Niccolò Longobardo

Niccolò Longobardo

Niccolò Longobardo (sometimes also Longobardi or Langobardo ; Chinese name: 龍華 民 (龙华 民) Lóng Huámín, age name: 精華 (精华) Jīnghuá; * 1565 in Caltagirone , Sicily ; † 1654 in Beijing ) was one of the first Jesuits of the China mission of the 16th century . and 17th century. The native Sicilian is best known for his critical attitude towards the method of accommodation Matteo Riccis , probably the most famous superior of the Jesuits in China .

Life

From 1610 on, Longobardo was Ricci's successor as superior of the China mission, a position that he relinquished to Manuel Dias the Younger in 1622 . In 1623, thirteen years after Ricci's death, he wrote a treatise entitled De Confucio ejusque doctrina tractatus , which - originally intended only for a Jesuit audience - attacked the Confucian-Christian syncretistic approaches of Ricci's proponents, based on an analysis of Neo-Confucian ideas sought to dismantle. Probably by chance, this writing, which had actually been destroyed and banned by visitor André Palmeiro in 1629 , later came into the hands of the Franciscan missionary Antonio Caballero , who passed it on to the Dominican Domingo Navarrete in 1669 at a conference in Canton . Through this, the treatise came to Europe, where it was first translated into Spanish, later into French by missionaries of the Missions Etrangères de Paris and finally used in the 18th century on the occasion of the rites dispute against the Jesuits. Even Leibniz took as part of his investigation into Chinese hexagrams Scripture Longo Bardos noted and commented on them.

Longobardo was the oldest survivor of the first generation of Jesuit China missionaries. Among other things, he was responsible for the extensive collections of the Nantang library, as well as the recruitment of several important astronomers and mathematicians for the Chinese imperial court. During the transition from the Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty , he was arrested due to his contacts with high-ranking figures from the last Ming imperial family and spent some time in a prison in Beijing. Later, however, he succeeded - also through the position of Schall von Bells at the court of the Manjurs - to establish good relations with the Shunzhi emperor, who even provided money for his funeral after Longobardo's death.

In addition to theological works, Longobardo also wrote a treatise on earthquakes and a biography of Jehoshaphat , which is listed as notable in secondary literature for being a kind of Christianized form of the Buddha's life.

Sources and further reading

• Liam M. Brockey: Journey to the East. The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579-1724 . The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2007, ISBN 978-0-674-02448-9 .
• George H. Dunne: The great example. The Jesuit China Mission ("Generation of Giants. The Story of the Jesuits in the Last Decade of the Ming Dynasty"). Schwabenverlag, Stuttgart 1965 (Peter & Paul Library).
• Jacques Gernet : Christ came to China. A first encounter and its failure ("Chine et christianisme. La première confrontation"). Artemis-Verlag, Zurich 1984, ISBN 3-7608-0626-0 .
• Luther C. Goodrich (Ed.): Dictionary of Ming Biography. 1368-1644 . Columbia University Press, New York 1976, ISBN 0-231-03801-1 .
• Wenchao Li, Hans Poser (Ed.): Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , "Discours sur la Theologie Naturelle des Chinois" . Publishing house Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt / M. 2002, ISBN 3-465-03214-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Contents: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: De Confucio -Traktat (in French translation and Leibniz 'remarks); Niccolò Longobardo: Traité sur quelques points de la religion de Chinois ; Antoine de Sainte Marie: Traité sur quelques points importants de la mission de la Chine ; Nicolas Malebranche : Entretien d'un philosophe chrétien et d'un philosophe chinois sur l'existence et la nature de Dieu