had to be carefully drafted. Stumpf, who lived with the French Jesuits but had meanwhile also enjoyed the trust of the Portuguese provincial superiors, had been entrusted with the exhausting correspondence with the Roman General Curia. His knowledge of Manchu and Chinese, his empathy, his efforts to be polite in spite of all the severity gave the hundreds of letters a quality that was also recognized by the order's administration.

He also put reports and pamphlets on paper. In 1701 he wrote a Tractatus contra Historiam Cultus in response to Charmot's attack, and four years later he wrote Vinciciae Missionariorum Societatis Jesu contra caluminia a Ro Nic. Charmot . Analecta and a replica of the two-volume text Il Disinganno , written by an anonymous Dominican, were created almost at the same time . In 1700, the Jesuits had also received a declaration from Emperor Kangxi on Confucianism and ancestor worship, which they sent to Rome together with a detailed letter. The Pope decided to send a legate for further clarification. In April 1705, Monsignor Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon (1668-1710) arrived in Canton. Due to his experience and reliability as "Notarius Apostolicus", Stumpf had to keep the minutes of all events.

Kangxi granted the legate an honorable welcome, but he did not want to comment on the Pope's attitude to the rites question and in the following period caused increasing irritation at court with his evasive and clumsy behavior. Even before Maillard de Tournon's arrival in Canton, the decision against the Jesuit position had been made in Rome. It gradually became clear that the Legate had come to China by no means with an open mind. When he then ignored various suggestions of the Jesuits and commissioned Charles Maigrot of all people to review the Chinese writings and documents on the rite issue, the Emperor Kangxi even intervened. Maigrot was called to talk about the Confucian rites. The emperor's judgment was devastating: Maigrot did not understand anything about Chinese literature and philosophy. De Tournon was stubborn, and on August 27, 1706, Kangxi ordered his departure from Beijing. In December, he and two other missionaries were expelled from the country. Any missionary who wanted to stay in China was from now on only allowed to do so with an imperial permit.

In the meantime the decree had reached the Far East from Rome. When Tournon arrived in Nanjing in January 1704 , he announced some of the papal provisions in the so-called Nankinger Manifesto, which he further tightened by threatening excommunication in the event of non-compliance. On imperial orders he was immediately arrested, taken to Macau and handed over to the Portuguese.

From November 1605 on, Stumpf had collected all the documents on the Apostolic Visitation and rites question. He gave the diary of 1,500 pages created in this way with the title Acta Pekinensia . They not only contain his reports, but also numerous quotations from letters in various languages ​​or Latin translations, as well as Latin translations of Chinese documents. Some of the Chinese originals have been preserved so that the quality of his work could be verified.

While the situation of the China mission deteriorated in the following years, new tasks awaited Stumpf. After some hesitation he took over the position of rector at the Jesuit college in Beijing, which had been vacant due to his death. A few months before taking up the new position, he wrote a Succincta Chronologica Relatio for the church authorities in Rome , in which he again justified the Jesuit position and proposed a solution. In the same year, however, the Pope again confirmed the ban on rites of 1704 by decree. After the four-year rectorate had expired, Stumpf was elected the new visitor . As such, he was at the head of the Jesuits in China and was only responsible to the Superior General of the Order in Rome. French Confrates had given him their vote, but that did not mean that they submitted to his authority. In November 1715 the Franciscan Carlo Orazi da Castorano appeared on behalf and with the authority of Bishop Bernadino Della Chiesa to demand the publication of the papal decrees of 1704 and 1710. Stump tried to put it off a little longer. But in August 1716, several printed copies of the Apostolic Constitution "Ex illa die" of March 19, 1715 reached China, in which Pope Clement XI. confirmed and strengthened the previous decrees and pronouncements. This could no longer be concealed from the Chinese authorities and the emperor. Castorano, who had meanwhile been arrested by Chinese authorities, sent a long complaint to Europe Relatio eorum quae Pekini contigerunt in Publicatione Constitutionis SSmi Dni N. Clementis Papae XX. the 19a Martij 1715 super rite Sinicos editae, et the 3 a Nov. 1716 Pekin publicatae . Stumpf tried in vain to clarify the allegations and events in direct correspondence with Castorano. Finally he decided on a detailed replica of Informatio per Veritate . This was the last writing from his pen and at the same time the only one that was printed during his lifetime - as xylography on rice paper. Stumpf hoped for broader support, but the opposite occurred. The attacks on him and the Jesuits increased. In 1720 the script was placed on the index, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Latin: Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide ) demanded that Stumpf be removed.

Its star was also declining at Kangxi. His bad health for years and the various stresses had their price. In 1719, Stumpf asked the emperor to exempt him from chairing the mathematical office. In addition, the production of a new vertical quadrant dragged on, and the cost overruns angered the emperor. At the turn of the year he could no longer attend the reception at court. On July 24th, 1720 he finally blessed the temporal. The burial took place in the Jesuit cemetery in Zhalan , at that time a village two miles west of Beijing, today in the central area of ​​the metropolis.

The ban on Informatio pro Veritate and the renewed ban on Chinese rites by the papal bull Ex quo singulari , renewed in 1742 and concluded after more than a century of disputes , meant that Stumpfen's memory quickly faded in the 18th century. It has only been torn from oblivion by researchers since the end of the 19th century. Today, Stumpf is one of the outstanding China missionaries of his time. His writings and letters are considered to be the most outstanding sources in the development of the situation in China at that time as well as the development of the rite dispute.

Works (writings)

• Acta Pekinensia sive Ephemerides Historiales eorum, quae Pekini acciderunt a 4 a Decembris Anni 1705. 1a Adventus Ill. Mi Rev. mi et Exc. mi Dñi D. Caroli Thomae Maillard de Tournon Patriarchae Antiocheni Visitatoris Apostolici cum potestate Legati de Latere .
• Kiliani Stumpfii ex Societate Jesu Visitatoris Compendium Actorum Pekinensium Annis 1715. 1716. 1717. et Documenta Tria mihi in hoc compendio specialiter observanda .
• Succincta Chronologica Relatio et historia Missionis Sinensis (1710)
• Information pro veritate contra iniquiorem famam sparingly per Sinas cum calumnia in PP Soc. Jesus, & detrimento missionis. Communicata Missionariis in Imperio Sinensi . Anno 1717.

literature

• Claudia Collani: Kilian Stumpf SJ on the situation of the China mission in 1708 (I) . In: Neue Zeitschrift für Missionwissenschaft, 1995, pp. 117-144
• Claudia Collani: The report of Kilian stump about the case of father Joachim Bouvet . Journal of Mission Studies and Religious Studies, 1999, vol. 83, no3, pp. 231-251.
• Claudia Collani: Kilian Stumpf (Jilian Yunfeng) - Mediator between Wurzburg and China . In: Huang Shijian (ed.): Dongxi Jaoliu Luntan, Vol. 2, Shanghai (Shanghai Wenyi Chubianshe), 2001, Stumpf 259-276.
• Thomas HC Lee (ed.): China and Europe: images and influences in sixteenth to eighteenth centuries . Hong Kong Chinese Univ. Press 1991. (Institute of Chinese Studies Monograph Series, 12)
• David E. Mungello (Ed.): The Chinese rites controversy. Its history and meaning . Steyler, Nettetal 1994.
• Sebald Reil: Kilian Stumpf: 1655-1720; a Würzburg Jesuit at the Imperial Court in Beijing . Münster: Aschendorff, 1978 (missiological treatises and texts 33)

Web links

• Letter from Kilian Stumpf to the Russian Tsar, June 25, 1717 ( digitized version of the University of Tartu )
• Acta Pekinensia project of the Ricci Institute in Macau