Ecclesiastical Colony: China's Catholic Church and the French Religious Protectorate 0199924627, 9780199924622

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Ecclesiastical Colony

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Ecclesiastical Colony China’s Catholic Church and the French Religious Protectorate

Ernest P. Young

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1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

© Oxford University Press 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Young, Ernest P. Ecclesiastical colony : China’s Catholic church and the French religious protectorate / Ernest P. Young. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–992462–2 (alk. paper) 1. Catholic Church—China—History. 2. China—Church history. 3. Missions, French—China— History. 4. France—Foreign relations—China. 5. China—Foreign relations—France. I. Title. BX1665.Y68 2013 266c.251—dc23 2012033747 ISBN 978–0–19–992462–2

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

For my wife, Brady Mikusko, with love.

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Contents Acknowledgments ix Specialized Terms and Acronyms xi Introduction 1 1. The Emergence of the French Religious Protectorate in China 11 2. Church and Protectorate under the Treaties 35 3. Defending the Protectorate in the Late Nineteenth Century 54 4. Collecting Indemnities and Enduring Criticism 78 5. The Complexities of Jiao’an in the Early Twentieth Century: Sichuan and Jiangxi 97 6. Reform Agendas for the Missions 121 7. Dissidence and Catholic Patriotism in Tianjin 148 8. Petitioning Rome 171 9. The Vatican Engages and Catholics in China Respond 185 10. The Papacy’s New China Policy 211 11. Falling Short 233 Notes 261 Glossary 345 Bibliography 351 Index 375

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Acknowledgments

over the many years that it has taken to bring this project to fruition, I have depended on help from many institutions and people. It is my duty and pleasure to acknowledge the most important of these contributions. The financing of my research trips was assisted by several sources. My initial foray into French libraries and archives (diplomatic and ecclesiastical) was supported by the History of Christianity in China Project, a program of the Henry Luce Foundation. Later I received a crucial assist from the Office of the Vice President for Research of the University of Michigan to explore archival possibilities in Rome. Then a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies enabled an extended visit to several European archives and libraries. The Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan contributed to time at the archive in Belgium of materials regarding Vincent Lebbe and then toward another trip to Rome to benefit from a further opening of Vatican archives. I am indebted to the courtesy and assistance of the staff of several archives. In London: the Public Record Office (now part of the National Archives). In Madison, New Jersey: Archives of the United Methodist Church. In Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: Archives V. Lebbe. In Nantes: Centre des Archives Diplomatiques. In Paris: Archives de la Congrégation de la Mission (Lazarists); Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères; and Archives de la Société des Missions Etrangères de Paris. In Rome: Archivio Generale OFM (Franciscans); Archivio Generale della Compagnia di Gesù ( Jesuits); Archivio della S. Congregazione di Propaganda Fide ix

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Acknowledgments

(Propaganda); and Archivio Segreto Vaticano. In Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives. As to libraries, in addition to the generous cooperation and assistance of the University of Michigan Libraries, especially its Asia Library, I benefited greatly from access to the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris), the library of the Institut Catholique de Paris, the Missionary Research Library Collection of the Burke Library (Union Theological Seminary), the New York Public Library, and the Yale Divinity School Library. I was alerted to important sources for my project by Daniel Bays, Danke Li, Richard Orb, and Roger Thompson. Special mention goes to Judith Wyman, who shared her knowledge of various relevant archives and provided me with a major set of materials that she gathered while engaged in her own work. Perhaps this is where I should acknowledge the guidance to the intricacies of Vatican archives that Francis X. Blouin, expert extraordinary in these matters, offered me. Research assistance, including translations, transcriptions from handwriting, and the presentation of photographs, was provided by Keichi Chang, Brian R. Dott, Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker, Joseph Ho, Bertrand Metton, and Lora Wildenthal. I especially wish to commemorate the help of my beloved brother, Merrill Orne Young, now deceased, who applied his great skills as a Latinist to absorbing the first lot of Latin documents that I had brought back from archives in Rome. Readers of evolving manuscripts deserve a special place in heaven for their generous contribution of time and their willingness to risk the resentment of a thin-skinned author at critical comment. Friends and colleagues on whom I inflicted this task and whose suggestions have been invaluable are Tom Buoye, Joe Esherick, Tom Tentler, and Fran Blouin. I also roped into this job my adult children, who provided some necessary unvarnished reflections on the text. To this list should be added the two anonymous readers for the Oxford University Press. I am also much indebted to the editorial expertise and care given to my book over many months by Sonia Tycko and Nancy Toff at the same press. Last, I offer my loving gratitude to my wife, Brady, for her patience and support over the years. I dedicate this volume to her.

Specialized Terms and Acronyms

apostolic delegate

apostolic vicar

jiao’an MEP procurator

Propaganda

xi

A representative of the Vatican to the churches of a particular area or territory, but ordinarily lacking the formal diplomatic status of a nuncio or internuncio. The superior of a vicariate, with a bishop’s title, although lacking the autonomy of a diocesan bishop. Often rendered as “vicar apostolic.” Chinese term for incidents and legal disputes arising from the Christian presence. Société des Missions Etrangères (Paris), formed to recruit French priests for missionary work. Church term for a business manager or treasurer, a priestly office found at various points in the ecclesiastical structure, including in vicariates and representing missionary organizations in Rome and in financial centers such as Shanghai. Shorthand for the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, also often referred to as Propaganda Fide, which was the Vatican’s bureau for the administration of missions. Its current name is the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

xii

SPF vicariate

visitor

Zongli yamen

Specialized terms and acronyms

Society for the Propagation of the Faith (Oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi), dedicated to raising funds for missions. A unit of missionary administration in the field, comparable to a diocese and headed by an apostolic vicar. Often referred to as a “vicariate apostolic.” A term used in some cases in China for the resident representative of a Europe-based missionary organization. Also known as a “provincial.” An “apostolic visitor” was an investigator temporarily commissioned by the Vatican. Abbreviated name of a central office assigned to handle foreign relations among other things in the late Qing, 1861–1901.

Introduction

the history of the Catholic church in China spans several centuries. Its record has had mixed reviews. Much praise—and scholarship—has been lavished on the European missionaries, predominantly Jesuits, who, from the late sixteenth century into the eighteenth, laid material and intellectual foundations for a persisting Catholic presence. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, Christian churches in China became part of a system of foreign privilege and power politics. The preeminent expression of the place of the Catholic church in that system was known as the French Religious Protectorate, whereby the French state claimed the role of guardian for all Catholics in China. The foreign bishops who administered the Chinese church generally welcomed—indeed, invited—the proffered protection. Their participation in the Protectorate was crucial to its usefulness to France. The manner in which French authorities put this claim into effect was controversial. It was objectionable to China’s leaders, aroused much popular protest, irritated other European countries with their own Catholic missionaries in China, sometimes frustrated the pope, and was abhorrent to a new Chinese nationalism. Especially from the early twentieth century, vigorous critics of the linkage of religious mission and French policy emerged inside the Catholic church, both in China and in Rome. This book is about the conjuncture of the Catholic immersion in imperialism as it developed in the nineteenth century in China and the struggle within the church against that linkage in the first decades of the twentieth century. 1

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Ecclesiastical Colony

The story is both institutional and personal. Large diplomatic and ecclesiastical administrations framed the developments. Some remarkable characters acted out the dramas. Among the notable Catholic prelates in China were a megalomaniacal bishop in the interior province of Sichuan who seemed to aspire to his own kingdom; a suave, epicurean priest in Beijing whose influence straddled the worlds both of foreign diplomats and the highest officials of the Chinese empire; a German bishop who counted as his supporters the German emperor and the Vatican but who disastrously fomented the disaffection of his own missionaries; and a twentieth-century French bishop whose evangelistic successes were purchased at the price of scandalous commercialism. The struggle against the foreign rule of the church that the French Religious Protectorate confirmed and sustained was waged by, among others, an Egyptian Catholic missionary; an ascetic Belgian missionary who founded one of China’s most important newspapers of the time and who eventually adopted Chinese nationality and joined the war effort against Japan; culturally and socially prominent Chinese Catholic laymen, who publicly sought the indigenization of China’s church; Chinese Catholic priests who petitioned Rome for reform; and a couple of popes and the head of their missionary administration, who in the late 1910s and the 1920s together attempted to free the Chinese church from its indenture to foreign protection. The clashes from all this created sharp and enduring divisions among the interested parties, religious and secular. A moment near the end of the nineteenth century between French officialdom and the Chinese Catholic church captures some of the style that had grown up around the French Religious Protectorate. Rededicating the Church at Wanghailou At the quay of the French consulate in Tianjin, early in the morning of June 21, 1897, a resplendent congregation of diplomats and military officers of different nations, along with ecclesiastical representatives, boarded boats for the site of a newly reconstructed Catholic church some distance upriver. Tianjin (formerly spelled Tientsin) was the major commercial city of north China, the seat at this time of the governor-general of Zhili (now Hebei) province, and the main port for the country’s capital of Beijing. The foreign dignitaries and priests of the church were to be joined by the Tianjin customs daotai (an imperial official who handled the Chinese government’s local relations with foreigners) and the area’s military commander.1 The purpose was to consecrate a carefully repaired church that had been badly damaged in the course of the events commonly called in Western accounts the

Introduction

3

Tianjin Massacre. Twenty foreigners, mostly French but of several nationalities— a priest, ten religious sisters, diplomats, businessmen, wives—had been killed in Tianjin by an angry crowd on June 21, 1870. A Chinese priest and some Chinese employed by the Catholic mission there were also victims. The incident erupted when allegations of the atrocious abuse of children by European Catholic sisters, including kidnappings and the harvesting of body parts, interacted explosively with the irascible and murderous behavior of a French consul, who publicly shot an attendant of a Chinese official. The mission premises, its church, and the neighboring French consulate were gutted, as were the Catholic orphanage and some British and American Protestant chapels.2 The French-led Catholic mission there had acquired the site in 1865. The first edifice was completed in 1869. The place was known as Wanghailou from its location along Tianjin’s main waterways, but the church was called by the mission Notre Dame des Victoires (Our Lady of Victories). The name had a history in Europe as an icon of French imperial power.3 It would have been hard to avoid the implication that the victories being commemorated by this religious monument were those over forces of the Chinese government during the Arrow War (1856–1860) by French and British troops. Envoys from these belligerent European powers had used the Wanghailou site as forward headquarters.4 This reconstruction was not an exercise in tact. Indemnities and other sanctions had been imposed on China in the aftermath of the 1870 violence, including funds for repair or replacement of damaged buildings. But the Catholic mission for the area used its indemnity monies instead to raise a new church inside the French concession in Tianjin, leaving the frame of the old church derelict.5 It was not until 1896 that the French minister negotiated particular arrangements for the repair of the church at Wanghailou: the mission would pay (having spent the indemnity already), but the Chinese government would countenance an accompanying conspicuous monument with an imperial inscription condemning the attacks on the foreigners and would enable a rededication. This project was overseen by a leading French priest of the Catholic vicariate (that is, a missionary diocese) in which Tianjin was located. Over the years, this priest, Alphonse Favier, had managed the building of several ecclesiastical and secular edifices.6 Among these edifices was the new French consulate, moved in the 1870s downstream from the old site but still in Tianjin. Favier was wont to claim that, by his skillful management, he had saved the French government 60,000 francs on the consulate.7 French diplomats often sought his advice regarding the expansion or repair of their own establishments.8 For this rededication in 1897, the French minister (the top foreign diplomats in Beijing had not yet been granted ambassadorial rank) requested and received a

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Ecclesiastical Colony

special train from Beijing to Tianjin to convey him and his entourage to the ceremony, although the new line was not yet officially open for the whole route. The five boats ferrying the foreign participants—French, British, Russian—from the French consulate to the church were also supplied by the Chinese government. So were a dozen of its gunboats to protect the foreign convoy, as well as contingents of Chinese marines stationed in a camp adjoining Wanghailou and patrols in nearby villages. Guards were sent to protect the small Chinese Christian community of Tianjin. In addition, the French minister had arranged for a gunboat from the French fleet in China to be stationed nearby with a landing party ready. One might wonder at this level of security for the dedication of a church. The problem was indications of popular hostility. In a pattern that recalled the 1870 outbreak, talk of planned Catholic sacrifices of Chinese children as part of the celebrations had been heard in the preceding weeks. The rumors, which seem to have started as a more generalized panic about child kidnappings in the area,9 claimed that the mission was purchasing hundreds of children and preparing them for slaughter on the day of the church’s inauguration. Local missionaries reported to French consular officials the pervasive circulation of these tales in the Tianjin population. Chinese authorities were also aware and concerned. Citing agitation among the people, the provincial governor-general had requested that the inauguration of the new building be postponed. The French minister had refused. He was determined that the anniversary date of the 1870 affair be kept (by the Western, not the Chinese, calendar). The governor-general ordered the decapitation of someone who was convicted of attempting to sell children for adoption but who had no link to the mission. He also issued two proclamations, at official French request, exonerating missionaries and Chinese Christians from all these allegations. He hoped thereby to refute the rumors and defuse the situation. But anxiety continued at a high level. Out of caution, the Daughters of Charity, belonging to a European religious order in Tianjin, were told to stay away from the ceremony.10 What had been accomplished by this pomp and muscular display? The chief representative of the Catholic mission, Alphonse Favier, standing in for his incapacitated bishop whom he would soon succeed, observed that, during the slow-moving journey of the convoy, Chinese watching from their boats displayed an attitude “nothing less than hostile.” Nonetheless, he optimistically concluded: “It seems that the government and Chinese officials have finally understood that their interest lay in loyally joining with us for this ceremony of supreme reconciliation.”11 A critical French journalist remarked soon after the event that the reconstruction of this Tianjin church had all but led to a new anti-European uprising.12 As it turned out, the ceremonies, amid the elaborate precautions, were conducted without

Introduction

5

incident. However, the hostility lived on, and the official reconciliation, postulated by Favier, was at best ephemeral. The Zhili governor-general, who laid on so much protection for the event, resisted French pressure to attend.13 Three years later, as part of the mixed popular and official attack on Christianity and foreigners known as the Boxer Uprising, the church of Notre Dame des Victoires was again assaulted. The French Religious Protectorate over its 100-year history had more than one face, and the intensity of its exercise varied. Nonetheless, this vignette of 1897 suggests some observations about the institution. Generally speaking, the protection advertised by the French Religious Protectorate was actually afforded by the Chinese government, not by French force. The official French role was to present Chinese authorities with concerns about the safety, well-being, and interests of missionaries and Chinese Catholics. In practice, these concerns were prompted by the allegations of missionary bishops, who charged local officials, local elites, or ordinary Chinese with hostile acts (or the likelihood of them) against Catholic persons and property. French diplomats and consuls would address higher Chinese authorities and seek corrective action and redress. Behind the remonstrances of French official representatives was the threat of punitive force, always there implicitly and not infrequently invoked explicitly. By the time of the rededication of Notre Dame des Victoires, there had been two wars between France and the Chinese state. Soon France would participate in another. French naval forces were permanently stationed in Chinese waters. But the French military were not capable of policing the protection of the myriad Catholic communities scattered all over the country. The system depended on prevailing on the Chinese government. Another observation is that French diplomats and the Catholic missions maintained conspicuously close ties. Certainly, it was not strange that state officials would attend the consecration of a church. Even in France, where anticlericalism had reemerged in the political arena with considerable strength since 1879, the state had not yet renounced its linkages with the Catholic church inherited from Napoleon’s 1801 concordat. In this case, among those killed in the 1870 violence in Tianjin were French diplomats. Yet the degree of official French involvement in all phases of this reconstruction and its celebration exceeded what one might expect from these circumstances. Not least, it was the French government that had originally extracted from the Chinese government indemnification for the damage and then lobbied Chinese authorities for facilities and extravagant security measures. The killings in 1870 were themselves precipitated by the French consul’s angry encounters with local Chinese officials suspicious of the Catholic mission, encounters in which the consul twice fired a pistol, with a resulting Chinese fatality.

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Ecclesiastical Colony

When Favier wrote of Chinese authorities “loyally joining with us,” the “us” would seem to refer to the amalgam of mission and French officialdom. Such an identification came easily to most Catholic missionaries, not only French ones. This identification was sometimes seen by highest Catholic authority as a problem, but it had a long life, with great consequence. The presence of diplomatic representatives of other foreign countries, including British and Russian consuls, points to another possible definition of “us”: all Europeans and their North American offshoots. In any major showdown in China, the foreign powers came together, as was soon to be demonstrated again by the response to the Boxer movement and its investment of Tianjin and Beijing in 1900. There were also fissures, however, which the French Religious Protectorate often aggravated. British and Russian representatives joined in the ceremonies for the rededication of Notre Dames des Victoires. Yet they could not but recall that the erratic and belligerent behavior of the Tianjin French consul, in his expansive interpretation of the French Religious Protectorate, had precipitated the riot and led to Chinese, Russian, British, Belgian, and Italian deaths, as well as French ones. The French policy of Catholic protection would more than once lead to “collateral damage” at the expense of other foreigners, as well as of numerous Chinese. A further point that might be drawn from the vignette is to question the effectiveness of the French Religious Protectorate. The answer depends on its actual purpose, and there were various views of this. The first official answer had to be the safeguarding of Catholic evangelism in China, of the missionaries and their property, and of the free exercise of their religion by Chinese Catholics. Most Catholic missionaries seemed to believe that, without the protection of foreign power and its monitoring of China’s officialdom, they would soon be forced out of China and the Christian religion would be eradicated. The record of the era before there was any prospect of such protection, that is, before 1842, could be used both to support and to refute that proposition. At any rate, foreign protection, once it was imposed, did not prevent assaults on missions and Christians, as the history of Wanghailou in Tianjin so concisely illustrates. Construing the Missionary Problem The numbers of Chinese Catholics expanded substantially in the last two-thirds of the nineteenth century. Yet the last four of those decades were marked by recurring hostility, often violent, to the Catholic presence all over the country, as well as to that of the much smaller number of Protestants. The century ended with the cataclysmic outburst of the Boxer affair, during which tens of thousands of Chinese Catholics, among several categories of victims, were killed. In attempts to understand

Introduction

7

this history of conflict, which extended beyond the Boxer moment, various explanations for the troubles besetting the Catholic mission movement to China have been offered. They stack up impressively. To start with, there is the postulation of incompatibility between Christianity and Chinese culture at a fundamental level—philosophical understandings of nature and the relations of humans to it and to each other. Addressing the Catholic missions to China in the seventeenth century, Jacques Gernet has given the fullest exposition of this approach. “At the farthest extremity of the Eurasian continent they [European missionaries] had come into contact with a scholarly and developed civilisation which differed fundamentally, not on particular points, but as a whole, from all that had become familiar to them by virtue of their own long traditions.”14 He argues that, insofar as Chinese of sound mind converted, it was because they had been deceived by watered-down versions of Catholic doctrine. When the truth came out, through controversy within the Catholic church over accepting converts’ performance of socially crucial ceremonies, the house of cards collapsed. Catholic conversions, in this view, could thence come only from Chinese who were ignorant of or uncaring about their own culture. One may doubt whether Chinese thought was the seamless, integrated whole implied by Gernet’s argument or whether the early Jesuits actually did hide from evangelized Chinese the more difficult parts of their doctrine.15 Yet Chinese culture arguably raised other obstacles to a Chinese Catholicism. Paul A. Cohen has made the case for a xenophobic strand in Chinese responses to foreign imports, especially religious ones, readily labeled heterodox.16 When Catholic evangelism was strongly revived from the mid-nineteenth century, there were arguments and images ready to be deployed against an alien religion. These were arguments and images that, mutatis mutandis, had once been deployed against Buddhism, an Indian import in the early centuries of the Common Era. They were recast in the seventeenth century to refute and disparage Christianity. When missions became aggressive after a bundle of imposed treaties were in place from 1860, an array of cultural missiles to combat the Christian message was available to the educated classes. As a result, despite its expansionary effort, Christianity was on the defensive in China as irredeemably foreign and heterodox, a term as much political as religious. A related argument holds that it was the literati or gentry—the widespread stratum of the classically educated at the top of Chinese society—who were the instigators and managers of antimissionary acts. Stirred by anti-Christian literature and threatened by missionary pretensions to local leadership and power, they used their prestige and networks to mobilize resistance and sometimes violence against these interlopers. Local officials, who were of the same social class, might

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Ecclesiastical Colony

enable such activities. In the late nineteenth century, this was the most widespread explanation among missionaries and diplomats in China for the hostility to Christian evangelism so often encountered. It has also had its latter-day scholarly advocates.17 More recently, Barend ter Haar has proposed that missionaries, especially Catholic ones, ran afoul of strong oral cultural traditions that inclined Chinese to scapegoat outsiders. When under stress for any of a variety of reasons, communities sometimes demonized intruders according to inherited scripts. They imagined unfamiliar sojourners to be performing atrocious acts, like the black-magical use of children’s bodies or the poisoning of well water, and demanded retribution. It was the missionaries’ new prominence in the latter half of the nineteenth century, their own suspicious rituals, and their assertiveness that triggered violent attacks on missions. These attacks, then, had little to do with doctrine or religious intolerance or with gentry conspiracy.18 A frequently cited point is that Catholic communities in China developed a distinct subculture, especially from the early eighteenth century, when they were told by their church to avoid certain customary displays of reverence for the spirits of deceased relatives or collective homage to Confucius. They were also enjoined from contributing to local festivities that were judged to have a religious character. Christianity was not alone among China’s various religious strands in holding fast against selected normative social expectations,19 but that did not exempt its followers from disparagement and resentment on this account by their non-Christian neighbors. With many, cultural arguments have not sat well. They imply narrowness and intolerance on the part of the Chinese. They draw attention away from what is often seen as the main problem for Catholics (as well as for Protestants)—the dependency of the Christian missions on the unequal treaties. Once foreign privilege had been engraved in treaties signed as a consequence of two wars (1839–1842 and 1856– 1860), missionaries were linked to the position in China of the global powers of that era. Indeed, they had become the most legally privileged of foreigners in China. Since missions were thereby conjoined with imperialism, the rejection of Christian evangelism by many Chinese can be explained by Chinese patriotism.20 Hence, as one scholar puts it, the active opposition to Christianity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries “was an important constituent part of the Chinese people’s anti-imperialist struggle.”21 The undoubted linkage of the missions with the imperialist position in China of powerful Western nations from the mid-nineteenth century is to be distinguished from the proposition that opposition to these missions and to Chinese Christians was owing to a patriotic, anti-imperialist consciousness.

Introduction

9

An examination of any substantial number of actual occasions of local conflict over the Christian presence in China after 1860 is likely to unearth evidence for most of these suggestions about root causes. Whatever its explanatory value for earlier centuries, Gernet’s postulation of a clash of civilizations would have been rapidly losing its applicability from the late nineteenth century, when cultural change accelerated on both sides. Indications of each of the other explanations just described can be found in the wide array of contests between the Christian missions and their local social environment. My intention is not to displace these explanations, but to introduce another dimension that framed the issues. The further dimension is that a major ingredient in the troubled story of Catholic missions in China during the period of the unequal treaties was an institutional one: the French Religious Protectorate, which we have already met in the 1897 rededication of Notre Dame des Victoires in Tianjin. The Protectorate was in part constructed from the treaties, but it transcended the treaties and fed on all sorts of conflicts about the missions, no matter what their origins. This institutional arrangement had emerged from the blend of several historical developments. It cast what turned out to be a baleful light on Catholic evangelism in China and, indeed, on Sino-foreign relations generally. This study does not attempt to describe the multifarious activities of ordinary Catholic missionaries in China. Nor does it treat more than incidentally the psychology of Chinese Catholics—their religious orientations and the varieties of their interactions with their church. A focus on the relationship of the Catholic church in China with the French Religious Protectorate puts politics, both ecclesiastical and secular, at the forefront. Evangelical strategies are explored primarily in that context. The world of Catholicism in China in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries comes with terminology particular to that place and time. Some usages that reflected the outlook of our Catholic protagonists strike a discordant note for twenty-first-century sensibilities. For example, foreign clergy used the word pagan to categorize those who had not heard or had not accepted the gospel. From their point of view, such people were unfortunate, so there was an ineluctable pejorative component, but it is apparent that the term was not intended as an insult, only a description. One verbal habit that seems almost humorous after Vatican II was the way in which Catholic missionaries and Protestant missionaries respectively often spoke of Christianity as uniquely their own and routinely excluded from the designation followers of the opposing tradition. Catholic-Protestant hostility marks much of the period. Though raised a Protestant of the Anglican persuasion, I inhabit an extended family with Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, unbelieving, and yet subtler religious

10

Ecclesiastical Colony

orientations. My immersion in the story of Catholic missions in modern China began with burrowing into an incident from the Protestant side. The incident turned out to have primarily Catholic roots. Further investigations led me to explore the French Religious Protectorate, which fascinated me for its complexities, peculiarities, grandiosity, and contradictions. What follows is my effort to understand its rise and fall, its operations and effect, and the manner in which it recruited and depended on the participation of foreign Catholic bishops in China.

1 The Emergence of the French Religious Protectorate in China

a catholic presence in China has been continuous from the late sixteenth century. Some Jesuits began a creative breakthrough in evangelistic method from the 1580s. The essentials of this method were an appeal to the educated elite in their own idiom and cultural style and an assertion of the compatibility of original Confucianism with Christian doctrine. The times were favorable intellectually, as Chinese scholars of that period were already questioning the accretions to Confucianism bequeathed by centuries of exegesis and elaboration. Some of them were curious about what these erudite priests—Matteo Ricci and his successors— might offer, quite as much about mathematics, astronomy, and geography as about philosophy or religion. Ricci reached Beijing, the imperial capital, where he resided from 1601. After his death in 1610, with some ups and downs, his approach was continued until the early eighteenth century by impressively talented missionaries.1 The court took some on to serve as something like science and technology advisers (including in the post of director of the Astronomical Bureau) or as munitions experts, diplomatic interpreters, musicians, mapmakers, and court artists.2 In 1692, the Kangxi emperor, an exceptionally forceful and capable ruler of the recently consolidated Qing dynasty (1644–1912), declared Christianity an acceptable religion of the realm.3 In an act that would cause some complications in the 1880s, he donated land in the Forbidden City, within Beijing’s imperial quarter, for a new Catholic church—which became known as the Beitang or North Church. The number of Chinese Catholics at the beginning of the eighteenth century is often said to have been about 300,000, although a recent careful consideration 11

12

Ecclesiastical Colony

puts the figure at 200,000 or less.4 The numbers come from missionary sources. The Christian cohort at the time is perhaps best thought of as representing a proportion of the Chinese population that was very small—at most close to one tenth of a percent—but not entirely trivial. The climate for Catholic evangelism in China turned unfavorable in the first decades of the eighteenth century. In a series of decrees beginning in 1704, with severe, incontestable finality in 1742, the Holy See—that is, the pope—ruled against those missionaries who, with the Kangxi emperor, held that socially mandated rites for deceased progenitors (“ancestor worship”) and for Confucius were civil ceremonies, the performance of which should be no bar to Catholic fidelity. The papal condemnation of these rites for Catholics was not lifted until the late 1930s. The particular impulses behind the original decision in the early eighteenth century remain difficult to sort out. Perhaps the missions were hapless victims of the reflexive extension to China and other Asian areas of an obsession whose real target was Europe. The Catholic church of the Counter-Reformation had been waging war on the relics of paganism and other “superstitions” that had found niches within European Christendom.5 Further, the Jesuits had been criticized in Europe for purported moral laxity in their teachings, a charge that could be attached to their forgiving view of customary Chinese rituals.6 It has also been suggested that, since Spanish Dominicans were among the leading missionary critics of these rites, there might be a carryover impulse from the Spanish inquisition and its effort to root out any hidden remnants of Jewish or Islamic practices in the Spanish population.7 In any case, the effects were disastrous for most of the Catholic missions in China. The Kangxi emperor (reg. 1661–1722) responded angrily to these churchly assertions about venerable Chinese practice. Christianity lost its toleration and, in 1724, was officially declared an illegal and heterodox cult. Kangxi’s successors from the 1720s until the 1840s periodically endorsed efforts to rid the country of missionaries and to induce Chinese Christians to renounce their Catholicism, with punishments extending to exile and execution. The toll was considerable. While the Chinese population in the eighteenth century was roughly doubling, the numbers of Christians, estimated at somewhere from 135,000 to 200,000 in 1800, had declined in the previous century by a third or half, or at best remained about the same (hence a much smaller proportion of Chinese).8 The number of foreign missionaries in the country, which had been 117 or more in 1701, amounted to only thirty in 1810.9 Had a hostile state managed by itself to roll back the successes of the early missionaries? Three features of this setback for Catholic evangelism modify such a conclusion. The first feature is that, unlike the wipeout in the fourteenth century at the end of the Yuan dynasty, which had experienced some Christian evangelism, Catholic

The Emergence of the French Religious Protectorate in China

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communities survived into the mid-nineteenth century, even with a scarcity of clergy. In other words, the rollback was only partial. Indeed, in some regions the evidence points to growth during the hard times of the eighteenth century, notably in the large interior province of Sichuan. The province’s Catholic population had declined to an estimated 5,000 people in 1750 but reached 40,000 in 1800, and it continued to grow in the early nineteenth century. In the country generally, official persecution was only intermittent.10 Even at its peaks, repression was not thoroughgoing, never reaching the stringency of the official campaigns of extirpation of Christianity waged in Japan, Vietnam, and Korea at various times from the early seventeenth century into the nineteenth. European missionaries never completely stopped entering China afresh—disguised as Chinese or hidden by Chinese Christians and benefiting from a common official preference to avoid the issue. They were restricted in the scope of their activities but were still traveling to distant parts of the country and often residing there for many years, even decades (though some were seized and executed). In Beijing, remarkably, the court did not terminate its employment of foreign Catholic priests as mathematicians and astronomers (and sometimes architects, artists, or musicians), even as official campaigns against missionaries and Chinese Christians were waged elsewhere in the empire, from which these priests were explicitly exempted. This anomaly provided some protection for Chinese and foreign Catholics in and around the capital city.11 Although Catholics in Beijing were particular targets of renewed official strictures on Christians from 1805 into the 1820s, the city had served as a base for surreptitious forays in the larger region,12 as did Macao, under Portuguese administration, in the south. In short, Chinese Catholicism, when it was reshaped in the nineteenth century, already had endured hard times and had old roots in the country. Many Chinese received their Catholicism, not from foreign evangelists or their Chinese assistants, but from long-lived familial tradition.13 The common use of the term converts for the generality of Chinese Christians reinforces the mistaken impression that Chinese Catholicism had disappeared before the nineteenth century. It misleadingly implies that all missionaries under the unequal treaties, that is, from 1842, were starting from scratch. It was only the Protestants who were.14 Despite persecution (which from the state’s point of view was a matter of enforcing the law), Catholicism had survived and had, in practice, become one of China’s many religious strands. A second point about the long period of decline of Catholicism in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is that its causes were by no means all Chinese. The Catholic missionary enthusiasm of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gave way to a cooling of European religious interest in the eighteenth century. Moreover, the Jesuit order, which had played such a large role in the China missions, was under

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concerted attack in Europe from mid-century. It was actually dissolved by the pope in 1773. The remaining missionary work in China adjusted to this blow only with difficulty. Then the French Revolution and Napoleon’s conquests effectively shut off most of Catholic Europe’s support for missionary enterprise. A third aspect of the weakened Catholic presence should also be charged to the Europeans. This was the small size of the Chinese priestly contingent and the absence of Chinese from higher levels of ecclesiastical authority. The story is tangled, but the results are clear. Formal papal policy from the seventeenth century onward was, generally, to encourage the training of indigenous clergy and to work toward a truly local church organization, albeit under the distant pope. Actual movement in these directions was snail-paced, even as measured by centuries. Chinese candidates for the priesthood were trained both in China and abroad (for example, in Macao, Beijing, Sichuan, Siam, Manila, Paris, and Naples) but in small numbers. Missionaries generally resisted fostering a fully indigenous church.15 Chinese postulants and priests complained of discrimination.16 Although the fifty to eighty Chinese Catholic priests at the beginning of the nineteenth century were about twice as numerous as the remnant of European missionaries in the country, they were still much fewer than the number of foreign missionaries in China a century earlier—and far short of the pastoral need, not to mention for further evangelism.17 A Chinese priest had actually been appointed bishop by Rome in 1674. European Catholic authorities on the scene put obstacles in the path of his consecration and installation, which were nonetheless accomplished eleven years later.18 This first Chinese bishop was also to be the last until the 1920s, about 250 years later. Hence, even when the missionary presence was at its lowest level since the early, pioneering decades of the seventeenth century, Chinese Catholicism remained subordinated to European leadership. The relative scarcity of missionary priests did permit the spontaneous emergence of local coloration to Catholicism, as missionaries discovered later when renewing contact with long-neglected Christian communities. But the indigenousness of Chinese Catholicism, stemming from its considerable history, was compromised by its continuing foreign hierarchy. This characteristic would become even more marked and problematic during the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. The decline of Catholicism in eighteenth-century China, then, was not a product of official repression alone. Indeed, since persecution can be an uncertain instrument, even when wielded with more determination and consistency than was done against Christianity in China between 1724 and 1844, the possibility remains that the overall results were quite as much attributable to mistakes of commission and omission by the European management of evangelism.

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Fissures in the Chinese Catholic Church before the Treaties If Chinese Catholicism could not be separated from its missionary management, then some of the keys to what would transpire must be sought in the history of mission organization. The peculiarities of this history contributed mightily to giving the French state an opening for the assertion and definition of its Protectorate. Famously, at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, popes parceled out to the Portuguese and Spanish kings the evangelization of vast lands, newly accessible to Europeans by the voyages of discovery. Although major portions of the globe bear the marks of these extraordinary gestures, the signs disappeared slowly in China, which was allotted to Portugal as part of its padroado real, or crown patronage. From a Catholic point of view, however, the effects were still conspicuous as late as the first decades of the nineteenth century. The papal grant entrusted to Portugal the dispatch of missionaries to designated parts of the world, and their support. It also permitted the Portuguese king to name bishops and other officials of the church in these areas, to supervise the departure of missionaries to the field, and to transmit (or not transmit) papal instructions.19 It was more than a century before Rome addressed the considerable flaws in these arrangements, which included declining Portuguese capacity. The creation in 1622 of a new administrative body, the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, or the Propaganda (also commonly referred to as Propaganda Fide), was a preliminary step toward rectification. The Propaganda gradually intruded its authority into the mission business, as it found openings.20 Emphasis should be placed on gradually. Let us look at the Chinese case. The tactic was to whittle away at the domains of the bishops chosen by Portugal. This was done by establishing “vicariates,” or missionary dioceses, under “apostolic vicars,” who were endowed with an episcopal title but without a diocesan bishop’s autonomy.21 The apostolic vicars would be assigned parts of what Portugal still considered to be under its patronage, on the grounds that these areas were as yet inadequately evangelized. They would be directly under the authority of the Propaganda in Rome, instead of the Portuguese or any other king. To supply these vicariates with missionaries, Rome encouraged recruitment outside the purview of the Portuguese monarchy. One notable result was the formation of the Société des Missions Etrangères (Society of Foreign Missions) in Paris in 1658 to 1660. This society (referred to with the acronym MEP, for Missions Etrangères de Paris) enlisted French secular priests (that is, not in an order or congregation) for mission work. It would eventually be assigned major portions of East and Southeast Asia as its special responsibility. Apostolic vicars and missionaries to serve under

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them, outside the Portuguese padroado, were recruited not only through the MEP but also from among priests of various missionary orders and nationalities. From the late seventeenth century, there was a significantly independent representation in China of French Jesuits, with support from the French crown.22 Portuguese resistance was considerable. Missionaries of whatever provenance often felt it wise to check in at Lisbon on their way out to the field, even though after 1633 the papacy no longer required it and in 1659 recommended the apostolic vicars to avoid Portuguese landfalls altogether.23 There was always the possibility that, without Portuguese certification, they might be detained along the most likely route at the Portuguese colony of Goa in India or at the small Chinese coastal town of Macao, given over to Portuguese administration by Chinese authorities. There they might be charged as French spies, rebels against the Portuguese king, or simply disobedient priests.24 Into the first decades of the nineteenth century, China was still divided ecclesiastically more or less as it had been at the end of the seventeenth century. The Portuguese monarchy had the rights of “vicar of the Church” with respect to the only full-fledged bishoprics in China: those of Macao, Nanjing, and Beijing, each governing a diocese of two or more Chinese provinces. These large territories were balanced by vicariates of various sizes, led by apostolic vicars who were members of some European missionary institute but were administratively beholden to the Propaganda in Rome. An early effect of a revival of Catholic missionary energy in China in the first decades after Napoleon’s defeat was an exacerbated divisiveness. Everyone could see that Portugal’s reach had long ago dramatically diminished. Its powers had been further curtailed by Napoleon’s invasion of the country, the long exile of its king to Brazil, and the subsequent political turmoil at home. After Napoleon’s defeat, civil war and official anticlericalism damaged relations with the Vatican.25 As the Portuguese were losing their hold over their remaining ecclesiastical jurisdictions in China, religious orders and missionary societies, already on the spot, vied with each other over the inheritances. The result was an unseemly brawl. Although the elevation of particular Chinese priests to formal positions of authority, including that of apostolic vicar, was considered in Rome in the 1810s, no agreement could be reached.26 Reconstruction of the church under Chinese leadership seems not to have been considered an option. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, up into the 1840s, there were several primary contending groups. The largest was the Lazarists, who in 1784 had succeeded to the leading position in China in the wake of the Jesuits’ earlier dissolution. The inheritance included continuing posts at the court as “science advisers” and some choice church compounds in Beijing. The Lazarist order—more formally the

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Congregation of the Mission (and in the United States known as the Vincentians)— had been founded in France in the early seventeenth century and remained centered there, but it had branches in other countries, including Portugal. Franciscans, mostly Italians, were another group, dispatched directly by the Propaganda. A third contingent, all French, was sent by the Missions Etrangères of Paris (MEP). Spanish Dominicans, based in the Philippines, formed a fourth grouping, with a presence mainly in Fujian province. And a revived Jesuit order, quite multinational, whose ban the pope lifted in 1814, was now waiting in the wings.27 In contrast to later arrangements, the dioceses and vicariates were not assigned systematically to any particular order or missionary organization. Hence in many places one could find a mixture of missionaries by nationality and religious society or institute. Even as the first indications of a renewed Catholic missionary impulse in the early nineteenth century reached China, the disarray worsened in some areas. Protests about existing arrangements reached Rome. Petitions from Chinese Catholics of the Beijing diocese in 1832 and 1833 wrote of the irresponsible disposition of property and the lax behavior of some Portuguese Lazarists.28 The remedy requested in these petitions was the return of the Jesuits. Requests by Chinese Catholics for Jesuits came also from the Yangzi provinces of Jiangsu and Hubei in 1833 and 1834, and again from Beijing in 1835.29 The new pope, Gregory XVI (reg. 1831–1846), responded to disarray in the China mission field in various ways. His first act was to send a personal friend and a priest, Count Luigi Di Besi. During his stormy years in China, 1834 to 1847, Besi worked at bringing the Jesuits back to Beijing and Jiangnan (the lower Yangzi delta region in central coastal China). He was staunchly resisted by both Portuguese and French Lazarists. In 1842, however, possibly assisted by the turbulence in the area caused by British military movements during the Opium War, Besi acquired ecclesiastical authority in Jiangnan. He managed to bring the Jesuits back there—and they stayed, although Besi soon had a falling-out with them as well.30 In Beijing, Lazarists held on, changing the national complexion of the leadership from Portuguese to French.31 Yet the newly dominant French Lazarists were never entirely confident that they might not be displaced in some clever maneuver by the Jesuits, who had historical and sentimental claims on the place. An early instance came in the late 1840s, when Jesuits believed (probably incorrectly) that they were being invited to resume their role as the emperor’s astronomers in Beijing. They secured permission from the Propaganda and appointed two scientifically learned priests, recruited in Europe. When the Lazarist administrator in Beijing learned that a representative of the Jesuits was coming to make arrangements, he concluded that the initiative was from the beginning a Jesuit conspiracy to recover their dominant

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place in Beijing generally and that the Jesuit order had tricked the Propaganda. As it turned out, the Jesuits’ emissary was waylaid by pirates on his trip north and never made it to Beijing.32 These contretemps do not to exhaust the subject but give a glimpse of the infighting among Catholic missionaries in these years. In 1838, Pope Gregory XVI began a reorganization of the administration of China’s Catholic missions, in effect ending the padroado there. Portugal’s nominees for succession to the empty sees of Nanjing and Beijing were told by the Vatican that their appointments were conditional on accepting direct responsibility to Rome. When, following Portugal’s hard line, they refused these terms, Rome moved to install its own choices, who would soon be transformed from diocesan bishops into apostolic vicars. Similarly, though Portugal retained for a time the patronage of the Macao see, the reach of this diocese was vastly reduced. The province of Guangxi and most of Guangdong, where Macao was located, were turned into a lesser order of ecclesiastical district, called apostolic prefectures, in the charge of the MEP and reporting to the Propaganda.33 As a result of these measures, the Holy See’s missionary administration had gained formal authority over virtually all of China—with the small Macao exception— that had originally been assigned to Portugal. It delimited missionary jurisdictions and entrusted each (ius commissionis) to exclusive management by a European missionary organization (orders, congregations, societies). In this system, apostolic vicars—titular bishops—were nominated by the respective missionary institute for confirmation by the Propaganda. However, these measures provoked resistance, countermoves, and foot-dragging by various interested parties. The new administrative units for missionary territorial administration—vicariates and prefectures—did not fully emerge from the old Portuguese padroado diocesan structure until 1856 and beyond.34 Gregory XVI was already gone, and China’s second war with European powers—the so-called Arrow War, with its enormous consequences for mission enterprise—was about to begin. The French state had already asserted a powerful presence in the region and was striving for more. Amid all this turmoil, there were signs of a separate Chinese Catholic voice. Although never entirely free of European oversight, Chinese Catholic clergy and their faithful enjoyed a period of relative ecclesiastical autonomy in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.35 Indeed, Chinese priests were themselves spread thin. It is not surprising that under these conditions the Chinese cultural milieu and the natural creativity of Chinese Catholic adherents affected religious practice and attitude.36 These indigenous developments might be marked as auguries of an aspiration for some autonomy and of discontent with a purely foreign leadership for the Chinese church.

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One innovation that European missionaries frequently commented on and apparently tolerated was setting off firecrackers at certain moments during the eucharist, including at the elevation of the host.37 Richard Madsen has suggested that elements from folk-Buddhist traditions in China gave original twists to their counterparts in Catholicism—to various rituals of exorcism and healing, apocalyptic expectations, lay leadership, and even the cult of Mary. He believes that these influences have persisted into present-day Chinese Catholicism.38 In any case, European priests upon their return in strength found much to criticize and often had trouble reimposing a European discipline. Sometimes the issue might have been long simmering, as in the matter of traditional forms of honoring ancestors. For example, a ruckus had broken out in Beijing as a new bishop in 1786 called for renewed attention to the papal proscription of these Chinese rites. In response to the reading of the bishop’s letter in Beijing’s four churches, parishioners presented him with oral and written objections.39 From this incident and other indications, one can detect a continuing strand of Chinese Catholic dissent over these decrees, which were a burden, limiting social ambitions and potentially souring relations with the surrounding non-Catholic community.40 In moments of concentrated official surveillance, church authorities might forgive outward compliance with the customary observances regarding ancestors as a tactic for avoiding imprisonment, torture, or death, as long as such practices were abjured once the threat was over.41 How seriously the matter was taken was indicated by the requirement that all Catholic missionaries coming to China sign a special oath, swearing to enforce the interdiction regarding the condemned rites.42 This policy, rigorously pursued, suggests the perception of a tendency in favor of greater liberality on this issue among Chinese Catholics. When infusions of fresh missionaries increased from the 1830s, the Chinese Catholic welcome was not always warm, and in some cases the period of adjustment was stormy. As noted, Chinese Christians in Beijing, Jiangnan, and elsewhere petitioned for Jesuits in preference to the missionaries recently arrived. In 1834, the bishop of Nanjing (whose jurisdiction included Jiangnan), a Portuguese Lazarist actually resident in Beijing, threatened to suspend canonically the priestly functions of all Chinese clergy who rejected, in favor of the Jesuits, the authority of Lazarists sent by the bishop.43 In a turnabout after Count Besi had in effect succeeded the Portuguese bishop, now deceased, and invited the Jesuits in, some important segment of Chinese Christians in Jiangnan (roughly, the large and prosperous Yangzi delta region) ended up in conflict with Besi, wrote their objections to Rome, and contributed to his recall in 1847. A Chinese Lazarist, Shen Jinglun, presented himself as representative of the Christians of Songjiang (in the heart of Jiangnan) who

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adhered to the Portuguese padroado and defied Besi’s authority. He was reconciled with his superiors only after Besi’s departure.44 The return of the Jesuits, when it actually happened, precipitated its own problems with Chinese Catholics. An in-house history of the Jesuit mission in Jiangnan, recalling this period, reports complaints by the new missionary arrivals regarding the timidity of the Jiangnan Catholics toward their non-Christian neighbors and the officials—an “excessive prudence” the returning Jesuits felt they had to correct.45 Indeed, local Christians, in a display of “excessive prudence,” complained about Count Besi’s conspicuous fraternization with Henry Pottinger, the senior British representative during the Opium War, since it linked them by association with the invader. The returning Jesuits were critical of their constituency of Chinese Catholics, not just politically but also religiously. An ignorance of doctrines was accompanied, they charged, by laxity with respect to the rules regarding marriage. Catholics, it was further complained, had got into the habit of attending the corrupting operas of local festivals and, to avoid official harassment, had returned ancestral tablets to their homes. Although Christian communities of the area were eager for priestly ministrations in the form of the sacraments, they were accustomed to running their own affairs and managing ecclesiastical property. “Rebellious” resistance to missionary authority was not unheard of.46 The worst problem, in this litany of criticisms, was that women had inserted themselves into positions of responsibility and leadership—even spiritual leadership. In the seventeenth century, the Jesuits and other orders had managed the inadequacy of their own numbers, measured against the expanding size and spread of the faithful, by establishing male and female confraternities. These associations were designed to serve devotional and social needs in the absence of the priest.47 Lay associations of women proved to be particularly persistent, developing a life and style of their own. Influenced by a practice introduced as early as 1642 into Fujian province from the Philippines by Spanish Dominicans (the consecration of devout women as beatas), Catholic women, renouncing marriage and living either with their natal family or in small self-organized groups, formed communities centered on a chapel, taught children prayers and doctrine, helped the sick and the dying, baptized babies, and cared for the chapel. They became known as the Virgins (tongzhennü or similar designations). They would eventually be found in most parts of the country, with considerable local variation.48 These women, in the view of missionaries reestablishing themselves in Jiangnan, were causing scandal by too liberal association with men, by their unseemly affectations, and by the elegance of their dress (the use of silk was specified). Wrote the chronicler of the Jesuits’ return to Jiangnan: “In more than one village, a Virgin had usurped the functions of administrator. Almost everywhere they led the chanting of prayers at the church, gave pious readings, admonished delinquents.”49

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Although the possibility of “scandal” was surely present, one needs to put into a broader context the missionary objections to the observed prominence of women in church affairs. True, the formal rules for women’s social behavior could be extremely restrictive in China. Female leadership, or mere presence, at any mixed-gender setting outside the family could be tarred with the brush of potential sexual promiscuity. In eighteenth-century Sichuan where consecrated Virgins became conspicuous, the missionaries sought, not always successfully, to confine the Virgins to female settings.50 Yet it is also the case that leadership roles for Chinese women were not unheard of, particularly in religious practice. Susan Naquin has described the phenomenon of female sect masters and teachers in the popular White Lotus religious tradition.51 Female spirit mediums or shamans were common in folk religious practice among Chinese. It would seem that the initial hostility of the returning missionaries toward this assertiveness by Catholic women in Jiangnan arose as much from an anxiety about the difficulty of controlling these neglected Christian communities as it did from fear of public scandal. European missionaries asserted their authority over the Christian Virgins without abolishing the practice. Already in the eighteenth century, they had established rules, approved by Rome, for the work and living circumstances of these women. It was in part the evident departures from those rules in Jiangnan that alarmed the returning Jesuits. One tactic was to reorganize the Virgins in conventual religious congregations, with various designations: the Présentadines (Association of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin), the Josephines, and so forth.52 The Virgins nonetheless persisted separately all over the country, alongside more conventional Catholic versions of female religious.53 An 1881 letter of a Jesuit missionary in the northern province of Zhili expressed his appreciation of this local institution: The Virgins, because of their instruction, are especially in ascendancy. These fine girls, who have renounced marriage to serve the cause of religion and have spent years studying, render us immense services. Chinese women, who never engage in studies, look on them as oracles. In the Christian communities where they [the Virgins] sojourn, they train girls, preach, catechize, lead prayers, prepare the ill for death, keep the church very clean, etc. They are generally from thirty to forty years old. They always have with them one or two girl orphans, who follow them. We give to one Virgin the equivalent of eight fr. per month. With that they must feed themselves.54 The consecrated Virgin movement provided a valuable increment to Catholic evangelistic energy. Although influenced by a Spanish model, at least in Fujian

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province, its development and spread seem to have been driven by the spiritual aspirations and practical creativity of a portion of the Chinese female laity. It benefited from the accommodation of the mission establishment, even as that establishment worked to tame and control it. But one can detect in it the expression of a separate Chinese Catholic voice. Some other expressions of that voice were more overtly oppositional, although evidently enabled by divisions among the missionaries themselves, such as the “rebellion,” previously noted, of Chinese Catholics against new structures of authority in central coastal China—Jiangnan. Similar disturbances within the church took place in the north. As Rome shifted prime responsibility from Portuguese to French Lazarists in Beijing under the new Propaganda-directed dispensation, contingents of Chinese Christians, in apparent contradiction with earlier requests for Jesuits, which implied a wish for change, held out for the old system and resisted the new missionaries. A delegation went all the way to Rome to protest. In the “reformist” view (in this case, that of the incoming French Lazarists), the trouble had to do with the combination of lax discipline over the Chinese clergy under the Portuguese regime and the practice of an annual Portuguese subsidy of fifty taels (the tael was a unit of account approximating an ounce of silver) to each Chinese priest. For the moment at least, the French heirs to the Beijing mission could not match this stipend, since the funds of the old Beijing diocese were in Portuguese hands in Macao. The “schism” of disobedient Chinese Catholics lasted for three years, 1851 to 1854. It was led by a Chinese priest in western Zhili province (the province in which Beijing was situated). Several substantial Christian communities in various other parts of the province participated.55 In the south, the Portuguese bishop of Macao in the 1840s and 1850s resisted Rome’s plan to transfer missionary enterprise in most of the region to the MEP. He threatened with canonical suspension any priests sent into his old diocese by the Propaganda and said he would excommunicate any Catholics who welcomed such priests. The Chinese faithful divided, with one party petitioning Rome against the French missionaries of the MEP. The local head of the MEP in Guangzhou wrote to the Propaganda: “Chinese priests go so far as to destroy our newly established chapels and have us taken by the mandarins of the region.”56 (The venturing of European priests beyond the five port cities designated for foreign residence by new treaties was common at this time but still illegal.) It was not until 1858—when substantial French military power was drawn into the area by the Arrow War—that governance decisively shifted to the new apostolic prefectures of Guangdong and Guangxi under the MEP. Might there not have been, in this latter-day Chinese Catholic support for the padroado, a nostalgia for the autonomy that went with light Portuguese supervision?

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To summarize, Chinese Catholicism in the early nineteenth century was organizationally divided. The divisions were not superficial but rather reflected radical contrasts in kind and serious factional infighting. A Chinese Catholic constituency, survivors of many years of state repression, sometimes doubted that a resurgent foreign missionary presence was an unalloyed blessing. Under such circumstances, a unified structure for a Chinese Catholic church was a distant prospect. From the late 1830s, the Holy See began to restructure the missions, but the hour was late. Before a coherent Chinese church could be shaped, another European government—that of France—usurped the supervisory role and prevented a full-scale reorganization. The Intrusion of France French Catholics and French money led the global growth of Catholic missions in the nineteenth century. The initial impetus for expanded missions came not from the princes of the church but from ordinary priests and laypeople. An early expression was the founding of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in 1822 (Association de la Propagation de la Foi or, later, Oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi), based in both Lyon and Paris and led by lay Catholics. This society (to be distinguished from the Propaganda in Rome, an organ of papal administration) was extremely effective in broadening the popular base for missions and in raising funds. Through its widely read journal, Annales de la Propagation de la Foi (Annals of the Propagation of the Faith), eventually issued in various languages, the Society effected a dissemination of publicity for Catholic missions that was unprecedented in its breadth.57 Along with a foundation for the salvation of children’s souls (Oeuvre de la Sainte-Enfance, or Holy Childhood Society) begun in 1843, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith was at mid-century the most important source of European financial support for Catholic missions of various nationalities.58 Although branches of these funding organs were established throughout Europe, two-thirds of all funds available for Catholic mission work around the globe during the half-century from 1822 to 1872 came from French contributions. The rate of departures of missionaries from France steadily increased from 1830 to 1910. Including priests, brothers, and female religious, departures to the field averaged about twenty each year at the beginning of this period and reached more than 150 a year by the end of it.59 The increases occurred despite a declining rate, especially around the turn of the twentieth century, of priestly ordinations in France.60 The combination of swelling funding and increasing personnel gave France a special prominence in Catholic missions worldwide. In China, where French missionaries had already been a substantial fraction, the French soon became a strong majority of

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all Catholic missionaries—as much as seventy percent or more—and maintained a preponderance until World War I. By about 1840, then, various circumstances were coming together to reshape the organization of Catholicism in China: The strong revival of missionary enthusiasm in Catholic Europe, notably in France. The assembly of substantial resources, both personnel and money, on behalf of missions. The expiry of any Portuguese claim to preeminence in the China missions. A pope, Gregory XVI, with deep commitments to missionary enterprise (he had been prefect of the Propaganda before becoming supreme pontiff ). And a background from previous decades of serious slippage in the overall Catholic position in China, combined with signs of loss of European control, creating a sense of urgent need for revitalization. Louis Wei, a leading scholar of the China missions in this period, writes: This Church of China, emerging from the catacombs, found itself in a lamentable state of anarchy, of internal disorder, like a ship without a rudder, without direction, which proceeded with difficulty in the vast sea of China, in a large and ferocious storm.61 Before the fissures in the Catholic presence in China could be mended and before reform had a chance to build a coherent ecclesiastical organization, power politics changed the rules. For the next century, the French state would have a large voice in governing Chinese Catholicism. Often that voice was decisive. Its predominance was for several decades jealously defended against all challengers, including popes. In a tale marked by ironies, the first initiative in the nineteenth century toward this official French relationship to the Catholic Church in China came during the regime of Louis Philippe, when relations between church and state in France were strained and when French diplomacy was managed by a Protestant, François Guizot. The same impulse that governed so much of France’s subsequent policy in China was present from the beginning: keeping up with Britain. During Britain’s first war with China, the Opium War of 1839–1842, France was not a belligerent and sent only observers, and that belatedly. These official observers found that representatives of the Chinese empire, in hope of isolating the British and winning the support of Britain’s main rivals, were ready to grant France (as well as the United States and others) the equivalent of whatever Britain was exacting from China by way of future privilege in trade and residence. When France sent its plenipotentiary, Théodose de Lagrené, with a six-ship naval escort to formally secure the same commercial rights won by Britain in war, agreement came quickly and without struggle.

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The resulting Sino-French treaty (Huangpu, 1844) made no mention of Christian evangelism among the Chinese. It did allow the French to establish churches, hospitals, hospices, schools, and cemeteries in the five ports already opened for foreign residence, trade, and naval vessels by the British treaties, but only there. Like the British and Americans, the French were granted in their treaty immunity from prosecution by Chinese authorities (extraterritoriality or, more precisely, consular jurisdiction).62 Also like the British and Americans, they would be confined to the environs of these five treaty ports, the most northerly of which was Shanghai. The French treaty specified that, if the French violated this restriction and “proceeded far into the interior,” they were subject to arrest. If arrested, however, they should be conducted unharmed to the French consul in the nearest treaty port.63 Although no mention was made of missionaries, they were the object of interest here, since only a few French merchants could be found in China at this time. Lagrené’s instructions from Paris did not include religious issues. Nonetheless, he raised them. Not only was he regularly lobbied by missionaries on the spot64 but also he hoped that any victories for Catholics in China might serve his government well by mitigating French clerical hostility at home. Paris supported his initiatives after the fact. Lagrené’s strategy was to suggest insistently to his negotiating counterpart, Qiying, that, of its own volition and as a gesture of friendship toward the French monarch, China might declare Christianity legal. He did not have the authority to negotiate an agreement on the matter, but he assured Qiying of the favorable effects of China acting on its own. Much was made of the precedent of the Kangxi emperor’s edict of Christian toleration in 1692. Lagrené also threatened Qiying with French misbehavior if evidences of Chinese favor toward France’s religion were not granted. Qiying—and then in a rescript of December 1844, the emperor—reluctantly accepted the idea. By this act, Catholicism (tianzhujiao) for the first time since 1724 was decriminalized in China, so long as the religion was not used as a cover for evildoing and so long as adherents did not seduce women, tear out the eyes of the sick, or commit other crimes (practices the old law code had imputed to Christians).65 In the new dispensation for foreigners in China, extracted from Chinese authority in the 1840s, we see a curious indirection regarding crucial parts of British and French interests and activity. Britain was seeking greater security and future expansion for its trade with China. The foreign smuggling of opium, illegal in China, had become key to the operations and profitability of that trade, which in turn was financing the expansion of British rule in India. The war had been fought in the first instance over British objection to the manner of an official Chinese crackdown on this illegal component of the trade. Yet in the treaties concluding the war, the opium

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trade was not mentioned. Rather, China was simply deprived of some of the sovereign instruments by which the opium trade might be cut off, such as prosecution of British-subject smugglers. Although the issue of missionary access to existing Chinese Catholics and to potential Chinese converts was quite different in substance from opium smuggling, the government of Louis Philippe showed toward it a similar reticence. Self-consciously independent of the Catholic Church, the French government of the time refrained from endorsing a missionary presence beyond the treaty ports but gained for the missionaries the legal immunities that would shackle official Chinese efforts to control evangelism inside the country. The immediate effects of these first arrangements—a Sino-French treaty and an imperial decision for religious toleration—were mixed. Although disappointed that France had not secured their right to evangelize at will in all parts of China,66 Catholic missionaries were now legally protected from Chinese retribution if they broke the rules and went anyway. Some had done this all along at their own risk, before Lagrené’s negotiations. A few had paid for it, even with their lives. What had changed, by imperial decree, was that the practice of Catholicism was permitted to Chinese subjects and that missionaries who were caught outside five designated ports should, by treaty right and imperial declaration, suffer no more than the inconvenience of an escorted trip to a French consulate. The 1844 imperial document of toleration assigned to foreign consuls the job of restraining and punishing the transgressors. France enacted no regulations to enforce the treaty stipulation that French citizens should not leave the designated ports, and French consuls did not feel bound by the imperial injunction to “restrain and punish.”67 Hence, if brought by Chinese authorities back to a treaty port, the missionary could, and usually did, simply turn around and journey back to his illicit post in the “interior.” It seems that the practice of Catholic missionaries of all nationalities presenting themselves as French for Chinese official purposes began at this point. The advantages were obvious for those whose governments had not yet negotiated these immunities for their nationals. More advantages were to accrue, but some characteristics of the French Religious Protectorate had already emerged. Missionaries complained that the imperial rescript of 1844, once again permitting Christianity to Chinese after 120 years, had not been properly publicized. Lagrené and his entourage, however, were impressed, after a tour in 1845, by the freedom of religious expression found in Catholic villages. He charged that it was the “bluster” of the missionaries that imperiled a gradual Chinese adjustment to the newly legal Christian presence.68 Despite this judgment, French authorities did not attempt to enforce restrictions on the missionaries—restrictions embodied in a formal Sino-French treaty

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and agreed to in discussions about a Chinese toleration pronouncement. It was a continuing pattern of the emerging French Religious Protectorate. When missionaries overstepped agreed boundaries or acted aggressively, French officials piously complained but then implicitly encouraged the violations and excesses by using diplomatic and military muscle to back up the missionaries. Not always, but often enough. Before Lagrené left and after the arrival of more French warships, he pressed for another “spontaneous” Chinese gesture toward his monarch’s (rather theoretical) religious preferences. This would further serve the French king’s relations with the church. The result in 1846 was another imperial act, this time an edict, regarding Christianity. Though Lagrené’s request for a general amnesty for previously sentenced Christians was not met, the edict reaffirmed the toleration of Catholic practice in China, while insisting that Catholics must obey the law and that the religion not be used as a cover for misbehavior or subversion. It provided that officials who persecuted Christians solely because of their religion should be punished. It also decreed that Christian churches that could be proven to have been constructed in the Kangxi reign and to have been subsequently confiscated should be restored to local Christians, except where these buildings had been converted into temples or residences. It restated the ban on foreign travel and preaching beyond the treaty ports.69 Despite the ban, as many as a hundred Catholic missionaries ministered beyond the treaty ports in the years of this regime, from 1844 until the outbreak of another war in 1856. This violation of treaty agreement and imperial edict persisted only because many Chinese officials were inclined to look the other way. The chief French representative in China in 1852 reflected on this “irregular” missionary conduct: “In what European country would foreigners be tolerated who make a practice, even a kind of rule, of defying the laws and claiming to be able to do it with impunity?”70 And there was some reaction on the Chinese side. In the years 1842 to 1856, about fifteen European missionaries were arrested and taken to a treaty port. Then in 1856, a MEP priest, Auguste Chapdelaine, who had entered Guangxi province two or three years earlier, was killed at the order of a local official. Certainly the missionary was there illegally, but by the new rules, he should have been escorted to a French consulate rather than executed, even if guilty of a crime.71 France, now under Louis Napoleon and pursuing national glory, decided to make this incident a casus belli. It joined with the British, who opted for war that same year. Britain had not been satisfied with Chinese performance in executing the Opium War treaties and was looking for a lever to induce the Chinese government to negotiate revisions and expansions. The opportunity was created in the form of a trumped-up dispute regarding the Chinese seizure of a small vessel that claimed

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British registration, even though its license had expired. The boat’s name was the Arrow, which became the British name for the subsequent armed conflict with China. The war is also known, with greater descriptive accuracy, as the Second Opium War. The war was fought only intermittently but, with one temporary exception, produced successive setbacks for China. The Qing dynasty was simultaneously facing an unprecedented revolt against its rule in China: the Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864), which was much more threatening than anything the foreign powers could mount at that time. This civil struggle incurred deaths in the many millions and seemed for a time to be on the verge of bringing down the imperial government. Large stretches of China’s most affluent central regions were in rebel hands for a decade. The movement’s highly articulated ideology incorporated significant Christian elements, acquired from Protestant sources. Although most Protestant missionaries, like the Catholics, judged it to be heretical, its Christian aura tended to incriminate all Christians by implication. In addition, another rebellious movement, known as the Nian, which was based on coalitions of bandit groups, broke out in the mid-1850s and held parts of provinces between the Taiping areas along the Yangzi and Beijing. Given the circumstances, it was remarkable that the Qing court offered any resistance at all to the Anglo-French forces, who were not expecting much of a fight. New treaties were negotiated in the northern city of Tianjin in 1858, and then, after further arguments and armed clashes, another set in Beijing in 1860. At its core, the war was fought over a Franco-British desire to augment their privileges and presence in China. In this they were very successful. The new treaties added more ports for unrestricted trade, opened the Yangzi River to foreign ships, established a foreign diplomatic presence in Beijing, and extracted large indemnities from the Chinese government. Not least, they made explicit what had been achieved only partially and by indirection in the earlier agreements: The opium trade was legalized, and missionaries were unleashed to set up shop in China almost anywhere they chose. The Missions in the Unequal Treaties What exactly these new treaties provided in the way of rights for missionaries and Chinese Christians turned out to be a source of continuing argument. Because in subsequent years the French claim to a special protective role rested in the first instance on these treaties, to which French officials frequently had reference, it is worth inspecting the relevant clauses. In the Sino-French treaty negotiated in 1858 at Tianjin, the key provision regarding religion was Article 13. It repeated what had already been declared unilaterally

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by the emperor in 1844 and 1846: that adherents to Christianity should be secure in their religious practices. Toleration was made more emphatic by specifying that all previous proscriptions of Christianity were abrogated. To this assurance was added the new right of missionaries with special passports to enter the “interior” of the country—that is, outside the vicinity of the port cities named in the treaties—and to be protected by local authorities. Further, any Chinese who wished to (the Chinese-language text stipulated that the party be law-abiding) might not be prohibited from newly embracing Christianity. Thereby Christian proselytism was implicitly legalized. Like the earlier imperial decrees, the Chinese text used tianzhujiao (Catholicism) rather than a more comprehensive term, but the French text, which was declared to be authoritative, referred to la religion Chrétienne and le Christianisme. However those words were interpreted, Protestants could claim identical rights on grounds of most-favored-nation treatment, enshrined in the treaties. What was new here was that conversion to Christianity, not just its practice, was specifically permitted and that missionaries, equipped with appropriate passports, could enter the “interior” and should be protected by local officials. In subsequent decades, French authorities in China made much of the special potency of French passports for entering the country outside the treaty ports. These were large and verbose documents, in Chinese and French, stamped by both Chinese and French authority, specifying in Chinese the treaty privileges that the bearer enjoyed and calling on local authorities to honor these privileges and provide every assistance.72 It was French doctrine that missionaries, whether French or of other foreign nationalities, were better equipped and more secure in their persons when carrying these passports than any of them would be with those of other issue. For some considerable years, all Catholic missionaries did ask for and receive these French passports, which identified the bearer as French (“notre compatriote”). For the non-French, the anomaly was said to be worth it for the extra efficacy that went with the document and for the implied promise of official French backup when needed. As a French foreign ministry memo of 1900 put it when rehearsing the elements of the Protectorate: “Since 1860, the [French] Legation [in Beijing] has delivered to French missionaries and to all foreign ecclesiastics, who are therein called French in order for them to benefit from the advantages we have obtained in favor of our nationals, special passports as envisioned in articles 8 and 13 of the 1858 treaty.”73 The practice was critical glue in holding together the transnational pretensions of the French Religious Protectorate. When venturing beyond the treaty ports, all Catholic missionaries—Italian, Belgian, German, Austrian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Irish, as well as French—were for many years formally presented to

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the Chinese world as protégés of the French state. How curious was it that France, which had contributed so much to modern nationalism, should have sponsored this subversion of the sacred relationship of citizen to his or her country! French officials themselves sometimes seemed uncertain how far to take their claims to provide protection, especially when it came to intervening between Chinese Catholics and their sovereign.74 In general, they expressed pride in their posture. The French minister in Beijing in 1886: “Whereas the other powers only protect their nationals, France protects in addition foreigners who come voluntarily to ask her support, and even subjects of China. . . . While other powers follow only their material interests here, we pursue a work of civilization.”75 It was the habit of most imperialists, not just French ones, to characterize their enterprise as spreading civilization. What is elided in these remarks is that “foreigners” came under the French umbrella only insofar as they were willing to play at being French and that Chinese Catholics did not have direct access to French authority, but only as represented by European missionaries. When another Franco-Chinese treaty, known as the Beijing Convention, was imposed in 1860 under threat of military occupation of the imperial capital, additions were made that opened the door to endless complications and conflict. Article 6 of the convention treated Christians and their religion. Part of the reason that the article led to so much controversy was that it treated property, never an easy topic. Another part of the problem was the ambiguity engendered by differing texts. The French and Chinese versions of Article 6 of the Beijing Convention were conspicuously divergent in phraseology and even in content. The French text was comparatively short and made its point directly. Referencing the 1846 imperial edict of toleration, the French version of Article 6 provided that religious and charitable establishments that had been confiscated from Christians during the persecutions would be returned to the owners, along with related buildings and cemeteries, through the intermediary agency of the French minister to China, to whom the Chinese government would deliver the property. There were already some problems of interpretation here. Did the reference to the 1846 imperial edict then carry over the specified limits to this idea of returning confiscated property; that is, did it exclude sites subsequently turned into temples or homes? (There was to be much contestation over this.) Also, the Chinese text provided the alternative of monetary compensation. And who were the proper present-day owners (propriétaires) of property confiscated as much as a century or more earlier? It could make quite a difference in the real social world, with implications for Catholic relations with local communities and with the state. On this point regarding the recipients, the Chinese text was more explicit: they were “the believers [or church members] of the said place” (gaichu feng jiao zhi ren), a phrase

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also in the imperial edict of 1846. However the ambiguities were to be resolved, it would have required no great imagination to foresee the troubles this provision would stir up. The most vexing difference between the two texts of Article 6 was the addition to the Chinese version of eighteen characters with no counterpart in the French, on the matter of missionaries’ acquisition of new property. The Chinese text read: “It is further permitted to French missionaries to rent and buy lands in all provinces and to construct [buildings] at their convenience.”76 The Qing law code during the years of proscription of Christianity had explicitly forbidden to Europeans the acquisition of property in the interior of the country.77 Now, according to the usual interpretation of this Chinese text, French missionaries could not only enter the interior, a privilege open as well to other foreigners such as merchants with passports, but could also become renters and purchasers of land, a right not provided to foreign merchants outside the vicinity of the treaty ports.78 And the missionaries, with their extraterritorial privilege, could not be held accountable by local authority. One might wonder whether such an arrangement was workable. Official French interpreters, including a missionary, managed surreptitiously to inject into the Chinese text this expansive right to property acquisition.79 The evidence suggests that responsible Chinese officials were for almost a decade not alert to the fact that the French text of Article 6 of the Beijing Convention of 1860 did not allow, as the Chinese text seemed to, missionary rental and purchase of land in all parts of the country. British and American officials generally held that there was no explicit treaty right for their missionaries to become property-owning residents of the “interior” but that, since Chinese authorities in practice enabled such residence, the missionaries and their property should be protected everywhere.80 In the wake of the Arrow War and its treaties, disputes about church property emerged immediately. At first, the contentious issues tended to focus on the return of confiscated property rather than the purchase of new real estate. Even so, French officialdom entered this era seriously uncertain about the legality of new missionary acquisitions outside the treaty ports because the French text of the Beijing Convention was authoritative and did not include this right. In 1864, a high Chinese official forbade a land sale to a Catholic mission on grounds that the treaty provision on church property (in the Chinese text) did not specify “the interior” and hence applied only to treaty ports in the various provinces.81 Conscious of the weakness of their claim, French diplomats sought to rescue it by further agreements with the Chinese government.82 The results became important additions to the panoply of texts that were held to flesh out the French Religious Protectorate. In 1865, from China’s new central office for dealing with foreign representatives, known as the Zongli yamen, the French minister in Beijing secured a letter describing

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the manner by which French missionaries should purchase land and buildings in the interior. It provided that the contract of sale should bear the seller’s name and should specify that the acquisition was to become “the common property of the Catholic church of the locality” (benchu tianzhutang gongchan). There was no need, the letter said, to list the names of the missionaries or the church members.83 Note the tension in the text, whereby missionaries purchase the property but the local church receives it. The translation used by the French legation papered over this discrepancy by substituting “Catholic mission” for “Catholic church,”84 but in this case the Chinese text was authoritative. One might argue that these were equivalent terms in the discourse of the time, but there could be a world of difference. “Catholic mission” might imply the immunity of the property from Chinese legal process that was enjoyed, through extraterritorial privilege, by the foreign management of the missions. “Catholic church” might imply the full authority of Chinese law in handling subsequent disputes.85 Nonetheless, the right of French missionaries—and all Catholic missionaries at the time legally adopted a French identity—to buy land and buildings in the interior was embedded in this official Chinese communication, securing what the authoritative text of the Beijing Convention had omitted. In the words of a French diplomat in China eleven years later: “Thanks to this ingenious scheme that gives the appearance of Chinese ownership to lands bought by the missionaries, the latter could make themselves purchasers of real estate without any difficulty.”86 The French government subsequently referred to this Zongli yamen letter as the Berthemy Convention, after the French minister in Beijing to whom it was addressed. Despite the optimism of the diplomat just quoted, disputes about Catholic Church property and its acquisition abounded in the years following these initial efforts at defining the issues. They were frequently at the root of local conflicts among missionaries, local Christian communities, their non-Christian neighbors, and state officials. These conflicts sometimes lasted for years, even decades, and often enough boiled over into violence. Each episode had its own peculiarities, but there were also some recurrent themes. One was the difficulty at arriving at a balance between the urgency of the missionary wish to establish or expand a presence in some locality and the desire of officials to keep the peace in the face of angry objection by major elements of the non-Christian population. Missionaries tended to dismiss the seriousness or representativeness of the hostility and often labeled it a conspiracy by a handful of antiforeign, anti-Christian agitators. Chinese officials often argued that there were flaws in the property purchase—for example, the reputed seller was not the true owner—or that building on the land in question would lead to violations of local understanding of geomantic forces (fengshui) to the detriment of everyone and for that or other reasons would

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roil the people to a point where officials could no longer contain popular anger. Many missionary purchases were delayed or blocked by local official interposition. Catholic missionaries repeatedly called on French officials to intervene with higher Chinese authority to compel the closing of a deal or its protection. In 1895, the French minister in Beijing, Auguste Gérard, extracted from the Zongli yamen another letter on property purchases by Catholics. It repeated verbatim the 1865 Berthemy Convention and added two points. The first, in a concession to Chinese law, was that the Catholic church should pay the customary registration fees on the purchase contract after it was made. In effect, extraterritorial privilege could not be used as an excuse to neglect this tax. The second, designed to finesse interventions by Chinese authorities, provided that the seller need not notify the local official before effecting the sale, nor was the official’s permission required.87 This second provision satisfied a long-held wish of the Catholic missionary establishment. It did not end frequent local opposition to missionary purchases, but it did strengthen the Catholic side in property battles. Some prominent Chinese officials objected to the new provision, arguing that it would enable fraudulent sales and engender controversy, but Gérard refused to reconsider. In the wake of the Qing defeat by Japan in war and out of an increased sense of weakness in the face of foreign power, the Zongli yamen chose not to irritate France.88 The French government did not publish these conventions of Berthemy and Gérard, although their content was known.89 French officials argued in internal discussions that these and other side agreements with the Qing were exclusively French and, in contrast to the treaties, were not subject to most-favored-nation rights. This position, like the view regarding French-issued passports, was part of their insistence that the French Religious Protectorate was unique in kind, not reproducible by other powers as they also offered protections to missionaries. To this list of constitutive texts of the French Protectorate should be added an imperial decree of February 1862 that exempted Christians from locally imposed contributions to community activities designated as religious, such as support for temples and for theatrical performances dedicated to local deities. Such imposts were to be distinguished from taxes and labor services devoted to secular purposes, like public works, where Christians would bear their share. The impulse for this special dispensation began with Franciscan missionaries in Shanxi province, but French authorities gave themselves credit for obtaining Zongli yamen and court approval.90 A central characteristic of their Religious Protectorate in China, which French authorities recited repeatedly over the next decades, was that it had come into being by virtue of “French diplomacy and French arms.” The Protectorate rested on Sino-French treaties and agreements and had not been conferred on France by

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others. In other words, in contrast to the old padroado of Portugal, it was not an endowment or assignment from the pope. While Rome had been trying to end the Portuguese padroado and stitch together pieces of a remnant church, France had stepped in and established its position as the new protector. True, France did not claim a religious dimension to its Protectorate, but it was extremely jealous of its worldly overlordship, in which it had found a key to prominence among the powers in China. When French officials believed that French interests were at stake, they did not feel inhibited from influencing personnel decisions within the missionary establishment, including the appointment of bishops.91 A paranoid style developed, as other countries questioned France’s pretensions and as the Vatican, in its centralizing mood, chafed at the barriers France had erected between itself and the Chinese church. Indeed, France early on felt it necessary to protect its Religious Protectorate over Catholicism in China from interventions by Rome. This was another irony in the story. If one attributes the beginning of France’s self-appointment as guardian of Catholics in China to Lagrené’s negotiations with Qiying in the 1840s and accepts the idea that the legal basis for this guardianship was the treaties and agreements arrived at between France and China in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, then the French Religious Protectorate lasted for about a century. It was not until 1946 that the key treaties were incontestably abrogated. By that time, there was not much left to the policy, but it had a lively existence through the rest of the nineteenth century and beyond. It was the occasion for much controversy within the Catholic church in the early decades of the twentieth century.

2 Church and Protectorate under the Treaties

during the forty years from the Sino-French Beijing Convention of 1860 to the Boxer affair of 1900, Chinese adherents to the Catholic church increased steadily, and the number of Catholic missionaries grew proportionately more rapidly. In many places, these increments occurred without overt strife with the local non-Christian communities. Qing officials, whether begrudgingly or not, usually fulfilled the assignment given them by the new treaties and by the court to protect the missionaries and the Christians from religiously based discrimination or assault. Nonetheless, these years were replete with episodes of opposition to the expanding Catholic presence—episodes that often became diplomatic issues between foreign and Chinese authorities. First, a brief consideration of the broad outlooks that marked the Westerners and Chinese of that era. For Europeans and Americans—that is, for those who were dominant in their societies—it was a time of exuberant belief in their own superiority among the peoples of the world. Their new industrialized power fed a sense of mastery and self-confidence that was accompanied by disparagement of other countries and places as less than civilized. With regard to China, whereas in the previous two centuries many prominent Western observers had been its admirers, recognizing points of preeminence over their own societies, instead, in an intensification of a trend from the end of the eighteenth century, most Westerners by the late nineteenth century viewed China as a pitiable object. The expression of virulent racist views regarding the Chinese was common. Their inability to successfully resist foreign military power was attributed to innate deficiencies. The country’s continued existence as an autonomous entity was in question. There were some foreign 35

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sojourners in China, among them a few missionaries, who resisted these judgments. However, they were isolated individuals before the turn of the century.1 Among Chinese, from the time of the arrival of European ships to Chinese shores in the sixteenth century, there had been some worry about possible political subversion. This potential was an ingredient in the eventual proscription of Christianity and the careful controls over European trade in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But the concern had been modified by a self-assurance that downgraded the European threat in comparison with the government’s other challenges. In the wars of the mid-nineteenth century, succumbing to foreign demands seemed to the imperial court preferable to the uncertain consequences of prolonged, last-ditch resistance. For the next few decades, the Chinese government (in the shape of the Qing dynasty) mostly pursued what might be called “soft” policies. From the 1860s, it adopted a strategy of attempting to adhere to the treaties it had signed, of acceding to “reasonable” Western requests, and of playing off the various foreign powers against each other.2 Simultaneously, the government sponsored modern arsenals, shipyards, and specialized schools in a program known as Self-Strengthening. Within officialdom as a whole, there were outspoken opponents both of the tendency to accommodate foreign wishes and of the mild Westernizing projects of Self-Strengthening. These opponents had their victories in influencing decisions, but generally the moderates prevailed at court.3 The moderates’ responses to a condition of national weakness could be said to have had their own sort of success: in contrast to much of the rest of the non-Western world, China avoided full loss of its sovereignty and sacrificed only small parts of its empire to outright colonialism. China survived for another day. On the other hand, the accommodations were humiliating. There were more wars and more losses. The effective administration of the country that had characterized the Qing during most of the eighteenth century had markedly declined. In the last years of the nineteenth century, the country was skirting close to decomposition and colonial parceling. The dismay, and then the anger, of more and more Chinese was intensifying. The anger was directed not only against the unconscionably privileged foreigners and their Chinese protégés but also eventually against the feckless government that had allowed the predicament. The Qing dynasty (1644–1912) was established by military power in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. The key actors had been members of an ethnic minority known as Manchus, who occupied the throne and also retained for themselves other strategic posts in the government. From the beginning, there were participants from other ethnicities of this multiethnic empire, including, at all levels short of the emperorship, from the overwhelmingly most numerous ethnicity, the

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Han. However, the Qing court, while embracing older Chinese traditions of rule and ideology, insisted on retaining a distinctively Manchu component to the polity. Memories of the initial conquest and resentment at continuing Manchu privilege sustained the potential for ethnically based opposition to the government. Such sentiments marked the massive, mid-nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion. They were to resurface in the last two decades of the Qing, when they intertwined with embitterment over the failures in foreign affairs. In this context of Western assertiveness and Chinese accommodation after 1860, the French Religious Protectorate honed its methods and defended its prerogatives against any challengers, Chinese or foreign. This chapter describes the manner in which the Catholic church in China and official representatives of the French state cemented their relationship, as awkward as it sometimes was, and explores the interests that were being served. It examines the patterns of local opposition to and attacks on Catholic missions and looks at one early case of missionary excess that tested the limits of official French support. The Organization of Catholic Missions Catholic missionary enterprise in the second half of the nineteenth century had the appearance of a tight-knit project. Its structure of authority proceeded from the pope through the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, or the Propaganda, to the missionary bishops in the field, and on to their missionary staff, who supervised Chinese priests and an array of church workers or catechists. The head, or prefect, of the Propaganda had been called the “red pope,” implying a stature second only to the supreme pontiff himself. Jurisdictions distributed to other governing bodies (known as dicasteries) in the Vatican’s administration of the church were mostly granted to the Propaganda in its relationship to missionaries. (The Propaganda’s deference to the Holy Office, keeper of the orthodoxy, was a major exception.)4 Missionary bishops in turn, in their capacity as apostolic vicars of missionary vicariates, were more directly beholden to the Propaganda than regular diocesan bishops were to the various Vatican offices. They were required to file a yearly statistical report to the Propaganda about their progress, answer a long mandatory set of questions about their vicariate every five years, and come to Rome every ten years for debriefing.5 Superimposed on this command system was a broad program of centralization within the Catholic Church. One expression of this project was the effort to acquire control over the appointment of bishops from the historical dispersion of this power, as in the mid-nineteenth-century episcopal appointments in China that

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had long been in the purview of the Portuguese king.6 The first Vatican Council (1869–1870) could be seen as part of this campaign for papal power.7 An aspect of the campaign was the Vatican’s keenness for the Roman or western European model of Catholicism. The divergent rules, practices, and liturgical languages of the much smaller Eastern Rite Catholic churches (found primarily in eastern Europe, eastern Africa, the Middle East, and parts of India) remained exceptions, not alternative models. New Christians in the mission fields were required to accept the Latin version of Catholicism with little leeway for adaptation to local ways and cultures.8 It all looked like a monolith. Yet obstacles to the smooth flow of papal authority into the China missions were formidable and, in practice, decisive. The religious orders and missionary societies, while legally subject to papal decisions, became somewhat autonomous actors in China. The reforms of Pope Gregory XVI, fully implemented only in the 1850s after his death, assigned exclusive territorial jurisdictions to the leading Catholic missionary organizations, which generally turned their allocations into jealously guarded enclaves, as if the assigned territories were permanent possessions. The vicariates of these jurisdictions received their missionaries almost entirely from their own respective missionary institutes, headquartered in Europe. Even more tellingly, the apostolic vicars, or bishops, were in effect also chosen by the order or missionary society. Although the names of three possible candidates for any episcopacy had to be submitted to the Propaganda for approval—a listing that was known as the terna—the consistency with which the top name was accepted meant that the dispatching institute generally made the actual decision.9 The processes internal to each particular missionary organization as to how the terna was composed varied, from secretive consultations with selected missionaries by the superior in Europe to actual votes by the European missionaries of the particular vicariate in question. The results were similar in that the cross-fertilization that might come from the importation of fresh, outside leadership was almost unheard of. The system was conducive to the entrenchment of received attitudes and methods. It also inclined the missionary bishops, who were in theory subordinates of the Propaganda, to be closely tied in practice to the superior of their motherhouse or seminary back in Europe. At the least, they could play the one off against the other to achieve a degree of independence from both. The bifurcation of authority between the Propaganda and the missionary institutes could result in serious conflicts. The tendency at the Vatican was to support the final authority of the apostolic vicars. However, not only were these bishops beholden to the heads of their orders or societies in Europe; the missionary

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organizations also often sponsored “visitors” or “provincials,” resident in the field.10 These priestly agents reported to the institute’s superior in Europe, and, when the apostolic vicar was not also the provincial (as he sometimes was in the smaller operations), the chain of command was further muddied. Along with the autonomy exercised by missionary organizations in personnel, and no doubt helping to sustain it, went financial independence from the Vatican. Notice has already been taken of the emergence earlier in the nineteenth century of two major organizations devoted to raising money for Catholic missions: the Society for the Propagation of the Faith (henceforth, SPF) and the Holy Childhood Society.11 By 1860, the SPF, administered by lay Catholics and with its governing councils in Lyon and Paris, collected in one year over six million French francs from around the Catholic world. The Society continued for several decades to dispense funds directly to Catholic missions of various nationalities, in most years from the late 1870s between six and seven million francs. Until about 1900, more than sixty percent of the receipts were raised in France. These sums were ten times the Propaganda’s own budget. Non-French missions sometimes complained that the SPF was not evenhanded in its allocations. From the 1880s, the Vatican tried to subordinate the organization by moving it to Rome. The SPF resisted the move and, with the help of the French government, successfully blocked it until 1922.12 The Holy Childhood Society was founded in 1843 by the French bishop of Nancy, who was deeply interested in the China missions. Its purposes, as he declared them, were “the administration of baptism to children in danger of death and the purchase and adoption of a great number of others.”13 The focus was from the beginning primarily, though not exclusively, on China. In the church’s theology, young children of pagans, like those of Christian parents, were burdened with none but original sin, which would be absolved by baptism, and by baptism alone. When they died in childhood after baptism, before any opportunity to be charged with sins of their own commission, their souls would be guaranteed a place in heaven. It seemed an attractively certain path to salvation for large numbers of innocents. A description of “baptism expeditions” by the Daughters of Charity in Zhejiang notes: “The Sisters baptize only when they feel sure that the baby will not recover, or is too frail and delicate to be reared.”14 The children of the donor countries who offered their coins for saving the soul of a dying Chinese child would thereby gain a personal intercessor among the angels.15 For abandoned or purchased children, the Society funded orphanages, which would save lives and raise new Christians. These were dramas with apparent resonance in nineteenth-century Europe. Among those recruited for the society’s central council were Henri Lacordaire, Alexis de Tocqueville, Alfred de Vigny, Alphonse de Lamartine, and Hector Berlioz,

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to pick out some celebrities.16 By the late 1860s, the Society was dispensing nearly two million francs in a year, collected from many countries and going in largest part to China.17 In contrast to the SPF, the Holy Childhood Society was run primarily by clerics. Even though the Propaganda made recommendations for the apportionment of funds, however, both societies represented a major divergence from centralization in Rome and increased the sway of France. The China missions assiduously reported each year the number of their baptisms of dying babies and the number of children in their orphanages.18 Lay church workers (especially midwives) were given training in the baptismal ritual and were empowered to perform it. These activities were not new to Catholicism in China: baptizing children in articulo mortis (on the point of death) had its devoted practitioners among Catholic missionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.19 Nonetheless, the continuing grants from the Holy Childhood Society reinforced the practice and thereby may have contributed to the frequency of charges by Chinese of the Catholics’ black-magical use of children’s bodies. The subsidies from the SPF and the Holy Childhood Society were a major component in the maintenance of Catholic missions in China for several decades, and this money did not come from the Propaganda. Gradually, the missions acquired their own endowments, from gifts and then increasingly from overgenerous indemnities. Eventually the income from endowments became the largest part of mission revenue. These funds, too, did not come from Rome and were administered quite independently by the missions. The Operation of the French Religious Protectorate The fair degree of autonomy of the China missions from the Propaganda, nourished by powerful missionary organizations and independent funding, was further encouraged by the French government. French officials did not openly declare a policy of keeping attenuated the Vatican’s governance over the missions in China. Nonetheless, they repeatedly intervened to that effect. For the French Religious Protectorate to function and to serve official French interests, it was vital that Catholic missionaries in China sought help from French authority. Missionary complaints, on their own behalf or for their flock, were the fuel that fed the machine. They provided the occasion for French intervention with representatives of the Chinese state to insist on the protection of Catholic missionaries and Chinese Catholics; to demand punishments of culprits or of negligent Chinese officials, when there were incidents perceived as anti-Catholic; and to exact indemnities (that is, money payments) and other compensation on behalf of the missions for damages to person or property. A frequent form of official French

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intervention was, at the request of a mission, to mobilize pressure on Chinese officials to adjudicate court cases in favor of Chinese Catholic litigants. The justification was to counter alleged anti-Christian prejudices, but the effects were often to give Christian communities a privileged status. Yet there was no rule that compelled Catholic missionaries to address themselves to French officials. The Sino-French treaties provided certain rights for missionaries and Christians, but, beyond official Chinese responsibility, they did not specify procedures for enforcement. There had been no formal agreement by either the Vatican or the Chinese government to assign France the role of oversight. Both the Vatican and China acknowledged the practice of French consuls acting as representatives of Catholics but were not committed to its continuance, if there were better alternatives. French nationals among the missionaries could be expected to seek assistance from their own government, but it was part of being a universal church that even French missionaries might accept other arrangements if their confreres agreed to go elsewhere and it appeared advantageous. Especially from 1879, when the Third Republic began to show itself anticlerical at home, the French government might worry that Catholic clerics abroad would not respond favorably to its offers of protection. All this presented the French Religious Protectorate with some daunting challenges. To keep the pleas for help coming to French consulates, the Protectorate had to satisfy missionary demands, salve missionary anxieties, and prove itself an effective advocate. The Vatican had to be convinced of the continuing usefulness of French power to the China missions and also had to be inhibited from appearing to be an alternative itself (for example, by having a papal representative in Beijing). The Chinese government had to be prevented from circumventing French diplomats by deals with the Vatican or by direct arrangements with the missions. And other countries with substantial numbers of Catholic missionaries in China had to be kept out of the business of mission protection. Or so it appeared. As it turned out, the French Religious Protectorate could survive with a less than perfect score. Still, the pressure to keep all the relevant parties in line was considerable. French authorities were inclined, by the importance of the policy to France and its seeming fragility, to indulge the missions and seek outsized compensations for them, even when facts were unclear and the justice of the missions’ claims was uncertain. In a review of the nature of the French Religious Protectorate at the end of the nineteenth century, a long official French memorandum referred to some of these vulnerabilities. It noted that the Protectorate’s sole juridic basis was in the treaties and other agreements with China that recognized Catholicism, missionary

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evangelism, and the rights of Chinese converts throughout the empire. From the Vatican, there was only “a sort of tacit mandate,” entrusting the defense of Catholic interests in China to France. The memo continued: Apart from that, [there is] no right, no strict obligation in the basis of our protectorate. Nothing binds Catholic missionaries to our operation. If all, from whatever countries they hail, have up to now resorted to French protection, it is because this protection was the best to be offered them, without distinction of nationalities, strongly enough organized to be efficacious with the Chinese authorities and constituting an assemblage of advantages substantial enough to connect the missionaries to it. Thus our protectorate became a tradition, and the beneficiaries have never had reason to complain about it.20 What, then, was in it for France? French authorities regularly asked themselves that question and were not always comforted by the answers. Although there were certainly devout Catholics scattered through the French diplomatic corps, one may confidently assume that the policy of protection was not driven by religious commitment, especially during the era of the Third Republic with its anticlerical ethos. In 1880, the foreign minister addressed his legation in Beijing on the subject: It is important not to misunderstand the character of the protection we accord the missionaries. . . . In acting in this manner, the government does not have for its purpose religious propaganda, which would be as contrary to the principles as to the rules that govern our present policies in particular. We intend only to employ for the benefit of France’s position the connections and continuing advances accomplished by the missionaries among the Chinese population. Our commerce has not expanded sufficiently in China to produce for us predominant interests there, and we must recognize that, if we renounce the protection of Catholic missions, our role in the Celestial Empire would in reality be noticeably diminished.21 To warrant a place in great power maneuvering in China, France required something to balance the strong trading position of Britain (and of the United States, Germany, and eventually Japan). Russia had the advantage of territorial propinquity. Playing the missionary card, as an occasion for and a supplement to armed force, had proved to be an effective option for France and not just in China. French imperialism had its own special character. As one study of the Third Republic has put it: “Obsession with ‘status’ . . . was at the heart of French nationalism of both the left and the right after the defeat [by Germany] in 1871. . . . In fact, the necessity of industrial and

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commercial expansion was subordinated to the need to maintain national greatness.”22 It was with such sentiments that French governments of various colorations at home persisted in support of the Protectorate in China for so long a period. Although the essential feature of the Religious Protectorate for France was the political prominence it provided, other benefits of closeness to the missions accrued. The missionaries themselves were cast as supporting staff. Like consular representatives of countries with some numbers of Protestant clergy there, French authorities called on the missionaries to be their eyes and ears. In 1879, for example, the new head of the French legation in Beijing, while introducing himself to all the Catholic bishops and promising protection, added: “I will attach a very special importance to varieties of information that you judge might be of a nature to interest the Legation.”23 The French government sometimes paid missionaries for particularly sensitive intelligence, and it was not the only government doing so.24 In arguing for continuing the Religious Protectorate, a French foreign ministry memorandum of 1906 noted that, in addition to being “inestimable informants,” missionaries could everywhere provide contacts with Chinese proprietors and traders. The memo gave the example of the former procurator (business agent) in Shanghai for the MEP, Father Léon Robert, to whom was owed the acquisition of lands for the extension of the French Concession, a stream of useful advice to French merchants, and in particular the mobilization of Chinese capital to launch a French steamship line on the Yangzi River.25 Indeed, despite reliance on missionary attachment to the Protectorate, French diplomats felt the missionaries should be returning favors. The French foreign minister in 1901 wrote: “It is necessary, actually, that the exertions of these religious [he referred particularly to French missionaries] agree with the views of the Government; it is only through this common understanding that we will obtain an equitable remuneration for the services we furnish the missions.”26 Increasingly, French authorities called on the missions to establish schools where French language and French learning would be taught. They also pressed for more hospitals, which the missions should manage but which would not be staffed only with religious personnel—to display French science in China.27 By virtue of their pivotal position in arranging indemnities and providing subsidies, French officials had at hand ways of compelling the missions to accede to these requests. For example, after four years of urging by the French consul-general in Shanghai, who was seeking ways to curb British predominance in the Yangzi River valley, the coadjutor (that is, auxiliary) bishop of North Jiangxi in central China reported in 1902 to his motherhouse in Paris: “I have been forced (but literally forced) to build a college, with a sum that consular authority withheld from the indemnities of Msgr. Vic [the bishop of the neighboring East Jiangxi vicariate, which would collaborate

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in the school project].”28 Other bishops, too, were known to express unhappiness at having foisted on them what they saw as extraneous and burdensome additions to their programs.29 French officials sometimes sought to link the settlement of an anti-Catholic incident to China’s granting commercial concessions to French companies. A case occurred near the end of the century, when Chinese resistance was particularly low in the wake of defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. France and Britain were at a peak of global imperial rivalry, exemplified by the Fashoda crisis of 1898 in Africa. In French imagination, the two countries were vying for predominance in the large interior province of Sichuan.30 In a climax of turmoil there, a French missionary and a Chinese Catholic priest were seized in mid-1898 and held for about half a year by a small rebel army under a popular leader, Yu Dongchen, who had a history of anti-Christian agitation (he was also known as Yu Manzi or Wildman Yu). Many Christian homes were sacked and Catholics were killed.31 Chinese troops eventually effected the release of the priests and the defeat of Yu Dongchen’s movement. While exacting large indemnities from the Chinese government (over a million taels) for the movement’s damages, French authorities took the occasion to seek commercial concessions as well. The French consul in Chongqing, Sichuan’s major commercial city, proposed securing rights for a French railway between two of Sichuan’s larger cities, space for a French concession in Chongqing, and mining rights for a Sino-French company. Although the Chinese government correctly observed that France had recently agreed that missionary matters would not be linked to economic concessions, the French minister in Beijing in 1899 supported a reduced version of the consul’s list, focusing on mining concessions.32 The sophistical justification was that the settlement of the damage to Catholics and the demands for economic concessions were not linked pursuits, but only parallel ones.33 The Architecture of Conflict: Jiao’a n The Yu Dongchen affair had some of the widest repercussions—the movement touched twenty-eight counties and two provinces—among anti-Christian incidents before the Boxers about two years later. But it was one of many after 1860. Such incidents were labeled jiao’an, an expression that could have more than one translation. In this context, the word has frequently been rendered “missionary cases.”34 However, the feature that links all cases was the involvement, not only of missionaries, but of Christians of all sorts and denominations, whether foreign or Chinese, clergy or laypeople. In documents of the period and subsequently, jiao has commonly been used in compound words as shorthand for Christians generally, as in minjiao—“the

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people” (that is, non-Christians) “and Christians” (both Catholic and Protestant). The transliterated Chinese term—jiao’an—will be used here. It is also true that incidents of conflict including Christians usually became cases through the petition of missionaries to foreign consular and legation officials in China, who then took up the affair with Chinese authorities for settlement. By that route, they entered the terrain of diplomacy. Hence extensive records remain. Attempts to list or count jiao’an have arrived at discrepant results. Published efforts range from about 600 to almost 2,000 for the period 1861–1911.35 Aside from the selection of sources, there are problems of definition (what constitutes a discrete case, whether to include every iteration of a continuing dispute, whether to include only disputes that reached the level of intergovernment negotiation), the problem of contextual numbers (in calculating proportions, unreliable figures for the general population as well as for the Christian constituencies), and the problem of categorization (subjectivity or insufficient information in assigning roles and causes). A further consequential variable is the choice of years, particularly whether to include the exceptional year of 1900, and at what point to end the count (the number of cases diminished radically from 1908).36 For the detail of its analysis, I shall report the findings of one particular study of jiao’an from 1860 to 1899, based primarily on the records collected at the Qing’s office for foreign relations (referred to here by the customary short title, Zongli yamen). The author, Chen Yinkun, starts with over 800 cases for these years but also uses for his calculations the figure of 663, arrived at after deducting for instances where non-Christians were the complainants; for occasions where one movement produced multiple cases by reason of its spread, such as that of Yu Dongchen; for noncontentious settlements, such as some of the return of previously confiscated church properties; and for cases of conflict between different Christian communities.37 At Chen’s lower total, there was an average of 15.6 jiao’an a year, with a gradually increasing yearly average from early to late in the measured period of 1860 to 1899. Instances of conflict in official records collected by the Zongli yamen in Beijing naturally did not include those that never reached the diplomatic level: if, for instance, the disputing parties settled locally on their own and felt no need to report the matter up their respective hierarchies.38 In these same years, the numbers of foreign Catholic missionary priests in China went from about 200 in 1860 to about 900 in 1899, to which latter figure should be added about 700 foreign religious sisters and a much smaller number of religious brothers. Protestant missionaries were about 100 in 1860 and at the end of the century were over 2,000 men and women, plus many more if missionary wives are counted. Chinese Catholics had passed 700,000 by 1899, and Protestants numbered about 100,000.39 Measuring these figures against the number of cases, one can see

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that there was much local accommodation to a growing Christian presence. On the other hand, conflicts where Catholics were involved and the disputants could not reach agreement were numerous enough to keep the officers of the French Religious Protectorate quite busy. In this period, provinces with the highest number of jiao’an—Sichuan, Zhili, and Shandong, in that order—were among the provinces with comparatively large populations. They also contained more Catholics than other provinces (in Shandong’s case, only during the last years of the century), with the exception of Jiangsu. Guangdong, with somewhat fewer Catholics, ranked fourth in jiao’an, by virtue of a rash of incidents during the Sino-French War of 1884–1885.40 A striking result of Chen Yinkun’s tabulations is the comparatively high number of jiao’an involving Protestants in proportion to the number of Chinese adherents. In the last fifteen years of the century, as the number of Protestants approached 100,000, Protestant cases exceeded Catholic cases per thousand members by almost two and a half times, and earlier the discrepancy had been greater. However, in 1899, Catholic adherents were much more numerous—by a factor of seven—than Protestants, and the number of Protestant missionaries more than matched the total of Catholic missionaries. Hence Catholic missionaries by individual average were complainants in substantially more cases than were Protestant missionaries. One conclusion: it was the missionaries, not their Chinese constituents per se, who drove the jiao’an, three-quarters of which in the period 1860 to 1899 were Catholic cases.41 The cases involved all kinds and degrees of conflict and damage. In the forty-year period of Chen Yinkun’s study, incidents in which Chinese Christians were killed were three times as frequent as those in which non-Christians were killed. Chinese Christians suffered 1,598 fatal casualties; foreign missionaries and their families, fifty-six; and Chinese clergy, six. (These numbers were to be dwarfed in 1900 by the Boxer affair.) There were hundreds of incidents of the burning of churches, of other mission houses, and of the homes of Christians. Larger numbers were registered regarding instances of stolen money and goods. Beatings were common, of both Christians and non-Christians. Another considerable item was disputation over the sale or rental of property to missionaries or Christians.42 The list goes on. Identifying the initiators of these many contretemps has always been of interest, starting with the folks on the spot at the time. Generalizations have pointed to Chinese officials manipulating matters behind the scenes, to individuals or groups from the gentry social elite, to secret societies, to angry or envious or superstitious ordinary villagers, or to the Christians and missionaries themselves by their provocations or aggressive actions. Chen Yinkun holds that, insofar as attributions can be made, officials and gentry were important instigators in the

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first years after 1860 but were dissuaded from persisting by government disapproval. As a result, the anti-Christian movement acquired a more popular, if less disciplined, leadership.43 The data, difficult to interpret, do not lend themselves to general conclusions. It is also not easy to measure the root causes of late-nineteenth-century jiao’an. A large body of scholarly Chinese comment holds that opposition to the Christian missions was part of patriotic resistance to foreign aggression, in which the missions were implicated. Although recognizing the element of cross-cultural conflict and misunderstanding in jiao’an, this view assigns that aspect a secondary role only.44 There can be no doubt that the expansive exercise of treaty privileges by missionaries, their protection, and the protection of their Chinese protégés by foreign power evoked widespread resentments.45 A Christian presence could be locally disruptive in a variety of ways. As many narratives note, Christian refusal on religious grounds to contribute to community festivals and to rites in honor of forebears left the rest of the community (or a lineage organization) with a bigger bill. The refusal was resented both morally and economically. Christians declined to help finance rainmaking rituals but then benefited when it rained, or they were to blame if the rains did not come. Things got worse when Christians claimed a share of local temple property, including endowment land, for their own religious uses, because of their rights as members of the community that they otherwise appeared to be subverting.46 Among the many other headings under which Chen categorizes causes of jiao’an, those with especially numerous instances were the behavior and arrogance of Chinese Christian clergy and lay believers, the behavior and attitude of missionaries, disputed contracts in the rental and purchase of church land, economically motivated theft of church property, effects of war (the Sino-French War of 1884– 1885 and the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895), quarrels over the return of confiscated churches, violations of geomancy (fengshui) by missionary construction, and a catchall category of misunderstanding and suspicion between Christians and the rest, including charges that the missions engaged in the evil use of children and in black magic. Another large category was simply the spreading repercussions of any particular jiao’an into adjacent areas.47 Recently, the argument has been forcefully advanced that these jiao’an were basically expressions of ordinary social fissures and inherited disputes that characterized Chinese society, especially in rural areas. In this view, the addition of Christian organization into the mix only aggravated what was frequently a preexisting tension or conflict.48 While this must often have been the case, the aggravation could be substantial. Internationalizing the conflict inevitably raised it to a new level of seriousness for all involved.

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When Catholic missionaries brought instances of perceived abuse to themselves or their Christian constituents to the attention of French officials, these officials regularly took it upon themselves to press Chinese authorities to bring matters to a “satisfactory” conclusion. Such interventions amounted, in Chinese eyes, to interference in Chinese legal process, without adequate attention to the facts of the case. The French, like the British in response to similar appeals from British Protestant missionaries, were often ready to underline their insistence on a favorable outcome by moving their warships into menacing positions or by threatening such movements.49 If there had been no damaging violence in the incident, resolution might come simply from Chinese governmental exhortation to the disputing parties or from instructions to local officials to satisfy the complainants. When there had been damage to person or property, foreign diplomats characteristically asked for punishments of guilty or negligent parties and a monetary indemnity. French demands of this sort were generally more exorbitant than those of other foreign governments. Cases arising during the Sino-French War of 1884–1885 (over the expanding French occupation of Vietnam) were exceptions. The French government in the peace negotiations reluctantly forswore most indemnity claims, including for jiao’an, except those occurring in Taiwan.50 Settlement was frequently not quick. Local officials resisted giving in to missionary demands, or the disputants dug in and refused offered terms. The longest time to settlement was thirty-eight years, over the ownership of a building claimed as a formerly confiscated church in Henan province. About two-thirds of all concluded cases from 1860 to 1899 were settled between four months and two years from their initiation. Only seventeen percent were wound up in less than four months.51 Managing jiao’an was not a casual task. The French government was well aware that its policy of protecting Catholics in China was heartily resented by many Chinese. In its periodic reflections on the policy, the advantages gained and the hostilities aroused were weighed against each other. Just as China missionaries varied in their enthusiasm for French protection— with very occasional calls for its abrogation—so, too, did French officials differ in their commitments to it.52 There were limits to official support for missionary pretensions. An early case, and perhaps the most flagrant in the whole history of the French Religious Protectorate, centered on the bishop of East Sichuan. Bishop Desfl èches in Sichuan Eug ène Desflèches came from the MEP seminary in Paris to Sichuan in 1840, when his presence was still illegal under Chinese law. He became the first bishop

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of the newly created East Sichuan vicariate in 1856.53 Acting on the clause of the 1858 Sino-French treaty that authorized the return of previously confiscated church property, the mission sought for itself in 1862 the premises of a particular Chongqing temple. The Beijing government, at the request of the French minister, ordered the Sichuan authorities to effect the requested transfer.54 With an expansive notion of the extent of the temple’s grounds and at the cost of public meeting space and a storage facility for the local militia, Desflèches built a church and other buildings. In March 1863, the newly acquired Catholic properties were sacked by an angry crowd, for which Desflèches blamed local officials. There were no personal casualties. The French legation in Beijing, even while skeptical of Desflèches’s inflated version of the affair, secured a substantial indemnity of 150,000 taels. Sichuan’s provincial government negotiated the repossession of the temple grounds and the community meeting place in exchange for guaranteeing the mission rights to other sites in the city.55 This compromise did not introduce an era of harmony. Desflèches reentered Chongqing the next year with great ceremony, and his mission immediately complained of the behavior of local officials and the iniquitous treatment of Christians.56 East Sichuan was wracked with a continuing epidemic of conflict between Christians and their opponents.57 During the rest of the 1860s, a series of severely violent incidents involving the Catholic missions afflicted the department of Youyang in the southeastern corner of the East Sichuan vicariate. In response to aggressive evangelism, allegedly extending to coercive measures, churches and Catholic homes were attacked, and a French missionary was killed. The French minister in Beijing effected a settlement in 1865 on Desflèches’s terms by threatening to dispatch troops to Sichuan. Then in 1868 and 1869, reacting to perceived abusive acts by Christians, elements from local militias destroyed the main church in Youyang and killed another French missionary. A Chinese Catholic priest organized revenge and, according to Chinese official accounts, recruited for this purpose bandits from the neighboring province of Guizhou. Disorder reigned. Tabulations of casualties vary, from twenty to over 200 deaths. Many more were wounded and made refugees.58 During the effort to bring this situation under control and manage the aftermath, Chinese officials described Deflèches as “exceedingly cunning,” “blindly protecting Christians,” and given to “shooting his mouth off ” (raoshe) despite a weak case. He was backed by a new and aggressive French minister, brandishing threats of gunboats. Li Hongzhang, who had recently emerged as one of China’s most important officials, was deputed to manage the crisis and negotiated a settlement in early 1870 with the French minister.59 In 1872, Desflèches attempted, through the French legation in Beijing, to secure the renegotiation of this 1870 agreement, which had

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provided a much smaller indemnity than the mission had received in the 1865 settlement, but the Zongli yamen refused.60 French diplomatic authorities eventually took stock and questioned how far they could travel with Desflèches, as another rash of violence seized the East Sichuan vicariate.61 In May 1876, the French minister in Beijing wrote to Paris that Desflèches was litigious and aggressive and that the East Sichuan mission had had an exceptional amount of difficulties with the Chinese government. Three European priests had lost their lives in East Sichuan jiao’an. The minister stated that, as long as Desflèches ran the vicariate, it would never be peaceful.62 That same year, a successor French minister with long experience in China reported about the bishop: “This prelate has gathered around his apostolic authority about 20,000 Christians, whom he has made into a kind of clientele, as in ancient Rome, whom he governs and on whom he depends. He judges their disputes; assesses as he wishes the taxes each must pay; effects payment of them to the Chinese government in his own name; shows himself in public only when surrounded with the customary display of the highest mandarins; in short, if I may use this popular expression, he plays at being viceroy.”63 In subsequent commentary, the French minister noted that Desflèches had written for authorization to arm his Christians and make them into a praetorian army.64 The reports of official Chinese investigators portrayed a Christian constituency already sufficiently armed to have killed six militiamen recently. They charged that the bishop sought out people who could give him access to the salt business for profit (subsequent revelations confirmed this) and that some Christians believed he had embezzled a part of the indemnities. Many of his own flock had left the church, it was said, and there were priests who “deeply loathe Desflèches’s unreasonableness and presumption.”65 Sichuan’s governor-general (the real viceroy) pointed out to a French official that the only peace that East Sichuan had known for years was when Bishop Desflèches was absent in Rome for the Vatican Council.66 Perhaps it was Desflèches’s disdainful rejection in 1876 of a settlement regarding the most recent missionary killing (a French and a Chinese priest) in East Sichuan that tipped the official French balance against the bishop. The diplomat who negotiated the agreement opined that the bishop did not wish and would never wish the fight to end.67 The French foreign minister first asked the head of the MEP in Paris to apprise Desflèches of the seriousness of the situation and of the need not to do anything that would cause trouble for French policy. A few months later, he addressed the Propaganda about the threat posed by the current state of affairs under Desflèches, not only to the security of the mission but also to all evangelical work in China, which France was protecting.68 Early in 1877, a delegation of the Zongli yamen asked the French minister in Beijing that Desflèches be removed. In April, upon the

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suggestion of the French government, the Propaganda invited the bishop to Rome “in order to explain matters in his mission and to take a few months’ rest in Europe.”69 Even as French authorities in China and Paris were attempting to rein in Desflèches, they seemed equally concerned not to give anyone, especially Chinese officials, the impression that France was relaxing its Religious Protectorate. The French legation in Beijing repeatedly reminded its Zongli yamen negotiating partners in 1876 that the Sichuan authorities were responsible for the security of Catholic missionaries. The French minister, despite his critical view of Desflèches, held that violence to Sichuan Christians and their property violated the 1858 Sino-French treaty and must be protested. He told the Zongli yamen that, even though Sichuan was inaccessible to French warships, he would hold the whole country responsible (an instance of threatening random retaliation). While in internal communications blaming Desflèches for the turbulence in Sichuan, he pressed the Qing court to remove the province’s top official, the governor-general. This was done in October 1876, before Desflèches’s recall.70 It proved harder to get rid of Desflèches than the Sichuan governor-general. The bishop delayed his departure for about a year, telling Rome that continuing negotiations about unresolved incidents in his vicariate required his presence. Informed in mid-1877 that the bishop was being recalled, Sichuan’s leading officials became increasingly frustrated by his persisting role in blocking all progress toward settlement of the two remaining cases. Even when he announced he was passing on responsibility to his provicar, he continued to pull the strings from behind the scenes. The Chinese concluded that he had no intention of leaving and was sabotaging any settlement to provide the excuse for his remaining in charge. He had “become truly evil.”71 Even after Desflèches left Sichuan in April 1878 (about a year after the Propaganda had called him to Rome), he sojourned a couple of weeks in Hankou, proceeded to Shanghai, and seemed to be attempting a reconsideration by the French minister of his removal. Chinese authorities were determined that Desflèches never be permitted to return to Sichuan.72 It took further prompting from the French government for Rome in June 1878 to order Desflèches to leave China immediately. Simultaneously, however, the French foreign minister counseled his representative in Beijing: Indeed, it would be especially regrettable if Chinese authorities come to misunderstand the determinative causes of our disposition with regard to the bishop of [East] Sichuan, and if, by any indication whatever, they attribute to us the intention of disengaging from the enterprise of the religious missions. . . . We are determined to stand firm on the ground defined by the treaties and to pursue resolutely the fulfillment of the religious clauses.73

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In a dispatch to Paris summing up the Sichuan imbroglio, the French minister in Beijing reported that, after Desflèches had departed, there was prompt settlement with the new governor-general of remaining issues, “in which the injuries were reciprocal.” The Sichuan missionaries were paid a considerable indemnity: 69,000 taels (over 500,000 French francs).74 Desflèches had lobbied for more. As the century went on, indemnities trended higher. In 1881, the British consul in Chongqing reported that the MEP in Sichuan “appears to be possessed of almost unlimited funds. . . . The Eastern branch, at least, whose head-quarters are in Chungking [Chongqing], is generally known to be one of the largest landed property owners in the Province.”75 Much more was to come. Chen Yinkun counts the countrywide total of indemnities arising from jiao’an between 1860 and 1899 at over 5,250,000 taels. More than three-quarters of this sum came in the last fifteen years of the century.76 He does not calculate how much of this went to Catholic missions, but certainly the great bulk of it did. From 1895 to 1899, indemnities for the three Sichuan Catholic vicariates alone came to over 2,100,000 taels.77 Although the Desflèches matter as an instance of the French Religious Protectorate had some extreme aspects, including the bishop’s irrepressible combativeness and the ultimate disciplining by French authority and the Vatican, it also contained features that were recurrent. One repeated theme was the readiness of French officials to throw their weight behind the missionaries, even when the issues seemed at best muddy. Another recurring pattern was demanding dismissal of Chinese officials, not so often for concrete acts as for failing to forestall insult or injury to missionaries or Chinese Christians. It is easy to imagine how the success of diplomats from the leading foreign powers in ending or disrupting official careers instilled both a fear of foreign disapproval and an accumulated resentment at its toll.78 Because of their special political dependency on the business of religious protection, French authorities were probably more inclined toward unquestioning support of missionaries than were other powers. Yet even the British consular and diplomatic establishment, though often disparaging of their missionary nationals in China,79 did not impose serious constraints on their activity. A study of British missionary policy in the last decade of the nineteenth century states: “To sum up, Foreign Office efforts to control British missionaries in China in the 1890’s were fitful, tentative, and feeble.”80 If nothing else, one had to keep up with the apparent French success in serving the Catholic missions. Although the British were more modest in their monetary claims, they were regularly pressed by their missionary constituents and also secured the dismissal of officials deemed negligent.81

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The next chapter recounts the entry of Germany and Italy into the competition for the role of Catholic protection. Even Japan wished to emulate the French model early in the next century, by seeking (unsuccessfully) for its Buddhist missionaries to China the same privileges accruing to Catholic ones. Although the French Religious Protectorate was hardly the only factor in the heightening tension in Sino-foreign relations, it and the constant stream of jiao’an certainly worsened them for the rest of the century and beyond.

3 Defending the Protectorate in the Late Nineteenth Century

although french governmental representatives in China disclaimed any interest in interfering in the internal life of the Catholic church, they did intervene when perceived French official interests were at stake. As in the Desflèches case, they might use the power of France to influence ecclesiastical decisions about personnel. Although such interventions seem to have been infrequent in the nineteenth century, the French diplomatic establishment in China was the only authority on the scene to oversee the Chinese Catholic church as a whole. There was no unified Catholic hierarchy for the country, no archbishop, no primate, and no papal representative. These circumstances enhanced the position of French officials with respect to the mission church. When the circumstances were threatened in the 1880s, France reacted strongly. The Prospect of Sino-Vatican Relations and Beijing’s North Church It was not long into the era of the unequal treaties before Chinese officials sought ways to dampen the turbulence around the growing Christian presence. In 1869, Prince Gong, uncle to the emperor and the dynasty’s foreign policy spokesman, was reported to have said to a departing British diplomat that he wished the diplomat would take away with him those Western gifts to China, opium and the missionaries.1 In the next year occurred the Tianjin Massacre, referred to in the Introduction. When twenty missionaries, foreign diplomats, and businessmen, along with some associated Chinese, were killed in a major popular outburst in the northern city of 54

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Tianjin, the Chinese government faced a serious set of diplomatic problems, with internal political implications. In the wake of the incident, the Qing government proposed thoroughgoing reforms in the management of missions and Chinese Christians. They included restricting orphanages to Christian children, excluding Chinese women from churches and eliminating women from the ranks of missionaries (the incident involved charges against religious sisters of extreme child abuse), forbidding missionary intervention in legal suits, mandating Chinese rules of deference when missionaries communicated with officials, and restricting the return of former church property. Further, new church members were to be vetted for quality before baptism and to be officially registered.2 The response of the foreign powers was mostly negative. The French found the proposals either irrelevant (for example, they denied that Catholic missionaries usurped the authority of the magistrates by interference in civil or political affairs) or unacceptable (for example, excluding sinners from evangelization was to misunderstand its salvationist purpose).3 This was one of several episodes of foreign rejection of Chinese proposals to change the practices regarding missionaries and the protection of Christians.4 Meanwhile, the Chinese government attempted other strategies to sever, or at least weaken, the linkage between foreign power and the missions, particularly the French Religious Protectorate. A recurring notion was to bypass official French interventions on behalf of Catholics by establishing direct relations with the Vatican.5 As early as 1881, the high official Li Hongzhang, who had become China’s point man in foreign affairs, had recorded his favoring such diplomatic relations. Word of this Chinese interest soon reached Rome.6 By every indication, the new pope, Leo XIII (reg. 1878–1903) was or soon became an enthusiast for the idea. From the beginning of his papacy, he worked to boost the Vatican’s international presence. He concluded from the results of the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 on Africa, as they pertained to religious activity, that total dependence on French protection of Catholic missions was unwise.7 The Sino-French War of 1884–1885, in which the Qing attempted unsuccessfully to save northern Vietnam from French occupation, precipitated direct communications between the Chinese government and the papacy. When real fighting broke out, the French minister to China left Beijing and placed the care of the Catholic church in the hands of the Russian legation. More significantly, the Qing court on its own initiative ordered all officials to attend to the safety of missionaries (more than 70 percent of Catholic missionaries were French) and to preserve the peace for Chinese Christians. Apart from disturbances in Guangdong province, the churches enjoyed fair tranquility during the year of war.8

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While the war was still on, Pope Leo wrote the Qing emperor a letter thanking him for protecting missionaries and converts. Receipt of this letter in April 1885 inspired the Zongli yamen and Li Hongzhang to attempt direct ties with the Vatican, with a view to breaking France’s monopoly on handling Catholic jiao’an.9 Li dispatched to Rome a Britisher, John George Dunn—in effect, a Chinese official as an employee of the internationalized Imperial Maritime Customs Service—to explore the matter. On the Catholic side, the possibility of having a resident papal representative in China had been raised before, notably in the conclaves of the missionary bishops from China at the Vatican Council in Rome in 1870. The majority opposed this proposition, as well as the appointment of Chinese bishops and the establishment of an ecclesiastical hierarchy in the country.10 Now in 1885, missionaries agitated against the new initiative. The first move was to alert French authorities. The Dutch Lazarist procurator (priestly business agent) in Tianjin, apparently consulted confidentially by Dunn, wrote the French minister in Beijing that the Zongli yamen and Li Hongzhang were intent on exchanging diplomatic representatives with the Vatican. The Chinese advocates of the plan, he related, held that “France misused [the Protectorate] and, for purely political designs, often turned religious questions into occasions of strife.” The projected new arrangement, in their argument, had no other purpose than “to guarantee peace and prosperity for the Catholic Church forever.” The Dutch priest was confident that Rome would not be deceived by such sweet talk and would not support this démarche. He was happy to report that neither would the bishops and missionaries in China. Behind this maneuvering, he wrote, appeared to be rival foreign countries, especially Britain, which “has already been working for several years to undermine the French Protectorate.”11 Alongside the issue of possible Sino-Vatican diplomatic relations was another mission matter with which Li Hongzhang had been charged. For several years, the most powerful voice at court had been that of a woman generally referred to as the Empress Dowager (of her various names and titles, Cixi was most often used). Since her nephew the emperor was approaching his majority in the mid-1880s and would soon be assuming authority, she wished to expand her palace into territory occupied by the North Church.12 The Kangxi emperor had granted land for this church within Beijing’s Imperial City in the 1690s. It had become the cathedral and residence for the bishop of the vicariate of Beijing and North Zhili. Now the court ordered Li Hongzhang to arrange for the removal of the North Church as part of a general clearing of the area. Li Hongzhang’s initial problem was to discover to whom he should address himself. He approached the eminent priest and all-purpose fixer of the Beijing vicariate,

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Alphonse Favier, and was told that, according to church law, suit should be made to the pope in Rome. When Li dispatched Dunn to Europe at the end of 1885, the charge included both relations with the Holy See and the recovery of the North Church property. Arriving in Rome in February 1886, Dunn pressed the case for the exchange of representatives between China and the Vatican with the pope, his secretary of state, and the Propaganda prefect. He asserted that China’s initiative in this matter had been taken without consulting any foreign power. The Chinese government had never agreed to the rights that France had arrogated for its Protectorate over Catholic missions in China and wished to see its end. The missions were considered political agents and were treated with suspicion, whereas the Holy See had no territorial, political, or commercial ambition. With a papal representative in charge, distrust would evaporate, and the missionaries would be able to penetrate the country with the greatest of ease and apply themselves to establishing relations with China’s ruling classes.13 Leo XIII had the matter deliberated in meetings of Curia prelates, including one in mid-March 1886 with twenty-two cardinals in attendance. Few of them wanted to flatly turn down China’s proposals, but most opposed running afoul of French sensitivities and held fast to the necessity of the French Religious Protectorate. In effect, they were for giving France a veto in the matter, even while optimistically hoping that France and China could somehow be mutually accommodated.14 In conversations with official French representatives, who were following all this closely, Leo expressed his interest in the idea of relations with China. He professed his wish not to do anything that might harm France, whose assistance to the Chinese church would still be required. He insisted, however, on the need for a proper representative of the Holy See in China, where, his information told him, France was decidedly unpopular with the people.15 Such assertions prompted French authorities to reconsider the merit and legal basis of their Religious Protectorate in China. The conclusion was that the policy was important to France, that it did not depend on the pope’s support, that it was in France’s interest to continue with it whether or not the Vatican sent a representative to China, and that the Vatican should be warned that the dispatch of a papal representative with diplomatic status might have repercussions on the Catholic Church in France.16 In April 1886, Vatican prelates and the French government entered into serious talks about the matter. The French conceded the acceptability of an apostolic delegate (that is, a resident papal representative) without diplomatic character, subordinated to official French authority, such as pertained in the Ottoman empire. The Vatican’s negotiators declared that their proposed representative in China would

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not displace whatever existing arrangements France had there but that he should have sufficient authority to be effective with the Chinese government. It was just such efficacy that the French feared. The Chinese authorities let it be known that they would accept only an envoy who was independent of any third-party country, including France. Meanwhile, word came from Rome that the pope wished missionaries on the spot to negotiate suitable terms for the removal of the North Church in Beijing. For the Holy See, approval of this transaction was no more than a canonical formality. Li Hongzhang accordingly commissioned another trusted foreign employee of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service (Gustav Detring) to fashion an agreement with Favier for the transfer of the church to another location. When an agreement had been reached (including 350,000 taels, or close to two million francs, for expenses), Favier went to Rome with the purported purpose of obtaining papal consent. He arrived in July 1886 and left Europe at the end of September. Close students of these events believe that Favier used his access to the Vatican and to the French prime minister to try to derail the plan for Sino–Holy See relations.17 Six years later, Favier himself related that he had been recruited by the French ambassador to the Holy See to lobby the pope and his secretary of state against “this intrigue.”18 Nonetheless, in early August 1886, the Vatican announced the papal appointment of an apostolic delegate to China who was also to be an “extraordinary envoy,” in effect a nuncio, hence placing him on a level with the ministers of the powers in Beijing. Forthwith, the French government pressed the pope and his secretary of state to withdraw the decision. Otherwise, it was declared, France would recall its ambassador to the Holy See, and voices in France seeking retribution might generate further consequences. A papal representative who was commissioned only to study the situation in China would be acceptable, as long as he left all contact with the Chinese government in the hands of French diplomats. At the end of August, the papal secretary of state responded that the subordination of the representative to the guardianship (tutelle) of the French minister in Beijing was impossible. As late as September 10, 1886, the French ambassador in Rome reported, “The pope objects to all my arguments with an unprecedented obstinacy.”19 Yet it was evident that the Vatican’s determination was being eroded by French pressure.20 Li Hongzhang, the key Chinese official of the time, was challenged by the French consul in the city of Tianjin, where Li resided as governor-general of Zhili province. When told that no modifications in the Religious Protectorate could be made without French agreement, Li angrily rejoined that China did not recognize French rights in this matter. He argued that nothing in the treaties justified French claims, as was confirmed by the best legal opinion. Although French involvement with the

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affairs of Catholic missionaries of every nationality had been tolerated out of ignorance, China now intended to stick with the actual clauses of the treaties. And the French notion of an apostolic delegate on the Ottoman model was unacceptable. The papal representative must have the rank and authority of a minister with full powers. Li was equally vehement about the disposition of the North Church. The French consul asserted that the contract signed by Favier on behalf of the Beijing bishop and Detring on behalf of the Chinese government had no standing, since the establishment belonged to the French government. Li asserted that the North Church had never been France’s property. The Kangxi emperor had given it to the missionaries in the eighteenth century, and when it was restored to them in 1860 after an earlier confiscation, it was simply by the mediation of the French minister as specified in the treaties. (Disputes about ownership of the North Church continued right up to 1949.) Li’s only concession was to offer a note from the emperor to the French minister in gratitude for lending his good offices in the matter.21 One further round of French pressure on both the Vatican and China proved successful. On September 12, 1886, the French ambassador to the Holy See delivered the pope an ultimatum. If a papal envoy left for Beijing, the French embassy to the Vatican would immediately be closed, the 1801 concordat governing church-state relations in France would be abrogated, the church in France would be separated from the state, and the fifty million franc budget for the Catholic religion would be terminated.22 Dunn reported to Li Hongzhang from Rome that, in the face of these threats, the pope could only suspend his project.23 Shortly thereafter, the Quai d’Orsay instructed the French minister in Beijing to offer Li Hongzhang satisfaction over the North Church removal in return for Li giving up the idea of diplomatic relations with the Holy See and for not protesting against the French Religious Protectorate.24 Li in effect accepted the offer and over the next three months worked at conciliating his French interlocutors.25 The North Church was moved to a new and larger location within the Imperial City and rebuilt at China’s expense. Pope Leo XIII subsequently wrote that the failure to establish diplomatic relations with China was for him “the greatest disappointment of his pontificate.”26 It was not that he stopped trying. In the early 1890s, the Vatican and the Chinese government engaged in an intensive round of discussions about a papal representative for China, some sort of concordat between the two governments, and an ecclesiastical hierarchy. This last project implied a national organization of the Catholic church in China, thereby displacing the central role in the church hitherto enjoyed by French diplomats.

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There were particular circumstances affecting the situation. In 1891, an exceptionally widespread array of attacks on missions and Christians along the Yangzi valley of central China brought special attention to the recurring social disruption and consequent damage to Sino-foreign relations accompanying the missionary regime. This stimulated some to contemplate reform, although the underlying causes of these jiao’an were always up for debate. Another circumstance: in 1890 the first defection of a Catholic vicariate from the French Religious Protectorate occurred. South Shandong under the Society of the Divine Word, a primarily German Catholic missionary association, declared itself to be under German protection. This development sharpened official French anxieties about the sturdiness of their system. Third, Leo XIII had embarked at this time on his policy of Ralliement, calling for the reconciliation of the Catholic church in France with the secularizing state of the Third Republic. In effect, he had to straddle the contradiction between persuading his resistant prelates in France, with their monarchist sympathies, to embrace the same French government from which he was trying modestly to wean his prelates in China. This condition no doubt added to the lesson from the previous decade that he could not go far in China without official French acquiescence. A further complicating feature was a quite personal one: the angst of Alphonse Favier. A member of the Beijing and North Zhili vicariate since 1862, he had carved out for himself a key role in the operations of the Catholic church in China. Although not a bishop himself, he was recognized by bishops of various nationalities as a most effective facilitator at the pinnacles of power in the country—with the foreign legations, especially that of the French, and with the highest Chinese officials. Bishops regularly sought his good offices. Further, he had represented his vicariate in the negotiations over a settlement of the Tianjin Massacre in 1870 (his bishop was attending Vatican I in Rome), and he was a significant agent in arranging the transfer of the North Church in 1886. As procurator of his vicariate and hence its investor, he was proud of its prosperity. In 1898, the Belgian minister in Beijing commented, with obvious hyperbole, that for twenty years the Lazarists had purchased every piece of land on sale in Beijing, and in a few years, they would own the whole city.27 Yet Favier had been passed over twice when it came to the appointment of a new Beijing bishop, the second time in March 1890. In a letter to the Lazarist superior general in Paris in August 1890, while professing his relief at the result, he totted up all those who were disappointed that he had not been made Beijing bishop. They included the Qing court, the diplomatic corps, and the missionaries of the area. Favier in effect asked the superior general how, in deciding whom to recommend to Rome, he could have been deceived by the intrigues of a few against Favier’s appointment.28 The man who got the job and hence became Favier’s superior reported early

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the next year that, though the blow was harsh and the wound deep, Favier was recovering from his melancholy and was looking on his bishop more sympathetically.29 Frustrated ambition appeared to be seeking some outlet in this next round of discussion about the organization of the Catholic church in China. At the beginning of the new discussions, the Chinese government and the Vatican made use of the recent emergence of a vicariate in China that was not under the French Religious Protectorate. The German bishop of South Shandong, Johann Baptist Anzer, delivered messages between Li Hongzhang and the Vatican in late 1890 and early 1891 about the possibility of establishing an ecclesiastical hierarchy in China, with archbishops and an apostolic delegate, or perhaps an archbishop who would serve at the same time as a papal representative. Despite an attempt at secrecy, word got out. Anzer, who did not interact easily with Li Hongzhang and was based some distance from Tianjin and Beijing, withdrew from the negotiations. The French foreign minister, in talks with the Paris nuncio in October 1891, again threatened retaliation against the church in France, even though the nuncio assured him that this time the proposed papal representative would have no diplomatic powers. In 1892, Li Hongzhang wrote a letter to the papal secretary of state, the formidable Mariano Rampolla, to urge putting in place an ecclesiastical hierarchy, so that the Catholic church might be better organized and so that, as a consequence, the Chinese government could offer more efficacious protection. He suggested that a start be made with an archbishop for Zhili province (which then contained four vicariates) and that Favier be appointed to the post—a man who, Li wrote, enjoyed the confidence of the Chinese court and government.30 The Vatican again retreated in the face of French objections. Although Leo XIII yearned to bring the Catholic church in China into his embrace and chafed at the barriers imposed by French policy, he accepted the predominant view of his missionaries that a protecting Western secular arm was necessary for evangelism to proceed in China. Lacking a critique of imperialism, he remained vulnerable to French intransigence.31 Favier later declared that he had no idea that Li Hongzhang would be proposing him as archbishop. Nonetheless, Favier had been part of the discussions and regularly reported developments to Rome. The French minister in Beijing concluded from his sources that Favier was part of an anti-French conspiracy with Li Hongzhang and Anzer. The minister also faulted Favier for taking up matters relating to Belgian missionaries in Inner Mongolia instead of leaving it all to French diplomats. In June 1892, he forbade Favier from having any contact with his or any other legation in Beijing and instructed him not to meet with Chinese officials.32 Although Favier was defended by his bishop, it was only with the arrival of a new minister in Beijing in 1894 that he regained his intimate relations with the French legation.

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French authorities found themselves fending off further Vatican initiatives to install some sort of papal representative in China in 1893 and 1894, in 1898, and, under a different pope, in 1905.33 Various proposals for Sino-Vatican relations were raised on the Chinese side in the first years of the twentieth century, without result.34 A papal delegate actually came to China only in the early 1920s. A Breach in the French Religious Protectorate, Bishop Anzer, and the German Seizure of Jiaozhou The French government found it necessary to protect its Religious Protectorate in China, not only from Chinese objections and papal discontent but also from other European states with their own Catholic missionaries in the country. Conscious of the lack of any internationally recognized legal basis for the transnational Protectorate, French officials regularly acknowledged the voluntary character of the participation of non-French missionaries. Why, then, did those missionaries choose to carry French passports and to call on French consuls when in trouble? The Propaganda archives contain numerous communications from China missionaries alleging lack of sufficient attentiveness or support on the part of French officials, and sometimes this negligence was attributed to national prejudice. Generally, however, when confronted with the alternatives, missions decided that they preferred the clout that France wielded. Despite exceptions in extreme cases, French representatives typically aimed to please their missionary constituents. An early example of missionary preference was the attempt in 1868 by the Spanish minister in Beijing to compel the Spanish Dominicans in China to withdraw from French protection in favor of Spain. The Dominicans refused.35 Another factor in perpetuating France’s reach beyond French missionaries was the hostility of the Vatican to the new Italian state because of the seizure of extensive papal territories during Italian unification, climaxing in the annexation of Rome in 1870. Italian missionaries in China, along with those from Belgium, were second to the French in numbers. They were predominant in some nine or ten of the vicariates of that time. In 1884, the Italian minister to China issued to Italian missionaries in Hankou certificates of Italian nationality, and the missionaries were disposed to accept them to avoid the odium of being taken for French amid the hostilities of the Sino-French war. The Vatican intervened, however, and in February 1885 told the missionaries to resort to the French bishop in Beijing during the war.36 When Li Hongzhang’s agent, John George Dunn, had been pursuing Sino-Vatican diplomatic relations in Rome, the Italian government had asked him to raise with Li the possibility of removing Italian missionaries from French protection.37 In

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1888, the Italian minister in Beijing secured from the Zongli yamen agreement to certify passports issued by the Italian legation for its own nationals among the missionaries. To the Italian bishops in China, he declared that the Italian government alone had the right and duty to protect Italian citizens abroad, whatever their status. “Consequently the Royal [i.e., Italian] Government will view as irregular and unlawful passports issued by any other than Italian authority to missionaries of its nationality in the Far East.”38 The Italian bishops got a red light from the Propaganda and declined to go along. (It was a time of particularly high tension between the Italian government and the Vatican.) In a circular at the end of the next year, the Italian legation in Beijing rebuked the Italian bishops for their rejection of its protection. It labeled them disobedient before their own country’s law and declared void whatever government pensions they might have had.39 At the request of the Propaganda, the French government made up for any official Italian subventions now denied to Italian missions in China.40 When the Italian legation had asked the Zongli yamen for the exclusive right to issue passports to Italian missionaries, the German legation had done the same regarding German missionaries and had won the same assent. The French legation had countered these moves by getting assurances from the Chinese government that it would continue its practice of certifying all passports presented by the French legation, as long as the recipients were described as protégés of French authority and as long as there was no doubling. In effect, the choice of protector was returned to each bishop, with the difference that alternatives were now more conspicuous. There was only one German bishop in China at the time, and he, too, stayed with the French, but only momentarily. The Society of the Divine Word was founded in the 1870s by German priests, with Austrian and Dutch participation, as an instrument for challenging French dominance in Catholic missions generally.41 Because of the campaign (the Kulturkampf ) that decade against the Catholic church by the government of a newly unified Germany, the society established its base in the more tolerant Netherlands, in Steyl. This circumstance lent it the alternate name of the Steyl Mission. The society kept its headquarters there, even after the Kulturkampf expired by the early 1880s. In 1879, the first Steyl missionaries went to China, where they were soon given space by the Franciscans in Shandong province. In 1885, the Propaganda authorized a new vicariate called South Shandong and entrusted it to the Steyl Mission. The first bishop was Johann Baptist Anzer, from Bavaria, a cofounder of the society and part of the first contingent to come to China. As noted, he served as intermediary between Li Hongzhang and the Vatican in 1890 and 1891.

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A study of the Steyl Mission describes Anzer as “a man of clear vision, quick perception, prudence, generosity and indefatigable zeal.”42 A recent book on the origins of the Boxer affair calls him “a natural-born evil genius and a master of the technique of bullying and striking a deal.”43 His contemporaries also puzzled over the man. Although from German sources he appeared from the beginning of his time in China to be seeking German protection, he persuaded French officials in the 1880s that he was devoted to the French Religious Protectorate, even after Germany declared its own protectorate for German missionaries in 1888. Then, when he accepted German protection in 1890, he explained to his French interlocutors that the new kaiser was personally committed to establishing German protection over South Shandong. If Anzer refused, the Society of the Divine Word might be excluded from recruiting in Germany and barred from German territories in Africa. If he submitted, the vicariate would be lavished with money and granted all the protection that diplomacy, an army, and a navy could provide. In contrast to the Vatican’s severe instructions to the Italian bishops that they stay with the French, the Propaganda told Anzer the decision was his. He felt forced to turn to Germany, he asserted, but expressed his anxiety about becoming a tool of German ambition and declared the move to be provisional only. The French recipients of these remarks confessed their doubts about Anzer’s sincerity, and the head of the Steyl Mission in Holland was irritated by his equivocations. The French government ineffectually asked the Propaganda to follow the Italian model and require German missionaries to seek only French protection, but it was disarmed by its own repeated assertions of the voluntary character of its Protectorate.44 Leading Germans had been urging for a couple of decades that Germany acquire a territorial base on the Chinese coast. Jiaozhou (old spelling: Kiaochow) Bay, on the southern coast of Shandong (but east of the limits of the South Shandong vicariate), became the preferred choice by the middle 1890s. The decisive defeat of Qing China in its war with Japan over predominance in Korea in 1894–1895 revealed more starkly than ever China’s military weakness. China had refused Germany’s request in 1895 for a coastal base, but now German authorities were determined. The German minister in Beijing in 1896, urging the seizure of Jiaozhou Bay, suggested that troubles affecting the South Shandong missionaries might serve as a pretext. When the news of the killing of two such missionaries on November 1, 1897, reached Berlin, the delighted kaiser, after assuring himself of Russian assent, ordered an invasion. The Chinese government put up no serious military opposition. In a treaty of March 1898, the area around the bay was leased for ninety-nine years. Germany was also granted concessions for railways and coal mines and adopted most of the province as a German “sphere of influence,” meaning German priority in any future concessions to foreigners. There was some popular resistance to

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this German takeover and expanding presence. German military forces met the resistance, including attacks on missions, with brutal search-and-destroy operations beyond the leasehold.45 The major European countries with interests in China rivalrously rushed to enhance their positions there in what has been called “the scramble for concessions.” Germany’s acquisition of a Chinese port was imitated by Russia in Port Arthur (Lüshun, southern Manchuria), by Britain in Weihaiwei (northeastern Shandong), and by France in Guangzhouwan (southern Guangdong). These, plus a major expansion of British Hongkong by leasehold, a bunch of railway and other concessions granted to several countries, and various claims to “spheres of influence” by foreign powers, seemed to augur an imminent collapse of remaining Chinese sovereignty. The French minister in Beijing in June 1899 described arrangements of this sort arising from agreements among the powers and the Chinese government as “special rights, privileges, [and] the faculty of exclusive intervention, which constitute a new kind of colony, upon which the interested parties could place their hands at the propitious moment.”46 Although he was a keen participant, it would be overstating his role to say that Bishop Anzer was the architect of this awesome chain of events.47 He had, indeed, been in Europe at the moment that his two missionaries were killed in Shandong, and he hastened to Berlin to cheer on a German seizure of Jiaozhou Bay.48 However, the German government—its emperor in particular, but also various high officials, like Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz—were already set on moving soon. In the aftermath, Anzer persuaded the Propaganda to add the Jiaozhou area to his vicariate, at the expense of the East Shandong vicariate under French Franciscans (though they were to get some compensation, and they survived Anzer’s wish to absorb the whole vicariate).49 Soon thereafter, Anzer began complaining about German protection and threatening a return to the French.50 After the mayhem caused by German military excursions into the countryside in the year or two after the Jiaozhou seizure, German policy moderated. The focus became turning the Jiaozhou leasehold into a model colony. It was decreed that only German missionaries and not their Chinese Christian flock would be shielded by the German protectorate.51 Anzer’s lobbying in Berlin to overturn this ruling failed.52 Throughout these turbulent years, another drama in the German mission was unfolding out of public sight: the radical disaffection of several of Anzer’s missionaries—perhaps most of them, as was later alleged.53 In January 1895, the superior general of the Society of the Divine Word in Steyl, Arnold Janssen, sent the Propaganda a collated set of charges against Anzer that he had received from five named South Shandong missionaries. The petitioners included Anzer’s second in

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command (provicar), who was one of the first members of the society and who had come to Shandong with Anzer, as well as another missionary who would eventually succeed Anzer as bishop. The core accusation against Anzer was his frequent inebriation, which became noticeable on his trip to Europe in 1890. The German minister in Beijing, who had been persuading Anzer to accept German protection, wrote ahead to ensure that he was accorded celebrity treatment. Anzer seemed to have lost his self-discipline. Subsequently, it was charged, his drunkenness became widely observed, diminishing his episcopal dignity and impeding pastoral work. On one occasion while on a public thoroughfare, he fell off his horse while drunk, and on another trip he had to sleep off his inebriation by the side of the road. In a confirmation service, his words were so garbled that the assisting priests doubted the validity of the sacrament. Another complaint was his extreme mistreatment of the missionaries, including verbal attacks without cause and in front of Chinese. When his provicar felt compelled to gently admonish the bishop, he was exiled to a remote posting, leaving the vicariate without proper leadership in the bishop’s absence. Further, Anzer was given to lying, to the point that a Chinese official in the provincial capital told the provicar that the bishop’s words were no longer credited.54 Five months later, the Propaganda received a letter from the South Shandong provicar, one of the original complainants, asking the prefect to “bury the case in eternal silence.” The bishop had reformed himself, and his great contributions to the founding of the mission should be remembered.55 Six years later, the author of this exculpatory letter sent another set of charges to the superior general in Steyl for forwarding to the Propaganda. The new letter, cosigned by three of his colleagues, said that his previous communication and another missionary letter in support of the bishop had been extracted by Anzer’s pleas. Rome had been misled. In fact, reported the new letter of 1901, Anzer’s drunkenness had lessened only momentarily. Further, Anzer had presided over a loosening of the clergy’s rules. The bishop himself regularly entertained young women in his rooms, often with the doors shut, and a women’s hair ornament was found in his bed. After a six-month delay, Anzer transferred to another job, without serious punishment, a director of the seminary who had committed “the horrible crime” of pederasty with more than one seminarian. Then the bishop gave the directorship to another missionary who was notorious for “the same shameful inclination.” Anzer would not listen to his provicar, who reported the seduction of a girl by a missionary. He was given to relating in the presence of his missionaries scandalous sexual tales about eminent figures, such as the famous seventeenth-century Jesuit missionary, Adam Schall.56 The original charge of frequent lying was repeated in this 1901 rehearsal of Anzer’s faults. “Everybody absolutely agrees that the bishop lacks sincerity and veracity.”57

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Anzer’s ecclesiastical superiors had been deceived—among other ways, in his statistical reports. His missionaries dared not confide in him for fear of their secrets being turned against them and used to create divisions. He often slandered the superior general in Steyl ( Janssen) and the Italian Franciscan bishop of the neighboring North Shandong vicariate. He was accustomed to hitting his servants. He arbitrarily denied priestly faculties (for example, hearing confessions) to missionaries who crossed him in some fashion, to the detriment of the faithful. There was doubt that he himself had been making his own confessions. As to administration, baptisms were being performed with little preparation. There were almost no schools in the whole vicariate. There were no pious fraternities. Although the bishop constructed cathedrals and residences for himself, outlying Catholic communities were starved of funds for oratories and chapels. Only the bishop was privy to the finances of the mission, including even the amounts of the annual allocations from the SPF and the Holy Childhood Society or the uses and present location of the indemnity for the 1897 murders. In the town of Qingdao, the heart of the new German leasehold of Jiaozhou, Anzer had constructed large buildings without consulting his confreres and had registered properties, not to the mission, but in his own name. “Indeed,” concluded the letter, “destruction and ruin threaten the mission of South Shandong and the Chinese province of the Society of the Divine Word.”58 It is perhaps of interest that the chief author of this letter, Josef Freinademetz, was canonized in 2003—pronounced a saint by Pope John Paul II.59 Seeming to confirm Anzer’s boast that he had the full backing of the Holy See, the Propaganda prefect, Mieczysław Halka Ledóchowski, wrote Janssen, the Steyl Mission head, that the Propaganda had investigated the charges against Anzer and had determined that they were without foundation. Ledóchowski went on to reprimand Janssen for interfering in the administration of a vicariate.60 The ever agile Anzer had earlier put his own frame on disaffection in his vicariate by attributing it to a hostility emanating from Arnold Janssen, which was imitated by some missionaries, to his forbidding missionaries from taking up civil legal cases on behalf of their Christians (perhaps a reflection of official German policy, which Anzer had protested), and to the influence of French displeasure at his shifting to German protection and acquiring the Jiaozhou area from French missionaries.61 Ledóchowski’s investigations apparently began and ended with an inquiry to the French bishop of East Shandong, who replied that he had nothing adverse to report (although the same bishop had earlier blamed the turbulence in Shandong on Anzer’s aggressive pursuit of establishing a mission in Shandong’s Yanzhou, sacred as Confucius’s birthplace).62 Prefect Ledóchowski died shortly thereafter. In August 1902, Janssen wrote the new Propaganda prefect to revive consideration of the case and offered further witnesses,

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at least one of whom, now in Europe, wrote his own long account of Anzer’s misbehavior, based on fourteen years’ service with him and confirming the charges coming from the Shandong missionaries, while adding others.63 This time the Propaganda asked a different bishop in China to evaluate the case against Anzer. The reply came back fully validating the accusations of the South Shandong missionaries.64 The documents about Anzer were sent to the Holy Office for review because they raised doubts about Anzer’s faith (“de fide suspectus”: was he confessing himself ?), but the Holy Office declined to weigh in. The Propaganda then summarized all the charges in a long document and held a meeting, at which it was decided to summon Anzer to Rome and force him to resign.65 When Anzer reached Rome in November 1903, he was told by the Vatican’s secretary of state that he would not be allowed to return to China. The next day he had a stroke and died.66 This event relieved the Vatican and the Society of the Divine Word from having to explain Anzer’s departure from his bishopric. Granting Official Dignity to the Catholic Establishment in China From the middle of the 1890s through 1900, Chinese politics underwent kaleidoscopic change in a confusing mixture of advances and retreats. Among the developments were the mobilization of parts of the educated elite outside the government around ideas of reform, derived in considerable measure from Western and recent Japanese example; the emergence of a republican revolutionary movement (still quite small); the adoption of a radical reform agenda by the young emperor; the seizure of power in September 1898 by the Empress Dowager Cixi (for her, it was a repossession of powers she had never fully relinquished), relegating the emperor to an exclusively ceremonial position; the revocation of most of the reform agenda and the repression of leading reformers; after the defeat by Japan in 1895, surrender to much of the foreign “scramble for concessions,” but then in 1899 the flat rejection of an Italian demand for a coastal base;67 official ambivalence toward a primarily peasant anti-Christian and antiforeign movement in north China (the Boxers) of a sort the regime would ordinarily repress implacably; and eventually, in June 1900, an awkward alliance by the court with this movement, even as major parts of the country ignored or defied the court’s policy and its call to war on the Western nations. To this ill-fitting list of events must be added a Chinese pronouncement of March 15, 1899, which granted Catholic bishops and certain other Catholic missionaries a kind of official status in dealings with Chinese authorities. Following the Empress Dowager’s coup d’état against her nephew the emperor, this measure was open to a

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variety of interpretations. Amid an apparently reactionary turn, was the Qing court unaccountably endowing Christian evangelism with new prestige and endorsing a special place of privilege for Catholicism among China’s religions? Or had the Catholics and the French government cleverly pulled off a diplomatic master stroke in negotiations with unwitting or extraordinarily accommodating Chinese officials? Or was the measure designed by the Chinese government to separate missionaries and their complaints from the secular ambitions of powerful Western nations? Events compounded the paradox. Only a year and a quarter later, the Qing court cast its lot with a popular movement that was busy assaulting Christians of all sorts. We have seen Chinese authorities frustrated in their efforts to negotiate effective regulations for Christian evangelism or to bypass official foreign intervention on behalf of Catholics by establishing direct relations with the pope. The results of endorsing the plans of the Italian and German legations to remove Catholic missionaries of their own nationality from French protection, in the Qing diplomatic tradition of setting foreign countries against one another, were unrewarding. In the Italian case, the Vatican, for its own reasons, squelched the maneuver. The German case led to a transfer of a vicariate to German protection, and the death of two missionaries there provided an excuse for German aggression. The example of the German seizure of Jiaozhou Bay was a dangerous one for China. The Belgian minister to China in July 1898 wrote to his foreign minister: “The way to acquire cheaply a colony or at the very least a ‘concession’ in China is now known: it costs the lives of two or three missionaries, resigned in advance to martyrdom.” He suggested that Belgium might discreetly inform the French government what would be an opportune reparation to require of China if a Belgian missionary were to be killed. He had his eye on a concession in Hankou (Belgium had entered a project to construct a railway from Beijing to Hankou). Brussels found the idea of speculating on the possible massacre of a Belgian missionary, with political profit in mind, repugnant. As it turned out, when a Belgian Franciscan perished half a year later in Hubei province (where Hankou is located), the settlement was limited to the usual mix of a money indemnity, punishment of culprits, and the dismissal of local officials.68 At about the same time, the French minister in Beijing declared: “We have thought for some time, with reason, to derive from our protectorate political advantages, as the Germans have done.”69 The next year, France’s foreign minister agreed with him on the desirability of a French base in the north.70 No government explicitly advocated the partition of the country, but, as the powers jockeyed for position, the thought that it might occur anyway was widespread, and the German minister in Beijing was eager to discuss it.71 These were perilous times for China, which the Christian missions aggravated.

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The evidence suggests that from 1898 the court was contemplating a new tactic to lessen the political costs of jiao’an. In May 1898, Alphonse Favier, recently made coadjutor bishop of the vicariate of Beijing and North Zhili, reported to the papal secretary of state that in his most recent meeting with high government officials, they suggested dealing directly with bishops and missionaries to avoid the political demands of states who used the protection of religion as an excuse. Bishops could be officially recognized, it was proposed, and given high status by the court. To this proposition Favier added, in his presentation to the Vatican, that the French Religious Protectorate could remain for major cases and for the application of force if it became necessary.72 By January 1899, the French minister in Beijing had learned from Favier himself about these approaches and reported them to Paris.73 In the same month, the court prepared the way by endowing high provincial officials with honorary membership in the Zongli yamen to encourage them to manage problems with the missions locally.74 A set of regulations regarding the protocol for relations between foreign Catholic clergy and Chinese official representatives received imperial approval on March 15, 1899. Archbishops and bishops were granted the nominal ranks of governors-general and governors and were given the right of access to these august administrators of the provinces. Missionaries of special status in the vicariate, such as vicar general, were permitted the right of interview with provincial judges, treasurers, and certain other high provincial officials. Ordinary European priests (and only European ones) might visit prefects and county magistrates, accompanied if need be by an interpreter, and those so designated by their bishop could negotiate with local Chinese authority. “Important jiao’an” were reserved for settlement between appropriate Qing authority and the minister and consuls of “the country [or countries] which the pope has mandated to protect the Catholic church.” The rules went on to exploit the possibilities opened by the provision of missionary access to the territorial officials of the empire. “In order to avoid much wasteful complication, the local officials will meet together with the bishops and missionaries for discussion [about conflicts], and they should promptly and harmoniously consult about what to do and should devise a settlement.” Aside from enjoining both sides to instruct their constituents to behave themselves, the regulations called on imperial officials to adjudicate legal cases between Chinese non-Christians and Christians equitably and called on missionaries not to intervene or provide unreasonable protections.75 In transmitting these regulations to the French minister, Favier reminded him that he had previously alerted the legation to this project of the Chinese government. He said that he had been consulted by Chinese officials about missionary titles and ranks and had managed to inject the passage reserving important cases

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for the protecting power. That power could not comfortably be specified by name because, he noted, Germany would have had to be included. Alerted by his in-house translator, the French minister, Stéphen Pichon, required some changes. The references to zongzhujiao could only mean “archbishop” or even “primate,” despite Favier’s claim that “bishop” would be a good translation. Insisting on its deletion, Pichon seems to have detected a surreptitious attempt to establish a Catholic hierarchy, despite well-known French objections, and perhaps to crown Favier himself as the pope’s representative in China. (Indeed, Chinese diplomats, communicating through the Paris nuncio, were simultaneously urging the Vatican to make Favier “metropolitan of Beijing,” as someone who enjoyed the respect and trust of the authorities and people. Any other choice, went the message, would be prejudicial to relations between the government and the church.)76 Further, the expression used for the pope’s mandating (qinming) a protecting country could apply only to a sovereign’s order to a subordinate, which was not the Vatican’s relationship to France, nor was it a description of the basis of the French Religious Protectorate. Pichon required that some version of “entrust” should be substituted (zhuantuo took its place). Favier obtained agreement to these changes from Ronglu, whom Favier claimed as a friend and who was a Manchu official at the top of the administrative hierarchy since his key role in the Empress Dowager’s seizure of power in September 1898. On March 27, 1899, Pichon transmitted the revised Chinese text and a French translation to all his consuls and then on to the Catholic bishops of China.77 The Catholic response, both in China and Europe, to these arrangements was generally enthusiastic. Pope Leo XIII, in conclave with his leading Curia cardinals, rejoiced at the news.78 A Te Deum was celebrated at St. Sulpice in Paris. There were some negative notes. The bishop at Chongqing in Sichuan province argued that too much had been made of the new regulations, which reflected only political maneuvering, although he held Favier in high esteem.79 From Jiangxi, however, the bishops of the province’s three vicariates reported their pleasure at the development. Two of them happened to pass through the provincial capital soon after the new rules were announced and found the governor easily accessible and cordial. The third wrote to Pichon, the French minister, that the recent regulations “will remain as an eternal monument to the gratitude that the Catholic missions will owe you and which they will be happy to retain for you. Your Excellency has rendered a prodigious service to the Catholic cause and consequently to the influence of France as protector of the missions.”80 Favier, who had been ostracized from the French legation in the early 1890s on suspicion of having undercut French policy, extracted from Pichon endorsements of his French bona fides and testimony to his having kept the legation informed.81

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He was confident that the missionary bishops appreciated the results, and he told the head of his order that some, who suspected his hand in the matter, had written him their congratulations.82 At the Quai d’Orsay, by contrast, the response was one of shock. In a variety of ways, the question was posed, “What did Pichon think he was doing?” The first problem was that official France had not been sufficiently informed this was coming and had learned of its details from the Lazarists in Paris. The French ambassador to the Holy See in late May 1899 found himself having to conceal from the papal secretary of state his lack of knowledge about the matter.83 The French foreign minister asked of Pichon a full account of the circumstances that led the Empress Dowager to this determination, “whose principal intention had to be in opposition to the traditional exercise of our protectorate.” Though the regulations still left a role for French officials, it was clear that the missionaries would increasingly conclude their differences with Chinese authorities amicably, “in conditions which will almost always suppress the possibility of stipulations advantageous to our general interests.”84 The foreign minister’s critique echoed a Quai d’Orsay memorandum, which went further in postulating that the impetus for these regulations had come from Favier’s ambition to be apostolic delegate in China, which, if satisfied, would in effect end the French Religious Protectorate. (Here was being expressed the long-standing official French fear that an anointed papal representative in Beijing would short-circuit missionary appeals to French diplomatic authority and hence starve the Protectorate of sustenance and undermine France’s prominence in China.) The memo concluded: “The influence that he [Favier] has acquired over M. Pichon makes us suppose that our representative has lent himself to the intrigues of this prelate without calculating their meaning, and that he did not appreciate all the consequences of the decree of March 15 until after approving its preparation.”85 Pichon’s full-dress defense to Paris of the measure and his relation to it had several parts. First, he held that the document could have been worse but for his discreet interventions. Yes, the Empress Dowager, whose personal project this measure appeared to have been, intended by it to weaken the Protectorate. Operating from behind the scenes, however, he had managed to excise references to an ecclesiastical hierarchy, such as France opposed, and had devised language that removed the suggestion that France exercised its role only as an assignment from the Vatican. Second, the new rules would not have a large effect on current practice in negotiating settlements and hence would not block opportunities for France to exact advantages from the Chinese. The delegation of negotiating authority to bishops had already been practiced, notably in Sichuan and Guizhou provinces.86 He argued strenuously that there would be no dearth of cases usable for political leverage. “There is not a day, so to speak, when we are not availed of a new complaint.” In

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short, the reasons that a secular France cherished the Religious Protectorate had not been betrayed by these new arrangements. Finally, Pichon noted the joy with which the pronouncement had been greeted among missionary orders and at the Vatican. For France to have stood in the way, or to have been perceived as impeding, would have fatally damaged the Protectorate, which ultimately depended on Catholic compliance. These new regulations were commonly, if ironically, interpreted as a triumph of French diplomacy. Better to ride this tide, while retaining the essentials of the Protectorate.87 The Quai d’Orsay was apparently reconciled to Pichon’s stance and even reproduced parts of it in its own discourse by the following fall.88 Pichon’s career seems not to have been damaged. In a few years, he would become France’s foreign minister. In any case, events soon overwhelmed all subtleties, as China entered the paroxysm of the Boxer affair. The Boxer Moment The upheaval of the spring and summer of 1900 that inflamed China and grabbed the world’s attention got its name from popular movements that emerged in Shandong province in the late 1890s. In the West, it was long known as the Boxer Rebellion, but this appellation contains a convenient dodge. Whether the Boxer movement, in its several expressions, was or was not a rebellion—that is, opposed to civil authority and a challenge to the government—was precisely what was at issue among Chinese officials at the time. Calling it such after the fact was a way of removing responsibility from the Empress Dowager, who embodied the government, with which the Western powers and Japan wished to deal in the aftermath. Recent scholarship has preferred the Boxer Uprising, leaving open the question of the movement’s relationship to the government. The Boxer War is another candidate. At the climax, there was surely something like a war between the Beijing government and an assemblage of allied countries, although the definition of the conflict was left a bit vague on both sides. The “Boxer” part comes from the name adopted by the relevant movements emerging from the north China countryside at the time: Yihe quan, rendered as Boxers United in Righteousness, with a reference to the martial arts.89 The story in brief: An expanding and triumphalist Christian evangelism in an environment burdened by a sequence of flood and drought, as well as by the depredations of German military expeditions into the countryside, sparked popular opposition in Shandong province at the end of the nineteenth century. The resulting rural movements drew creatively on various inherited cultural repertoires, including the martial arts, theater, and religion. They put together a psychologically potent set of

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practices and rituals that promised to aspiring warriors a divinely endowed physical invulnerability. Adherents joined ongoing disputes with the missions and initiated new ones. They raised the slogan, “Protect the Qing and destroy the foreign,” thereby declaring their loyalty to the throne and their hostility toward Chinese Christians (members of a foreign religion), foreigners, and such foreign imports as railways and the telegraph. At the end of 1899 and the beginning of 1900, the main movement spread into the neighboring metropolitan province of Zhili and, in a few months, on to the cities of Tianjin and Beijing, as well as into adjacent provinces. Meanwhile, Qing officials pondered their options. Repression was attempted by some, who saw the movement tainted by banditry and, in any case, a threat to order. Government troops fought against the Boxers on several occasions. However, there were also officials who valued the loyalism of the movement and saw it as recruitable in resisting foreign aggression. The Empress Dowager was in charge and vacillated. Growing foreign clamor about the Boxer movement seemed to her to mask threats to her own somewhat irregular place in the government. She had aroused the opposition of diplomats in Beijing by her recent manipulations of the imperial succession, which implied a possible dethronement of the emperor and an antiforeign turn.90 Efforts by the legations in Beijing to bring ever more foreign military force into the capital, which they felt necessary for their security, appeared to the Empress Dowager to be steps toward regime change. The Empress Dowager eventually sided with the antiforeign members of her court and with the Boxers. From early June, Boxers entered Beijing in some numbers. Railway and then telegraphic communication was cut. An attempt by the legations to bring in a second and larger round of military units was successfully blocked by Boxers, who were soon joined by government troops. Foreigners in Beijing, incorrectly anticipating imminent reinforcements, started to shoot Boxers and indulged in rather indiscriminate assaults on the general population. Boxer warriors surrounded the defended compound of the Catholic cathedral, the North Church, while other Catholic churches in the city, as well as Christian homes, were burned, and two Catholic missionaries were killed in the process. Central commercial portions of the city were set on fire. Full-scale fighting began at the Chinese forts guarding the approach from the sea to Tianjin and then in Tianjin itself. A siege of the Beijing legations by Boxers and government forces began on June 20, when the diplomats refused the government’s request to leave Beijing after the German minister was killed on the city streets. It was on June 21 that the Empress Dowager formally embarked on war. By this act, she was endorsing attacks on foreign diplomats, foreign clergy, and the many Chinese Christians who sought refuge with the foreigners in their defended Beijing enclaves, one diplomatic (the legation quarter, with between 2,900 and 3,700

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Chinese refugees)91 and the other ecclesiastical (the North Church, with about 3,300). The same policy theoretically applied to the rest of the country, and there was much violence in the north. Over the summer, about 230 missionaries (including family members) died, mostly Protestants. Perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 Chinese Christians (unreliable estimates) were killed, overwhelmingly Catholics.92 Several senior territorial officials, especially in central and south China, decided to ignore the Empress Dowager’s decrees and made local arrangements with foreign consuls to kept their regions out of the conflict. The foreign powers assembled an allied force to take Tianjin and then Beijing. Contingents of this force lifted the siege of both the legations and the North Church compound in mid-August. They proceeded to occupy major cities of north China and engaged in punitive expeditions into the countryside. Russian troops occupied Manchuria. Having appointed Li Hongzhang to negotiate terms with the foreign powers, the Empress Dowager fled to an interior city with the emperor. The negotiations, starting with the dismissal and punishment of the belligerent members of the Empress Dowager’s court, reached a final form only in September 1901. The Boxer saga includes various obscure parts and interpretive difficulties, quite beyond what can be explored here. A few points relevant to the French Religious Protectorate may be registered, along with some particular Catholic perspectives on the crisis. One curious feature of the Boxer events was the multiple roles of Alphonse Favier, who had finally become the Beijing bishop. As informal clearinghouse for major Catholic petitions from the provinces, he had been involved in the disputes where versions of the Boxers first appeared in Shandong.93 He happened to be in Europe at the beginning of 1900, but after his return, he loudly warned about the dangers to foreigners represented by the spread of Boxers in Zhili province. In mid-May, he was telling the French minister that the Boxers were headed toward Beijing and that their attacks on Chinese Christians were only a cover for their principal aim, which was the extermination of Europeans. They started with the churches and would end with the legations, he wrote.94 At the same time in a very different tone, he was reporting to the Vatican about the intricacies of China’s court politics of the time—notably the new importance of an antiforeign imperial relative, Prince Duan, and the sources of his animus. But there were countervailing tendencies. He told the papal secretary of state that he had good reason to believe that the Empress Dowager was favorable to Catholicism and that she was proceeding with great caution among the contending factions in her court with a view to maintaining her regency and the future of the dynasty. Many of the highest authorities, he declared, were “our friends.” The missionaries, he thought, were not in danger, but Chinese Christians were. Fortunately, he noted, the decree

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of March 15, 1899, allowing bishops to deal directly with governors-general, had in no way been revoked.95 In early June 1900, he delivered a papal letter and gift to the Empress Dowager, somewhat to the Vatican’s subsequent embarrassment.96 Favier would then preside over the defense of the North Church and its many refugees during a two-month siege. But Favier’s belief in the Empress Dowager’s good will toward the Catholic church was not extinguished by the accompanying loss of life, including some 400 in his charge who died of bullets, cannon shells, mines, disease, and hunger.97 In the aftermath, he was both hero for having saved so many and villain for permitting (or encouraging) the survivors to engage in postsiege looting. He embodied the compromises of the Catholic missions in the nineteenth century, notably their entanglement with imperialism. He seemed to believe that he could serve both the Chinese church and France without contradiction. Yet he had won the confidence of various highly placed Qing officials, and, as described later, he was a confidential critic of the condition of the missions. As information about the Boxer movements accumulated, various interested foreigners blamed Germany for what was happening. The charges, however, were curiously conflicting. Many made much of the fact that the province where the Boxers were spawned, Shandong, was also where German forces had seized territory militarily and had engaged in violent expeditions into the countryside. Although the German forays were not in the same part of the province as were the original Boxers (which was in the jurisdiction of a vicariate under an Italian Franciscan bishop under French protection), it was not hard to imagine the news and the resentments spreading through the province, as they did throughout the whole country. The other, contrasting charge, which was widely held among French diplomats and Catholic missionaries, was that the German government’s subsequent withdrawal from seeking indemnities for Chinese Christians who sustained injuries on account of their faith had encouraged local Chinese authorities to slack off in their job of protection and had emboldened fomenters of disorder to increase their attacks on Catholics. This was the opinion of the French minister in Beijing, who confessed that he had difficulty in explaining to the German minister on what grounds France demanded indemnities for Chinese subjects from the Chinese government. He acknowledged that the practice seemed devoid of any basis in international law, at least if one were not officially endowed with the privilege of religious protection (and whence that endowment?).98 Nonetheless, he was instructed by Paris that complaints of German missionaries about their government’s dereliction regarding this issue “can only induce us, on all occasions, to uphold our rights as the protecting power of Christians.”99 The Boxer catastrophe, in this second interpretation, arose from too little foreign protection, rather than from too much.

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The climactic events of the Boxer summer, with its strange, half-way war (Favier’s friend Ronglu has generally been credited with restraining the Chinese professional military from overrunning the legations and the North Church),100 overwhelmed the French Religious Protectorate for the moment. It had been somewhat battered even before the Boxers: by the German defection, by ever more vociferous Italian discontent with a French-run system, by the possible undermining by “spheres of influence” (could French protection of Catholics persist in areas of the country where some other foreign power claimed priority in all things?),101 and by doubts within the French establishment regarding the legality of it all. Would the limits of French protection, so evident in the Boxer affair, vitiate its future in the eyes of its crucial constituency, the Catholic missionaries? Would its contributions to the anger of so many Chinese at the privileged Christian presence in their country occasion reconsiderations of the policy? The answer was that the policy would survive for some decades more and that its operations and its effects would be at the center of major battles within the church.

4 Collecting Indemnities and Enduring Criticism

china’s world was substantially altered in the aftermath of the Boxer affair of 1900. Because some of the changes appeared contradictory, new directions were not immediately apparent. For example, foreign encroachment on China’s sovereignty was much augmented, with temporary military occupation of parts of north China, permanent foreign garrisons in Beijing and between Beijing and the sea, and an enormous indemnity that constituted a drag on China’s finances for years to come. At a lower level, a lust for revenge and plain avarice led many foreigners, civilian and military, to give themselves over to pillage and mayhem in the northern cities and countryside.1 On the other hand, foreigners had been startled at the depth of the hatred toward them and Chinese Christians and at the reckless bravery that the hatred seemed to have inspired in parts of the population. There were stinging bees in this honeypot, and in the future some caution was advisable. The possibility of China’s partition into foreign-run colonies was off the table. Another contradictory change was the collapse of resistance by a dispirited Chinese officialdom in the face of foreign demands, whether global or local, while simultaneously there emerged a new eagerness for reform and a spreading patriotism that would soon change the face of Chinese politics. In its last ten years, the Qing government sponsored some impressive changes in its institutions affecting education, the military, and the judiciary. By the end of the decade, it had arranged for elected representative bodies at various levels in the polity, with promises of more to come. A modern nationalism, already apparent in the late nineteenth century, spread widely in the educated part of the population and beyond and informed a new level of political activism outside the bureaucracy. 78

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The French Religious Protectorate in China might seem to have been destined for rapid extinction in this post-Boxer environment. Together with the missions, it did make some modifications in its practice—notably in scaling back interventions in Chinese civil cases involving Catholics. But that adjustment did not come right away. French authorities, even as anticlericalism took hold at home, continued to uphold the Protectorate’s basic features. They stood guard, not always successfully, for several more decades against efforts to discount or circumvent it. The Boxer Indemnities The imposition of indemnities in the wake of the Boxer episode turned out to be a complicated process for the missions and therefore for French officials. The powers were, first of all, determined to be compensated for the expenses of their military expeditions and the subsequent occupations. In addition, they sought to extract payment for damages inflicted by Boxer warriors and Chinese government forces on foreigners, their properties, and their Chinese employees. The countries that had collaborated in June, July, and August 1900 to rescue the besieged in Beijing subsequently negotiated among themselves and presented virtually unresisting Qing negotiators with a 450,000,000-tael exaction to be paid with interest over thirty-nine years. But there was no common auditing of the damages and expenses, only lump sums for each participating government, calculated internally according to agreed categories and added together to make the unitemized total included in the Boxer Protocol, signed in September 1901.2 To this diplomatically negotiated track at the center was added another: payments by local and provincial Chinese authorities to private claimants, mostly missionaries and their Chinese church members. This second track has not attracted much attention in most accounts.3 By its unstructured nature, it was not susceptible to precise or comprehensive tabulation. Before, during, and after the formal negotiations in Beijing, missionaries and local Chinese officials, with or without consular oversight, were striking deals for direct and immediate compensation. One might call this the irregular indemnity. Collecting the irregular indemnity for Boxer-era depredations was an entrepreneurial enterprise, pursued in several parts of north and central China and even as far away from the main events of 1900 as Sichuan, Guizhou, and Guangdong. In a letter to the Vatican as the Boxer Protocol negotiations were nearing a conclusion, the Beijing Catholic bishop, Alphonse Favier, explained one part of the logic for the resort to local settlements. He noted that the foreign diplomats in Beijing who had been designated negotiators for the Allies were not disposed to seek remedies for Chinese Christians. If he and other churchmen had not gone directly to

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Chinese authorities, in his view, there would possibly have been no indemnity at all for these victims of Boxer violence. (The only Chinese mentioned in the Allied definition of recipients were the employees of the foreigners.) He had agreed with top Qing officials on a sum for damaged churches and chapels, for destroyed Christian homes, and for the indemnification of the Christian families massacred in his vicariate, whom he counted at 6,000. He recommended to bishops who asked his advice that they follow suit. Not only was there agreement, Favier continued, but the Chinese government went ahead with payments, even before the French minister had got around to approving the transactions.4 Favier was not fairly representing France’s diplomats in Beijing. In an instruction to a subordinate, the French minister, Stéphen Pichon, acknowledged the delicacy of indemnifying Chinese Christians, in that some countries insisted it was an internal matter for China. Nonetheless, he wrote, the French legation had always held that the protection of indigenous Christians was part of French religious patronage, a part that was “exercised, it is true, with some circumspection.” To avoid a breach with the other powers, Pichon had recommended to Catholic missionaries to settle reparations for Chinese Catholics with local authorities as much as possible, while also seeking the assent of those authorities regarding claims for the missions themselves.5 Judging by reports from the vicariates, the two categories of indigenous and mission claims often melded into each other. Another aspect of the irregular indemnity was that it had Chinese official sanction. Soon after the beginning of the negotiations with the Allied powers regarding a settlement, the eminent Chinese official Li Hongzhang, who had been appointed to represent the Qing court, proposed that he and Favier treat directly, in a friendly fashion, regarding an indemnity for churches, deaths, Chinese Christians, and cemeteries.6 This readiness to manage matters separately with the missions was replicated broadly. As with the imperial decree of March 15, 1899, which authorized direct negotiations between Catholic missionaries and Qing officials, one suspects a Chinese interest in separating the missions from the powers claiming to protect them. With the overtly pro-Boxer officials purged, those in charge may have felt that there was some justice in compensating survivors of Boxer assaults. The policy also bespoke desperation and an eagerness to get beyond the events of 1900. Perhaps, as foreigners sometimes alleged, it was in addition an opportunity for local officials to take a cut from the special levies financing these payments. In practice, this openness to side deals opened a second path to compensation for the missions, some of which profited from the combination of tracks. The vicariate of North Zhili, which then included the cities of Baoding, Tianjin, and Beijing, had no doubt been hardest hit.7 Its bishop reported receiving directly

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from Chinese officials over three million taels for his Chinese Christians. In addition, his vicariate was later allotted over 2.6 million taels for its share of the general, global indemnity.8 The resulting abundance would become a key element in subsequent Catholic evangelism in the area. Although it lacked major cities, the neighboring vicariate of Southeast Zhili had been directly in the path of the Boxer movement as it spread north out of Shandong. Its Jesuit bishop, a Frenchman, reported to the Propaganda in September 1901 that, on instructions of the imperial court, local authorities were indemnifying the losses of Chinese Christians. They had already made payments, to the great relief of the mission’s impoverished neophytes. Meanwhile, the vicariate was calculating with local officials, county by county, indemnities for churches and mission establishments of all sorts. Part would be paid by local authorities, and part would be added to the war indemnity being negotiated in Beijing and eventually would be paid to the mission by France.9 A year later he wrote: Our Christians have been indemnified nearly sufficiently for the enormous losses that the Boxers had made them suffer by pillaging their property and burning their houses. As to the mission’s establishments, a part of the indemnities have been paid in the very same district [where the damage was incurred], with various due-dates. The rest, in agreement with the Chinese authorities and the French legation, have been carried forward to the global indemnity, and will be paid . . . when?10 The plaintive question—when will we get our money from France?—reveals another motive for negotiating locally: skepticism about the payout from an indemnity extending over thirty-nine years. (The French government would soon address that issue.) The vicariate’s share of the general indemnity as determined by French officials came to 1,402,900 francs, about 375,000 taels.11 The amount received from local collections went unreported. Indemnities were also collected outside the main battlegrounds of the Boxer war. Jiangxi, just to the south of the Yangzi River, experienced more damage to Catholic church property in the Boxer year than any other central province, even though the peasant Boxer movement of north China had not spread in its direction. The area’s governor-general had endeavored to stay out of the war. Nonetheless, the provincial governor reported that in 1900 “cases of making trouble for Christians (naojiao zhi an) spread almost everywhere,” that more than thirty churches had been destroyed by fire, and that missionaries and Chinese Christians listed at least 1,600 cases of property loss.12

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All Catholic claims (there were three vicariates at this time in Jiangxi) were met by local settlements between missionaries and Chinese officials.13 Although Catholic bishops and regional Chinese officials negotiated with each other, actual procedures for disbursement were ad hoc. Payments to Chinese Catholics were sometimes made directly by local officials, but often the money was distributed by the missionary.14 This Jiangxi pattern seems to have been common. Two aspects of these irregular indemnities are worth noting. First, although their unsystematic character and the hit-or-miss reporting of the results meant that the totals can only be guessed, the opportunity for the missions to collect proceeds in addition to the compensations being negotiated in Beijing considerably augmented the finances of a number of missions. Second, this rather messy procedure was enacted in the view of local populations, who were close witnesses of the transfer of wealth from the non-Christian community to the Christians, foreign and domestic. In another case, the search for indemnities exposed vulnerabilities in the French Religious Protectorate. The vicariate of North Shanxi, adjacent to Zhili province and run by Italian Franciscans, had witnessed some of the worst violence of 1900 against foreigners. In July, forty-five Protestant and Catholic missionaries were killed in the provincial capital of Taiyuan, allegedly by order of the imperial governor.15 Victims included the Catholic bishop of the vicariate of North Shanxi and his coadjutor (also a bishop). Many Chinese Christians, as well as more foreigners elsewhere in the province, lost their lives, and property was destroyed. The surviving vicar general of the North Shanxi vicariate, and its administrator by default, was Barnaba Nanetti Da Cologna. After first presenting claims to French officials, he informed them that his vicariate would instead seek its indemnity through an Italian organization, purportedly nongovernmental, known as the National Association of Florence (formally, L’Associazione Nazionale per Soccerrere i Missionari Italiani).16 The National Association of Florence proposed to do better for the Italian missions than would France, if they would work with the Italian diplomatic legation in Beijing.17 To do so would contradict Vatican policy of shunning the Italian government. Out of the ten Italian-run missionary jurisdictions in China, only North Shanxi took up the offer. In response to the news, heated messages were exchanged among the French legation in Beijing, the French foreign ministry, Bishop Favier, the Vatican, the Italian government, and various officials of the Franciscan order.18 Before long, French authorities decided that the North Shanxi vicariate, by seeking Italian representation for its indemnity claims, had removed itself from French protection and insisted that French passports in the hands of North Shanxi priests be returned.19

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In long letters of justification to the head of his order in August 1901, Barnaba Da Cologna argued that he had not intended to forswear French protection but had only sought the best arrangement for his vicariate. The French had been dilatory and would limit its indemnity to one million taels, he wrote. When he sought telegraphic guidance from the superior back in Rome who was in charge of Franciscan missions, he was told to seek the best way to settle missionary indemnities for the benefit of his vicariate, including compensation for the murdered bishops.20 Da Cologna noted that the French would not seek to indemnify the mission for those missionaries who had been killed (one of whom was his own sister). And Italian authorities in Beijing were most responsive. In Da Cologna’s version of subsequent events, Li Hongzhang, the Qing’s top negotiator, had complained to Bishop Favier in Beijing that North Shanxi was asking too much, and Favier mobilized the Propaganda against Da Cologna.21 “Favier as French fanatic has worked with the Chinese government to remove me from the mission by hook or by crook. He had promised it to Li Hongzhang. And he got it through the Sacred Congregation [the Propaganda].”22 Barnaba Da Cologna and his closest associate in this maneuver were indeed removed from the North Shanxi vicariate by order of the Propaganda, which, when directly confronted on the issue, was still urging Italian missionaries in China to keep their distance from the Italian government. Da Cologna was replaced by another temporary administrator for the North Shanxi vicariate, who was soon followed by a newly appointed bishop. The upshot was that this Italian-led vicariate departed permanently from the French Religious Protectorate in favor of Italian protection. The Vatican learned to tolerate this deviation from its hostile posture toward the Italian state.23 The scope of the French Religious Protectorate was further reduced, if by a small percentage. Other predominantly Italian vicariates, well after their Boxer indemnities had been secured with French assistance, were to follow one by one in subsequent years and decades. Among the effects of the disarray in the North Shanxi vicariate was the recording of a Chinese Catholic voice. After the removal of Barnaba Da Cologna, the Franciscan head office dispatched the bishop of the South Shanxi mission, a Dutchman, to visit the neighboring mission to the north and report. Some of the Chinese priests of the vicariate took the occasion to present a petition, which reached Franciscan headquarters in Rome. In obvious rejection of Da Cologna’s leadership, they said they preferred French to Italian protection: Italians (presumably official ones) were enemies of the church and, in any case, were unable to protect. Then the petitioners went on to ask for more involvement in the management of important vicariate affairs. They requested that all priests, whether European or Chinese, be treated uniformly, or at least without great distinctions, for the sake of

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harmony and the smooth operation of the vicariate. In the matter of distributing indemnities, there should be a focus on places that had suffered most to revivify decimated Christian communities. There should also be checks against favoritism in disbursement.24 It was hard to miss the implicit charge in this petition that indemnity moneys had been used neither wisely nor fairly. In his report, the Dutch episcopal inspector recognized the simmering discontent of the Chinese clergy. He focused on their request for more equal treatment and countered that one cannot insist on perfect equality. Chinese priests, he wrote, shared the national trait of pridefulness, did not think of themselves as inferior to Europeans, and “everywhere are quick to complain loudly and to recruit many instigators among the Christians.”25 This divergence of view between foreign bishop and Chinese priest was not new. For example, in 1873, a Chinese priest in Shanxi province, after returning from study at the Propaganda’s Urban College in Rome, was suspended by his bishop for rebelliousness. The Chinese priest then addressed the Propaganda about equality between European and indigenous clergy, about relations to property, about the permissibility of Chinese priests organizing among themselves, and about their right to address Rome directly. The Propaganda delegated adjudication of the matter to its procurator in Hongkong, who backed the bishop and dismissed the priest’s inquiries. An undercurrent here was the concern that the Chinese clergy would displace the foreign missionary establishment. This apprehension was expressed in 1886 by as senior an administrator as the secretary of the Propaganda in Rome: “The possible formation of a national church in China should be feared, since the indigenous clergy wish to be emancipated from the apostolic vicars and to create a Chinese church, as previous attempts have proven.”26 Tension between a bishop and the Catholic laity also occasionally surfaced. In 1895, the Propaganda received two letters in Chinese from lay church leaders, teachers, and ordinary Catholics of the South Hunan vicariate, lambasting the policies and attitude of their bishop, Antonio Fantosati. The particulars included Fantosati’s use of accumulated church funds to buy land for a vineyard to supply himself with wine and other delicacies; his daily indulgence in the lifestyle and apparel of a Western nobleman; his denial of funds for evangelistic projects; his inadequate protection of his Christians and his abuse of the priests; his closure of the vicariate’s seminary on grounds of an excess of priests; his obstructing the plans of some of the displaced seminarians to continue their education in Rome; and his reliance on a provicar who, despite his many years in China, could not communicate in Chinese and did not understand Chinese customs. When the letter writers asked their priests why they did not inform the Propaganda about the situation, the answer was that all communication had to go

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through the bishop. At one point, the first letter transcribed the name of Fantosati, who “is like a destroyer of the church, not an evangelist,” with Chinese characters that, though approximating the name phonetically, could be read, “he who commits much killing” (fan-duo-sha-di).27 (Five years later, Fantosati was killed during the Boxer summer.) After 1900, perception of a need for fundamental reform in the Catholic missionary enterprise in China spread gradually and set off a major storm in the 1910s. A central issue turned out to be the discriminatory treatment of Chinese clergy. A feature of the Boxer-era indemnities was that, in many cases, these exactions were not carefully calibrated to actual damages arising from the Boxer movement. Some of the claims were quite tenuously connected, such as those of the Jiangxi missions or, even more remotely, the 400,000 taels exacted for the southeast, where Li Hongzhang had kept the peace in 1900.28 The rule seemed to be that any act during 1900 that could be interpreted as antiforeign or anti-Christian might have been a response to the court’s belligerent messages to the country in the summer of that year and was hence indemnifiable as part of war reparations. After all, even in the areas of the Boxer movement, the greatest violence came after the Empress Dowager’s declaration of war, and the killings of foreigners were commonly by official instigation.29 Moreover, it is evident that missions took the opportunity of Chinese acquiescence during the immediate Boxer aftermath to settle old disputes. French consular authorities aspired to oversee the process for Catholics, with the exception of claims of the German-protected vicariate of South Shandong and, eventually, of the vicariate of North Shanxi as it shifted to Italy’s patronage. However, local arrangements between mission and officials were in many cases beyond monitoring.30 How to treat Chinese Christians remained a prickly issue, even as resort to local settlement was seen as a way to avoid facing it. What about missionary requests for reimbursement of sums given to Chinese Christians on an emergency basis in the wake of the upheaval?31 How to treat areas where local deals were not struck, even though local Christians had suffered? There were similar uncertainties about indemnification for the murder of clergy. It had been French policy for some time not to indemnify relatives, on grounds that those who entered the priesthood gave up the role of breadwinner for their families, which therefore suffered no material loss by the priests’ deaths. Yet there was a compulsion to seek some sort of compensation beyond the invariable demand for punishment of the perpetrators. Various compromises ensued. One was to concede to Belgian missions—which stuck with French protection throughout, no matter how restively—an indemnity of 10,000 taels each for six missionary deaths.32 A common tactic in other cases was to ask a “moral indemnity” or “moral reparation,” which might be applied to some worthy project, such as a school or hospital.

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A portion of this charge might actually go to the mission’s coffers or to relatives, despite formal policy. Finances in the Catholic Missions Although accepting and even encouraging what I have called the irregular indemnity, the disposal of which was generally outside their control, French authorities still had the task of apportioning and distributing the Catholic mission share of the regular, general indemnity. After the Boxer Protocol was signed in September 1901, French authorities adopted special measures for awarding sums to vicariates under French protection. The procedure was to hand out claim forms to the bishops, figure as best one could the degree to which claims had been met by direct payments by Chinese officials, and put all this before a reparations commission in Paris for adjudication. The French government would float a loan, backed by the indemnity, to pay promptly those who had been damaged in 1900—an answer to the query of the Jesuit bishop who wondered if his vicariate would have to wait thirty-nine years for full compensation. There were guidelines, though flexible ones. The indemnity was for reconstruction and should not be used as endowment or for new projects. Then again, “moral indemnities” were apparently exempted from this injunction. And no objection would be raised if there was some surplus.33 All amounts were reduced by ten percent, which was retained by the French government as “quite slight compensation for the risk run by France in assuming the hazard of non-payment of the indemnity by China.”34 How much money did all this amount to? The mission portion of France’s general indemnity, after the ten percent reduction, came to over twenty-two million French francs, which according to the exchange rate at the time (averaging around 3.5 francs per tael) was over six million taels.35 The North Zhili mission, which included Beijing, received about forty-five percent (9,852,000 francs) of the regular indemnity for Catholic missions and, as noted, had more than matched this amount in acknowledged irregular receipts.36 The real size of the irregular indemnities among all the vicariates is a matter for speculation but was probably much more than the Catholic mission share of the general indemnity. While acknowledging that its information is incomplete, a Chinese study suggests an irregular or local indemnity, Catholic and Protestant, of over nineteen million taels.37 Although the missions’ share, however calculated, was small compared to the compensated costs of the French military expedition and other secular expenses, it made some vicariates affluent indeed. There had been large indemnities before. However, the Boxer indemnities dramatically raised the level of payouts over a short

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span of time. A Shaanxi Catholic missionary commented: “The Jesuits and Lazarists in China are all-powerful, because they have become millionaires.”38 He could have added that some Franciscan, MEP, and Belgian Scheut vicariates had also been richly rewarded. There was no extra-mission supervision of expenditure, and it is not difficult to believe that some considerable sums were put into income-generating property, even though French authorities had excluded use for endowments.39 It was established practice. For example, Favier in Beijing had been proud to point to his smart investment of portions of the money his vicariate received from the Chinese government for the expenses of moving the North Church to a new site in 1886. Generally, the archives give only infrequent and disappointingly incomplete snapshots of the finances of any particular vicariate, making comparisons difficult. In 1919, however, an apostolic visitor, commissioned by the Vatican to investigate the Chinese church, managed to extract financial statements regarding investments, income, and expenditures from most vicariates.40 The unaudited figures were not verified by more than the signatures of the respective bishops, but they have the virtue of being relatively comprehensive and of capturing a moment in time. They reflect the wealth of the Catholic missions. Some vicariates reported much more income from investments (including land) than others. Of the forty-five reporting vicariates, the average proportion of annual income in 1919 derived from their own investments was fifty-five percent. For Lazarist-run North Zhili (somewhat shrunken since 1901 by spinning off two new vicariates), investments provided ninety-seven percent of income; for Franciscan-run East Hubei (which included Hankou), about eighty percent; and for MEP-run East Sichuan (which included Chongqing), ninety-two percent. Franciscan-run North Shanxi seemed to have done well with its new Italian patrons; it enjoyed the second highest return on investments in proportion to income of all reporting vicariates, amounting to ninety-five percent. Jesuit-run Jiangnan, covering two provinces and including Shanghai, had by far the largest investments (6,924,303 gold dollars, or about seventy million French francs)—over three and a half times the next in line. Its expenses were also high, perhaps because of its size and its many priests and costly institutions, including a university and an observatory. Its income from investments reached almost eighty-two percent of expenses. The days were long gone when annual disbursements from the Society for the Propagation of the Faith (SPF) and the Holy Childhood Society provided the bulk of support.41 In 1919, these sources together averaged about eight percent or less of vicariate income.

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The increments in wealth had not gone unnoticed. In 1906, the British minister in Beijing reported that his French colleague had admitted that indemnities “had greatly enriched the Roman Catholic missions in this country.”42 Certainly a part of what the vicariates put into their investments came from religiously motivated private donations from Europe, and some received subsidies from various European governments. Nonetheless, Catholic missions had become significantly financed by funds collected from the Chinese government and people but controlled by the foreign clerical establishment. Meanwhile, France was experiencing an upheaval at home in relations between the state and the Catholic church. It was reasonable to wonder whether the French Religious Protectorate in China would survive. Critical Voices Even within the French diplomatic establishment, the policy toward missions in China was often questioned. In the months before the Boxers’ arrival in Beijing, Stéphen Pichon, the French minister there, expressed his doubts. First, he complained about the workload. “It would be easy to prove,” he wrote Paris, “that the Religious Protectorate consumes the largest part of our diplomatic activity in China, and that it is, consequently, the main source of our expenses here.”43 In another dispatch, he argued that there was no longer any benefit to France in representing non-French missionaries. Once the universal Catholic Protectorate served to gain political position for France, but it was no longer necessary for that, and it antagonized the Chinese.44 He was converted back to supporting the transnational Religious Protectorate by the overwhelming experience of the siege of the legations and the requirements of the Boxer aftermath. By the end of the year, he was arguing that other countries with substantial numbers of Catholic missionaries in China—like Austria, Belgium, and Italy—would not be up to the job of protection.45 The Quai d’Orsay instructed Pichon and his successor, who took over before the Boxer negotiations were concluded, to stay with the policy of open-ended Catholic protection. Yet it was a hard time to be endorsing Catholic causes in France. In the aftermath of the Dreyfus affair, which had polarized the country during the late 1890s, the anticlericalism of the Third Republic reached a famous climax in the first years of the twentieth century. By the Associations Law of 1901, religious orders that were not authorized by parliament lost their legal status and found their property auctioned and their members dispersed. One French bishop in China commented: “France, very busy banishing dangerous nuns, completely leaves us in the lurch.”46 Elections in 1902 confirmed the predominance of the anticlerical block

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in the National Assembly. The government proceeded to close ever more religious schools. In early 1904, the archbishops of Paris and Rheims accused the government of “the annihilation of Catholicism in the souls of children through antireligious instruction and education” and asked a halt to “this new barbarism which threatens to enslave us all.”47 In the summer of 1904, France officially broke relations with the Vatican, as disputes simmered over the pope’s power to discipline a couple of French bishops and over the protocol of a visit to Rome by France’s president. In 1905, the National Assembly passed the Law of Separation, to take effect the next year. This legislation ended the Concordat of 1801, terminated government subsidization of bishops and parish priests, and assigned churches and their property to local councils of Catholics (associations cultuelles). Church and state were thereby segregated from each other in France.48 Catholic missions in China had not been exempt from public criticism. Bishop Favier made a rushed trip to Europe at the end of 1900, although he had just been there earlier in the year. Among his tasks was to respond to accusations of Catholic looting in Beijing after the lifting of the siege on the foreign legations and the North Church. His justification was that his mission was responsible for thousands of Chinese Christians in his vicariate who had been on the edge of starvation.49 There was another activity of the Beijing mission in the Boxer aftermath that required public explanation. The French occupation troops, like others in the Allied forces, were themselves principal looters.50 The Catholic mission provided banking services so that soldiers could repatriate the value of their booty without having to deal with local merchants at very low returns. The Lazarist procurator offered them, in the form of drafts on French banks, about three-quarters of the worth of the silver bars and other goods that they had purloined: the mission as fence. Favier declared that the intention was to oblige the soldiers. When the French general intervened to apportion the proceeds according to military rank, Favier immediately acceded. “We had only one desire, that of working for the Good Lord and for the glory of France.”51 It was characteristic of Favier that he proclaimed this as one desire, rather than two. Yet another behavior that attracted censorious attention was the practice by some missionaries of accompanying Allied troops as they engaged in punitive excursions into the north China countryside. Here was an aspect of the collection of the irregular indemnity and perhaps partial explanation for its remunerative successes. Catholics were not alone in this, no more than they had been in looting northern Chinese cities. Press reports of such practices by American Protestant missionaries attracted the attention of Mark Twain, who commented: “Sometimes, an ordained minister sets out to be blasphemous. When this happens, the layman

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is out of the running; he stands no chance.”52 The American military occasionally escorted the missionaries as they collected these irregular indemnities, and their commander, out of distaste for the practice, tried to contain it.53 A Lazarist spokesman explained that Catholic missionaries accompanied French troops as chaplains and interpreters and could not be held responsible for every abuse.54 It was the season in France for muckraking about Catholic organizations. In early 1901 in the National Assembly, Georges Clemenceau, a Radical deputy and later prime minister, accused the Jesuit mission of operating a cigarette factory in Hankou and a brothel (maison de tolérance) in Shanghai. The French consul-general in Shanghai was asked to look into these charges. He reported that Hankou had neither cigarette factories nor resident Jesuits. However, the Jesuits did own land in the Shanghai French Concession, where at rue du Consulat, No. 55, there was a certain Chinese hotel of “ill repute and general decadence,” which provided the Jesuit mission with rent. Several concerted efforts to persuade the Jesuits to pull the building down or dispose of it had been turned back on grounds that the income was good.55 There was a downside for the mission’s public relations in indiscriminate, if remunerative, investments. In the face of all this bad press and general hostility, one might have expected a breakdown of official French support for anything more than the minimal requirements of caring for one’s own nationals when it came to missions in China. The actual rupture of diplomatic relations between France and the Vatican and the disestablishment of all religious institutions in France would seem to have been the coup de grâce. Panicked at the possibility that its income properties would be seized by the French legation in Beijing, the Jesuit vicariate of Southeast Zhili in early 1906 went about hiding its assets.56 Indeed, many accounts of this period in Chinese history have stated that the French Religious Protectorate for non-French missionaries ended in 1906 by formal declaration.57 Whatever statements might have been made, it was quite far from the case that France had abandoned its transnational Protectorate. The old slogan that French anticlericalism was not for export still pertained, at least for the China missions.58 It was not that diplomatic observers were oblivious to missionary excesses. Dispatches from the field contained a persisting thread of criticism and warnings of consequences. Pichon, observing the goings-on in the Boxer aftermath, wrote this to Paris: [The Catholic missionaries in Zhili province] most often conduct themselves as conquerors; they perform the function of guides for the armed columns; they accompany the soldiers in the attack on towns; they point out to the officers the mandarins to be punished; they participate in quarrels in which Protestants

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are involved; and they sometimes resort to threats and direct intimidation in order to levy imposts. Certain among them have even gone further and have participated in acts even more serious than the lootings for which they have been upbraided. They have discredited themselves.59 For a 1901 description of some effects of the indemnity process in Jiangxi province, where there were no marauding foreign troops, here is the voice of the resident British consul: In fact it is very evident that the whole country [referring to the province] is deeply agitated by the measures arising out of the settlement of last year’s troubles. The collection of the indemnities, amounting in all to a million and a half taels, and the demand for the punishment of so large a number of real or alleged ringleaders have brought the question of membership of the Christian churches into the heart of every village and town of Kiangsi [ Jiangxi], not as a matter of religious belief, for which the people care as much or as little as elsewhere in China, but as a matter of immunity from exaction and of protection for liberty and property. The rival churches appear in the light of powerful though competing clubs, membership of any one of which is a security against intolerable extortion.60 In the same year, the French consul-general in Shanghai warned against the possible consequences of a weakened Chinese officialdom. He reported officials to be completely demoralized, not daring to detain Chinese Christian converts even when found guilty of crimes, because Catholic and Protestant missionaries thwarted local justice by all possible means, especially by threatening resort to a foreign consul or diplomat. “This state of affairs is particularly serious because, if we do not strive to preserve the mandarins’ prestige and authority which they require to govern the populations of the interior, we can expect in a short time from now in these parts the worst outrages of the wars of religion.”61 When relations between France and the Vatican were severed in 1904, the foreign minister instructed his representative in Beijing that French rights in China were based on treaties and that this event called for no change in existing instructions.62 But would the French Protectorate survive the Separation Law of 1905? A lengthy foreign ministry memorandum of the time weighed the pros and cons of the Religious Protectorate in China, including the problem of a secularizing and anticlerical policy at home. Although there were doubts about the legality of protecting Catholic Chinese nationals, said the memorandum, and although missions were foci of discord and a burden on Sino-French relations, nonetheless the widely

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distributed missions were also a powerful and affluent presence, providing useful information to French consuls and support for French manufacturers and merchants in a country of abundant resources, undergoing transformation. The missions also ran French-language schools and could be asked to do more. They constituted valuable occasions for French official assertiveness. China would probably show no gratitude to France if it abandoned this role and would still be under the sway of the European states, none of which would surrender any part of their stake to another. The conclusion: “Accordingly, relinquishing the Protectorate could afford us no advantage, whether moral or material.”63 The new bishop in Beijing assured the Vatican in early 1906 that the French minister in China was instructed by Paris to continue protection for all Catholic missionaries and their works, in accordance with France’s traditional policy.64 Testimony for the persistence of a transnational Religious Protectorate was not only French. A retrospective Belgian account recalled that there had been a concern that French anticlericalism in those years would infect policy abroad or that the Vatican would call a halt to French protection of Catholics in the Middle East and East Asia. Belgium had its own treaty of 1865 with the Qing to fall back on, with rights identical to those in the Sino-French treaty of 1858. However, French protection continued, Belgian anxieties were assuaged, and Belgian missionaries continued to get their passports in China from French authorities for many years to come.65 It was part of the flexibility, as well as the vulnerability, of the French Religious Protectorate that its membership rite was the granting of French passports. As long as the treaties continued in force and as long as non-French missionaries requested French passports for use in China, the transnational character of the policy persisted. Up to 1905, only two of forty-one vicariates had opted out, one German and one Italian. There would be other departures, and some newly organized vicariates were somewhat later to abjure French protection. But for over three more decades, substantial numbers of non-French Catholic missionaries got their license in China from French authority. The Continuing Protectorate in Action Blame for the disaster of 1900 was distributed lavishly in all directions. The foreign powers held both mandarin and peasant Chinese responsible. At Allied insistence, numbers of official Chinese were executed, forced to commit suicide, exiled, or dismissed. In north China, foreign troops pursued many rural Chinese as Boxers, whether they had been or not. There was no reliable count, but observers agreed that deaths inflicted by Allied punitive expeditions greatly exceeded those perpetrated

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against foreigners and Chinese Christians in 1900.66 On top of all this there were the indemnities. Meanwhile, Westerners disagreed among themselves as to their own roles in precipitating the violent movements that became the Boxer Uprising and the court’s war. Some newspapers in the West pointed to the provocative behavior of the missions. In November 1900, fourteen bishops and other high officials of Catholic missions in China, of various religious orders, denounced to the French minister what they described as the cowardly and criminal press campaign of holding religious evangelism responsible for the troubles. Chinese pagans and Christians had enjoyed good relations, they held, until European states got into conflicts with China.67 In reports to the prefect of the Propaganda, the Lazarist bishop of North Zhili and the Jesuit bishop of Southeast Zhili both cited the German occupation of Jiaozhou in 1897 as a precipitant.68 A representative missionary view, expressed in print by a Jiangxi missionary, was that the Boxers had been secretly fomented by the Qing government and that the European economic exploitation of the country would feed yet further attacks on foreigners.69 On the Chinese side, defeat and foreign occupation of part of the country imposed a degree of diffidence regarding public accusations. Nonetheless, as they had in the wake of the attacks on foreigners and missions in Tianjin in 1870 and along the Yangzi in 1891, high officials proposed new rules for recruitment of Chinese as Christians and for missionary behavior. The weightiest of the proposals, endorsed by China’s central government and reaching the French foreign ministry in June 1901, was accompanied by a covering letter from Liu Kunyi, defining the problem, and a set of recommendations authored by Zhang Zhidong. These men were distinguished governors-general of central provinces who had largely kept their areas out of the Boxer war of 1900. In seeking to propagate their religion, Liu Kunyi wrote, missionaries exceeded agreements and exercised undue interference in protecting Christians. The result was to oppress ordinary people and to engender hostility and opposition. These effects were compounded as the unscrupulous and the ambitious exploited religious membership for nefarious purposes. So Christianity expanded among the poor and the disreputable but was shunned by the educated and official classes. Insightful voices in France and Britain (the journalist Paul Boell and the statesman Lord Curzon were cited) had perceived the harm of all this. For future harmony between Christians and non-Christians, workable, ameliorating arrangements were required. Zhang Zhidong’s recommendations acknowledged the treaty right of Christian practice and of freedom from discrimination on religious grounds, as well as immunity from contributions to non-Christian religious events. But Chinese Christians were still Chinese subjects, under Chinese authority and subject to all secular taxes.

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If they had complaints, they should address them to local Chinese officials and not try to bypass these authorities by appealing to missionaries for foreign official help. Missionaries should channel communications about legal matters through their consuls. Chinese clergy had no special standing with regard to official access and must observe proper etiquette in dealings with mandarins. Missions, Zhang continued, should not provide refuge for criminals wanted by the authorities. No one should be received as a Christian who had a criminal record or had brought a legal case against others. If Chinese authorities ascertained dishonesty in the convert, he should thereupon be excluded from the church. Missionaries who evangelized outside treaty ports should understand Chinese spoken and written language and should wear Chinese clothes. Finally, all religious establishments and churches should be declared to local officials and appraised by those authorities in case of later damage claims.70 From these statements, one could readily extract a hypothesis regarding the causes of the Boxer affair, as well as objections to the extravagance of missionary claims afterward. French officials were not impressed with these and other Chinese proposals of the time to reshape the management of the Christian presence. France was content to rest its case on the treaties and other agreements with the Qing state, as well as the decree of March 15, 1899, empowering Catholic bishops and designated missionaries to deal directly with Chinese officials. The French minister in Beijing even suggested that these new proposals were inspired by rival missions. Like earlier Chinese reform proposals, which France had always rejected, they were aimed at abolishing the French Religious Protectorate.71 It would be a few more years before there was any serious change of course in the oversight of Catholic missions. Despite the trauma of the Boxer affair and its widespread ramifications, there was no sudden diminution of jiao’an (that is, legal disputes arising from the Christian presence).72 Taking as a measure the listing of such cases by two Chinese scholars of the subject, who draw from a variety of sources, one would conclude that the rate actually rose for a while after 1900.73 Leaving out the exceptional year of 1900 itself, over the seven years before 1900, jiao’an by this count came at the average rate for the whole country of seventeen per year. In the seven years after 1900, the yearly average was about twenty-four. Sichuan province had registered the most jiao’an in the decades before the Boxer Uprising and led in this immediate post-Boxer period, too, with about a quarter of total cases. Otherwise, incidents occurred throughout the country, with Zhejiang, Jiangxi, and Zhili next in frequency. From 1908, the national count did decline precipitously, but the first years of the twentieth century actually witnessed more serious incidents of legal conflicts involving churches, missionaries, and/or Chinese Christians than in any previous

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comparable stretch of years before 1900. Without any reliable method for weighing the many possible factors in the generation of these post-1900 jiao’an, each of which had its own characteristics, some might be suggested. First, missionaries and Chinese Christian converts continued to grow in number, quickly replenishing losses from the Boxer year and then soon exceeding pre-Boxer totals. In addition, consular reporting in these years leaves the impression that there was no lessening of missionary assertiveness; rather, perhaps it increased, stimulated by feelings of injury and by perception of new opportunities in the weak resistance of Chinese officials. Then, the dynamics of consular and diplomatic protection persisted, despite the frequent expression of concern about missionary imprudence and excesses. Foreign gunboats were still answering missionary pleas for backup, feeding illusions of potency and stoking local resentments. One reason that leading foreign powers in China seemed unable to shake the habit of support, often undiscriminating, for their evangelistic protégés was the continuing rivalry between Catholics and Protestants. This rivalry had become a conspicuous source of local conflict already in the 1890s, as the number of Protestant missionaries and their adherents had greatly increased. It had its reenactment at the diplomatic level in barely disguised contests between French officials, on the one hand, and British and American officials, on the other, as they jockeyed for prestige and local influence. In the Boxer aftermath, there was no letup; arguably, it got worse for a time. Although these sectarian clashes did not quite reach the point of religious wars, as conjured up by the French consul-general in Shanghai, quoted earlier, there certainly were some pitched battles. A further factor, much cited by contemporary observers, was the perception of an increasing fiscal burden on the population, which produced unrest. Annual payments of the general Boxer indemnity were in the first instance drawn from established state revenues, like taxes on foreign and domestic trade and the salt gabelle (government licensing of the production and sale of salt). Particular quotas were assigned to the provinces, which might find it necessary to impose new, additional taxes to meet their share. Further, what I have called the irregular indemnity, paid within a short time frame, called for ad hoc levies, which, it would appear, were imposed arbitrarily in many cases. As the post-Boxer reforms of the government got under way, more taxes were required to fund new programs, such as the police, public schools, railway projects, and Western-style military units. In some places, resentment toward Christian communities and opposition to the reforms coalesced: the same crowd would burn down both the local church and the new government school. Both seemed foreign, and both were incurring new taxes.74 It took a while for the differences to be sorted out.

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For the large part of the educated elite who were enthusiastically embracing a nationalist vision for China, there was yet another motivation, which contradicted the popular opposition to the new reforms. Chinese nationalism as it took shape from the late nineteenth century signaled an end to complacency regarding China’s position in the world. China, in this perspective, was reconceived as one nation among many—and an embattled one at that. This new vision prescribed strength for China and consequently Westernizing reform. For a time after 1900, the communitarian frictions engendered or exacerbated by the growth and spread of a Christian presence, Chinese and foreign, were conflated with concerns arising from new nationalistic definitions of China’s circumstances. Aside from being disturbers of local social and political arrangements, Christian missions were often described with a special intensity by these nationalists as the vanguard of foreign conquest. The Boxer movement, though an evident failure on its own terms, was also exemplary as an expression of collective courage in taking on powerful enemies. Were its adherents model patriots? Generally, new nationalists did not think so, at least until much later when histories of the anti-imperialist struggle were written. The Boxers were too primitive, and their moment on the stage had resulted only in tragedy and setbacks to sovereignty and independence. Killing missionaries, dispossessing or slaughtering Chinese Christians, and burning churches would not produce national strength, which would come from reform. Nevertheless, the Boxers had shown the sort of readiness to face foreign force that ordinary Chinese had to learn.75 China was rapidly evolving, but the prominence of jiao’an would persist for a while. The next chapter specifies the interweaving of change and continuity in two major sets of cases in the provinces of Sichuan and Jiangxi in the early twentieth century.

5 The Complexity of Jiao’an in the Early Twentieth Century: Sichuan and Jiangxi

Boxers and Religious Rivalry in Sichuan The western province of Sichuan, which had been comparatively lightly touched by violence in 1900, was to have its own Boxer movement.1 Boxer survivors from north China came to the province in 1901 and, it is assumed, spread their message. The Sichuan version of the phenomenon, however, had some contrasting features. A degree of originality might be expected. The province had, after all, a rich history of popular movements, including tumultuous years around the Christian presence in the nineteenth century. Differences from the 1900 Boxers included the prominence of a declaredly revolutionary slogan: “Destroy the Qing, suppress that which is foreign, and revive the Han” (mieQing jiaoyang xingHan). The Sichuan Boxers thereby abjured any official sponsorship, though some missionaries held that it was there anyway. Female participation was more conspicuous than in 1900, including a prominent warrior leader with the paradoxical nom de guerre, Goddess of Mercy Liao (Liao Guanyin). Similar to 1900 were rites of divine possession, claims of invulnerability, and an early concentration of hostility on Chinese Christians. Accounts suggest that the ranks were greatly augmented by the spontaneous participation of poor peasants or, in hostile versions, bandits.2 The main events were in 1902. The largest outbursts were in counties near the provincial capital of Chengdu, notably Jintang, and included a brief penetration of Chengdu itself.3 The Catholic missions gave the figure of 1,500 to 2,000 for the number of Catholics killed or missing in Sichuan in 1902, including one Chinese priest 97

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(but no foreigners), with much damage to property.4 Sichuan’s governor-general, newly appointed to clean up after his ineffectual predecessor, accomplished a temporary suppression of the rebels. Regarding compensation for the missions, he raised more resistance to claims than had the Qing’s negotiators in 1901. Nonetheless, the Catholic missions of the province were awarded an indemnity of 788,000 taels (about 2,500,000 French francs).5 Incidents labeled as Boxer-inspired continued for a few years beyond 1902, although with lessening damage and diffused purposes. Among the contributory factors to this new round of violence in Sichuan was certainly a severe drought in the Chengdu plain during the spring and summer of 1902. In his own analysis, the resident British consul added to this factor the enormous indemnities still owed for the depredations of Yu Dongchen in the 1890s, as well as substantial annual payments toward the national Boxer indemnity. He further cited a certain amount of apathy on the part of the provincial government in dealing with the outbreak, as well as a servile attitude of officials in dealing with Catholic missions.6 The same consul on the eve of these new troubles had reported that the Catholic bishop in Chengdu exercised great influence over the imperial governor-general and regularly had Chinese officials appointed or removed at his instance. “At the present time,” he wrote, “a lawsuit against a Roman Catholic convert supported, even indirectly, by his Mission cannot be successfully fought by a non-Christian Chinese, however good the latter’s case may be.” It mattered because there “is a tendency to a popular movement against the arrogant usurpation of temporal power by the Roman Catholic Church and the craven attitude of the Chinese officials.”7 The first French gunboat to reach Sichuan was on station there from late 1901. In his turn, the same Chengdu Catholic bishop believed in the malignity of some leading officials and blamed the Protestant pastors for any hatred of foreigners. He also held that “these wretched English have been stirring up the masses against us.”8 This last claim may be the least plausible on offer but needs to be understood in the context of the sectarian rivalries of the time. Take, for example, the French version of events in southern Sichuan in 1903. The primary blame for some deadly confrontations between Chinese Protestants and Catholics in Yongning county lay, in the French consul-general’s view, with the indiscipline of the China Inland Mission and the eagerness of its (mostly British) Protestant evangelists to compete with the Catholics for conversions. The pastors accepted all comers, it was alleged, even groups of secret society members, who did not bother with any doctrinal instructions. When these unscrupulous converts attacked Catholics, for whatever reason, the Chinese authorities would not intervene in what they saw as foreign fights. According to this French consul-general, the county magistrate of Yongning telegraphed that on such and such a day the English attacked and wounded the

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French, and the next day the French inflicted reprisals.9 No foreigners were present, but the outlook behind the metonymy, by which “English” stood for Protestant Chinese and “French” for Catholic ones, was not confined to the Catholic bishop and the Yongning magistrate. Local social cleavages (including secret society feuds), Catholic and Protestant mutual hostility, and international rivalries interacted and exacerbated each other, with toxic results. In another conflict of this sort, as reported by the British consul-general, a French priest in the southwest of the province in 1905 was outraged at a magistrate’s verdict favoring a Protestant in a dispute with a Catholic. He allegedly called for help, which arrived at the market town of Lugu in the shape of 1,000 men armed with spears and guns, who began plundering. When government forces attacked and killed eighteen of this Catholic band, who had crosses sewn on their tunics, the French priest demanded compensation. French officials for a time insisted that the leader of the Catholic band not be prosecuted, but they seem eventually to have cut him loose from their protection.10 In an official count of 1910, there were 165 French Catholic missionaries in Sichuan, including twenty-four female religious or sisters.11 A Protestant yearbook of 1907 for Sichuan counted 329 Protestant missionaries, of whom 188 were women.12 A Chinese tabulation of 1909 gave similar numbers for missionaries and counted about 141,000 Catholics and nearly 37,000 Protestants in the province.13 Both French and British officials sometimes recognized that their evangelistic constituents could take things too far. In his reports, the French consular representative in Sichuan during these years, P. Bons d’Anty, admitted that official Chinese reproaches regarding Catholic missionaries were not always without foundation. The missionaries had excessively involved themselves in local affairs. “It seems to me that the missions have taken on a much too considerable influence in the political and social life of the region and that therein lies a cause of the ceaselessly reviving agitation directed against the missionaries and the Christians.”14 The same British consul who lamented the power of the Catholic missionaries over Sichuan’s officials also remarked on the regrettable tendency of some Protestant missionaries to meddle in Chinese affairs that had nothing to do with religion.15 These moments of critical reflection about one’s own constituents were ephemeral; more common was the focus on the sins of one’s rivals. For example, a different British consul-general in Chengdu complained in 1907 that French priests were acting as political agents for the French government and had nearly obtained the status of French citizens for their converts. And, he continued, his colleague, the French consul-general (the same P. Bons d’Anty) found no case too trivial, no connection with alleged “religious persecution” too slight.16

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Foreigners had trouble distinguishing the varieties of politics swirling about them in Sichuan’s complex circumstances. The British consul-general protested in 1906 to the provincial governor-general about a book that, as a missionary had discovered, was being used as a school text in a southern region of the province. It was a history of the Qing, which the consul-general took to be both antidynastic and antiforeign, pointing particularly to the paragraph on the causes of the Boxer Uprising of 1900. It read: From the time when the court openly allowed the dissemination of Christianity, Christian missionaries, who came continuously to our country in a steady stream, frequently insulted our people. Those who followed this religion were all worthless fellows (wulai zhi tu), who often behaved illegally and were shielded by the Christian religion. The missionaries did not investigate and took their side every time. Hence wanton behavior went unchecked. The cruel oppression of our compatriots occurred everywhere. This then led to the disaster of our people’s hostility toward Christianity. Also, because several foreign countries successively occupied our country’s land after 1894, the bluster that the people would repel the foreigners erupted and could not be restrained.17 Chinese officials argued that the text was neither antiforeign, antimissionary, nor antidynastic. It only described past events and criticized only illegal missionary interference, although the governor-general allowed that the language was objectionable.18 Indeed, the book expressed the outlook of the new nationalism, which shared the anger at foreign incursions into China, including the Christian missions, but judged the popular response to be a “disaster” (huo) and the call to expel foreigners to be “bluster” (qiyan), as the next two paragraphs on the events of 1900 illustrated. This nuance was lost on the British consul-general. He insisted on punishment of the degree-holding author, who managed to disappear in a timely fashion.19 The level of tension surrounding Christian missions was nonetheless declining from about this time. In the arena of popular movement, the antigovernment portion of the Sichuanese Boxer slogan had gained prominence by the middle of the decade. The proliferation of public schools, in which Sichuan, with Zhili province, would lead the country in these years of officially sponsored reform,20 was resented for the taxes required, for the requisition of temple property to serve as schools, and for their educating mostly the children of the already well-off. The new schools had a foreign aura—as a concept and for the subjects they taught—so were often linked with missions as objectionable foreign intrusions. For example, in a popular outbreak in Sichuan’s Kai county in 1907, the cry was “Down with Catholic churches, gospel halls, and foreign schools!” Along with

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mission stations and Christian homes, government schools were also destroyed. There and in Wan county, the complaints extended to taxes for the provincial railway project and the costs of the government’s antiopium campaign.21 Soon, attention in Sichuan turned away from the missions, as the reform programs (notably the railway trunk line) and how they were being handled became preoccupying. By 1908, consular reports spoke of the diminution of conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, the reduction of disputes about missions generally, and the stronger stand that Chinese officials were taking toward priestly interference.22 Mission schools were losing enrollments to the improving government schools.23 It was the central government’s nationalization of Sichuan’s provincial railway project in 1911 and the accompanying foreign loan that set in motion events leading to the revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty. During the upheaval of the 1911 Revolution, missionaries and Chinese Christians were generally not objects of hostility or violence, in Sichuan or elsewhere in China, despite isolated incidents. Sectarian Contestation in Jiangxi In numbers of missionaries killed, the largest single incident after the Boxer affair occurred in the city of Nanchang in 1906. Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi province in central China, was not a treaty port, although it was usually accessible from the Yangzi River by steamship via lake and river passage. At the time, it had no foreign residents other than missionaries and their families. Believing that the French chief of the city’s Catholic mission had mortally wounded the county magistrate of Nanchang by cutting his throat, a protesting crowd gathered in the city center on February 25, 1906. Substantial numbers set off seeking vengeance and killed nine foreigners—six French missionaries and three members of a British family. An exploration of the origins and contours of this bizarre event highlights a number of the already noted features of the post-Boxer circumstances surrounding missions. The event also precipitated changes in the French Religious Protectorate that would have a considerable effect on its subsequent dimensions. A Catholic presence had been established in Nanchang at the end of the sixteenth century by Matteo Ricci himself, the primary architect of the early Jesuits’ successful evangelistic strategy. Various orders and mission societies subsequently spread the religion in the province over the next century. As in most of the rest of China, only very thin and intermittent pastoral attention was given to those Chinese Catholics in Jiangxi who persisted in the faith during the 120 years of proscription from 1724. When toleration was reestablished in the 1840s, the mission claimed about 7,000 believers in the whole province, which was made a vicariate in 1845 under the

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Lazarists. The number of European priests there went from one in 1832 to thirty-six in 1899, along with twenty European sisters. Chinese priests numbered six in 1832 and eighteen in 1899. Jiangxi Catholics had expanded to over 23,000 by the end of the century and were distributed in small groups across most regions of the province.24 However, despite a concerted effort to establish a missionary presence in Nanchang itself in the early 1860s under the new dispensation of the unequal treaties, local resistance blocked a permanent return of European Catholic missionaries into the walled city until the late 1890s.25 French authorities in China had ineffectively supported attempts at acquiring and holding on to mission land within Nanchang in 1862 and 1863 and again in 1870. It was the missionaries’ view that, when their real estate in the city, acquired by a French missionary, had been purposefully destroyed by fire, their acceptance of indemnities had in no way terminated claims to the property. The Chinese government held that the money paid in compensation had been in exchange for the city land and that the mission had used the funds to build elsewhere, so the matter had long ago been settled.26 French diplomats initiated a new round of negotiations in 1897, in the period of special foreign assertiveness (“the scramble for concessions”) after the 1895 victory of Japan over the Qing. The particular agent sent into Jiangxi to accomplish the Catholic opening of Nanchang was the young Paul Claudel. His subsequent fame justifies a brief digression. Claudel had a long career as a diplomat, assigned to New York and Boston before coming to China in 1895, where he held several posts until 1909. He subsequently rose to the rank of ambassador, serving in Japan, the United States, and Belgium. But he is best known as a writer, with a large and controversial reputation. Recent discussions of a revival of one of his plays and a new English translation of one of his books characterize him as “one of the leading exoticists of twentieth-century French literature”27 and his work as constituting “a radical, far-reaching overhaul of the conventions of French poetry and drama.” He was made a member of the Académie française in 1946. Also noted as fully justified are charges of “authoritarianism, Islamophobia, misogyny and anti-semitism,” though he mitigated the last one by condemning the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 and publicly opposing policies toward French Jews during the Vichy period and the German occupation.28 Unlike many official representatives of the Third Republic, Claudel was devoutly Catholic, having experienced a teenage conversion from agnosticism while listening to the Magnificat in the Notre Dame Cathedral of Paris in 1886. During his posting in Shanghai and other Chinese ports in the 1890s, he found a “spiritual refuge among the missionaries.” Back in France in 1900, he applied to enter a

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Benedictine monastery but was turned down and returned to his consular duties in China.29 The Lazarist procurator in Shanghai (the main Catholic missionary organizations kept business representatives in residence there) had suggested in September 1897 that Claudel be sent to Nanchang to negotiate. The procurator argued that, though a mere assistant (suppléant) consul, Claudel was knowledgeable, intelligent, and zealous.30 Within a month, the French minister in Beijing informed the Jiangxi governor of Claudel’s imminent arrival. A year later, the French consul-general in Shanghai could report a definitive settlement regarding Nanchang, which provided the Catholic mission with some of the same land within and around the city that was alleged to have been confiscated. The consul-general felt it was important that Chinese authorities themselves were installing the mission in the provincial capital city because the English Protestant pastors “went everywhere, saying, it seems, that soon this region will be subject to the sole authority of Great Britain.”31 In 1899, recounting various attacks on Catholic missionaries and their parishioners in Jiangxi, he ascribed the difficulties to the British, “who seek to combat our influence there by every means,” and their missionaries “encourage the population and the local authorities to molest our missionaries and their Christians.”32 In this part of China as elsewhere, there were the familiar strains of rivalry between Catholic and Protestant missions, embedded in contests for great-power influence in a country that seemed poised on the brink of breakup. In 1898, a new coadjutor bishop was appointed to the North Jiangxi mission, which included the city of Nanchang. He was Paul-Léon Ferrant, and in effect, he took over management of the vicariate from the aging senior bishop. He declared a keen interest in developing the Nanchang operations and for a time contemplated moving the see of the vicariate from Jiujiang, Jiangxi’s treaty port on the Yangzi River, to Nanchang. An early discovery was that the militant challengers to Catholicism in Jiangxi were not so much the British missionaries, although they were present in considerable numbers, but rather American Methodists.33 American Methodists had sent missionaries to China since 1847. Around the turn of the century, under the rubric of the Central China Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, they were in a particularly expansive mode in northern Jiangxi. The presiding elder (that is, director) of the large Nanchang mission district, Don W. Nichols, reported that 1901 was “a year of unsurpassed victories in the work along all lines.” The accomplishments included an annual twenty-five percent increase in self-support (locally generated revenues) and the construction of three new churches or chapels, one paid for from the 1900 indemnities and two by “direct contributions from the people.”34

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His bishop was enthusiastic: “Nichols is the one supremely successful evangelistic worker in the Mission. His district shows more numbers than all the others combined and greater self-support.”35 And in another episcopal letter to the home board: “His influence with [the civil authorities] seems paramount, much to the discomfiture of the R. Catholics, against whose aggressions he is the only barrier. I could but feel that we should thank God for such a protector.”36 Nichols himself expounded on the topic: “Never in the history of the Church in China has she had so many friends as to-day, and never a time when the enemy of Protestantism and vital Christianity was so bent on the destruction of the Church. . . . The Catholics have no more changed their spirits from the days of the Spanish inquisition than the leopard has changed his spots.”37 Nichols and his bishop seem not to have been alert to the irony that their hostility to Catholic missions led them to replicate precisely those behaviors for which they castigated the Catholics. Nichols’s partisanship was noticed by Catholics and their French consular patrons. He was identified as the principal instigator of a movement against Catholics, and, according to the North Jiangxi bishop, he arrested Catholics on his own account.38 An emissary sent to Nanchang from the French consulate-general in Shanghai in 1901 had this to say about Pastor Nichols: “A man of action, very energetic, with few scruples . . . and, in order to produce for himself a clientele, he speculated on the litigious spirit of the Chinese, what is more with complete success. He became the champion (advocat) of all bad causes. His clients have called themselves Protestants. It seems to have been enough to give one’s name and to buy a Bible in order to have the right to the protection of the ‘Episcopal Mission’ before all the courts of the province.”39 Indeed, the British consul in Jiangxi at the time recalled that Nichols had said to him in 1902 that in some places whole populations sent representatives to request admission to his church en bloc.40 Moments of violence between Chinese Protestants and Catholics were not unusual in Jiangxi province in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but one that had special relevance to the 1906 killings in Nanchang occurred in a market town in 1901. The town was Chigang, about twenty kilometers from Nanchang. It had both Catholic and Methodist outstations linked to the respective Nanchang missions. The area was afflicted at the time with the worst floods it had experienced in over a half century. The bridge connecting the two parts of town washed out, and the locals resorted to ferries. On July 2, 1901, when a Catholic, carrying bean curds, refused to pay the fare, the Protestant ferryman grabbed the bean curds. A fight broke out, which was continued in a teahouse in town, and on and on for the next two days, as parties formed in part around denominational affiliations. After the “Protestant” side had trashed some “Catholic” shops, an elaborate trap was set, whereby seven Catholics, pretending to be switching sides because

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of purported mistreatment at Catholic hands, succeeded in leading a belligerent contingent of Protestants and others into a Catholic ambush. The predominantly Catholic force of 200 to 400 strong had formed in a neighboring village, allegedly with the encouragement of a Chinese priest. This force trounced the Protestants alongside a river. Twelve people died, some by drowning. Six were Methodists. One Catholic was fatally stabbed. Further, “Protestant” shops in town were smashed, and the Methodist chapel defaced.41 Chinese authorities moved in and made arrests. Was this incident a jiao’an? There is not sufficient testimony to discern whether old antagonisms within the community had reinscribed themselves as religious divisions, as seems likely, or religious rivalries had created the divisions. The British consul in Jiujiang held that the affair arose from disputes about indemnity payments, and the Catholic bishop seemed to agree.42 The Jiangxi governor’s report focused on the tension between two families, one Protestant and the other Catholic, which had organized competing ferries and quarreled over money. Further, the brother-in-law of the chief organizer among the Chigang Catholics was discovered to be in possession of a list of 399 names of people to whom Catholic largess was distributed in the form of rice and money.43 Such practices, perhaps financed by the indemnities of 1900, would help explain the solidarity of the town’s Catholics as well as the resentment of the rest. But in no way did “pagan” persecution of Christians enter the picture. These violent outbreaks between Catholics and Protestants flummoxed Chinese authorities.44 When consulted, foreign consular officials piously responded that it was strictly a matter for Chinese authorities to handle according to Chinese law. These authorities knew that it was not so simple, which was why they consulted consuls in the first place. Upon word of the Chigang affair, consular representatives of both Britain and France hastened to Nanchang in gunboats to parley with Chinese officials, although the French representative switched to a steam launch when his gunboat ran into navigational difficulties.45 In this case, the French consul-general in Shanghai, like his American colleague, agreed that the law should be enforced, but he nonetheless insisted repeatedly to responsible Chinese that capital punishment would be too severe. Two Catholic culprits from Chigang who had found refuge with missionaries in Jiujiang and Nanchang were reluctantly turned over to Chinese authorities. The punishments handed out included jail sentences of various lengths for both Catholics and Protestants—some for life, others for ten years or less. As for the Chinese priest, who, testimony claimed, had donated ten dollars in support of the Catholic vigilantes, the governor’s report judged him thereby to be a coconspirator, but Chinese authorities settled for asking the bishop and the French consul to

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dismiss him.46 Even so, the Catholic mission was unhappy with the resolution of the incident. Bishop Ferrant, who blamed the Protestants, was determined to obtain release of some of the convicted Catholics.47 The issue contributed to the Nanchang outbreak in 1906. Soon after the Chigang affair, the American Methodist Episcopal Mission in Jiangxi turned its attention to abuses within its own operation. The whistleblower was Reverend R. E. Maclean, a recently arrived member of the mission, who requested that his bishop establish an investigative commission. In a letter in the summer of 1902 to the mission’s corresponding secretary in New York, Maclean wrote: The actual conditions of our work in Kiangsi [ Jiangxi] Province are such that a man can hardly believe it though he hear it with his ear. It cannot be that a bigger farce then the Kiangsi Province work can exist in any Mission field. The work is rotten to the foundations.48 In the event, there were two commissions, one concerning the general state of affairs and a second focused on the mission’s property. These were the findings: that preachers, members, and inquirers had used the church for purposes of extortion; that money had been demanded as a condition for enrolling as an inquirer; that much of the church’s property in central Jiangxi had been acquired from such funds; that “we have taken into the Church by the thousand the law resisting element of the country . . . [and] a large number of undesirable and many even vicious people became identified with the Church.”49 The commissions noted that inquirers—that is, Chinese who had been accepted for religious instruction—were seen in the broader society and before the law courts as members of the church, even if the mission understood such expressions of interest to be merely the beginning of a long process of ascent toward full membership. Money had been raised in various disreputable ways: members or pastors taking on law cases and official business, sometimes on behalf of groups explicitly organized for the purpose; members or pastors acting as paid mediators for people who might or might not be Methodists; and enrolling people in the church for a fee, according to ability to pay. This last category might include debtors, who then escaped their debts through church protection. These practices reversed the stereotype of the “rice Christian,” purportedly bribed by handouts to be a church member. Instead, according to the Methodist commissions, ordinary folk were paying the church for inclusion on its rolls. The common motive was membership in an organization that granted special privileges and protections. The version of the phenomenon described here was surely extreme, but it was not unique. For example, two or three years later in a place in Guangdong,

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a Catholic priest charged a registration fee for those seeking help in legal cases against members of an established Presbyterian mission.50 On the matter of property, the second commission held that, outside the main centers, the population had come to view church properties simply as places to conduct business. “The Gospel was in these outside stations very infrequently heard.” Even in the centers, preaching was minimal. The commission recommended that many of these widespread properties be sold or returned to the original owners, since there were insufficient pastors to oversee distant stations, and there was great risk that the properties would be “put to immoral and unchristian uses.”51 The commissioners attributed this regrettable state of affairs to the desire of people to escape both official corruption and the oppression of the Roman Catholics, as well as to “the undue emphasis placed by the home church upon self-support, and rapid increase in membership.”52 The bishop who had so fervently endorsed Brother Nichols as the mission’s supreme evangelist had to acknowledge that Nichols’s management had gone awry. He, too, blamed Catholic persecution but also pointed to the styles of Nichols’s predecessor at Nanchang. Nichols, who had been in one post or another in the American Methodist China mission since 1887, returned to the United States and a job at Kansas Wesleyan University. The bishop, his successor (the well-known James Bashford), and most of the Central China Methodist missionaries eventually decided that as much as possible of the property should be retained.53 But a review of registered Methodists led to a precipitous decline in numbers for the province. According to mission statistics, the three categories of members, probationers, and adherents (or inquirers) together had reached 9,655 for all of Jiangxi in 1902. In 1903, after the housecleaning, the number was 1,911, or about a fifth of the previous year. Counting the Nanchang mission district alone—the area of Don Nichols’s responsibility—the numbers in 1903 dropped to less than four percent of what they had been in 1902.54 The superintendent of the Central China Methodist mission characterized the purge as a “wholesale exclusion” of the “unconverted and uninstructed.”55 These seem to have been a very high proportion in parts of Jiangxi. Missionaries carrying on in these once flourishing districts reported on the aftermath. “There has been a terrible collapse in the fabric of our church organization in Kiangsi [ Jiangxi].”56 Former adherents expelled by the “reform” were antagonistic to those who remained. In one county in the Nanchang mission district, all the hundreds who had joined “in the time of Roman Catholic persecution” were gone.57 The quality of Chinese preachers, whose numbers had shrunk dramatically, was judged generally inadequate. A British Plymouth Brethren missionary in Jiangxi told his consul about a former Chinese Methodist preacher who had recruited 2,000 converts and collected

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about 2,000 taels and who, upon being expelled from the Methodist church, had organized a Protestant church of his own.58 His name was Gong Dong, and he was of special interest because he sparked an anti-Catholic movement in 1904 that turned into a small rebellion. Like the incident at Chigang, that movement and its suppression left behind issues that were in dispute at the time of the 1906 killings in Nanchang city. The affair began with the arrival of two or three Chinese Catholic catechists or lay church workers on market day in mid-May 1904 at the town of Tangpu. They had been sent by an Italian Lazarist priest of the North Jiangxi mission to reopen a chapel, closed since 1900. Tangpu, about 115 kilometers west of Nanchang and in the county of Xinchang (later called Yifeng), had experienced troubles over a Catholic presence.59 The catechists, from the same Xinchang county, were met by violence. The aforesaid Gong Dong, a stalwart of his prominent clan and known for his pugnacity, led the attack. A local history states that the townsfolk had urged him on.60 The unfortunate catechists were killed. Or so it appeared; the bodies were not recovered, and the people of Tangpu denied any knowledge of the event, thereby stymieing local officials for a time. About a month after the disappearance of the catechists, an agent of the county government managed to arrest Gong Dong by a ruse, but at the cost of the life of an accompanying soldier, as a large contingent of pursuing Tangpu residents tried to rescue their leader, unsuccessfully. The next couple of months witnessed Tangpu’s resistance to further official intrusions, with checkpoints around the town. Attacks on Catholics occurred in various parts of the county and the neighboring county of Gaoan. For the relevant prefecture, the Catholic bishop tallied two chapels burned, two Catholic villages destroyed, seven Catholic murder victims, and many households pillaged.61 The provincial governor later reported that the Xinchang county magistrate had a reputation for protecting Catholics and had thereby stoked resentments.62 If so, this fact would help explain the trajectory of the event, as it turned into a communal revolt against public authority. The organizational coherence of the revolt no doubt was owed to the strength of Gong family feeling, but perhaps also to Gong Dong’s sojourn in Methodism, as described in the testimony of the Plymouth Brethren missionary. The American Methodist whistleblower, R. E. Maclean, told the British consul in Jiangxi that he did not remember Gong Dong’s name from his investigations, but that it was the case that some of the roughest folk had joined the church and that sometimes, in lieu of a fee, converts were accepted on the promise that they would be ready and willing to fight Catholics. He also said he knew of several new Chinese churches that had been formed by those Methodists purged in Ruizhou prefecture, in which Tangpu was located.63

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The Xinchang magistrate was dismissed for failing to keep order and for allowing the matter to escalate. Troops began to assemble by the hundreds at the prefectural capital of Ruizhou from other regions of Jiangxi and beyond. Local gentry unavailingly tried to arrange the surrender of the Tangpu ringleaders. The provincial governor was said in the second week of August to be ready to order regular army units to wipe out the whole insurrectionary Gong clan. At this point, however, he tried another tactic, dispatching Jiang Zhaotang, currently magistrate of distant Nanchang county but who had served eight or nine years as magistrate in Shanggao county, not far from Tangpu. Jiang succeeded in arranging the disarmament of the town and the surrender of two responsible parties (the Catholic mission had a list of seven or more). As part of the deal, he promised the people of Tangpu that there would be no executions.64 The Catholic bishop, Paul-Léon Ferrant, was furious and attributed subsequent anti-Catholic incidents in Jiangxi to the unwonted leniency of Magistrate Jiang Zhaotang.65 Ferrant refused to discuss indemnities until his demand for severe punishment of the culprits was satisfied. Although Ferrant would not have acknowledged it, this was a formula for delaying any settlement. Before turning to the events in Nanchang in 1906, it is necessary to register another feature of the scene, the newly pervasive nationalism among the educated classes of Jiangxi province. As elsewhere in the country, widespread demoralization in the immediate wake of the Boxer affair was rapidly being replaced by nationalistically inspired reforms and a more assertive officialdom. On the score of official nationalism, Chinese authorities pressed hard, though unsuccessfully, to exclude all foreign gunboats from the very large Lake Poyang, central to transportation within the province.66 The British consul in 1905 reported a less cordial tone in official relations, a tendency to insist on restrictions and assert claims. “I may be mistaken, but it looks like a concerted anti-foreign policy.”67 His successor in the province observed two years later that local officials “seem more and more anxious to prove to the higher authorities in Peking [Beijing] that they are maintaining China’s ‘sovereign rights’ in every detail on every possible occasion.”68 Nationalism had also spawned a revolutionary version of itself, directed against the Manchu Qing government, principally for failing to defend China against foreign encroachment and for allowing extravagant foreign privilege. In 1904, a pamphlet with this message was distributed widely in Jiangxi. It warned against an imminent invasion and occupation of the province by Britain. It cited the extermination of native Americans and the subordination and oppression of the peoples of India as intimations of what might come. The ruling Manchus were happy to curry favor with foreigners, went the argument, so there was no prospect that their officials would protect Jiangxi. Proof was in the jiao’an, where converts

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of the worst character were exonerated and non-Christians suffered, even to the point of execution. The remedy, wrote the pamphleteer, was for the people of Jiangxi to seize the provincial capital and establish a government. If the British stood aside, they would be dealt with on a new, independent basis. Otherwise, they would be fought to the bitter end.69 This pamphlet was apparently part of a revolutionary uprising planned for a number of Yangzi provinces. The plot fizzled without much consequence, but the nationalist sentiments embedded in the essay spread broadly. As in Sichuan, opposition to missions and opposition to new taxes for reforms might meld into one movement. In the county seat of Leping, near northern Jiangxi’s eastern border, a demonstration in July 1904 over a new tax on indigo—a major product of the region—led to the burning of the tax office, followed by the wrecking of Catholic homes, succeeded, after official attempts to arrest ringleaders, by the sacking and burning of the county offices.70 To summarize, political and social ferment had heated up considerably in Jiangxi in the first years of the twentieth century. The outbreak of violence in Nanchang in 1906 was shaped by these seething currents. Nanchang, 1906 The precipitating context for the Nanchang affair was the negotiations between the Catholic mission and Jiangxi officials over unsettled matters regarding the 1901 incident in Chigang and the 1904 affair in Tangpu.71 Bishop Ferrant of the Catholic North Jiangxi vicariate, which included both places as well as Nanchang, had never been happy with the lengthy incarceration of Chigang Catholics, even though French authorities had successfully saved from execution those charged with causing deaths in that affair. In late 1904, two of these Catholics serving ten-year terms were released, well before their terms had expired. According to official Chinese investigators sent later from outside Jiangxi, this release was the product of a secret deal, whereby Catholic authorities endorsed the rehabilitation of a Chinese official, previously fired from his position as prefect for alleged missteps in handling a jiao’an, in exchange for freeing some of the Catholic Chigang prisoners. This arrangement arose from family relations between the dismissed prefect and Jiangxi’s provincial treasurer. But it was soon undermined by a newly appointed provincial judge, who declared the early release of the convicts to be irregular. This high official ordered the county magistrate, Jiang Zhaotang, who had recently released these prisoners at the instance of his superiors in the provincial administration, to rearrest the two whose sentences still had seven years to run. The newly appointed head of the Catholic mission

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in Nanchang, Jean-Marie Lacruche, adamantly objected.72 Magistrate Jiang was caught in a most unenviable position. This was the same Jiang Zhaotang who had been deputized to defuse the revolt at Tangpu in 1904. It happened that Father Lacruche had then been in charge of the Catholic mission of the prefecture that included Tangpu, even though the catechists had been dispatched during his temporary absence. In that role, he had asked for a large indemnity and the execution of ten people charged with anti-Catholic acts. In late 1905, the bishop put Lacruche in charge at Nanchang and commissioned him to press for favorable settlements of both the Chigang and Tangpu matters—in the one case to resist the rearrest of two convicted Catholics and in the other to secure appropriate punishment of those accused of killing Catholics. Lacruche was a thirty-four-year-old Frenchman who had come to China as a Lazarist missionary in 1896. Although expressing it in somewhat different terms, both Chinese officials and missionary colleagues saw in him a hard bargainer, forceful and determined.73 Ferrant held him in high esteem.74 On the Chinese side, the negotiations were left to the Nanchang county magistrate, Jiang Zhaotang. Magistrate Jiang, fifty-six years old in 1906, had once been in the salt business but had been an official of the empire, albeit at the lower rungs, for seventeen years. In the aftermath of the explosion in Nanchang, many things were said about him, including some defamatory allegations emanating from the Catholic mission. Did he get his start as an embezzler? Was he desperately in debt? Was he being blackmailed for past immoral acts? Was he actually being impersonated by his brother?75 These charges did not stick, but the idea that he was a deeply deceitful person was not abandoned by the Catholic mission; indeed, it was reinforced by the manner of his death. By contrast, a British consul who had met him occasionally in these years judged him to be “a friendly and capable officer,” “a very able man.”76 Chinese reports quietly acknowledged a degree of tension between Jiang and at least some of his superiors but regularly described him as a popular official. Further, it was argued, in bringing the Tangpu insurrection to a peaceful end in 1904, he had displayed incomparable talent and achieved great merit.77 From the summer of 1904, Bishop Ferrant had importuned the French consul-general in Shanghai to effect severe punishments for the Tangpu culprits. Ferrant then lobbied the French minister in Beijing. The legation there received complaints about this issue from Ferrant in July, September, and December 1905, alleging that the Chinese authorities were stalling. In mid-February 1906, Ferrant went briefly to Nanchang to firm up his troops. At this time, he once again contacted the French minister, with the request that the legation insist to the Chinese foreign ministry that the matters be settled.78 This last iteration produced the fateful

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meeting at Nanchang’s Catholic mission on February 22, 1906, between Magistrate Jiang Zhaotang, told by his superiors to negotiate, and Father Jean-Marie Lacruche, commissioned by his bishop. This was the manner in which the French Religious Protectorate went about its business. There are numerous accounts of what transpired at that meeting and over the next few days. These include immediate telegraphic messages from the scene by provincial officials and members of the Catholic mission; notes composed by Jiang Zhaotang before his death; secondhand accounts from Protestant missionaries in the city, who were informed by their parishioners; newspaper versions; formal investigations by Chinese provincial and central authorities; detailed reports by British and French diplomats sent for this purpose to Nanchang; a long narrative put together by surviving Catholic missionaries of Nanchang under their bishop’s supervision; and the findings of a special team of Chinese officials sent to Jiangxi from neighboring Hubei province. The accounts differ on some points. What follows is a brief version, noting major disagreements in the sources. Reports diverge with respect to which of the two negotiators first asked for the meeting of February 22. The mission version, while acknowledging that an invitation was sent, attributed the initiative to Magistrate Jiang and held that he suggested that the Catholic mission headquarters would be the preferred venue. He arrived with two attendants, who remained outside the mission residence at the missionary’s request. In Chinese accounts, the exclusion of attendants was evidence of Lacruche’s malevolent intentions. After a mid-afternoon dinner, the two principals discussed issues concerning the Chigang and Tangpu affairs. At one point, according to Jiang’s testimony, Lacruche said that, if Jiang were dead, then matters could be easily settled. The mission version, based on Lacruche’s report, described the talks as temperate. Perhaps, given the history between these two and Lacruche’s reputation for aggressiveness, one should credit the Chinese claim, based on Jiang’s notes, that the exchanges became heated. The French legation in Beijing eventually accepted the likelihood of a contentious debate.79 In most Chinese accounts and in the version widely credited among the people of Nanchang, Lacruche was frustrated at Jiang’s resistance, attacked him out of anger, and cut his throat. In the mission version, Jiang retired alone to another room in the mission, saying he would compose terms of a settlement. After having the mission’s Chinese literary assistant take the text to Lacruche, Jiang was seen by a passing mission servant to be lying on a couch, with blood from his throat soaking his clothing. Informed, Lacruche took one look and headed off to report Jiang’s attempted suicide to the provincial governor. Chinese doctors arrived later to treat the magistrate’s wounds, which included thrusts with some pointed object inside the initial knife cut across the throat.

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Before Lacruche returned from the governor’s offices, the second county magistrate of the city (like many major cities, Nanchang was divided between two counties) arrived at the mission in response to an earlier request by Jiang. As word spread, soon higher officials came, as well as members of Jiang’s family. Although Jiang could not speak, he was conscious and wrote many brief messages through the night before his removal the next day to his residence. His messages were not consistent. In some, he said he had been attacked and asked for justice. In others, he implied he had initially cut his own throat but that others had held him and enlarged the wound. In yet others, he expressed his wish that his death would end the disputes, as Lacruche had suggested, and that his sacrifice would serve the good people of Jiangxi, save the Tangpu folk from retribution, and allow good relations to develop between Christians and non-Christians.80 Jiang Zhaotang died a week later. The question of whether his death was murder or suicide has remained contested.81 The only close witnesses were Lacruche, three Chinese employees of the mission, and Jiang himself. The other European priests of the Nanchang mission were for various reasons not present at the time. In the aftermath of the throat cutting, the provincial judge visited the scene and asked a few questions, but Lacruche refused to allow the Chinese employees—or himself—to be interrogated subsequently outside the mission compound. After Lacruche’s own death, a month passed before the Chinese employees were officially interrogated (they had prudently disappeared for a time), and their testimony, once acquired, did not challenge the mission version on essential points.82 As for Jiang, he seems not to have been questioned closely.83 His confusing notes to family, officials, and missionaries did not settle the matter. Could the issue be judged on grounds of plausibility? Although Chinese accounts cited the unlikelihood of an imperial official wanting to kill himself and the lack of any personal reasons for Jiang Zhaotang to end his life, such acts were not unknown. In Jiangxi’s Linjiang prefecture a couple of years earlier, a county magistrate had committed suicide, apparently over what he saw as the injustice of a land suit successfully pressed by the local Catholics.84 On the other side, French authorities were keenly aware, as were Chinese officials, of a recent case of gruesome priestly homicide in Yunnan province, where an MEP missionary was persuasively charged with the murder of a Chinese, mistakenly thought to have participated in the killing of some French missionaries.85 After Jiang’s death, various medical specialists examined the wounds. The first were his attending Chinese physician and the Chinese coroner, who both discounted suicide. Days later, British and French doctors were allowed to look closely at the corpse. In many Chinese accounts, then and subsequently, these foreign experts are characterized, incorrectly, as rejecting the possibility of suicide. It is true that their

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reports contained some forensic cautiousness about certainty, but they agreed that the evidence of the wounds to the throat and the lack of other signs of violence pointed to suicide.86 The Nanchang populace, however, as well as Chinese elsewhere, had no difficulty in believing that the French priest had made a murderous assault on a respected officer of the realm. The governor urged calm while the matter was being investigated. Teams of soldiers were assigned to guard the fourteen missionary establishments around the city, Catholic and Protestant. Two days after the wounding of Jiang Zhaotang, leaflets were distributed throughout Nanchang, inviting everyone to a morning meeting the next day, February 25, a Sunday, on the ample grounds of a central temple. The announced purpose was to plan for “civilized resistance” (wenming dizhi) to the extreme bullying contempt for China demonstrated by the French priest’s stabbing of Magistrate Jiang and thereby to “redeem the nation’s sovereignty” (wanhui guoquan). The leaflet urged everyone to refrain from rioting, which would obstruct a good outcome. It was signed, “all students of Jiangxi.”87 The leaflet reflected the new nationalism, both in its conceptualizations, such as national sovereignty, and in its prescription of “civilized” responses, apparently excluding personal attacks on foreigners. The governor and his aides understood perfectly well that it was incumbent on them to prevent any injury to resident foreigners. However, the student call to a meeting, which very likely resonated with the attitudes of many Chinese officials, was perplexing. The governor summoned some of the city’s leading citizens—including former officials and current leaders in the provincial railway project—to discuss what to do. He decided not to forbid the gathering but to send to it prominent gentry, who would reinforce the message of nonviolence.88 In the event, the student organizers, as well as the representatives of the governor, were overwhelmed by the large crowd in the several thousands, who shouted down the advocates of peaceful measures. The call went up to exact immediate vengeance on the missionary. The many who marched off in a violent mood easily overpowered the military contingent on guard at the main Catholic mission. Lacruche, who had been relying on assurances that French authorities were maintaining pressure on the Chinese government, was found and pursued through the city streets. He sought refuge at the house of a friendly former daotai (circuit intendant), who had links to the reform movement of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao and had been one of the gentry consulted by the governor the previous evening. But the crowd pulled Lacruche out, while wreaking great damage to the former official’s possessions.89 Lacruche eventually succumbed to blows to his head and was left dead on the street. The buildings of Nanchang’s Catholic headquarters were burned.

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A second French priest at the central mission, who was also attacked, managed with some agility, despite his injuries, to escape over the mission walls with help from soldiers. The same crowd also pursued five French teaching brothers (Marists) who administered a French college not far from Catholic headquarters. The college was burned. All five teaching brothers fled but were then killed, as they were run down at a pond outside the city walls. Near the French college lived a British Plymouth Brethren couple with two children. Part of the vengeful mob broke off and assaulted them, despite the couple’s protestations of their unconnectedness to the Catholic mission and to recent events. They were both killed, and their elder daughter, age seven, was so severely injured that she did not survive the day.90 A two-year-old daughter was spirited away to safety by a servant and a soldier. The compound was burned. In the outskirts of Nanchang, a small hospital and an orphanage, both run by French Catholic sisters, were also burned, but, warned by news of the violence going on in the city, the occupants had already left. The orphanage’s children were secreted with friendly families, and the five sisters and two priests at the hospital successfully sought refuge at a government facility in the neighborhood. All the Catholic enterprises in and around the city had been attacked and destroyed. With the exception of the Plymouth Brethren residence, all Protestant establishments were successfully protected, and no other Protestants were hurt.91 The thirty-five foreign survivors were shepherded that night under protection to the governor’s launch. One Methodist missionary insisted on staying in the city. The rest were taken to Jiujiang, the province’s treaty port on the Yangzi. Interpretations and Effects of the Nanchang Incident In one sense, this event in Nanchang in 1906 was another in a long list of jiao’an, if among the larger ones. It was also different. We cannot know the inner motives of the marauders, although the recorded testimony of some of those arrested for assault cited revenge for the attack on their “father-and-mother official” (fumu guan).92 The event seemed not to stem from communitarian resentments of non-Christians toward their newly privileged Christian compatriots, such as had marked many outbreaks and continued to characterize some of them. It is worth noting that no Chinese, not excepting Catholics, were killed by the crowd. Even Chinese who attempted to intervene on behalf of the pursued Europeans, such as some soldiers and the retired daotai and his family, were roughly pushed back, but not mortally wounded. Nor did accusations of evil magical practices going on behind mission doors play any role in this case.

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Another way in which the event was unlike most nineteenth-century jiao’an was that its precipitating context included a recent history of hostility between Catholics and Protestants and its lingering effects. This aspect was not highlighted at the time but emerges from a closer examination of the origins. A third difference was that the occasion was intertwined with the new nationalism. Although nationalist notions among the literati did not endorse such outbreaks, in this case they had inadvertently facilitated the violence by disarming the governor and providing the occasion for the gathering of a critical mass of angry citizens. And Chinese observers were reluctant to disapprove after the fact. What Westerners in China called the Nanchang Massacre was a hybrid event, combining past modes and new styles. Perhaps it was precisely this intersection of different discourses of the time that gave the event its special resonance, among both Chinese and foreigners. In the aftermath, Jiang Zhaotang was celebrated as a national hero. Jiangxi-origin officials in Beijing organized ceremonies in his honor. Newspaper articles all over the country hailed him as a model patriot.93 Zhang Zhidong, the eminent Qing official, was reported to have adopted one of Jiang Zhaotang’s sons.94 A statement by Yun Yuding of the elite Hanlin Academy in Beijing was widely reproduced. Yun argued that the good people of Nanchang had been right to seek retribution against Lacruche. There had never been such an evil priest since the establishment of relations with the foreign powers. To toady to the French by punishing the avengers would dishonor China’s national essence (guoti). The British had been unjustly injured, Yun wrote. The people should have known better, and the officials should have protected them. But the British should be compensated by the French, the true wrongdoers.95 When the Dagongbao, a newspaper in Tianjin with a Catholic editor at the time, presented the mission version of Jiang’s death, editors of eight other Chinese newspapers joined in publicly reproaching the Dagongbao for taking the foreign side in the controversy and asked for proof of suicide.96 The American Methodist presiding elder in Jiujiang believed that Chinese generally “felt that, in this instance, they had suffered an unpardonable wrong at the hand of the foreigner, and that not only was the riot justifiable but that any other course would have been unpatriotic.”97 After the various officially commissioned reports were in, negotiations for a settlement proceeded in Beijing over three months between the Chinese foreign ministry (the Zongli yamen had been replaced) and the British and French ministers. The foreign representatives insisted on appropriate punishments, including the removal of the top three provincial officials for not preventing the killings, as well as rewards for local personnel who helped the rescue of the missionary survivors. These matters and sizable indemnities (33,000 taels for the British, 355,000 taels plus some

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prime land for the French) did not present many difficulties. The French indemnity included damages and compensation for the 1904 Tangpu episode as well as for Nanchang, and 100,000 taels for a new hospital (what the French authorities considered the “moral indemnity”). Without Jiang Zhaotang to save him, Gong Dong of Tangpu was finally executed, as were nine others charged with the deaths of the missionaries in Nanchang. Against the wishes of the North Jiangxi bishop, the Chigang convicts with unfinished terms were reincarcerated. The main sticking point in the negotiation was how Jiang Zhaotang’s death was to be described. The French side had initially asked that Jiang be posthumously punished by dismissal from office, but the Chinese foreign ministry refused the request as unreasonable and insupportable.98 The French then demanded that there be formal recognition that Jiang Zhaotang had committed suicide.99 Although all were reluctant to say so openly, there was a consensus among informed Chinese officials that Jiang had at least made the first cut himself, even if, as some contended, the missionary had followed up with further thrusts.100 In its final version, the agreement between French and Chinese authorities stated that Jiang had cut his own throat, but to this was added the phrase that he did it “in a fit of anger”—with the implication that Lacruche had driven him to it.101 This was the compromise that facilitated the conclusion of the agreement. The Chinese side inserted one more statement that suggested further sharing of fault. Christians of all sorts remained “children of China,” the statement read, and owed obedience to the laws of the empire. “Christians must no longer produce false accusations inspired by sentiments of hate or malice, nor, while concealing the truth, solicit missionaries to intervene contrary to the treaties.”102 Note how the formulation, in a bit of judo, summoned up the treaties to discipline the missions and placed the Chinese Christians, and potentially the missionaries, on the wrong side of the law. In the aftermath of the Nanchang affair, there were abundant reports from consuls and clergy about the dire fallout from the affair, damaging attitudes toward Catholics and their works, particularly in Jiangxi, but also elsewhere. The French consul-general in Hankou spoke of the bad effect in his broad district, especially in Henan province.103 Similarly, the French consul-general in Shanghai reported that the Nanchang events had caused disturbances all over Jiangxi and in some other provinces, notably in Zhejiang, where missionaries received death threats, and Anhui, where churches were being destroyed and Catholic homes burned.104 Bishop Ferrant himself wrote to the Lazarist motherhouse in Paris about the setbacks throughout his vicariate after Nanchang and spoke of his fear that all was lost.105

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On the occasion of Ferrant’s death in 1910, the bishop of the neighboring East Jiangxi vicariate reflected on how the “disastrous results” of the Nanchang affair “had reverberated into the remotest corners of the province” and how the previously accommodating attitude of officials in Jiangxi toward the missions had completely changed. In the aftermath, he wrote, “all these avenues of conciliation were and have remained closed to us.”106 To the chorus of concern about the consequences of the Nanchang incident was added the august voice of the British foreign secretary, Edward Grey, who in May 1906 handed the French ambassador what was considered by the Quai d’Orsay an “unusual” note. In reference to Magistrate Jiang’s preference for suicide over conceding to the demands of the Catholic mission, Grey disparaged the practice of French missionaries negotiating cases about Chinese converts directly with Chinese authorities. Missionary interventions were not authorized by the Tianjin treaty of 1858, he argued. Such matters were properly the province of diplomatic and consular officers. In this case, departure from that rule had resulted in the massacre of three British subjects uninvolved in the dispute.107 French authorities were stunned by Grey’s scolding, at a time when Britain and France were building their new entente cordiale. After some thought and a bit of research, the Quai d’Orsay instructed the French ambassador to reply that Lacruche’s negotiations with Jiang were authorized, not by the Tianjin treaty, but rather by the imperial decree of March 15, 1899, which invited missionaries to deal directly with local authorities, at least as a preliminary to later diplomatic confirmation.108 In their internal communications, however, concerned French diplomats themselves expressed critiques of the patterns of missionary intervention not dissimilar from Grey’s. The minister in Beijing, for example, wrote in June 1906 that the principal worry regarding the Catholic missions was their tendency to consider Chinese Christians as under their national jurisdiction. “Under the influence of this tendency, the missionaries intervene too often with the local authorities in matters strictly Chinese, in which they have no right to become involved.” The results were sometimes quarrels, the taking of sides, and descent into serious conflicts. The Chinese government, he continued, protested this tendency, and “according to international law, they are right.”109 The minister’s remarks read almost like a renunciation of the extension to Chinese Catholics of the French Religious Protectorate. Nothing so radical was contemplated, but the word went out to the bishops that the lesson of Nanchang was to throttle back on interventions in Chinese courts. A synod of northern bishops (heading the various vicariates of Zhili, northern Henan, Manchuria, and Mongolia) resolved in their May 1906 gathering that “the times now require prudence” and missionaries should not undertake legal cases, even concerning religious discrimination, without

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the approval of their apostolic vicar. The North Zhili bishop, now Stanislas Jarlin, who reported on this development, was quick to add that it would be a serious mistake to forswear legal interventions by missionaries altogether.110 In 1908, the Qing government unilaterally rescinded the edict of March 15, 1899, which French authorities had suggested as the legal basis for Lacruche’s negotiations with Magistrate Jiang. When this news reached Paris, it happened that the foreign minister was Stéphen Pichon, who in 1899 as French minister in China had collaborated with Bishop Alphonse Favier in shaping the decree. He asked some questions but otherwise accepted this fait accompli.111 French officials had previously expressed concern about missionary interventions into Chinese legal process.112 After the Nanchang affair, however, the critical tone seemed to become harsher and more pervasive. Hard as that is to measure, officials more openly discouraged such interventions. For example, in 1910, the French foreign minister told his representative in China to take the occasion of any general gathering of Catholic bishops there to counsel them to be prudent and to “define clearly for them the limits within which their lawsuits and our official intervention must be contained, because of the present state of opinion in China and the changes that the times and the events of the last ten years have produced in Chinese administrative organization.”113 He appeared to be referring to the new strength of Chinese nationalism, in and outside officialdom, and to the recent impressive reforms accomplished by the Qing government. Protestant mission boards were in these same years more sternly exhorting their China missionaries against involvement in cases concerning Chinese Christians, while American and British consuls were more emphatic in their unwillingness to help in any but cases of clear religious persecution.114 Simultaneously from the Chinese side, as a nationalist consensus brought in larger proportions of the population, the resort to violence against missions and Chinese Christians was marginalized as a tactic. For example, a series of articles in a Guangzhou newspaper in 1909 called for new approaches to the Christian presence. The problem had been that the propagation of religion, which should properly be a matter of domestic law, had been internationalized by the treaties. Unschooled Chinese officials had let this happen, even to the point of agreeing to further expansions of privilege. The articles proposed various remedies. Short of the long-term goal of rescinding arrangements like foreign consular jurisdiction altogether, the foreigners should be confined to the limited scope specified in the treaties, without arbitrary additions. Advantage should be taken of the European tendency, especially in France, toward the separation of religion from the state. China should accept Christianity as a Chinese religion, similar to the incorporation of Buddhism and Islam. The

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expression minjiao, indicating “the people and the Christians,” as if they were of different species, should be expunged. The pope should appoint a Chinese as primate of China’s Catholic church, so that it could be independent and self-protecting. Meanwhile, it was asserted, Christians and non-Christians had become more harmonious with each other, despite the recent events in Jiangxi and elsewhere. As church people had entered more and more into charitable works, relief, and education, members from the middle and upper reaches of society had responded. Relations with the gentry had become cordial. The articles concluded that there was the prospect of avoiding future calamities arising from Christian evangelism.115 The immediate post-Boxer years had been eventful for the Catholic missions and marked by discord. The Boxer indemnities, both regular and irregular, had infused new wealth into many of the missions, even as in some places they sharpened local hostility toward the Christian presence. The Boxer affair by itself had not induced a change of course in mission assertiveness or in French policy. The face-off in Nanchang between Magistrate Jiang and Father Lacruche in 1906 dramatically expressed the perpetuation of nineteenth-century dynamics into the twentieth. On the other hand, it also registered the intrusion into relations with missions of new Chinese conceptions of how to deal with the foreign presence. The mainstream of Chinese nationalism tended to assign to the Christian presence only a secondary importance and concentrated its energies elsewhere. By the end of the first twentieth-century decade, perhaps in response to changing Chinese attitudes, both Catholic missions and French officials had softened their stance (as had Protestant missions and their protectors). With all concerned parties seemingly set on reducing tension around missions and their clienteles, the incidence of jiao’an declined sharply. After the 1911 Revolution, which resulted in a new state (the Republic of China), the violence that targeted Chinese Christians was no longer salient. Missionaries faced danger to their persons and property most often because of their dispersal around the country and the prevalence of banditry, as well as because of the social disorder attending recurrent political disruption during the Republican period.116 At the same time, France persisted in its Religious Protectorate and in seeking the adherence to it of the Catholic bishops, whose foreign nationality was essential to the Protectorate’s operations and usefulness. (From this official French perspective, the proposition of a Chinese Catholic primate was abhorrent.) French authorities in China continued to press Chinese officials for the protection of missions, punishment of culprits who inflicted injury on the missions, and indemnities. But this French system was to be challenged, as Catholic voices for a new dispensation became more audible. The next topic, then, is the issue of reform of the Catholic missions and of China’s Catholic church in the first decades of the twentieth century.

6 Reform Agendas for the Missions

by the early twentieth century, there was a discernible malaise within the Catholic missions in China. Expanding efforts since the mid-nineteenth century had not produced commensurate achievements. According to one major compendium, the number of foreign Catholic priests in China went from seventy-two in 1840 to 904 in 1900, more than twelve times as many. If foreign female religious or sisters, who all postdate 1840, are added (730 in 1900), the increase was more than twenty-two times. In the same period, Chinese priests increased five and a half times, from eighty-six in 1840 to 417 in 1900 (the figures on Chinese female religious are incomplete). Chinese Catholics were counted at 320,000 in 1840 and at 740,000 in 1900, increasing only by 2.3 times. Even if one took, as a baseline, estimates of 135,000 to 200,000 for the very beginning of the nineteenth century, the lack of productivity for the rest of the century is still striking.1 There was the feeling of missing the mark, despite the substantial numbers of Catholics and a sturdy financial base. One could blame the poaching Protestants. The new Chinese nationalism could be translated as a more intense antiforeignism. There remained the standby excuses for evangelical failure of Chinese pride and cultural resistance. Some, however, were moved to question the methods, the attitudes, and the institutional arrangements that had become unreflective habits among most missionaries, which were then inculcated in the Chinese clergy. Although not acknowledged as such, the trauma of the Boxer affair must have stimulated some of these reconsiderations. What had in the nineteenth century been occasional isolated voices of internal criticism, without broad resonance, now gained prominence. But perceiving 121

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the need for change was not the same as agreeing on policies or directions or pace. Reform was itself an arena of conflict. The Favier Memoranda Alphonse Favier, who had been made coadjutor bishop of North Zhili and Beijing in 1898 and then became fully in charge as bishop the next year, might be thought of as the archetypical representative of the established ways of late-nineteenth-century missions. Certainly he was a central figure, who long before he became bishop had served as an intermediary between Catholic bishops in other parts of China and the French legation, between the bishops and Chinese officials, and sometimes even between the French legation and Qing authorities. He socialized assiduously with the diplomatic corps in Beijing. He had friends among Qing courtiers, notably Ronglu, who was close to the Empress Dowager and was senior member of the Grand Council (the government’s highest official body) at the end of the century. In the absence of an official papal representative in China, Favier in his later years undertook the job of keeping the Vatican secretary of state informed about the political goings-on in the country.2 At the same time, he presented himself as entirely devoted to French interests in China. He embodied the contradictions inherent in the French Religious Protectorate. The worldliness of this corpulent and white-bearded figure was counted against him by some of his colleagues. When he was a candidate for bishop in 1890, a missionary priest in Beijing opposed choosing Favier in a letter to the head of the Lazarist order in Paris, who, by his recommendation to the Vatican, in effect made the episcopal appointment. The priest charged Favier with giving himself over to “a veritable commerce” in Chinese “curiosities” (that is, art objects) and having “lost the spirit of the vocation.”3 When Favier was again up for the job in 1897, as coadjutor with right of succession—and this time got it—another confrere remarked on Favier’s continuing commerce in knickknacks and his frequent lunches at the French legation. Because of Favier’s minimal participation in the religious life of the community, the missionary wrote, “I never believed that there could be a serious question of making him our titular superior.”4 Even his supporters in 1897, including the sitting bishop, who died within two years, argued for his candidacy on grounds of the usefulness of his prominence and his secular connections, rather than for any spiritual leadership.5 Then, as Beijing bishop, he was the nominal savior of about 3,000 Chinese Christians, as they found refuge with him in the compound of the North Church, which became a besieged fortress during the Boxer affair of 1900. The aftermath of

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this episode brought to public view the worldly side of Favier’s leadership, as his mission pursued spoils, revenge, and indemnification. So it is with some astonishment that one finds in the Propaganda archives two long memoranda from late 1900 and early 1901, submitted by Favier and castigating Catholic missions in China. In these letters, he describes “a considerable portion of the China missions” as “stagnant.” “It is a matter of prolonged sterility, not of all missions in China, certainly, but of a rather large number of them.”6 This from the man who, in a decentralized mission field, came closest to being its ecclesiastical chief. His bill of particulars stresses problems internal to the missions themselves. Catholic missions in China have made no correction of course in the past forty years, he asserts (a period that encompassed his own missionary career). Conversions have fallen far short of the increase in missionary personnel. Except when he makes his obligatory visits to the Catholic communities in his district, the European priest remains isolated in his residence, inert. “He lives apart within his little Christian flock which his bishop has entrusted to him and loses all kinds of contact with the pagan world to which God has sent him.”7 The working ministry has been handed over to Chinese priests, who mimic the passivity of their European mentors. The new missionary who does not resign himself to these moribund ways is considered by his senior colleagues to be harboring dangerous illusions about the reality of the Chinese environment. Missionaries take the status quo as both the tradition inherited from the past and the only program for the future. Bishops do not oversee the work of their missionaries in any detail and are comparably isolated, having little contact even with their neighboring prelates. Prescribed vicariate councils of priests rarely meet. No common programs are initiated, and the mission center becomes simply a treasury. Insofar as the European priests of a vicariate influence the choice of a new bishop, it is foreordained that existing habits will be perpetuated. Favier’s suggestions for reform focus on energizing the bishops, requiring them to take charge and follow diligently the accumulated instructions from Rome. They must break out of their isolation and instruct themselves about contemporary social, economic, and other movements. They should interact and exchange ideas with their fellow bishops. They should emphasize the evangelization of nonbelievers and should commit their European priests to spreading the gospel. Existing Catholic communities can be left to the ministration of Chinese priests. Past Propaganda instructions urging increased training of an indigenous clergy should be implemented. (Missionaries, Favier notes, are often unaware of instructions from Rome.) Bishops should oversee more closely the work of their priests and, where possible, visit the whole vicariate. Episcopal councils, with at least four missionary members, should be formed in all vicariates and report directly at least once a year to the Propaganda.

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He urges that good relations should be established with non-Christians. The development of educational institutions should not be left to the Protestants, and Catholic ones should be open to Catholic and non-Catholic alike. Missions should undertake on their own account humanitarian works, such as hospitals, leprosariums, and dispensaries, as well as encourage contemplative convents and monasteries. Finally, the Propaganda should involve itself proactively in the selection of bishops and collect information and explore conditions in the relevant vicariate by sending a papally appointed visitor.8 This ambitious list of prescriptions has a somewhat unreal aura. Favier did not discuss the obstacles to implementation. Nor did his own actions in these years fit all these counsels of reform, to say the least. Further, there were lacunae. He did not address the problem of the Catholic mission’s intimate ties to France, in which Favier continued to glory, even as he knew them to be disliked by Chinese authorities.9 Though he endorsed the training of Chinese clergy, he assumed their secondary, subordinate status to the European priests. He did not explain how European missionaries, so many with limited Chinese language skills, could take the lead in reaching the unconverted. Revealing a conventional European disparagement of the population he was supposedly serving, he wrote in a published letter a year after the Boxer affair: “As for the awakening of Chinese patriotism, I cannot concede it. In reality I have never observed a true patriotism amongst these eminently egoistic people.”10 Favier’s own interaction with non-Christians seemed far removed from spreading the gospel. Rather, it remained part of his courting of powerful personages. He reached a pinnacle in this pursuit when he was given an audience in early 1902 with the Empress Dowager Cixi and the emperor—the first imperial audience granted a Catholic missionary since the early eighteenth century, he boasted.11 Similarly, his major projects in the wake of the Boxer episode squared poorly with his call to evangelize pagans. True, he emphasized that the reorganized Franco-Chinese college in Beijing was open not only to Christians but also to non-Christians, who would prepare for study in France, whence they would return “with love of our country,” that is to say, France. Aside from enlarging the North Church complex of buildings, the heightened affluence of his vicariate was used to build a hospital in the legation quarter in Beijing for the military of the occupation, as well as for other Europeans; to raise a large church of Saint Michael for European Catholics, also in the legation quarter; and to construct another military hospital in Tianjin. “All these works, all these expenses, you understand,” Favier wrote in his order’s journal, “serve French influence and show that, if France protects us, we do not wish to be ungrateful.”12 Reports from his missionaries to the Lazarist motherhouse in Paris criticized Favier’s post-Boxer policies of funneling so many resources into fancy construction

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in Beijing, while the rest of the vicariate languished. Indeed, decisions about spending seemed arbitrary. Against his own recommendations, he got into the habit of convening his priestly council only occasionally and, in any case, decided matters on his own. Moreover, oversight of his subordinates was lax. As indemnity money passed through the hands of missionaries, some, as Favier himself had done long ago, departed yet further from the practice of poverty. A Lazarist visitor (that is, a resident supervisor over multiple vicariates, representing the congregation’s chief in Paris) remarked: “I fear that His Grace quite often transgresses the prohibition against engaging in commerce. He sees things in a completely personal way, often hardly theological and canonical.”13 Favier’s practices, then, did not embody new approaches to Chinese society. Nor did his ideas of change include loosened ties to the Protectorate. Nonetheless, even though there is no evidence that Favier’s reform memoranda were circulated among the missions, some of their ideas would recur in more militant versions of reform in subsequent years. Something was wrong with the Catholic missions; just what that was and how to fix it remained open questions. The Chinese government in 1901 attempted to obtain foreign agreement to a redefinition of accepted rules for the missions as a response to an implied interpretation of the causes of the Boxer affair. Although rebuffed at the time, the Qing court persisted. An imperial decree published in April 1902 called on the newly established Chinese foreign ministry to deliberate amicably with Bishop Favier of Beijing, “a man of just heart and great forbearance,” to formulate regulations for vetting potential converts and for ensuring equity in court cases.14 This imperial attention to Favier, like his imperial audience earlier in the year, was likely owed to his highly placed friends at court, as well as, perhaps, to his post-Boxer testimony to the Empress Dowager’s good will toward the Catholic church—a judgment scornfully mocked by other Catholic bishops.15 News of this imperial edict authorizing the negotiation of new arrangements for China missions reached the Vatican. The papal secretary of state wrote to Favier to say that Rome would be ready for such an agreement if international circumstances favored it—that is to say, if France would go along.16 Shortly thereafter, Favier passed on to the French legation in Beijing a set of twelve rules for missions, emanating from the Chinese ministry for foreign affairs. He professed that, since he had no authority in these matters, he had declined to participate in their formulation. The most conspicuous innovation in the proposals, aside from requiring a more detailed census of churches, missionaries, and Chinese Christians than did Zhang Zhidong’s plan of the previous year, was an item on relations between Catholics and Protestants. These two groups should avoid disputes and brawls over their religious differences, but if contentious or

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litigious affairs did arise between them, the matter should be settled by their respective missionaries. If the missionaries could not settle it, the affair should be referred to the judgment of Chinese officials. In his covering letter, Favier asserted that the proposals could not be simply accepted as they stood but could be a basis for discussion.17 Favier suffered a stroke in September 1902, paralyzing his left side, and was in effect removed as a participant in these maneuvers. The next year, the Qing government tried yet again to induce French authorities to consider modifications in current guidelines for missions. France also turned aside this démarche.18 Insofar as French policy toward China missions moderated later in the decade, it occurred without formal concessions in what were seen by French authorities as treaty rights. Meanwhile, other sorts of impulses toward reform were stirring within the missions. The Regime of Bishop Jarlin Favier’s successor in Beijing was Stanislas Jarlin. A Frenchman, he had come to China as a Lazarist missionary in 1886 and was made coadjutor bishop of the Beijing and North Zhili vicariate in 1899 at Favier’s urging.19 He had already been filling a major role as administrator of the vicariate when Favier died in 1905. Although Favier’s choice, Jarlin presented a marked contrast in personal style and in evangelistic policies. Where Favier was a bon vivant, Jarlin was an ascetic. He was not outgoing, as was Favier, and left an impression of reserve and inarticulateness, to a degree that was alleged to diminish his authority among missionaries and beyond.20 He preferred not to serve as Beijing agent for bishops around the country, as Favier had done.21 It was reported that he treated his contingent of missionaries with “Prussian militarism” (perhaps reflecting his experience as a pontifical soldier before becoming a Lazarist). Although this same report held that Jarlin lacked the cultural breadth and ecclesiastical learning that Beijing’s bishop should possess, general discipline and the regularity of religious observance among North Zhili missionaries improved.22 Regarding interventions in Chinese civil process on behalf of Catholics, Jarlin took important steps away from previous general practice. He was, of course, experienced in these matters. In the year before his elevation to coadjutor bishop, Favier had deputed him to negotiate settlement of an incident in Baoding, an important Zhili city, where Jarlin himself had recently been serving. Servants of the new Lazarist director of the Catholic mission there had physically abused and detained some intruding soldiers of General Dong Fuxiang. The comrades of these soldiers

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had rallied, plundered the mission residence, and seized the French director and his Chinese vicar, until these priests were rescued by the county magistrate. General Dong Fuxiang, who in 1900 became a willing ally of the Boxers, had to apologize. Jarlin secured as recompense the execution of two soldiers and the granting to the mission of the palace-size former residence of a daotai or circuit intendant, estimated by Favier to be worth ten times what it replaced.23 Insofar as this incident concerned church property and the safety of a missionary, Jarlin might have subsequently argued that the intervention was appropriate. When he became his own boss, however, he was part of a tendency among some missionaries toward reducing the use of this instrument. The most eloquent statement of his attitude toward the issue came shortly after he became a bishop in an injunction to one of his missionaries: “Above all, my dear friend, do not concern yourself so much with your legal case. Our Lord lost His only case and yet certainly right was on His side. After the loss of His case, all seemed forfeit. However, He had saved the entire world by losing face.”24 He drew on these sentiments to fashion a policy in the wake of the Nanchang affair of 1906. “Because of a legal case a mandarin tried to commit suicide in the presence of one of Monsignor Ferrant’s missionaries,” wrote Jarlin. “More than ever I am against handling legal cases.”25 In that same year, as previously noted, he was part of the meeting of North China bishops, which resolved to restrict intervention in civil matters to instances approved by the respective bishop.26 His instructions to his missionaries became more pointed. “We ask no special protection for our Christians. . . . Therefore mandarins need concern themselves with the matter at hand and not with the religion professed by those who appear in court.”27 And in 1909: “I think it is unnecessary for me to repeat that I do not wish you to concern yourself with lawsuits before the mandarins. . . . I count on your obedience.”28 It would be incorrect to conclude that Jarlin was alone among bishops in his efforts to check the practice of intervention with Chinese officials on behalf of Chinese Catholics. A study of the vicariate of West Zhili (also known as Southwest Zhili, centered on Zhengding, near Shijiazhuang), treating the decades preceding the Boxer affair, has argued that a policy of restraint in this regard in the 1890s, as well as good relations with local elites, was rewarded by relative immunity from the violence of 1900, with only 150 Catholic deaths.29 In 1903, a Jiangxi missionary reported that, exceptionally for that province, he had no difficulties in settling disputes between his Christians and the non-Christians. Instead of running to the magistrate, he simply alerted the local gentry, who were pleased to be asked and always settled matters for the better.30 Jarlin in this matter was part of a tendency among important parts of the Catholic establishment in China, even as others persisted in intervening aggressively, as seen

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in the discussion of Sichuan and Jiangxi in the early twentieth century. This tendency toward restraint, along with word from French officials that they would be more selective in their support of missionary requests on behalf of their flock, helps explain the precipitous drop in jiao’an from 1908. At the same time, Jarlin was a loyal supporter of the French Religious Protectorate and was acknowledged as such by the French legation in Beijing.31 He argued in Rome against a resident papal representative in China, opposed by France as impinging on the Protectorate. In a letter to a fellow bishop in 1909, he stressed that the effect of the Protectorate was not so much in what it did as in what it prevented: it constrained the Chinese state from changing the status quo adversely for the missions.32 On the issue of foreign protection, as well as regarding the precedence of European priests over their Chinese colleagues, Jarlin remained a conservative. More boldly, Jarlin pressed for changes in evangelistic practice. His program, elements of which he had been pursuing since the mid-1890s when he directed the Baoding mission,33 centered on the notion that a Catholic China would best be achieved by massive conversions of ordinary Chinese. Chinese were most numerous in the countryside. So the focus should be on peasants, who, he argued, would determine China’s future. This large project could not be accomplished by European missionaries alone, who in any case were not likely to be adept at face-to-face conversions of individual Chinese. The key lay in raising up an army of Chinese catechists or lay evangelists and teachers, under the supervision of priests, and in bringing religious education to the villages. Jarlin acknowledged that an emphasis on quantity would mean that many conversions would not go very deep and would not produce conformity to the fullness of Catholic doctrine. But the point was to establish Catholic families, so that the next generation would be brought up with a Catholic education.34 Getting the program off the ground required that missionaries leave their residences, as Favier had specified in his reform agenda, and go to the villages, a destination about which Favier had seemed little interested. Jarlin energetically corresponded with his missionaries in the field, guiding them, exhorting them, and goading them to be organizers of religious schools and supervisors of rural Catholic communities. The plan also demanded money. Bringing religious training to villages required funds for renting space, paying teachers, and providing the free meals that encouraged attendance. It was soon apparent that disbursement of cash was more efficient than substantive catering in sustaining those accepting religious instruction. Serendipitously, the Boxer indemnities were large in this vicariate. Jarlin directed the proceeds away from the showy urban projects favored by Favier toward the subsidy of rural evangelism.

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The approach was conveniently summarized by a missionary schooled by Jarlin, as he described the process in a new vicariate spun off from North Zhili in 1910: We have established that, for the propagation of the faith, the best and only truly efficacious way is to open schools for catechumens [those expressing an interest in conversion], where pagans may come to hear preaching and be instructed, where, thanks to the sustenance we give them, being freed from material worries, they may concentrate all their concerns and all their attention on the study of doctrine.35 These schools, he wrote, were not only at the missionary residence but in as many villages as possible. The object of study was the commandments and precepts of the church. It all cost money and the attentive supervision of the missionary. There were conspicuous omissions from Jarlin’s conception. First, his emphasis on the creation of Catholic families had the corollary—and he was specific about this— of downplaying charitable activities that served the old, the infirm, or orphans.36 These siphoned off both mission resources and missionary time. Second, he resisted projects of higher education for his vicariate. The pressure was mounting to commit funds in this area. There was the French government, which wanted Catholic missions to establish high-level schools to advertise French civilization, propagate the French language, and woo the mandarin class. There was the example of the growing Protestant investment in high-quality schooling. The Jesuits, too, were beginning to respond to the new Chinese enthusiasm for Western styles of learning. Some Lazarists urged Jarlin to start a university in Beijing to block the Jesuits from stealing a march and thereby laying claim to the Beijing bishopric. Jarlin objected that such schemes would be extremely expensive and would drain away resources from rural evangelism. He wrote in 1909: “The apostolic vicar [i.e., Jarlin] can scarcely teach all his Christians to read, and to understand Catholic doctrine. . . . They want to begin with the crown of the edifice. . . . They will succeed in voting a university that will take resources from the missions, and where they will teach primarily pagans, who will remain pagans.”37 Evangelism above all! He limited himself to support for a French-language secondary school in Beijing. Jarlin’s program, then, entailed both a modification of past practices and resistance to certain emerging alternative strategies, like higher education (and others, as will be evident later). By the formal measures used by the missions, it was immensely successful. As a proportion of the population, the Catholic component remained small. But it grew impressively in Jarlin’s territory in the early years of the twentieth century.

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Between the 1860s and 1899, the number of Catholics reported by the vicariate of Beijing and North Zhili (its formal name) went from the low 20,000s to the low 40,000s.38 In more than three decades, then, the numbers had only doubled, even though the number of missionaries had grown several times. The rate of increase from 1900 was much higher. After recovery from the Boxer affair, Catholics under Jarlin doubled in six years. By 1910, the count was over 170,000, about a fourfold increase in a decade.39 In that same decade, by contrast, the count of baptized Catholics in the neighboring vicariate of Southeast Zhili, under Jesuits, increased by about half, to roughly 74,000.40 The numbers are of uncertain reliability, but it is apparent from impressions of contemporaries that registered baptisms were booming under Jarlin’s administration. Surely, there were other factors than Jarlin’s strategy. Missionaries had often charged that their efforts had been obstructed by gentry resistance and official connivance. In the wake of the Allied occupation of north China in 1900 and 1901, antimissionary gentry or officials would have been lying low, and their purported obstructionism would have been much diminished.41 Further, the money that Jarlin put into village evangelism would have been available for other methods and would perhaps have secured comparable successes. Indeed, other jurisdictions were also prospering. What was special about the increase in adherents in Jarlin’s districts was its rapidity. Perhaps excessively rapid? Jarlin’s approach had its critics from within the missions. In 1910, a prominent Lazarist missionary reported to the motherhouse that conversions in the North Zhili vicariate came too quickly and were often not accompanied by true Christian education. The single-minded focus on baptisms resulted in neglect after baptism. He wrote: “But how many, alas, are Christians only in name!”42 Skepticism regarding Jarlin’s evangelistic reforms turned into outright condemnation among some within the church in subsequent years. The Chinese Initiation of Vincent Lebbe Jarlin’s harshest missionary critic, as it turned out, was another Lazarist priest, Vincent Lebbe, whom Jarlin for a while favored as an evangelist of great promise. He became the leading exponent of challenging the status quo in the Catholic missions of China. Major parts of the rest of the story of mission reform involve the activities of Lebbe and his collaborators, as well as the reaction against them. Lebbe was born in 1877 in Ghent (Gand), a town in Flanders, Belgium. He was christened Frédéric and throughout his life was called “Freddy” by his family. It was an international family. One grandparent on each side was French. His mother’s father, though French, had married an English woman and died, before

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Vincent’s birth, serving the British empire. But Vincent’s mother was mostly brought up by her French grandmother in Calais, and the language in Vincent’s immediate family was French. After the failure of his Flemish father’s business in Paris when Vincent was still small, the family moved back to Belgium, to Ypres, where Vincent spent most of his childhood. Enthralled by accounts of the martyrdom of a Lazarist missionary to China in 1840, “Frédéric” at his confirmation adopted the new name of “Vincent,” in honor of the founder of the Lazarist order, St. Vincent de Paul.43 From an early age, China and evangelism were part of his consciousness. In 1895, at eighteen, Vincent Lebbe entered the seminary at the Lazarist motherhouse in Paris with the intention of becoming a missionary. It was an exciting period in Catholic intellectual circles. In a series of unanticipated turns, the expulsion of priestly scholars from educational institutions by the anticlerical Third Republic in France had led to the late-nineteenth-century creation of Catholic institutions of higher learning, where, alongside the Thomism prescribed by Pope Leo XIII, new currents of thought flourished, in an attempt to reconcile Catholicism with the times. As Alfred Loisy, one of the most prominent Catholic intellectuals in this effort, said: “The adaptation of the gospel to the changing conditions of humanity is as pressing a need today as it ever was and ever will be.”44 From his letters while in seminary, it is evident that Vincent Lebbe was much taken with the reconsideration of Catholicism pursued by Loisy and others who would soon be classified by the next pope, Pius X, as “Modernists.” He wrote his Benedictine brother (the Lebbes were a very religious family): “Our age has two passions: truth and justice. And to reach these goals, each has its straightforward method. For truth, one is guided by critical knowledge, and for justice, by democracy. That is to say right away that, in contrast to you, I am for the critics and the democrats.”45 When the texts of Pius X’s 1907 condemnation of Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies” reached him in China, he confessed that he was at first horrified (révolté) and went through three months of loss of faith. He eventually reconciled himself, arguing that in any case he had never agreed with extreme versions of the tendency.46 Vincent Lebbe became a polarizing figure in Catholic circles, especially missionary ones, and remained so after his death in 1940. As a consequence, we have remarkably contrasting accounts of his life and activities. Mid-course, Lebbe left the Lazarist seminary in Paris for another Lazarist one in Dax in the extreme southwest of France. One version of this episode attributes the move to concern about his health, marked by fever, nosebleeds, headaches, and eye trouble. The symptoms were serious enough to put in question his ambition to be a missionary. A disparaging version attributes the move to the order’s worry about his excessively critical spirit, with

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time in the provinces as remedy. Both accounts include an incident at Dax when a professor, irritated at Lebbe’s constant questioning, challenged Lebbe to take over the class (the topic was an epistle of St. Paul). Lebbe did just that, with aplomb and, according to the favorable tradition, quite memorably.47 Soon he was back in Paris, either because southwest France had not improved his health or because of the presumption of his spontaneous lecture on St. Paul and other tensions with the conservative Dax faculty. From Paris, he was dispatched to Rome, where the Lazarists maintained an establishment and where he might better pursue his theological training. He had been in Rome only a short time when Bishop Favier passed through in late 1900 and accepted the delighted Lebbe for the Beijing mission. Lebbe arrived in Beijing in March 1901. In a year or two, his health had much improved. Vincent Lebbe was in many ways a remarkable man, but perhaps nothing stands out more than his affection for the Chinese people and for things Chinese. His love of China should not be confused with Alphonse Favier’s apparent pleasure in exercising his social skills within the Sino-foreign world of the treaty system. It was in part, certainly, a simple attraction to the people and their ways. Evident even as he first arrived in the country, it was also an act of will, a decision to side with China and to identify personally with the Chinese. He often declared that evangelizing was empty without a love of the people one hoped to evangelize. In contrast to Favier, Lebbe was inclined to calculate a separate Chinese interest. He proceeded to endorse it. He eventually died defending it. Four months after his arrival, in a letter responding to his brother’s recitation of recent Boxer atrocities, such as were reported in the European press, Vincent Lebbe wrote back, without disputing the reports: You see, those who speak such ill of the Chinese do not love them, and it is that which prevents them from knowing them well. The Chinese have great faults, like all of us, but they have qualities and virtues which we often make into faults. For me, I have never loved in my life as I love these poor people, pagans as well as Christians, and it is that which makes my happiness. When I am among them, gabbing in my little bit of Chinese, trying to begin my life as an apostle, I am happier than St. Paul in paradise. . . . For me, I am Chinese with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my strength, and I don’t know anything more than that. It is my lot, it is my country (patrie); they are my brothers and my children.48 Six years later, his bishop, Stanislas Jarlin (Favier had died), exclaimed in a letter to Lebbe, “Ah, how tender is this heart you have for these dear Chinese!!” Fine, Jarlin

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went on, as long as Lebbe did not allow it to affect his judgment.49 Jarlin’s unease at Lebbe’s Chinese enthusiasms was a symptom of the differences that would drive them apart. Lebbe’s first assignment, after a brief stint in a Catholic village, was to teach theology, scripture, and music at Beijing’s major seminary, that is, an upper-level school for training Chinese for the priesthood. He himself was ordained only later, in October 1901. The language of instruction was Latin, already studied by these candidates for the priesthood in a so-called minor seminary. In a recollection written sixteen years later, Lebbe described the trouble he got into for his interactions with the seminarians outside class, which was part of his crash program to learn Chinese. When he discovered that the students had throughout their seminary years been encouraged to distrust their compatriots and admire Europe, he tried to counteract this with a message of love and appreciation for their own people. On a matter that was controversial at the time, he also urged that they should resist pressure to wear the European soutane or cassock rather than Chinese garb. The seminary director, a French Lazarist, having got wind of Lebbe’s conversations with the seminarians, told Lebbe that he had barely escaped being sent back to Europe but had been reprieved on grounds of his youth and idealism. Lebbe was assured that his infatuation with the Chinese and China would pass. In his account of the episode, he quoted the director, with his own sarcastic comments in parentheses: You don’t know what the Chinese are. When you give them an inch, they take a foot. If you don’t rein them in, they get all puffed up and want to lord it over you (ah, the poor Chinese priests lord it over him!!). You treat the seminarians on an equal footing (I was myself still a seminarian), as you would treat students in Paris. It is a mistake. If you don’t correct yourself, you will repent of it later. . . . One must treat them with sweetness and firmness, and never let yourself be taken in. . . . Otherwise, when you are a priest, and they are also, they will want to conduct themselves with you still on a footing of equality (horrible crime, treason), and little by little they will take over your authority.50 The characterization of Chinese offered in these reported remarks of the seminary director was hardly unique among missionaries. The Propaganda in 1881 summarized the portrait of Chinese clergy expressed in the responses to a questionnaire administered to China’s bishops, in discussions by some of those bishops in Rome for the Vatican Council, and in reports from their regional synods in China. “The Chinese priests are like the people amongst whom they were born. They are fickle,

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lazy, ambitious, vain, cunning, hypocrites, liars, ungrateful, extremely greedy for money, easily rebellious and with regard to chastity extremely weak.”51 In Lebbe’s era, one of the most disparaging judgments that reached publication was by a Scheut father (that is, of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, based in Belgium), Louis Kervyn. In his 1911 book, Méthode de l’apostolat moderne en Chine (Method of the Modern Apostolate in China), Kervyn wrote: “Does not the enfeebling of the intellectual, moral and physical powers that we have been studying in the country of China persuade us that we find ourselves in China in the presence of a clearly inferior nature! The Chinese is, relative to the European Christian, of a truly distressing inferiority of nature and resources, so as to deter even the Church, if that were possible.” He went on to postulate an extra quotient of original sin among the Chinese.52 Lebbe’s contrasting “infatuation” with China and the Chinese did not pass. Yet there were still many questions about how to proceed as a missionary. During his early assignments to rural areas within the North Zhili vicariate, between 1901 and 1906, he experimented with an array of tactics. North China in the year of Lebbe’s arrival was still seething with the consequences of the Boxer affair. In letters to his family, he recounted tales of horrendous massacres, narratives he heard from surviving Christian villagers, as well as reports of continuing attacks by Boxer remnants. He was much moved by the heroism of the Chinese Christians, as were many missionaries who had previously been cynical about the depth of their converts’ faith (even as Kervyn and his fans stuck with older attitudes). At the same time, he was repelled by the outrages being inflicted by the foreign occupying forces: “Our armies leave behind them a long train of blood, of filthy degradation. They have done deeds that have made the pagans themselves utter cries of horror, which have caused them to say to the Christians, never have pagans acted in this way. So we throw a veil over all that.”53 For all his condemnation of the behavior of the foreign troops, he took advantage of the power relations of the moment. Under the supervision of an Italian Lazarist priest, he was assigned in early 1902 to the county of Wuqing, about halfway between Beijing and Tianjin. In a letter to his mother, Lebbe told the story of how, in a village decimated by Boxer killings, he negotiated the forgiveness and return of village Boxer leaders, on the condition that their whole families become Christians.54 In another village, after several days of lecturing non-Christians on Catholic teaching and on the importance of charity and forgiveness, he proposed that, if the rest of the villagers would convert, the Christians of the village would waive the reparations still due them from the Boxer year (an instance of the workings of the “irregular indemnity”). Numbers of converts in this and two neighboring villages soared, and Bishop Jarlin hailed Lebbe’s achievements.

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On another occasion, Jarlin commissioned him to appear before a magistrate some distance south of Beijing to extract a local Catholic priest from some troubles (the case indicated the limits to Jarlin’s policy of reduced interventions). Lebbe arrived dressed in a fine silk gown, given him for the occasion by Jarlin, and a large retinue of Christians. He accomplished his assignment but was disturbed by the obvious contempt in the eyes of the mandarin.55 Lebbe would later specify the counterproductive effects of these coercive and interventionist practices in his general critique of the missions. Lebbe was briefly district director of another rural area, centered on Zhuozhou, some sixty kilometers southwest of Beijing and a rallying point for Boxers in 1900. Then in 1906, he was appointed to head the Catholic mission in Tianjin, which encompassed the prefecture as well as the city. Tianjin prefecture contained seven counties. The city’s population was about half a million or more.56 The appointment certainly expressed Bishop Jarlin’s appreciation of Lebbe’s promise. It also was apparently arrived at faute de mieux: the previous incumbent had repeatedly asked for a transfer, and Jarlin was turned down by two others before turning to Lebbe. Morale in the Tianjin district was low. The numbers by which progress was measured were poor. The hostility of some in the population toward Christian missions, so evident in 1870 and again in 1900, had not been relieved by the subsequent Allied administration of the city and its hinterland for twenty-five months.57 Jarlin himself admitted that the Catholic community there was in a slump.58 Hence, along with the promotion for Lebbe went a stark challenge. Moreover, his differences with Jarlin were solidifying. Back in 1901 on the eve of his ordination, he had raised with Jarlin his concern about the conspicuous foreignness of Catholic enterprise in China and its dependence on foreign force. Jarlin had seemed sympathetic but resigned: these were the conditions bequeathed by history, and one must work within them. When Lebbe checked in with Jarlin five years later before proceeding to Tianjin, he raised what he considered a related issue: Chinese had the same rights as Europeans, he proposed, and, whether or not they were Catholic, they not only could but should love their own country. Jarlin this time exploded, calling Lebbe an incorrigible child (enfant terrible), a utopian, and a troublemaker. Lebbe quoted him as saying, “In Tianjin, you will concern yourself with your ministry, confessions, missions, catechumenates, and you will leave aside all the rest, all the rest, you hear me. . . . You have a few years of mission and you are going to revolutionize everything! But you will obey me!!” Lebbe asked if there was anything else, kissed the ring, and left for his new assignment.59

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Lebbe in Tianjin By the time Lebbe took up his directorship in Tianjin, he was well along toward fashioning a new persona, combining a program of sinification with his personal commitments and predispositions. At some point in these first years, he had become, with the help of tutors, fluent in Mandarin Chinese and adept at reading and writing. Henceforth everyone, Chinese and foreign, remarked upon his unusual eloquence in Chinese, to the point of mesmerizing large audiences. He never stopped deepening his language skills. His Chinese companions testified to his daily reading three decades later in the Four Books and the Five Classics—the central canon of the literary tradition.60 There were other adaptations. Like most male Catholic missionaries, he wore ordinary Chinese clothes. He took up smoking a Chinese-style pipe for social reasons (he had not previously been a smoker). He shaved his forehead and grew a queue in the fashion mandated for men under the Qing. He ate Chinese food, which might seem unexceptional, but Bishop Jarlin reprimanded him for precipitating the illness of one of his confreres at the Tianjin residence because of the absence of any European cuisine.61 Vincent Lebbe, the missionary, joined a casualness about money and budgets, for which Bishop Jarlin regularly castigated him,62 with a disconcerting degree of asceticism. Certainly no more elegant silk gowns. An Italian Lazarist who had been an assistant to Lebbe’s predecessor in Tianjin later recounted that Lebbe arrived at his new post encumbered only by a small mattress, a blanket or two, his breviary, his wallet, and his Chinese pipe. Such minimalism was unprecedented for a district chief. His clothes were so plain that, when he arrived at a protocol appointment with the city police chief, he was mistaken for someone asking for a handout and was refused entry, until he produced a letter of invitation. When itinerating, usually by bicycle, he would trust charity to provide. Occasionally, when things did not work out, he would collapse from hunger and fatigue.63 He made a number of changes in everyday social interactions that drew some attention. He dispensed with the screening of visitors by a doorkeeper and instructed that all who sought to see him be brought to his room. He decreed that Christians should be seated when meeting with a priest, not required to stand throughout as had been common practice. He asked that conversation be conducted in Chinese whenever European and Chinese priests gathered together. Soon after his arrival in Tianjin, he hosted a dinner, on the feast of Saint Vincent de Paul, for all priests and catechists of the parish in which his residence was located. The catechists declared that this was the first time “in centuries” that their pastor had invited lay Chinese Christians to dine at the same table with him.64

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He was an assiduous student of Chinese etiquette and meticulously followed the rules. Yet he did so with his own interpretation of their application. He worked to eliminate the performance of the koutou or ketou (kneelings and prostrations, anglicized as “kowtow”) by Chinese brought into the presence of a priest. Although the koutou was widely practiced in Chinese society as an expression of great deference, Lebbe observed that foreign priests seemed to have uniquely latched onto this particular Chinese ceremony, and what is more in an inappropriate context, while ignoring most Chinese customs. Among objections was its function as a barrier to Christians bringing along non-Christians on a visit to a priest. When Bishop Jarlin visited Tianjin only a month after Lebbe had taken up his new position, the elderly Christians greeted Jarlin with the koutou, but the children had already been schooled in the bow with one bended knee. Jarlin rebuked Lebbe for this, not out of any attachment to the koutou, he wrote, but because of its general usage in all missions in China and its acceptance by all forty bishops. Lebbe should not be tinkering with missionary traditions on his own say-so.65 Bishop Jarlin was insistent on another matter that spoke eloquently about the nature of European dominance in the missions. He instructed Lebbe not to place a European priest in a position subordinate to a Chinese priest. The occasion was the temporary transfer to Tianjin of a priest, who, as a European, should not be asked to help a Chinese father. “That has never been done,” wrote Jarlin, “and it should not begin by a confrere who is going to render you service.”66 Although there were rare exceptions, a broad inquiry into Catholic missionary practices a little over a decade later would confirm the generality of this injunction across vicariates. While Jarlin persisted throughout his career in his support of the French Religious Protectorate, Lebbe indicated his doubts about it soon after his arrival in China and emphatically declared his opposition to it by 1908. In that year, he advocated breaking with it as soon as possible and “making Chinese Christians of our Christians, with a complete indigenous priesthood.” The goal of a complete Chinese clergy amounted to a call for Chinese bishops.67 These were interrelated issues, since the French Religious Protectorate depended on a constituency of foreign Catholic bishops for its usefulness to France. Differences about these matters would be roiling the Catholic church in China about a decade later. In the short run, Lebbe’s most consequential innovation was to establish cordial relations with leaders of Tianjin society and to seek a role for the Catholic church in the public sphere. This started with exchanging visits with all the civil and military authorities in the city, and then in the outer reaches of his mission district. As noted, one of his courtesy calls was at the police bureau in Tianjin. He became particularly close to one police official, Yang Yide. Yang had risen rapidly in Tianjin

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police ranks in the first decade of the twentieth century to become head of police affairs in Tianjin city and then in Zhili province. He also distinguished himself by his sponsorship of schools for the poor and orphans and by organizing famine and flood relief. In 1912, Lebbe collaborated with Yang in providing a neutral drop-off at the Catholic church for goods looted during the Tianjin mutiny—a military riot—at the beginning of the Republic in the wake of the Qing abdication. The idea was to provide a kind of amnesty for looters, many not military, so that they could avoid the arrest that would follow discovery of stolen goods in their homes. In another indication of their friendly relationship, Lebbe was occasionally asked to address Tianjin’s police recruits.68 Later, Lebbe’s police contacts played a role in resistance to an official French effort to expand France’s Tianjin concession. An expectable but significant connection was with one of Tianjin’s (indeed China’s) most prominent Catholics, Ying Lianzhi.69 Ying was born in Beijing into a Manchu family of ordinary circumstances. After some requisite military training as a member by inheritance in the dynasty’s core security forces, the Banners, he refashioned himself as a Chinese literatus, although he never sat for the civil service examinations. In one version, an interest in Catholicism was sparked by the dedication of some Catholic sisters treating his ill fiancée. In any case, he took up the study of it and joined the church.70 Ying’s subsequent prominence came from the leading role he played in launching in 1902 an important daily newspaper in Tianjin, the Dagongbao (given the foreign title, L’Impartial) and then for a decade managing, editing, and writing for it. The chief fund-raiser for the establishment of the paper and most of those initially investing in shares were Chinese Catholics. Although the Dagongbao took Christmas and Easter as holidays and included pro-Christian material (including the mission version of the 1906 Nanchang incident), it avoided serving as a primarily religious organ. Its main focus, apart from standard coverage of the news, was on the secular reformist ideas of the time, including constitutionalism (under the monarchy), criticism of autocracy and government corruption, advocacy of women’s education, opposition to foot-binding, promotion of the use of vernacular Chinese (baihua) in publications, and defense of the country against foreign encroachment. Although Bishop Favier initially took an interest in the project and bought some shares, Ying resisted his pressure to locate the newspaper on Beijing church property. Then he had to fend off missionary efforts to censor purely political articles. He returned the bishop’s investment and replaced the sum from the sale of shares to non-Christians. The paper’s offices were first located in the French concession in Tianjin, but in 1906, when French authorities evicted them, they moved to the

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Japanese concession.71 Ying had Japanese friends and had visited Japan. He remained a churchgoing Catholic throughout, but his experience with Catholic authority had been mixed at best. Ying had met Lebbe earlier but made no substantive comment in his diary until January 1907, when Lebbe came to dinner. Ying recorded Lebbe saying that “he seeks only that China strengthen and that its people be wise. If he dies from exhaustion [in this effort], he will be very content.”72 This moment was apparently the beginning of a long-lived friendship.73 Ying was active in charitable work in Tianjin and suggested to Lebbe that he attend meetings of the Red Cross, in which Protestants played a leading role. Ying was quite friendly with parts of the Protestant community in the city and was asked occasionally to address gatherings at the local YMCA. So this cosmopolitan Manchu Catholic smoothed the way for Lebbe, who started attending meetings of the Red Cross board regularly. After sitting silently through several meetings, Lebbe asked to speak and urged that, because so many of the members were wealthy, they should contribute their own money to the cause. He was himself without personal funds, but he would pledge to raise $1,000 (Chinese dollars, about 660 taels) from his friends, which he then did. This got the ball rolling, and the drama of it all made Lebbe something of a personage in the city.74 Lebbe subsequently joined other committees of leading Tianjin citizens for building a hospital, for providing relief to victims of natural disasters, for resisting Japan’s Twenty-One Demands (presented in January 1915 and including measures that would seriously impinge on China’s autonomy), and so forth. Among the prominent citizens with whom he joined on these committees and who became his fervent supporters was Bian Yinchang, with various functions in the Tianjin Chamber of Commerce, including as chairman, and in the late teens, chairman of the All China Confederation of Chambers of Commerce.75 Wealthy non-Christian friends like Bian helped Lebbe establish preaching or lecture halls in the city, to which the citizenry were invited to hear talks on various issues, generally with a religious or ethical angle and often delivered by Lebbe. They were termed salles de conférence (lecture halls) in references by missionaries and Gong jiao xuandao suo (Catholic preaching places) in newspaper notices. By about 1915, there were eight or nine of them in Tianjin.76 A collection of some of these lecture hall speeches by Lebbe, Ying Lianzhi, and others were published under the title, Jiuguo, or “saving the country.” The title adroitly suggested the contents, including both patriotism, which the phrase ordinarily registered, and the evangelistic message that the patriotic path could best be pursued by means of Catholic ethical rigor.77 In subsequent years, Lebbe would often point to this book as evidence of the actual content of his pitch to the good people of Tianjin.

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One of Lebbe’s early innovations in Tianjin was to respond positively to the request of parishioners that the church mark Chinese national days (in this first case, the birthday of the Empress Dowager). The church put China’s national flag on display. Lebbe recorded at the time his delight at this evidence of patriotic feeling among Tianjin Catholics.78 From 1911, Lebbe and his colleagues in the Tianjin mission began an organization of Catholic laypeople to undertake the task of evangelizing. In 1912, it was named the Association for Catholic Action (Gong jiao jinxing hui). Among its plans were to dispense with the Jarlin regime of subsidized conversions, to establish a periodical organ, to standardize Catholic school regulations, and to sponsor lay evangelism. The organization grew and attracted the attention of clerical and lay Catholics in other vicariates, which established branches. A national meeting was held in Tianjin in 1914.79 Following up on the resolutions of the new Catholic laypersons’ society, Lebbe in early 1912 managed to start up a weekly Catholic newspaper in Chinese, called the Guangyilu, concerned primarily with religious affairs. When Bishop Jarlin heard of this, he was outraged. In his understanding of the situation, he had only recently told Lebbe that he did not want a Catholic newspaper published in Tianjin, and now he learned that one was already under way. He wrote to Lebbe: “I forbid you absolutely, you and all the priests of my vicariate, from writing for, from providing information to this newspaper. I forbid them from having subscriptions, from buying it, and I forbid equally all the Christians of my vicariate.”80 Lebbe contemplated resigning his post, on grounds that a new district director could manage the situation better. In a letter to a colleague, he wrote: “I am persuaded that, perhaps unwittingly on the part of His Grandeur [ Jarlin] himself, all this was a personal question, since I carried along the storm wherever I was. The only thing to do was to throw me into the sea.”81 However, the serviceable Ying Lianzhi was presented to Jarlin as the real and unique editor, so that Jarlin could be told that Catholic priests were not in charge, thus allaying his concern that the church would be responsible for what was printed. It was the case that, in the wake of the 1911 Revolution, Ying Lianzhi was removing himself from the daily management of the Dagongbao—permanently, as it turned out, though he retained some roles—and his time was relatively unencumbered. Jarlin relented, and the weekly was allowed to continue, as long as his priests had nothing to do with it.82 The high tension between the Beijing bishop and his district director in Tianjin was backdrop to a fundamental change in ecclesiastical organization in that city. In May 1912, the Tianjin district, with the Propaganda’s approval, was removed from the Beijing and North Zhili vicariate and made a vicariate of its own, called Maritime Zhili. The bishop of this new vicariate was not the missionary who had

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led the district for the previous six years, Vincent Lebbe, but instead Paul Dumond, a French Lazarist, senior in the field to Lebbe, and previously stationed in Baoding and Beijing. Dumond came to Tianjin in July 1912 quite conscious of Lebbe’s stature there and made Lebbe his second-in-command, that is, provicar or vicar general. At first, Dumond was a more lenient overseer than had been Jarlin, but the storms following Lebbe soon intruded. Before the storm clouds burst, Lebbe founded another Chinese-language newspaper with his new bishop’s permission, this time a daily. It turned out to be one of China’s major newspapers in much of the Republican period (i.e., 1912–1949). Lebbe had gone on a fund-raising trip to Europe in 1913, on which, incidentally, he escorted Ying Lianzhi’s son to Belgium for a period of study. While continuing to wear his Chinese-style clothes, he visited his family and gave many talks and interviews (in Belgium, Britain, France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Italy). He established or refurbished acquaintanceships that would prove useful in the tempest to come. He raised considerable sums, intended for a school in Tianjin and for a daily newspaper. At the time, nothing much came of the idea of establishing a high-level Catholic school in Tianjin. As he was returning from Europe in January 1914, Lebbe wrote an acquaintance about the obstacles he faced in this respect. While Protestants were moving rapidly in providing education for “the ruling class,” the Lazarist order of his own mission lacked the requisite talent. Yet it refused the offers of Jesuits to establish an institution of higher learning (une grande école) in Tianjin. A decade earlier, Jarlin had turned them down, and recently his new bishop, Dumond, had done the same, as well as blocked an elite school for girls. “You have no idea of the struggle the Congregations [that is, the religious orders] wage against each other. It is to keep the vicariate for the Lazarists, to prevent the Jesuits from having an opening,” even though the issue was only a school, complained Lebbe.83 It would appear that most of the 50,000 to 60,000 francs he had raised was available for the newspaper project, and more came from investors in China.84 With the money and the recruitment of Chinese editors, the Yishibao (foreign title: Social Welfare) was launched. The paper leased a building from the Tianjin Catholic mission by formal contract, but the bishop insisted that the mission have no financial responsibility for it. While Lebbe was acknowledged to be the man at the top (in effect, the publisher), the paper was primarily managed and edited by two Chinese, one belonging to a family that had been Catholic for centuries and the other a Catholic convert from Protestantism. Its first issue appeared in October 1915. Aimed at a general audience, it rapidly become one of the most widely read newspapers in north China, soon surpassing the Dagongbao in circulation. A Beijing edition was added at the beginning of 1916. Altogether, there were about 150 employees in

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1918, and the paper was making money.85 The strikingly large Catholic contribution to Chinese journalism in the first half of the twentieth century—first the Dagongbao and then the Yishibao—has not received the attention it deserves. In ten years, as district director and then as vicar general of the Tianjin Catholic mission, Lebbe and his colleagues had introduced an array of changes and new programs, which Lebbe would soon describe as constituting the “Tianjin method.” He was convinced that the approach taken toward evangelism during his years in Tianjin had general application. It attracted considerable attention, in the concrete form of emissaries from other missions coming on inspection tours and of subscriptions to and investments in his newspaper by distant vicariates.86 His approach would eventually also provoke various criticisms. One was that, as a method of evangelism, it was not productive of conversions. It is true that some of his innovations were of a sort appealing especially to the upper rungs of local society, a much smaller pool than the peasants targeted by Jarlin. The only available measures—the numbers reported by the mission—show a marked increase in Catholics in the Tianjin mission district between 1905 and 1915, bracketing the years of Lebbe’s dominant role there. The total went from about 7,000 to over 38,000 in that time, up by a factor of almost five and a half. On the other hand, the rate of increase went down by more than half from 1911 to 1915, years during which the Jarlin program of subsidized conversions was abandoned in Tianjin. This reduction in conversions was acknowledged by the Lebbe camp, who claimed that improved quality and higher regard in society justified the difference.87 Another reproach was that Lebbe’s apparent successes were owed to his pandering to the Chinese and that he sought popularity for himself, not Catholics for the church.88 Lebbe, who was trained to be introspective, wrestled with this accusation. In 1917, he wrote to a colleague: “Tell me truly what you find defective in me. The persistence with which they repeat to me that I am seeking popularity and human glory makes me think increasingly that there is some truth in it—even without me knowing it.”89 He occasionally admitted that he was forgiving of the faults he found among the Chinese.90 However, insofar as the reproach was directed against his advocacy of the empowerment of Chinese, inside the church as well as generally, he was unapologetic. A third charge against Lebbe was that of hypocrisy: despite his calls for abjuring foreign protection, he had not been above invoking it. One could start with his early use of coercive strategies in conversion, effective because of post-Boxer power balances, as described previously. Lebbe later acknowledged these moves as ill-conceived and harmful. It is only in writings critical of Lebbe that one finds another allegation: that Lebbe sought French official protection for his mission at

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the time of the 1911 Revolution and that, through his bishop, he pursued reparation for the material damage suffered by his wealthy Tianjin friends from the Tianjin mutiny of 1912. Local merchants’ losses from the mutiny were estimated at over twelve million taels.91 Regarding the request for reparations, there is the evidence of Jarlin’s epistolary response, reporting the French legation’s refusal to get involved.92 Here one does find inconsistency in Lebbe’s position. A further critical observation was that the Yishibao, for all its anti-imperialism, located its offices in the foreign concessions of Tianjin. Actually, the management had self-consciously rejected doing so, until 1922, when the headquarters were moved to the Italian concession to protect the newspaper—unsuccessfully, as it turned out—from warlord meddling in a time of endemic civil war. However, the charge that the Yishibao was registered with the American legation for purposes of protection seems to have some basis.93 A further point, raised even by those who were in sympathy with Lebbe’s main notions, was that the implicit claims of innovation and uniqueness often made on Lebbe’s behalf were exaggerated.94 Lebbe would have largely agreed. It is worth taking a look at the issue. Other Voices for Change Lebbe and his principal collaborator in these years, Antoine Cotta (about whom more later), legitimated their central critique of the current state of the China missions in large part by the antecedent of papal policy. Perhaps it was disingenuous to support a radical restructuring of the status quo on the basis of old instructions from Rome. Certainly, the idea that change was necessary impelled them to research the past, rather than the reverse. But the material was there and sometimes remarkably relevant. Despite occasional hesitations, the Vatican had long held that the purpose of the missions was to create an indigenous church, and then depart. In a famous instruction of 1659, the Propaganda warned against national rivalries and enjoined any attempt to change local ways, unless they obviously contradicted Catholicism and morality, and then only gradually. “What could be more absurd than to transfer France, Spain, Italy or some other European country to China?” (The early-eighteenth-century forbidding to Catholics certain Chinese rites, an act that would appear to vitiate this liberal policy, exemplifies the many uncertainties and ambiguities of its application.) The Propaganda had stressed the preparation of indigenous priests and anticipated Chinese bishops soon. The focus on training Chinese priests and promoting them was repeated in another Propaganda instruction in 1845. It was possible to construct a case out of these and other

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pronouncements from Rome that the China mission field was in gross violation of established papal policy and had been for many years.95 On the other hand, as Claude Prudhomme argues in his magisterial study of mission policy under Leo XIII, there was a retreat from the possibility of acculturation and from a positive evaluation of local culture on the part of the Vatican in the late nineteenth century—an emphasis instead on implanting the Roman model everywhere. This posture militated against the rise to authority of indigenous clergy.96 Without abandonment of the idea of an eventual Chinese hierarchy for the church, the goal was discussed in a framework that made it always subject to postponement. The local clergy would never seem quite Roman enough to risk their leadership. The pervasive fear among European prelates of a takeover of the Catholic church in China by the Chinese clergy was shared by the Propaganda secretary in the mid-1880s. Lebbe and Cotta would discover that retrieval of old Propaganda pronouncements by itself would not carry the day. Lebbe and friends were not the first critical voices from within the China missions. One they did not discover was that of a French Lazarist in the 1840s, Joseph Gabet, who anticipated some of the arguments made by reformers in the early twentieth century. Gabet served as missionary from 1835 in north China and Manchuria. In 1844, he embarked with another Lazarist, Evariste Huc, on a journey across China, to Gansu province, then on to Tibet, where they were turned back by Qing authority, and exited China via Guangzhou and Macao in 1846. That same year, Gabet addressed a long discourse to Pope Pius IX about the state of evangelism in China, which was made into a booklet, later withdrawn and forgotten.97 In his memorial to the pope, Gabet expounds the dire need for the indigenization of the church, to be accomplished by the proliferation of Chinese clergy, a less deracinating form of education for those clergy, and their advancement to positions of authority instead of seeming to be servants to the Europeans. As it stands, the Catholic Church appears to the Chinese as “a means of invasion.” “The Christians take shape in the bosom of the empire like a secret association, the purpose of which is unknown, and all of whose leaders are exclusively foreigners.” This foreign appearance, he writes, is the largest obstacle to Catholicism’s spread, and “good citizens show their patriotism by hating it.” He also reproves the bitter conflicts among the missionary orders, with their repercussions among Chinese Christians to the point of bloody feuds. He is highly critical of the inadequacy of language skills among the European missionaries, as well as of their luxurious lifestyles.98 These anticipations of the diatribes of Lebbe and other twentieth-century reformers, including Chinese, are all the more remarkable for their exposition at a point when the nineteenth-century swelling of the Catholic missions in China had barely

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begun. Nor was Lebbe the first Catholic missionary to object to the French Religious Protectorate. Italian prelates in China in the period of the unequal treaties, long constrained by the Vatican from seeking sponsorship by the Italian government, were often restive with French protection and the attendant deference to France. Early in the 1880s, the Catholic bishop of Hongkong and Propaganda procurator, Timoleone Raimondi of the Foreign Missions of Milan, facilitated the communication to Rome of a Chinese interest in direct negotiations with the Vatican. From his perch just outside the jurisdiction of the French Religious Protectorate in British Hongkong, he wrote in May 1885 a harsh critique of the adverse effect of the system. The missionaries [since the 1860 treaties] were considered like emissaries and policemen of the French Government, while the French Minister in Beijing was regarded like the chief of all the Catholic missions, of the missionaries and of the Christians in China. . . . The worst harm is that missionaries and Christians relied too much on French protection, rather than trusting in the power of God. At the beginning, the French Minister in Beijing obtained a lot for the missions, but this caused jealousy among the other European powers and, in the last ten years, the French Consul gained little. . . . In China there is great indignation against the French: their time of prestige and strength is over. . . . The French missionaries, or those who favor France, believe . . . that it is impossible to maintain the Catholic missions in China without French protection. . . . But the nationalist spirit, which can be called the cancer of the Catholic missions, is still strong among the French or the pro-French missionaries. The only remedy is the authoritative word of the Holy Father.99 Insofar as such views informed the Vatican’s attempt in 1886 at diplomatic relations with China, they were trumped by France. Among reform ideas more contemporary with Lebbe were those of Favier and Jarlin, already described. Lebbe’s later critique was in partial agreement with each in different ways. There must have been quite a few others with similar notions. One of these, who would become a major player in the changing missionary scene, was Jean-Baptiste Budes de Guébriant. He was of a noble French family from Normandy, with a chateau and a history of acclaimed military valor going back to the Crusades. Such ancestry carried considerable cachet in Europe, perhaps especially at the Vatican. In 1883, he entered the MEP seminary in Paris and was a missionary in southern Sichuan from 1885 to 1916, the last five years of which was as bishop of a newly created vicariate of Jianchang, lopped off from the South Sichuan vicariate.100

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Like Lebbe and many other missionaries (but by no means all), de Guébriant wore Chinese clothes. In a 1915 report as bishop, he declared that all his priests were so attired. Also like Lebbe and an indeterminate number of others, he sported a queue before the 1911 Revolution. Unlike Lebbe, he seemed to have been accepting of the koutou by Chinese Christians before their priests.101 In 1902, in a chain of communication to his brother the Count, on to the papal nuncio in Paris, then to the secretary of state at the Vatican, the missionary de Guébriant declared, like Favier, that the Catholic missions in China were stagnant. “Catholicism in China will be paralyzed and overwhelmed by Protestantism, if it does not aim at winning, besides the poor and popular classes as has been done up to now, also the mandarin classes.” There was a pressing need to establish Catholic schools, where modern subjects, now attractive to the Chinese elite, would be taught.102 Lebbe later recalled that de Guébriant had been among those bishops who had bought shares in the Yishibao. De Guébriant had frequently inquired about evangelical methods and had sent delegates to Tianjin to participate in the Association for Catholic Action. Lebbe believed that de Guébriant had adopted the “Tianjin method.”103 Nevertheless, in the 1915 report to the Propaganda on his first five years as bishop, de Guébriant noted that in the assignment of posts in his vicariate, European priests maintained their precedence over Chinese priests “by virtue of the tradition of Sichuan.” He also welcomed the French Religious Protectorate for its guarantees of religious freedom and of mission property, a position that Lebbe and associates contested.104 The paths of de Guébriant and Lebbe would cross with considerable consequence at the end of the decade. There is no way to know the views of the China missionaries as a body. Among the critical, there were, of course, differences, as we have seen. In a tone that contrasts starkly with the reformers attended to so far, one Barnaba Nanetti Da Cologna sent to Rome in March 1911 a singular screed, full of scandalous accusations, at a moment when he was anticipating, accurately, his own death.105 Da Cologna was the Franciscan missionary who had initiated the first Italian departure—the vicariate of North Shanxi—from the French Religious Protectorate in 1901. Although removed from his post at that time, he returned to the field, both to collect material on the events of 1900 in Shanxi and to serve as a missionary in a neighboring Shaanxi vicariate.106 Part of his motive in addressing the pope was to absolve himself of the charges of schemer and liar arising from that moment in 1901, especially, said Da Cologna, those leveled by Bishop Favier, as well as of subsequent accusations of his dishonesty by an unscrupulous German Shanxi bishop.107 But he also had the general state of the Chinese missions on his mind. Da Cologna’s list of deformities in the missions included the deceitful speculations of the procurators (or business managers) of the missionary orders; their investment

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in houses of prostitution and gambling (here he sounded like Georges Clemenceau in the French National Assembly in 1901); the beating of Christians and the mistreatment of seminarians by missionaries; unpunished breaches by priests of the rule of celibacy, well known among the pagans; the careerism of the missionaries (eight out of ten, he alleged, were bent on becoming bishops); and the corrupt manner in which bishops were sometimes chosen. In regard to his own stomping ground of Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, he made allegations against specific, named people. He charged that “now throughout all China one speaks of Taiyuanfu [the see of the North Shanxi vicariate] as a sink of fraud and scandal.”108 The basic flaw in the system, according to Da Cologna, was the monkish politics of the missionary orders. His remedy was the dispatch to China of a papal delegate, who could uncover the truth, circumvent the interference and manipulations of the heads of the orders, and nominate bishops directly to the Propaganda. Da Cologna, in his thirty-four-page polemic, had little to say about Chinese priests, except for charging one with flagrant incontinence. However, his insistence on the need for intervention from the Vatican was a regularly recurring theme among reformers, shared by Favier, de Guébriant, and Lebbe (although not by Jarlin, who proved to be more representative of missionary views than the others). Catholic criticisms of the state of foreign missions in China could also be formulated at a distance. In 1907, Canon Léon Joly, who had never been to Asia, published an incisive analysis of defects in the missions. The two-volume book powerfully influenced the more thoughtful of those who were looking to reform, including Lebbe, Cardinal Gasparri (Vatican secretary of state, 1914–1930), and the man later charged by the Vatican with setting the China missions straight, Celso Costantini. Its central points were that the missions had been sadly mistaken in relying on political power for their security and their religious freedom and in keeping indigenous clergy subordinate to the European priests. The results were a church that was seen as an advance guard of conquest and the lack of truly self-sufficient Christian communities.109 When Tianjin erupted in controversy in 1916, it should not have been a surprise. The China missions were ripe for change. As it turned out, however, resistance to change on some central issues was extremely strong and managed to substantially blunt efforts at reform.

7 Dissidence and Catholic Patriotism in Tianjin

warnings from within the Catholic Church that the China missions could not successfully continue along the paths established in the nineteenth century, as well as suggestions for reform, had been registered in the first years of the new century. These critiques seemed to have had little immediate impact on the field as a whole, aside from contributing to the significant development of a decline by the end of the first decade in missionary interventions in legal cases. In the next two decades, however, events exposed the accumulated contradictions in attitudes and policies that were impeding the emergence of a truly Chinese church. World War I had a large impact on the European missionaries, especially French and German ones. A new pope, Benedict XV, and his appointments would also change the balance of forces. Perhaps most crucial was the engagement of the Catholic missions with a heightening Chinese nationalism. The very idea of the French Religious Protectorate was at stake. Raising the Issue of Racial Inequalities in the Church Some of the turbulence to come had been foreshadowed by the rather muffled objections over the years from Chinese priests about their treatment and, from another angle, by the growing tension between the Belgian missionary, Vincent Lebbe, and the bishop at Beijing, Stanislas Jarlin. This latter tension was eased for the moment when Lebbe’s district of Tianjin was made into its own vicariate, under a different bishop. The first challenge at an elite council on the key question of the standing of Chinese clergy within the Chinese church came from another priest, Antoine 148

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Cotta. He was born in Egypt in 1872, but his father had been registered as a resident of Capo d’Istria, which was under the Austrian crown, until it was assigned to Italy after World War I.1 In China, Cotta was a missionary under the French Religious Protectorate. He was not above gaming the multiple claims of nationality opened up by these circumstances. He went to France in 1891 and entered the Paris seminary of the Lazarists, where he met Lebbe. His first assignment as a missionary was to Madagascar, but he left there in 1905 and was persuaded by Lebbe to come to China the next year. He and Lebbe shared an analysis of where the missions had gone wrong, to a point where it is difficult to say which of them was the initiator of any particular proposition. Cotta was perhaps the more analytical of the two. Lebbe was the great communicator and the person with stature in the Chinese community of Tianjin and beyond.2 He also turned out to be the better survivor in the battles to come and left the larger mark. Once into the struggle, they both wrote prolifically. The occasion for Cotta’s confrontation over the issues around Chinese priests was a gathering near Beijing in April 1914 of Lazarist bishops of north China, under the chairmanship of the region’s Lazarist visitor, who represented the head of the order. Each bishop brought along his chief lieutenant. In the case of the Tianjin bishop, that would ordinarily have been Lebbe, the vicar general, but Lebbe had not yet returned from his fund-raising trip to Europe. Cotta attended in his stead. The visitor presented for discussion the proposition that there should be created in Europe a special school for producing more missionaries for China, because of the increasing difficulty of recruitment in Europe and the need for European missionaries to officer (encadrer) the Chinese clergy. When it was his turn, Cotta made two points: that the shortage of European missionaries called rather for an increase in Chinese clergy (“our duty and honor is to work to render ourselves redundant”) and that to speak of officering the Chinese was to perpetuate the idea of the superiority of Europeans, when the systematic distinction between Chinese and European priests should instead disappear. There were some testy exchanges.3 A second round of discussion at this meeting concerned sending Chinese seminarians to Europe for theological training. The context was recent pressure from Rome to dispatch promising Chinese students to the Urban College there, with all expenses paid by the Propaganda.4 On the issue of a European education for prospective Chinese priests, the bishops divided. There were particular objections to Paris as a destination, where the environment was corrupting. The West Zhili bishop: “Rome is not better than Paris; therefore, there is no obligation to send any seminarians to Europe.” Bishop Jarlin of Beijing agreed. Others saw advantages and wished to respond to the Vatican’s request. Cotta declared that to exclude Chinese from Rome systematically was an anomaly, when secular organizations where sending

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young Chinese to Europe and America for further education. Ultimately, the matter was left to the discretion of each bishop. No Chinese seminarians were sent to Rome for several years. Cotta delivered a report of this meeting to the Lazarist motherhouse in Paris. The superior general wrote Cotta in February 1915, charging him with “serious lack of respect” toward several of the bishops and summoning him to France for a talk. It is likely that Cotta interpreted the summons as a cover for a permanent or extended recall from the China field. He begged off, writing that his Austrian nationality prevented him from going during the war to France, where he would be an enemy alien. This response elicited an epistolary rebuke from Paris for his attitude at the previous year’s meeting and a lecture on the “delicate” question of the Chinese clergy. The superior general told Cotta to avoid inciting Chinese priests against the apostolic vicars or the ordinary European missionaries. “The indigenous priests might quickly take advantage and in a very unfortunate manner, if they see in one or another of us a tendency in this sense. They cannot forget . . . that the Chinese Christians owe the grace of the Faith to [the European missionaries], who, for centuries, have made considerable sacrifices on China’s behalf.”5 Gratitude apparently dictated submissiveness. Cotta replied that the real and vital issue was “the systematic disparity between the Europeans and the Chinese. . . . The Chinese are in practice treated as inferiors, by reason of race.” The result is “the great difficulty, if not the impossibility, for the Church to develop normally in China.” These attitudes, wrote Cotta, made the Chinese church “a spiritual colony.”6 There the matter was allowed to rest for the moment. Enlarging the French Concession in Tianjin: Laoxikai The foreign concessions in or adjacent to some Chinese cities during the era of the unequal treaties were idiosyncratic, hybrid creatures, neither colonies nor “not colonies.” From the late 1840s onward, the treaty powers negotiated with Chinese authorities zones of urban space for foreign residence in the treaty ports. The major instance was in Shanghai. There, two large areas of foreign control prevailed: the French Concession and the so-called International Settlement, originally an amalgam of British and American concessions. Together, they became the downtown of a city that grew rapidly over subsequent decades. In Tianjin, as in some other cities like Hankou, a number of concessions of lesser size emerged, each with a national identification. They were spread along the major river and extended out from the limits of the old city and its immediate suburbs, where Chinese administration still

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prevailed. A strange, forced cosmopolitanism marked the results, not to mention great confusion and scandalous inefficiencies. The specific arrangements governing the concessions varied from city to city and from concession to concession. Chinese sovereignty was held to continue in some ultimate sense, in contrast to the legal status of outright colonies, like the original parts of British Hongkong or places under long-term leases, such as Jiaozhou (or Kiaochow, held by Germany until 1914) in Shandong province and Dalian (or Dairen, held by Russia, and then by Japan after 1905) in Manchuria. Any Chinese residents of the concessions were considered still to be subjects of the Chinese empire or citizens of the Chinese republic, under Chinese law. In many practical ways, however, the concessions were autonomous enclaves. Chinese might or might not be allowed to maintain residence or enterprise within any particular concession or part of it. Foreign concession authorities by various institutional arrangements set themselves up as middlemen between any Chinese residents and the Chinese state. Police and taxing powers, as well as a variety of urban services, were typically removed from Chinese official control with respect to the concession area and placed in the hands of consular officials or of local bodies representative of the foreign population only. The concessions were foreign turf in Chinese eyes, and in foreign eyes as well. In Tianjin, the leading entrepôt of northern China, the British, French, and American concessions were joined over the years by those of the Russians, Belgians, Germans, Italians, Austro-Hungarians, and Japanese. The British concession absorbed the small American one in 1902. Those responsible for the concessions sometimes sought to expand their area, by one means or another, back from the initial strips of river front. The French concession in Tianjin went from an initial 360 mu (about 60 acres) to about 2,300 mu (382 acres), mostly through a massive land grab in the wake of the Boxer affair, when the French military shared in the temporary foreign occupation and administration of the city. The British concession also expanded, to over 6,000 mu (about 1,000 acres).7 The result of this round of expansions and the establishment of new concessions was that the French found themselves with less concessionary territory in Tianjin, not only than the British but also than the Russians, the Germans, and the Japanese. For some French officials, this was an intolerable situation.8 They also spoke of avoiding encirclement by one or another neighboring concession, cutting off future expansion. Actual need for more space for French residences and businesses—with a reported 449 French citizens in 185 households in 19099—was never part of the argument. In the early years after the post-Boxer expansion, French authorities in Tianjin were preoccupied with the absorption of what they had just acquired, which they

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called the “Extra-Concession.” It was part of the legal complexity of the concession that it had to compensate the Chinese proprietors who had been evicted at the time of the extension. The manner and amount were still being negotiated in 1908, when Paul Claudel was Tianjin consul for France. It was Claudel, the diplomat and prominent author, who had arranged the entry into Nanchang of the North Jiangxi Catholic mission in 1897. After his request to be admitted to the Benedictine order was denied during a trip home in 1900, he returned to consular duties in China. He entered into an affair with the wife of a businessman on the sea voyage and housed the couple and their children at his assignment in Fuzhou, Fujian province. This romance inspired some of his most important subsequent compositions, “with an autobiographical frankness that is still alarming,” writes a recent critic. When apprised of the ménage of its Fuzhou vice-consul, the Quai d’Orsay, too, was alarmed. However, with the romance terminated and Claudel safely married to someone else, he was sent back to China as consul in Tianjin from 1906 to 1909.10 He failed to reach a compensation agreement with those Chinese proprietors. His successor took up the matter with the Chinese government. A settlement was reached at the time of the 1911 Revolution, for 125,000 taels.11 This settlement had some bearing on the manner in which French authorities took their next steps. They could now focus on the aim of approximating the reach of Britain’s concession. Yet they had to recognize that the tested method of buying up lands and building roads in the targeted area, such as had been done in Shanghai,12 was expensive and that the French concession, as an organized entity, had already gone heavily into debt in financing the development of the Extra-Concession, including the compensation of the evicted Chinese proprietors. There was the remaining possibility of reaching understandings with private French purchasers of land and exploiting their presence as an occasion for laying roads. Especially stimulating was the news that the Catholic mission had acquired property just beyond the borders of the expanded French concession in the area of interest.13 When the Tianjin Catholic mission district was upgraded in 1912 to a vicariate of its own, the new bishop, Paul Dumond, soon decided, against the preferences of many of his priests and of local lay Christians, that the twice-reconstructed main church at Wanghailou (Notre Dame des Victoires), not far from the city center, was not what he wanted for a cathedral, not to mention for a proper episcopal residence and other edifices. With the assistance of his procurator, Father Louis Fleury, he chose a site in the lightly populated district of Laoxikai (alternatively referred to simply as Xikai), hard by the French concession. The argument was that starting fresh where land was cheaper would cost less than expanding the old Wanghailou site.14 Construction began in 1913.

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Many have suspected that arrangements with the French consulate dictated the choice from the beginning. A reading of the internal French official correspondence during this period does not verify the charge. On the other hand, one of the vicariate’s French missionaries, Louis Morel, gave at the time detailed, if undocumented, accounts of Fleury’s secret dealings.15 In any case, the mission soon became caught up in the French consulate’s scheme for further expansion. A new French consul in Tianjin, Henry Bourgeois, formulated ambitious plans in July 1914. He would show himself to be a very determined bureaucrat, lacking prudence and subtlety. He suggested to his minister in Beijing that the Shanghai method of concession expansion—buying up land and laying roads—would not work, at least not in a timely fashion. There was no sign of adequate purchasers. Even the Catholic mission was putting its resources into building and would not be buying the requisite amounts of land. Rather, he argued, France should simply proclaim “clearly and openly our intention to annex a territory which we must occupy because of the risk of encirclement of our present concession by its neighbors, territory to which we have scarcely ceased aspiring since 1902.” A predecessor had requested it of Chinese authorities in that year. Bourgeois found the request in his archive. He noted that it was not surprising that there had been no response, since the request was addressed to “a provisional government, completely disabled.” Nonetheless, he proposed that the lack of response be taken as official Chinese assent, thereby providing a legal basis for the annexation. Further rationales might be a claim of most-favored-nation treatment, based on the expansion of the British concession, and occasional past forays into the territory by French concession police.16 As a legal position, Bourgeois’s plan was transparently feeble. Doubts in his own camp had to be periodically squelched.17 Yet on he forged. Without waiting for his minister’s authorization (which soon came), he made his claims public toward the end of July 1914, when he protested to the provincial foreign affairs commissioner the installation of Chinese police in the targeted territory and demanded their withdrawal. The Chinese commissioner rejected Bourgeois’s protest and its rationale in the 1902 request.18 The long-lived confrontation—the Laoxikai affair—was underway. It was not settled until 1931.19 The first rounds of exchanges between French and Chinese authorities, occurring in both Tianjin and Beijing, were concluded by a communication in late 1914 from Sun Baoqi, China’s foreign minister. He explained to the French minister, A. R. Conty, that, because the area in question was suburban and marshy, Chinese authorities had believed that occasional police patrols were sufficient. Then, as the population had grown somewhat, with the mission and a school, it was felt necessary to establish a police station there. Any surveillance over the zone by French concession

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police had amounted simply to clandestine trespassing. Extension of the concession was a matter requiring a written agreement between the two governments, and such an agreement was lacking. Rather than conceding the removal of the Chinese police, Sun asked that the French police be withdrawn and that all work on bridges or roads in this area be stopped.20 Negotiations in both Tianjin and Beijing were in abeyance during the extended diplomacy surrounding the Twenty-One Demands of Japan in the first half of 1915, but then resumed. Meanwhile, there were now two police administrations asserting jurisdiction over the area, one under the Chinese provincial and municipal authorities and the other coming out of the French concession. Neither police force had much to do in Laoxikai. Their presence and their patrols were symbolic of the positions of either side in the case. In the late summer of 1915, Consul Bourgeois raised the ante by presenting the Chinese inhabitants of the Laoxikai area with tax bills, payable to the administration of the French concession. This act carried the issue beyond diplomacy into the lives of Tianjin citizens. The citizens responded first by a petition to the provincial governor, via Tianjin’s police department, with the signatures of Laoxikai residents. Then public meetings were held on September 15 and 19, organized by some of Tianjin’s leading citizens who had already been politically active in the local movement against Japan’s Twenty-Once Demands earlier in the year. The meetings—the second with a reported attendance of more than 1,300—were under the auspices of the newly named Society for Safeguarding the Nation’s Territory and Sovereignty (Guotu guoquan weichi hui). There was agreement on writing to the Chinese authorities that they should pledge to hold on to the area, firmly and without any compromises. Speeches sounded the theme of the national interest in sovereign rights over people and land. Any wavering could lead to the partition of the country.21 The president of the new organization was Bian Yinchang, vice-chairman of the Tianjin Chamber of Commerce and one of Vincent Lebbe’s wealthy friends. Consul Bourgeois temporarily backed off. Bringing in the Catholics From the beginning of the Laoxikai affair, there was a Catholic dimension, which soon became an unexpectedly complicated factor in the controversy. The charge of complicity between the Catholic mission in Tianjin and the French consul was compelling at the time and has remained a part of many accounts. As one study of the Laoxikai affair characterizes it, “The Catholic church was an accomplice to wrong-doing and served as a tool of aggression.”22 For the missions to be stalking

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horses for imperialism was not new, but Chinese sensitivities had sharpened considerably since the turn of the century. This case seemed remarkably blatant. There was complicity, though not with the eagerness implied in the most critical accounts. Relations between Bishop Dumond and French authorities were edgy. In September 1915, for example, Dumond described sarcastically the French consul’s claim that the land purchased by the mission in Laoxikai had all along not been Chinese. The mission’s land there had been registered in the usual way for the purchase of Chinese land, and Dumond professed not to understand the consul’s contrary reasoning. Addressing the French minister in Beijing, Dumond plaintively pleaded: “Whatever the case may be, I have asked the Consul to be good enough to leave the mission completely out of this question.”23 The tone was not that of a team player. At about the same time, Henry Bourgeois, the Tianjin consul, described Bishop Dumond as “equivocal” and wondered whether he “realizes his duty as a Frenchman and the situation of obligation to the French government in which his mission finds itself.” At another meeting, he found the bishop “shifty” and his procurator, Father Fleury, “fearful.” He concluded that France could not count on the mission.24 That judgment, however, did not prevent him from using the mission presence in Laoxikai as much as he could. Fleury recounted to his superiors that he had been threatened by the French consulate to the effect that the construction of the mission buildings must not conflict with concession plans for roads through the area. Fleury was given blueprints and told that, if French concession authorities later had to destroy a misplaced structure, there would be no compensation paid.25 It is apparent that Fleury acceded to this and other requests of the French consulate. Distrust of Fleury, a Swiss, ran high among some of his confreres. He was young, a relatively recent arrival (1909), and by all accounts a worldly sort. As procurator, he made some profitable investments for the mission, but even his bishop, when about to depart for a visit to Europe, had qualms about leaving the keys to the treasury in Fleury’s hands.26 His considerable private business transactions were not only inappropriate to his clerical state but also sometimes passed the limits of ordinary honesty. A Czech Lazarist missionary of the vicariate wrote in 1918 of Fleury’s “disloyal proceedings regarding the Laoxikai affair and his bad reputation as a more or less shady operator.”27 Early on in his mission career, Fleury’s behavior had been sufficiently dubious for the Lazarist visitor, who had disciplinary powers as local representative of the order’s superior general in Paris, to transfer him to a different assignment within the vicariate.28 He was known among Chinese for frequenting dance halls and bars. A Chinese Lazarist of the vicariate received complaints of Fleury’s aggressive sexual advances toward various Catholic women, as well as the charge that he

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kept a mistress—reports that Bishop Dumond dismissed.29 For some, it was easy to believe that Fleury was concealing the extent of his deals with French authorities. For his part, Vincent Lebbe was not advertising his links to the popular movement against the expansion of the French concession. He later admitted that in the summer of 1914 he had suggested to the Tianjin police, headed by his friend Yang Yide, that they establish a presence in Laoxikai. As a leading member of the mission, he was on the spot, observing every maneuver, and highly sensitive to the implications of official French initiatives. He had to be aware of the new practice of French concession police taking strolls around the construction sites in Laoxikai. Whether Lebbe’s tip-off was critical to the investment of the area by the Tianjin police we do not know. The French consul believed it was. He heard from a highly placed member of that police force that the insertion of Chinese police into Laoxikai had been at Father Lebbe’s request.30 When accused to his face by Consul Bourgeois, Lebbe avoided the question.31 Similarly, in addressing his superiors, Lebbe downplayed his role in managing the Yishibao. That newspaper, which began appearing on October 1, 1915, immediately joined the opposition to the French presumption to concessionary rights over Laoxikai. The initial lead editorial, carried on over the first three issues, was in the form of “an exhortation” to the French consul. Did the consul not see the analogy with the German seizure of Alsace-Lorraine? Would the possession of Laoxikai be worth the damage it would do to Chinese attitudes toward France, especially in the context of the war in Europe? If France gained its objective, the editorial said, the aim of recovery would be passed on from Chinese father to Chinese son.32 The paper continued to report extensively on and offer editorial support to the resistance movement. Yishibao’s mushrooming circulation was generally attributed to the popularity of its espousal of this cause (and later that of the students in the May Fourth Movement). When challenged, Lebbe disclaimed responsibility, noting the absence of his name on any articles about Laoxikai, in obedience to his bishop’s instruction to be neutral. He would say that the editorial staff was autonomous. They were not obliged to listen to him, he asserted, and if they had, they would have done great harm to themselves by it.33 The line he took was that his contributions to the paper were all religious: oversight to forestall blasphemy and the like, as well as columns discussing religious matters only. For a while, his bishop endorsed these assertions. To the French consul, Dumond wrote that the mission had no financial or editorial role in the Yishibao and that Lebbe’s involvement was in a private capacity and “only to see that nothing might be published contrary to the faith or morals.”34 It was the case that Lebbe did not author published articles on Laoxikai. It was false, by his own admission, that he was not involved in fashioning editorial

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policies. The most explosive national issue in China in the first months of Yishibao’s existence was the monarchical movement of Yuan Shikai. Yuan, who had taken a republican oath when he became the compromise president of the country after the 1911 Revolution, was publicly agitating from August 1915 through frontmen for his installation as emperor.35 The Yishibao took a moderately expressed antimonarchical position at first—perhaps somewhat daringly, given Yuan’s taste for repression.36 When Yuan pushed through a staged election for his enthronement, followed by his formal acceptance in late December 1915, the paper editorially argued, under Lebbe’s name, in favor of accepting the fait accompli, since the country needed calm. Further revolution would only increase China’s weakness and precipitate foreign intervention. Rather, he wrote, we should not focus so much on the political leadership and should instead pursue reform of society.37 Three years later, Lebbe recalled that, after much deliberation among its managers about the paper’s position on Yuan’s monarchical coup d’état, “the missionary [Lebbe] imposed his way of looking at it.” The rapid collapse of Yuan’s monarchy softened the consequences for the paper of the unpopularity of the position it had taken.38 But the moment was evidence that Lebbe’s voice could be decisive. When describing his many responsibilities at this time to his nonclerical brother, he included presiding over the Catholic daily newspaper (“j’ai la direction”).39 It is difficult to believe that he was anything but supportive of the paper’s endorsement of the resistance to the extension of the French concession. Certainly, his many Chinese admirers thought that he had been. Lebbe’s prose actually appeared frequently in the Yishibao in its early years, in signed articles, in transcribed speeches, and in a regular column on religious history and doctrine. Among the notable features of these pieces is the self-identification of the author as Chinese. China is always “our country,” and the Chinese are always “we Chinese.” His most persistent theme is the need for patriotism (aiguo xin and the like). Our China, he writes, is a country besieged, humiliated, and in danger of national failure. We Chinese have the fault of bravery in private conflicts but passivity in public battles. We must show the world our determination and readiness for service to the national cause. He also writes of the cleansing power of the floodtide of new thought, of ideas of evolution and reform, or of science and democracy, sweeping away superstition and rigid patterns of the past. Here he is echoing the voice of the New Culture Movement, which was engaging the Chinese intellectual scene from 1915 in its attacks on traditional culture (and perhaps he was remembering some of the Catholic “modernism” that he had fancied in seminary). Lebbe’s pieces often end with the argument that patriotism, part of a God-given natural order, requires a moral citizenry, and the

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appropriate moral values are best defined and nurtured in Catholic teachings and Catholic religious practice.40 Lebbe’s contortions around the issue of his public engagement in the lively issues of his place and time were products of the difficult line that he was pursuing. As a student of Rome’s guidelines for missionaries, he had to be aware of repeated injunctions against involvement in issues of state. A recent instance was the Propaganda’s instructions of 1883 for the apostolic vicars of China, which firmly but vaguely prescribed that missionaries keep their distance from politics (as well as from commerce).41 What, then, was political? Without addressing the question directly, Lebbe’s worldview implicitly put patriotism and its mandates in a category separate from and superior to the political (as in American rhetoric on July Fourth and in election campaigns). The church itself was anything but clear or consistent about where the line should be drawn around the political. In defense of his stance, Lebbe pointed to the display by many of his European confreres of their natal national allegiances, their placing of their national flags in Chinese churches, their celebration of their national holidays. In Europe itself, Catholicism and patriotism were commonly conjoined.42 If, as a lifetime missionary in China, he had adopted a Chinese identity, was it not his duty as a Catholic to act like a Chinese patriot and encourage others to do likewise? To many foreign missionaries, nothing could be more political, as well as subversive of the ordered universe of the China missions. Lebbe’s Rebuke to the French Minister and His Departure from Tianjin Regarding the dispute raging in Tianjin about the French demand to incorporate Laoxikai into the French concession, Bishop Dumond mandated his priests to maintain neutrality.43 For Lebbe, the tipping point came in June 1916. The French consul, Henry Bourgeois, increased the temperature soon after Yuan Shikai’s death in early June 1916 by having the chief of the French concession police on more than one occasion place stakes, festooned with tricolor plaques, along the claimed roadways in Laoxikai. The Chinese police who were stationed there threatened to physically prevent him from continuing this practice. On the next such occasion, Bourgeois himself, flanked by his own armed policemen, made an appearance in the area. He was confronted by the alerted chief of the local foreign affairs bureau. A colloquy ensued. According to Lebbe’s account (similar ones appeared in the press), the French consul argued that his expansion into Laoxikai was to protect the Catholic mission. The bureau chief insisted that the land was Chinese but, in the face of the

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consul’s armed escort, withdrew under protest. The tricolor plaques remained, inscribed with faguo gongdao, intending to mark a “French public road,” but more readily and ironically translated as “French justice.”44 Lebbe could not contain his fury at this open conscription of the Catholic church for the purposes of French aggrandizement. On June 18, 1916, he sent a letter to the French minister in Beijing, decrying the attempt to enlarge the French concession in Tianjin, irrespective of the Chinese response. He subsequently characterized the letter as private. Indeed, he begins by disclaiming any official status: he is speaking as one who loves France, without being French, who believes in France as the world’s champion for justice, and whose sole motive is love of the church. He compares the threatened French incorporation of Laoxikai with the German acquisition of part of French Congo a few years back (November 1911), which contributed to a patriotic revival in France. “I cannot understand at all the real interest in extracting this bit of land in comparison with the immense loss of moral influence that is the certain consequence. . . . But do you know, Mr. Minister, the power of hate and disgust that we sow in their hearts by taking this fragment of land!” Then Lebbe rehearses the scene of Consul Bourgeois’s intrusions into Laoxikai. “Yesterday, passing by there, I saw the French flag cloaking this aggression. . . . Tears came to my eyes.” Is not the current Great War, being waged in Europe, precisely about the protection of the indefeasible rights of nationalities, especially those of the weak? “Is it possible to drape with the same flag our admirable infantrymen (poilus) and the policemen of M. Bourgeois?” He reminds the minister that for two years he has been persuading Chinese that France is defending right against might. “And see what we have come to—while in the city there is stirred up a recrudescence of hate, the hate of the weak, against our beautiful and beloved France, the France of Joan of Arc. . . . Is it irreparable, Mr. Minister? Is it absolutely necessary? Or indeed is pulling back still possible?” Lebbe concludes with a reference to his Belgian family, who are enduring deprivation and exile, wounds and imprisonment. They are sustained by their belief in France as defender of justice, for communities as for individuals. “I plead with you to act so that China can come to believe in this.”45 In writing to the French minister as a Belgian who loved France, Lebbe tactically shed his Chinese persona. In a review of these events a year later, Lebbe offered this fuller self-description to an inquiring French prelate, who was thought to be sympathetic (the aristocratic de Guébriant): [I am] of a family almost French (maternal grandfather and paternal grandmother), of French education, brought up with an intense love of France, more

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than of Belgium, which led to my being thrashed as a student, for insisting in college on defending France; who chose expressly a French religious order; who in Paris was considered by the Belgians and the Dutch as a traitor to my country, because I was actually French at heart. But since I responded to God’s call, I have considered myself Chinese, absolutely, without restriction, loving not only the Chinese, but the country of China, as the queen of the Belgians loves Belgium with an exclusive, patriotic love, although German by birth.46 In any case, Lebbe’s guise as lover of France was no protection against the attacks that followed. The French minister, A. R. Conty, chose to take Lebbe’s letter as a confession of conspiracy against France and as an opportunity to bring the mission to heel. Only days earlier, his Tianjin consul had reported: “The people, aroused by the prefect of police and also, I regret to say, by the Belgian missionary Lebbe, who is poorly controlled by his bishop, may at any moment be drawn into violent acts.”47 The minister now wrote the Lazarist visitor for North China (Desrumaux) that Lebbe’s letter was “abusive and threatening.” He took as a personal insult Lebbe’s reference to the Congo matter, since Conty had headed the French delegation at the conference where the partition had been arranged. He raised the possibility that the “recrudescence of hate” in Tianjin to which Lebbe referred in his letter had been stirred up by Lebbe himself, who “poses as a champion of the Chinese city.” Conty claimed that he was empowered by a royal decree of 1778 to send back to France any Frenchman who could harm the general welfare by bad conduct or intrigue. Lebbe, being Belgian, was not covered by this and was besides “more Chinese than European.” The minister concluded: “If the priests of the mission have the right to this protection [supplied by the legation], they must also fulfill the correlative duty.”48 The Lazarist missions of north China were being reminded of requirements supposedly imposed on them by the continuing French Religious Protectorate. This was the beginning of a campaign by the French legation in Beijing to remove Lebbe from China.49 Although Lebbe had shown his letter to a few of his Lazarist confreres before sending it, he had not shown it to his bishop. Bishop Dumond used this fact both to excuse himself with the French minister and to accuse Lebbe of disobedience. Lebbe had, of course, taken a vow of obedience as a Lazarist. He professed his adherence to the binding nature of clerical obedience. His ultimate ability to survive the onslaught of the next few years turned out to owe a great deal to his careful, even ostentatious adherence to that rule. His handling of the issue was always interesting.50 He had a knack for turning submission to the demands of obedience into a weapon.

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In the case of his letter to the French minister, Lebbe explained to his bishop (in writing, as less painful than face-to-face) that he could not in conscience accept the neutrality that the bishop had ordained. The mission had been the cause, even if involuntarily, of the plan of the consul, who used protection of the mission as his excuse. By the fact of the missionaries’ nationality, people tended to consider the mission to be in cahoots against the Chinese. “I do not wish for all the world to commit an act of revolt—and I cannot accept following this neutrality.” He suggested leaving Tianjin, until the bishop saw fit to recall him. “But I beg you, Monsignor, not to leave me longer in this cruel alternative of either disobeying you [which he believed he had not yet done—the letter had been private] or of acting against what I think is my duty.”51 Bishop Dumond endorsed Lebbe’s withdrawal from the scene. He simultaneously approved the idea of the Lazarist visitor that Lebbe go for a while to Zhengding in the West Zhili vicariate, where Lebbe’s contemporary, Jean de Vienne, was coadjutor bishop and would care for him. At Fleury’s request, Lebbe spent part of his last evening in Tianjin with a group of Chinese Catholics, exonerating Fleury of serving the French consul against Chinese interests. (Lebbe later seemed to have regretted this rather insincere gesture.) Then he was gone.52 Subsequently, his return to the city of Tianjin as missionary was often anticipated but never achieved. He stayed over three months in West Zhili, where he was deluged with requests to speak, until the Lazarist visitor ordered him to cease.53 Then, instead of the expected return to Tianjin, he was assigned a subordinate role in a parish at the extreme south of the Maritime Zhili vicariate, about 140 kilometers from Tianjin city. In March 1917, he was transferred again, this time all the way to Zhejiang province, south of the Yangzi, in a different dialect area. Thus began Lebbe’s long exile from the scene of his apostolic triumphs and from the thick network of his associations, built up over a decade. The Campaign for Lebbe’s Return His superiors were taken aback by the outcry in Tianjin at the news of Lebbe’s departure. If they had been reading the Yishibao, they need not have been surprised. A report of the ceremonial opening of a new lecture hall two months earlier included remarks by some of the benefactors who had made the hall possible. Bian Yinchang, a leading figure in the chamber of commerce and an organizer of the resistance to the expansion of the French concession, declared: Previously I had basically disapproved of the Catholic church, but through association with Father Lebbe I first realized that it did no harm to others.

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Later, when our association deepened and our discussions lengthened, I saw that he not only saved men but also could save the country. It is clear that Father Lebbe has worked hard to support public welfare in this region. Therefore we all should admire Father Lebbe, and we should revere the Catholic church, because it can save men and save the country. Previously we suspected missionaries of being under orders from their home governments. Now for the first time I have been convinced by Father Lebbe that this is not so.54 Another voice, that of Sun Zhongying, banker and president of the local Red Cross, continued the praise: I am neither Catholic nor Protestant. . . . I met Father Lebbe at a meeting of the Fund for National Salvation [the organization for raising money to resist Japan’s Twenty-One Demands of 1915]. Later we had friendly exchanges and mutual discussion. I first learned that the Catholic church has the ability to save people and benefit the age. Mr. Lebbe explained to me one by one the points about which I had previously been dissatisfied with the Catholic church. . . . The methods of Catholic evangelism were what made me most dissatisfied with the church. Father Lebbe readily conceded this point. Subsequently, I and Bian Yinchang searched for a building and finally found this place. Although we helped out a little with the financing, we can after all only open the door that has been customarily closed for some years. . . . I am moved by Father Lebbe’s virtue and knowledge, and I exhort you, if not to follow the religion, then to take Lebbe as a model as if following the religion. I will trust no one who does not respect Father Lebbe.55 This same Sun Zhongying was the intermediary around the end of June 1916 for a request by the newly installed president of the Republic of China, Li Yuanhong, for a personal interview with Lebbe. The president had heard from Xiong Xiling, the country’s prime minister in 1913–1914, of Lebbe’s eminent virtue, extraordinary capacities, and “improved method” of preaching Catholicism—so went the message—which had made Lebbe so popular among the Chinese. Xiong had come to Tianjin to extend the invitation, but Lebbe had already left and his return was uncertain, so the initiative was dropped.56 This interest in Lebbe at exalted levels in China’s polity was evidence that it was not going to be easy for his critics to deflate his reputation. As Lebbe’s precipitate departure from Tianjin became known (it was generally assumed that he had been forced away), the reaction gathered steam. In late June, a meeting of “various Tianjin circles” met in a guild hall to discuss the matter. Six,

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including the 70-plus-year-old director of a large hospital, were chosen to take the meeting’s concerns to mission authorities.57 They reported back that, Bishop Dumond being ill (an excuse to avoid the meeting, it turned out), they were received at the Laoxikai cathedral site by Father Fleury, who assured them that Lebbe had simply gone to Zhengding for a rest and that he would return after he had made amends with the French authorities. The delegation urged Lebbe’s retention, although they were not Catholics, because they had heard his lectures and wanted his teachings to reach all of China—irrespective of what the French consul might think. They left a letter for the bishop. The next day they traveled to Beijing and then on to the nearby Catholic establishment at Zhalan (or Chala, as it was known to the missionaries), to see the Lazarist visitor for North China, Father François Desrumaux. He had gone to a village some distance away and was not returning for a few days, so the delegation walked to the village, altogether a three-hour hike in the heat of the day, where Desrumaux was anything but welcoming. Nonetheless, the delegation presented its case: that despite years of evangelism, the gentry and merchants of Tianjin had looked upon Catholics as uncivilized (huawai zhi ren), with troubling local results that everyone knew about, but that Father Lebbe’s ministry had lifted the suspicion and jealousy, created warm ties of affection with the people, and had persuaded them that the Catholic church was a much-needed national resource. The sooner Lebbe returned, the sooner would the minds of ordinary people be relieved. With this, they shook Desrumaux’s hand and left.58 Several of the foreign missionaries of the vicariate came to Lebbe’s defense, as did all but one of the Chinese priests.59 Antoine Cotta took the lead, immediately justifying Lebbe’s actions, as well as his whole ministry, to Bishop Dumond, and then, within the next four months, in four long missives to the superior general of the Lazarists in Paris.60 Others joined in.61 The superior general wrote Cotta that the missionaries should abstain from an affair between two governments. Lebbe, he conceded, “truly has the soul of an apostle,” but needed a guide: “For the very reason of his enterprising zeal, he is open to going too far in advance, without always seeing properly where he puts his foot.”62 Citing the superior general’s unresponsiveness, five European priests and fourteen Chinese priests of the vicariate addressed the prefect of the Propaganda in early October 1916. They complained of the unmerited disciplinary measures taken against Lebbe, who “has turned around pagan opinion regarding Catholicism—achieving a true and profound sympathy.” In retaliation for his private letter to the French minister over Laoxikai, they wrote, the Lazarist visitor had forbidden him from involving himself in that matter and from any connection with the various publications that he had launched, including one that had become the primary newspaper of

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north China, the Yishibao. There was complete disarray as a result, they wrote, as all China watched.63 Twice in July 1916, the Lazarist visitor, Desrumaux, asked Lebbe in his West Zhili exile to help put out the fires. Bishop Dumond was being pestered to bring Lebbe back by Christian youth, by leagues of villagers, by members of the Chamber of Commerce. Desrumaux wrote, “What does all this mean, dear Mister Lebbe? Why this revolt against authority? . . . I wish to think that your good faith has been deceived. But what sins have been committed on your behalf.” Desrumaux recounted the arrival on foot of the delegation from Tianjin and how the delegates had haughtily demanded Lebbe’s prompt return. Further, a Chinese priest of Tianjin went outside the vicariate to put pressure on Bishop Dumond. The visitor wrote: “I cannot help but think that you are the unwitting cause of it. You have so often raised this Chinese priest to the skies. I fear that you have taken a false road, that you have made him revolutionary.” Shockingly, the Chinese priests were speaking of writing to Rome. Desrumaux asked Lebbe to defuse the situation by explanations to his friends.64 By late August, nonclerical Chinese appeals were being addressed directly to the Vatican, anticipating those of the vicariate’s priests. One to the pope introduces its signatories as members of the Zhili provincial assembly and gentry and merchants of Tianjin. Adducing the lack of any Chinese bishops in the long history of Catholicism in China (neglecting the sole exception in the late seventeenth century), they remark on the unassimilated foreign character of the church and its links to foreign governments. What is more, conversions in recent years have been purchased for cash, with predictably deleterious results. Father Lebbe, they write, has come to Tianjin and “pulled down the thick wall that had cut off your noble Church from the mass of the people. His preaching and even more his virtues recall the great saints. His tireless zeal, his modesty and his gentleness have touched all hearts. Thanks to him, we have learned that true patriotism is compatible with the Catholic religion, which is a source of salvation for individuals and society.” They list his many services to local charitable societies and commend his protest to the French minister over Laoxikai, for which the bishop and the visitor have expelled him from Tianjin. They ask the pope to send a delegate to investigate the matter thoroughly.65 At about the same time, forty lay Chinese Catholics of Tianjin, led by a catechist and including the two top editors of the Yishibao, took the matter to the prefect of the Propaganda. Their signed letter describes the suffering of Catholics in the city because of French moves on Laoxikai and the complicity of their bishop, which in turn has besmirched the Chinese faithful. The missionaries have suffered even more, accused by the public of lying and cupidity, but have been unable to speak because

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of the bishop’s injunction. Then Father Lebbe, the vicar general, was obliged to leave after writing the French minister. About Lebbe: “He is a missionary such as the oldest among us have never seen.” From the richest to the poorest, from the governor of the province to the rickshaw puller, all know him and love him. “If there were many Father Lebbes, everyone would be Christian.” Bishop Dumond would not accept a letter from them nor would he see them. “Despite our respect for episcopal authority, we affirm that the apostolic vicar seeks only his own tranquility. He does not love the poor, and he is completely incapable of making himself understood in our language. Father Lebbe converses with thousands, solely by means of his preaching and his conduct.” They ask the prefect to attend to this question, known all over China.66 This last missive seems to have struck a chord in Rome, or perhaps it was the accumulation of such appeals. The secretary of the Propaganda called on the Lazarist order to investigate.67 So began the Vatican’s attention to the burgeoning contest within the mission field in China. Consul Bourgeois Stokes the Flames: Tianjin’s French Concession on Strike Meanwhile, relevant French authorities in China concluded that the exile of Lebbe had cleared the way to their possession of Laoxikai. In correspondence with the Chinese, the Tianjin consul and the Beijing legation, exasperated with the lengthy negotiations, threatened direct action. The central government, weakened by Yuan Shikai’s unpopular monarchical movement and his death in early June 1916, did give the French encouraging messages as to its eventual acceptance of the transfer of Laoxikai. The Chinese foreign ministry insisted, however, that it could be done only with popular acquiescence in Tianjin, which was conspicuously lacking at the moment.68 The French response was to disparage the resistance in Tianjin. Wrote the chargé d’affaires in the Beijing legation to the Chinese foreign minister in early October: “The agitation is a sham. It had been most particularly kept up by a Belgian missionary, who has been transferred to a different district.” Only a few malcontents remained, he held.69 To his own foreign minister in Paris, the chargé sent the same message: “Further, this agitation was led in large part by a Belgian missionary of the Lazarist order, Father Lebbe, who imagined himself protected by his job of religious propagation, while inciting the Chinese to resist what he called the pretensions of foreigners.” Fortunately, the chargé continued, the minister, M. Conty, after several interventions, had persuaded the church to remove him.70 It would soon become evident how much French officials had misread the situation.

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When his local negotiating counterpart asked for yet more delay, Consul Bourgeois in Tianjin broke off the talks. On October 17, 1916, he distributed in Chinese and French a notification of the annexation of Laoxikai to the French concession, along with an explanatory map. The next day, with the approval of the French legation in Beijing, he issued an ultimatum to the Zhili provincial governor that Laoxikai be ceded within forty-eight hours. He received no reply. In the evening of October 20, he sent into the area a contingent of police and soldiers (French and Vietnamese), who demanded the departure of the Chinese police stationed there. When these police refused to leave, all nine were seized by the French-led force and disarmed. They were taken in custody to the French concession, where their detention was prolonged by arguments about terms for their release. The extension into Laoxikai had been accomplished, reported Consul Bourgeois. With this addition of 2,000 mu (over 300 acres), the area of the French concession had come close to doubling. He told his superior that he would be thoroughly astonished if the forcible expulsion of the Chinese police would cause any complications.71 In the event, the city exploded in anger. According to press reports, thousands spontaneously gathered at the Chamber of Commerce building the next day, where they were joined by the leadership of the Society for Safeguarding the Nation’s Sovereignty and Territory.72 Elements from that gathering spent the day lobbying the provincial governor, the foreign affairs representative in Tianjin, and the provincial assembly. At a special session of the provincial assembly, some members called for an immediate declaration of war. The chamber resolved on a delegation of six to pressure the central government to resist this travesty, with the determination to act if the national government did not. Bian Yinchang, who had led the lobbying, spoke of waiting for the delegation to Beijing to report back and of refraining from violence, but that the people should commit to boycotting French products.73 At a gathering where the Catholic mission was assailed as complicit in the seizure and profiting from it, Bian mounted the platform and dissuaded the agitated crowd from attacking the Catholic mission by arguing that Lebbe’s opposition to French expansion into Laoxikai was redeeming.74 The next weeks witnessed a whirlwind of activity. A new umbrella organization was formed, the Citizens’ Assembly (Gongmin dahui), an alliance of leadership from the Society for Safeguarding the Nation’s Sovereignty and Territory, from the Tianjin general chamber of commerce, and from the Zhili provincial assembly. Reportedly, over 8,000 people attended its first meeting on October 25, 1916. A program was adopted: to rally the country by sending out telegrams everywhere, to ask people to refrain from using the currency of French banks and to boycott

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French products, to block the ongoing recruitment of Chinese workers for service in wartime France, to search out those in their midst who were spying for the French and to punish them appropriately, and to insist on French withdrawal from Laoxikai and on the immediate recall of the French minister in Beijing and the French consul in Tianjin.75 Subsequent meetings of the Citizens’ Assembly occurred frequently. On October 29, a thousand attendees marched to pressure the acting foreign minister, visiting from Beijing, had some scuffles with the police on the way, and trashed the local foreign affairs office after being treated scornfully. Representatives of the Citizens’ Assembly seemed to commute almost daily to Beijing, where they asked high officials from the president and prime minister on down to firmly resist French blandishments. When messages came back from Beijing officials that the boycott should be called off, that the newspapers should stop inciting the population, and that everyone should leave the matter to the diplomats, the rhetoric of the protesters heated up. There was more talk of resistance to the death, of forming “dare-to-die corps,” of planning for military action. Itinerant speakers’ teams were organized to talk to folks in Tianjin and beyond about methods of resistance. A pronouncement claiming to represent the Catholics of seventeen Zhili counties alluded to the “arrogant” arrest of China’s policemen and the insult to the national polity and declared: “We have decided to sacrifice life and property. . . . We will come to Tianjin and together we resolve to die in battle to recover the land and to wipe away the insult.”76 There was even some humor, if rather bitter. A “New Analects” had the disciple Zixia asking Confucius questions about Laoxikai, with the sage answering: “Do not concede even a strip of land to the French,” and “If you cannot struggle to get Laoxikai back, the country will certainly fall.” A mock letter to the editor in the Yishibao purported to come from a Frenchman, who congratulated the Chinese negotiators in Tianjin and Beijing for betraying their country and becoming France’s high-level slaves. Bronze statues would be cast of them at French expense.77 Early on, the Chinese students of the Franco-Chinese College, a missionary project in Laoxikai with a subsidy from the French concession, announced their intention to cease attending school in protest. When they consulted Bian Yinchang, he praised their intentions but urged them not to abandon their studies.78 (He later established a substitute school for them.) Then, on November 12, 1916, 180 workers for a French firm in the concession went on strike. The next day, the number on strike rose to more than 450, affecting five enterprises. Although a workers’ strike had not been on its original agenda, the Citizens’ Assembly responded and met on November 13 to discuss the growing walkout by employees in the French concession

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and in French enterprises. The president of the provincial assembly hailed the workers’ patriotism. Bian Yinchang, asking for no violence, promised to raise funds for the workers’ needs and to sacrifice his family’s fortune in the cause if necessary.79 As the numbers of strikers increased—at the peak, about 1,700—and as Chinese shopkeepers in the French concession closed their doors, the organization and support of the strike became a large project. The Citizens’ Assembly issued certificates to strikers to secure their protection by local officials and to provide priority in alternative hiring. The striking workers formed teams that, among other tasks, identified infiltrators in French pay and took them to court. Movie theaters and teahouses collected fees to fund allowances for strikers.80 The French consulate estimated that the Citizens’ Assembly invested 200,000 taels (or one million French francs) in the strike.81 Certainly, French businesses in Tianjin, and to a lesser extent in Beijing, were hurt by the boycott and the strike, which petered out by spring 1917 (its length was measured variously between four and six months). French soldiers were put to work to keep concession utilities functioning, even if fitfully and not without accidents. French officials seemed more concerned with the withdrawal of all the Chinese police who had been employed by the French municipal administration. Efforts to transfer Chinese police from the French Concession in Shanghai failed; all but one refused the request out of solidarity with their striking comrades in Tianjin. The French consul-general in Shanghai did arrange for the dispatch to Tianjin of some supplementary military personnel, including twenty-three riflemen, a mechanic, and three stokers.82 Particularly galling was the withdrawal of virtually all domestic servants, even the cooks. This, said the French consul, “has been the principal factor in the bad mood.”83 From the point of view of official French interests, perhaps the most serious impact was on the recruitment of Chinese workers for the French war effort in Europe. A Lieutenant-Colonel Truptil (retired), sent by the French war ministry, had negotiated a contract for this purpose in May 1916, despite China’s nonbelligerent status at that juncture. The contract was with a purportedly private Chinese company, but in actuality the Chinese government itself simultaneously proposed the recruitment of Chinese laborers to serve the Allies and made the arrangements behind the scenes. The first group of Chinese workers had arrived in France in August 1916.84 North China provided the most recruits: by January 1917, some 5,000 out of a total of 7,800 for the country.85 In the wake of the Tianjin movement against French authority, Truptil had to suspend completely his activities in the north of the country, which had been explicitly targeted by the Citizens’ Assembly. British recruitment of Chinese labor for the war, which began a few months after that of the French, was also impeded by the fallout

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from the Laoxikai affair, though it recovered more quickly.86 Some time later, recruitment in northern China revived. With China’s entry into the war on the Allied side, the total Chinese contingent in France grew to something over 40,000 under French authority (and almost 100,000 under the British).87 This temporary setback to an important wartime project, controversial though it was, probably registered as a black mark on Henry Bourgeois’s career, left by his Laoxikai adventure.88 Similarly, it likely contributed to the recall of A. R. Conty, French Minister in Beijing, in the fall of 1917, whose contemptuous attitude had elicited frequent protests from the Chinese government.89 With Lebbe out of the way, how could French authorities account for the size and intensity of the reaction to their occupation of Laoxikai? There was much talk of German machinations behind the scenes. Even before the strike had begun, the French consulate-general in Shanghai noted that the Laoxikai controversy had provided Germany with its first real propaganda coup in China.90 Considering that France and Germany were in a state of war, it would have been surprising if German representatives in China had not taken advantage of the widespread anger at French behavior in Tianjin. The French legation in Beijing declared that “there was reason to believe” that a German businessman encouraged the zeal of Tianjin’s police chief and of Bian Yinchang of the Chamber of Commerce.91 The evidence of German involvement was scanty. French diplomats were particularly offended by the Catholic role in their troubles, even without Lebbe. As the strike of Chinese workers in the French concession was getting under way, the French consul wrote: It is completely established that the people who, as much during our negotiations as in the present moment, have had the most hostile attitude toward France are the Chinese Catholic communities. In particular one recognizes former students of the schools and seminaries of our missions among the promoters of the strike movement against our French enterprises. The students of the French Municipal School, run by Marists, have been the first to join this movement.92 In a subsequent report, the consul referred to his request (unheeded) for the arrest of the leaders of the opposition, including the president of the chamber of commerce, members of the provincial assembly, and Yang Yide, the chief of police. “Further, it would be good to recall to order the Chinese Catholic element, which takes a truly immoderate part in the present agitation.”93 Tianjin had become for a time a rather special place in the array of Catholic possibility in China. In Tianjin and its vicinity, the combination of being both

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a Catholic and a Chinese patriot, with all the anti-imperialist implications, was not only accepted, but broadly celebrated. The short-run results of the turbulent fall and winter of 1916–1917 in Tianjin were inconclusive. The British minister in Beijing, John Jordan, attempted mediation but failed. Diplomats on both sides put forward various proposals, including a shared administration, but unsuccessfully. Paris strictly forbade an apology for the forceful occupation of Laoxikai. The Chinese government insisted that any agreement be approved by the National Assembly, and such approval would predictably be blocked by the vociferous opposition in Tianjin and elsewhere to a deal. The French flags posted in Laoxikai by Consul Bourgeois remained, but Chinese authority had not conceded the annexation. In practice, Laoxikai was for a long time without any effective administration. Because of the French Religious Protectorate, Catholic ecclesiastical concerns in China were inevitably intertwined with secular issues. In June 1917, Lebbe wrote: “The [Lao]xikai affair has brought to light big, big questions, which are at the root of the whole question of the apostolate in the Far East.”94 In the wake of the affair, he was wont to say that the real reason for his continued removal from Tianjin was not his opposition to official France but rather his mode of evangelism and his positions about the Chinese church itself. His ecclesiastical superiors, he declared, found the vendetta of the French minister against him a convenient excuse for ridding themselves of a dangerous challenge to the established ways of being a Catholic missionary in China.95 More precisely, Lebbe saw the two—the French Religious Protectorate and the ways the church practiced evangelism—as linked. Indeed, he thought the only sure way to sever the links to foreign power was to change the church from within and make it truly Chinese. To accomplish this, he looked to Rome.

8 Petitioning Rome

vincent lebbe knew that he was not alone among China missionaries in seeing the need for drastic reforms in evangelizing. He had a close collaborator in Antoine Cotta. He was aware of others all over the country who had shown some appreciation for his approaches. The conclusion he drew from the Laoxikai affair, however, was that his superiors in China, as well as in Paris, were firmly against him. If he were to adhere to the formalities of obedience, as he felt he must, any effort to mobilize his colleagues would be squelched. Recourse could come only from Rome. As it turned out, the Holy See was receptive to Lebbe’s message. Turning to the Vatican From the moment of Lebbe’s departure from Tianjin in June 1916, his ecclesiastical superiors in China persisted in their efforts to cage him in. There was a special focus on his journalistic potency. The Lazarist visitor for North China, soon after Lebbe’s letter to the French minister about Laoxikai, enjoined Lebbe from all involvement in the question of the French concession extension, from all politics, and from all “collaboration” with the Yishibao and other newspapers with which he had links.1 By October 1916, Lebbe’s bishop had relented regarding written contributions to the two religious weeklies in Chinese that Lebbe had founded and edited, but he insisted on censoring Lebbe’s contributions. Lebbe wondered how this could be accomplished, since the mail from his new outpost took four days to reach Tianjin, and in any case, the bishop could not read Chinese.2 171

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A Catholic mission yearbook for 1917, edited by a prominent Beijing missionary and treating China and Japan, had this to say about the Yishibao, which “could have provided unquestionable services to the religion”: But having chosen to meddle in politics and to pass judgment on questions that far exceeded the competence of its editors, it took a wrong path and contributed no little to the turmoil in the Tianjin Church and to the distrust between indigenous Catholics and the French, even the missionaries, to the point that several prelates, who had at first patronized it, forbade the reading of it. One may say that no pagan newspaper has caused more harm to the cause of the Church, and none has done more to wreck the fine harmony between foreigners and Chinese.3 When Lazarist authorities transferred Lebbe south of the Yangzi to Zhejiang province in March 1917, he was again told that he must cease all communication with the Yishibao. He appealed, agreeing to write only religious apologetics and to abstain from all politics. His appeal was turned down, on grounds that any collaboration with the newspaper on Lebbe’s part would seem an endorsement of “its errors.”4 Lebbe’s transfer to Zhejiang came in the wake of an investigation into the Tianjin upheaval by the Lazarist visitor for the South China province of the order, Claude Guilloux. Guilloux had come to China in 1885. He happened to be the same priest who, as head of Beijing’s major seminary in 1901, had warned Lebbe against informal relations with Chinese seminarians. The Tianjin investigation was mandated by the Lazarist motherhouse in Paris. Most likely it was prompted by the Propaganda’s questioning the Lazarist order about all those appeals to Rome from Tianjin regarding Lebbe’s sudden departure from the city. The investigation was spurred on by the French minister’s message that he would take his concerns to Paris if he did not get satisfaction in China: “[Guilloux’s] Congregation has assumed a heavy responsibility toward the French government from the fact of the activity against France by certain of its members.”5 Guilloux conducted his five-day inspection of the Tianjin mission in February 1917. Bishop Dumond had already dismissed Cotta from the vicariate, effective at Christmas 1916, and had told him he must leave China.6 Cotta had stayed put. Guilloux met him separately because Cotta thought it ill-advised for him to enter the French concession where the meetings were held (as a declared Austrian, he became an enemy alien on French territory). Guilloux’s report to Paris, which traveled on to Rome, announces that the situation is very serious. He finds that only three of the nine European Lazarist priests in the vicariate stand with the bishop, leaving five against and one on the fence. The

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two Chinese Lazarists have been won over by “Lebbe and company” (MM. Lebbe & Cie.), and the fifteen Chinese secular priests (not Lazarists) are unanimously on Lebbe’s side. One of the Chinese Lazarists has slandered Father Fleury, “who had committed some imprudent acts” (this appears to refer to his sexual molestation of Catholic women). But Fleury “has remained the most faithful defender of the Monsignor.” The malcontents accuse the bishop of secreting himself in his apartments, lacking zeal, not visiting his vicariate, and showing no interest in the missionaries’ projects. “Above all, he has offended many of the confreres by treating them and their friends as rebels, Protestants, apostates, etc.” The visitor comments that these charges against the bishop are no doubt exaggerated, but that Dumond does seem to lack apostolic zeal, as well as tact and discretion.7 In his report, Guilloux rehearses the Laoxikai events, but, in a curious agreement with Lebbe’s own analysis, he asserts at the outset that that affair is only a surface event in a deeper problem, which is the attempt by “Lebbe and company” to profoundly modify the traditional mode of evangelization. They disparage the foreign character of the church as an obstacle to propagating Catholicism, they find the French Protectorate harmful, and they would challenge the authority of bishops. Their faults lie in usurping a role that the Holy See has not entrusted to them, in engaging questions properly left to the bishops and the Propaganda, in exalting Chinese nationalism and stimulating a dangerous xenophobia, in forgetting the great service rendered to the missions by France, and in entertaining illusions about the results of wooing the bourgeois class and winning pagan sympathy for Catholicism. Guilloux concludes by recommending that Lebbe and Cotta be expelled from China and that several more Tianjin priests be sent to other vicariates. Dumond is ready to resign, but it would be difficult to replace him. It is up to the Propaganda to settle “the weighty questions of the French protectorate, the emancipation of the indigenous clergy, and the new way of evangelization.”8 As early as mid-July 1916, near the beginning of his exile, Lebbe had raised the possibility of resorting to Rome, in the face of a repressive mission leadership. He came to this idea after discovering, and disparaging the fact, that his host in West Zhili, Bishop de Vienne, although he agreed about the need for Chinese bishops and about the harm done by missionary orders putting their particular interests ahead of those of the church, nevertheless would not address the Vatican on these matters, since the other bishops together would quash any such initiative.9 Waxing melodramatic, Lebbe wrote to Cotta in November 1916: If I had been a civilian [i.e., not a priest], I would have sold everything I had in order to buy powder and bullets, to die at [Lao]xikai. And since I am a priest

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and since we are brothers, let us swear once more to die in Rome rather than keeping forever silent in the face of evil.10 Lebbe had attended Guilloux’s meetings, coming into Tianjin from his distant rural parish, but was enjoined from contacting any of the city’s Chinese Christians.11 He was distressed by Guilloux’s insistence that it was the responsibility of French missionaries to keep Chinese Christians from participating in patriotic movements to which the French government objected. He pronounced himself more certain than ever of the necessity of addressing the pope, of a “complete indigenous clergy” (that is, Chinese bishops), and of withdrawal from the Protectorate.12 Like Lebbe, Cotta was also for circumventing the local missionary establishment. He proposed that, if their voices were not heard and if Lebbe could not return to Tianjin with his head held high, “take your case to Rome.”13 Prodded by its minister in Beijing, the French foreign ministry in early March 1917 twice called on the Lazarist head in Paris to remove both Lebbe and Cotta, threats to France.14 In mid-March 1917, the decisions of the Lazarist motherhouse reached China. They transferred Lebbe to the Lazarist province of South China (he was soon assigned to one of the Zhejiang vicariates). Cotta was ordered to Ecuador.15 Three other Lazarist priests, including one Chinese, were moved to other vicariates. The North China visitor told the disciplined Chinese Lazarist priest that his offense was signing a petition to the Propaganda prefect, when his superiors were not in the Vatican but in the Lazarist order. This passage in the Chinese priest’s account, relayed to Rome, was marked in blue pencil at the Propaganda.16 Lebbe departed immediately to his new assignment.17 Cotta refused to budge. Meanwhile, Lebbe and Cotta had found a partner in Rome, Gaston Vanneufville, a canon at St. John Lateran (Rome’s cathedral) and correspondent for the conservative French newspaper, La Croix. Lebbe had known him casually in 1900 and then met him again in 1913 during his European trip.18 Lebbe and Cotta embarked on an extended campaign of feeding Vanneufville essays, copies of all sorts of relevant letters and other documents, and reports on their own circumstances. In turn, Vanneufville passed these materials on to highly placed Vatican officials. He counseled Cotta and Lebbe to practice heroic obedience toward their immediate superiors but to address the Propaganda and the pope with full frankness.19 Making the Case for a Truly Chinese Church The efforts of Catholic critics of the China missions to make their case to the Vatican produced fat files in the Propaganda archives. So did the ripostes of their opponents, once they realized that a field of combat had opened up in Rome. Many of

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the documents show signs of attentive reading at the Propaganda, with underlining and marginal comments. What follows here are the main arguments found in essays by three eloquent spokespersons in the campaign to engage Rome: Antoine Cotta, Ying Lianzhi, and Vincent Lebbe. Writing at the end of 1916 and in early 1917, Cotta addressed the prefect of the Propaganda in an effort to explicate his views on the underlying issues facing evangelism in China. His central point is that the continuing foreign dominance in the Chinese church produces not vibrant Christian communities but “spiritual colonies,” an expression he had also used in 1914. The Holy See has been calling for full indigenization of the Chinese church for centuries. What has obstructed this goal? Allegations of Chinese incapacity and of a tendency toward schism have figured prominently among the arguments of those dragging their feet. Cotta holds, however, that invidious and unwarranted racial distinctions, leading to the subordination of the Chinese clergy, and the flaunting of foreign allegiances by missionaries to the point of providing intelligence to their own military have sabotaged normal development. On top of all that, missionary societies protect their territories against any encroachment from other missionary societies and fear that the institution of ecclesiastical administration by secular Chinese priests will diminish their patrimony. His summary: The interest of souls, the tradition of the Church, the instructions of Rome, the wish of the people—all tend to the natural, elementary solution: to acclimatize the Church in China, to convert the country through its inhabitants. The lack of a will among the European missionaries distances indefinitely this prospect. It is the reef on which the authority of the Pope and the Propaganda has hitherto been broken. . . . Give us the joy of prostrating ourselves, before we die, before a Chinese bishop.20 Ying Lianzhi, a lay Catholic, founding editor of the prominent daily newspaper Dagongbao, and a close acquaintance of Lebbe’s during his Tianjin years, arranged to have an essay of his on the state of Catholicism in China translated into French and sent to Rome.21 He wrote the essay, expanded by an elaboration in the form of a letter to a critical Shanghai catechist, in June 1917. Its title was translated as Exhortation à l’Etude, or “Exhortation to Study,” but the Chinese title, Quanxue zuiyan, might be rendered “Harsh Words about Urging Learning.”22 In weighing the influences on Vatican thinking in this period, Ying’s contribution needs to be considered among them. Indeed, it is reasonable to speculate that his perceptions were important ingredients in the development of both Cotta’s and Lebbe’s positions.

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Ying begins his essay by accepting the point that education is not a substitute for the virtues or a necessity for salvation. On the other hand, he argues, the church has gloried in its learned saints. The neglect of education and the mistrust of learning do not serve the church well. In China, the marginalization of the study of the national literature among Catholics has placed a wall between the church and the educated classes. Ying’s essay and his letter to the catechist then analyze the reasons for this marginalization and the effects. It turns out that this neglect of education is a symptom of deep problems within the Chinese church. The crux is the chauvinistic narrow-mindedness of the missionary establishment. Ying honors the sacrifices of the missionaries but finds intolerable their zeal in making Chinese Catholics into appendages of the missionaries’ home countries. He has even heard the claim that those who do not love the dispatching country are unfaithful to the Catholic church because they thereby rebel against their superiors. Does Catholic doctrine demand, then, that only the Catholics of China must love foreign countries rather than their own? Now that religious freedom is assured, obstacles to evangelization do not arise from the repressions of the larger society, but from within the church, he asserts. The obstacles are pride of race, taken to an extreme; investment in the prestige of the European homeland; and the hostility shown by the various missionary orders for each other. (Passages making these points were double-marked by the Propaganda reader.) He observes that his foreign ecclesiastical superiors regard the literature of China as puerile and trifling. Such is the ground from which springs the aversion to learning in the Chinese Catholic church, Ying asserts. Cultured Chinese now take it as a commonplace truth that the Catholic church does not prize education. Although the Jesuits have offered to establish one, there are no Catholic schools in Beijing or Tianjin worthy of the name. The bishops of the area “do not hide their scorn for learning and education. The schools and the press—there they find their great enemies.” When Catholics seek in pagan schools the education they cannot get from Catholic schools, they find themselves deprived of the sacraments. “Will pagans notable for intelligence and knowledge sign up for Catholic instruction, while priests capable of properly drafting a letter are as rare as the morning stars?” For there to be a convert from the ruling classes, he will first of all have to fall out of the sky. Then he must be equipped with certain particular virtues, such as “a humble disposition, ready to become a person submissive and respectful towards foreigners; to acknowledge the transcendent merits of his [ecclesiastical] superiors, on whom he will lavish tokens of reverence, genuflections and prostrations; and to renounce knowledge and education and above all the love of homeland.” Ying records that, after a year of fervent prayer on the

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subject, he joined with others to plead on their knees before their bishop, Stanislas Jarlin, for improvements in the local seminary, so that future priests would deepen their European and Chinese learning.23 Ying rehearses in his letter the abuses of Jarlin’s evangelical policies (in a passage marked by the Propaganda reader): In Beijing [referring to the vicariate] there are neophytes who received baptism up to five or six times. Their conduct is not improved by it: they keep all their vices, perform no religious practices, and are as ignorant about the way of the church as before. The annual accounts record so many myriads of new converts, of adult baptisms. So ask missionaries the proportion of Christians among this number. They will answer that it does not reach ten in a thousand! And Msgr. Jarlin prides himself on the great progress of the faith, and registers encomiums from the supreme pontiff !24 Further, this phenomenon is financed by the ill-gotten proceeds of the Boxer indemnities. The toll from all these problems, says Ying, is especially heavy on the Chinese priests, who are in state of depression. They see violated the rules that have been put in place by scripture, by the popes, and by St. Vincent de Paul and do not dare to speak out. The foreign missionaries say to them, “‘Without us you would die of hunger!’” Yes, China is weak, but the church cares not about weakness and strength. We absolutely do not admit that we have been born into a position of perpetual slavery. “Hence we have concluded that patience and resignation should give way to a more pressing duty, and the Holy See cannot disapprove of us, since Rome is the guardian of the laws and the oracle of justice.” Ying concludes by hoping that Rome will send someone to take stock.25 Some few months after arriving at his assignment in the south, Lebbe composed for his new bishop a statement of his views about the needs of the church in China—a statement duly transmitted also to Rome.26 He was responding to a reproving note from the bishop, who was Paul Reynaud, the longest serving Catholic bishop in China at that time. Lebbe was grateful to Reynaud for accepting him into the fold of the East Zhejiang vicariate and was pleased to find an easy social equality among the Chinese and foreign priests there. However, aside from his yearning for Tianjin and his anguish at beginning all over again with a starkly different dialect of Chinese, he was also discouraged by the francophilia evidenced in the display of the French flag in the cathedral and the churches and by the vicariate rule that priests wear the soutane, at least in the towns.27 He seemed to think he might win over the bishop, but he did not even come close.

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The first point in his letter to Bishop Reynaud is a rebuttal to the bishop’s warning against allowing “an unnatural, noisy patriotism” or chauvinism among Chinese Christians, which “confuses the love of country with the hatred of foreigners, the boycott of their goods.”28 Lebbe objects to the double standard, by which attitudes and behaviors condoned at home are contemned in China. Boycotts and strikes are scarcely unique to China. The Laoxikai case, among others, showed a civilized, restrained handling of these tactics with less damage than often occurs in Europe. “But patriotism is more than a force for the country; it is a force for the Church.” It has been the patriotism of the church in France during the years of war that more than anything else has returned the church there to the role it had lost. From his seventeen years as missionary, he has concluded that a fundamental obstacle to conversion is the national question. “And that is why, if true patriotism is praiseworthy and praised in the churches of Europe, it is necessary to the Church of China, and one of the indispensable human conditions for Catholicism taking root in the people and drawing the masses to its bosom.” Lebbe’s celebration of Chinese patriotism took him into doctrinally uncertain territory. Through the nineteenth century and beyond, the papacy had suffered a number of setbacks to its dignity and temporal authority at the hands of a variety of “patriotisms.” It had generally responded with hostility toward the liberal accoutrements of contemporary nationalism, notably in “The Syllabus of Errors” of 1864. It insisted for decades on a condemnation of the new Italian state (the Italian king was excommunicated) for seizing the papacy’s Italian territories. The Vatican in the nineteenth century ruled against Polish nationalist rebels and for their non-Polish monarchs, even when these monarchs were Protestant or Orthodox.29 On the other hand, both conservative and liberal versions of nationalism found a footing within the Catholic church in Europe by the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. An essay by Cardinal Mercier, primate of Belgium, celebrating Catholic patriotism, was published in the Yishibao.30 The purveyors of Catholicism through the mission movement were much marked by one or another form of it, as Lebbe notes. In essence, Lebbe was constructing his own theory, but by the same token, he could not easily be refuted from church doctrine. The standard Catholic injunction to respect legitimate civil authority worked in this case as much in Lebbe’s favor as it did for his opponents. In his response to Bishop Reynaud, Lebbe then enlarges the issue. How can this national question be answered by foreign missionaries? It cannot. Hence the requirement of a “complete” Chinese clergy, that is, with Chinese prelates, as well as full dignity to Chinese priests. Rome has been asking this for centuries, and yet the indigenous clergy remain “auxiliary,” often treated poorly. “We have got to the point of considering the field of our apostolate a fief of a race or even a fief of our

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congregation or of our homeland, and continue to try to keep it that way, even to the detriment of souls.” The shared focus of Cotta, Ying, and Lebbe on this trinity of fatal flaws in the missionary church—racism, European chauvinism, and the territorialism of the missionary societies—is striking. Will the custodians of the Religious Protectorate object? Perhaps they will simply withdraw, as Portugal once did. In any case, Lebbe writes, the good of the church comes first, and we must try to free ourselves from the Protectorate. “In the full sincerity of my soul, it seems certain in all ways that it [the Religious Protectorate] is an obstacle to the entry of an elite into the bosom of the Church.” Observe how Protestant missions campaigned against opium, separating Protestantism from Britain, and it was a great benefit to Protestantism in China. In the boycott of American goods in 1905 over emigration, American Protestant ministers took the lead against American policy. All this did no harm to England or America. The Chinese had no need of guidance in discerning the justice of the issues, but they did need to see that being a Protestant implied no renunciation or diminution of one’s rights as a citizen. Lebbe sums up his views by a statement of what has separated him from his former superiors: What they do not forgive me is that I believe that, to save the Chinese, today especially, one must love not only the Chinese, but China, as one loves one’s homeland, as a Frenchman loves France, to work to spread this love among priests, Christians, and pagans. What they forgive in me even less is to believe that the Protectorate is harmful to China and to the Church, and above all to have said this. What they pardon me for least of all, perhaps, is to believe that the establishment of a complete indigenous clergy is our first task—by reason of the traditions of the Church, the teachings of Rome, and the ever clearer voice of the facts—and to have worked to spread this idea around me, and to have declared that I would die happy if I could kiss the ring of the second [Chinese] bishop of China.31 The superior to whom this essay was addressed, Bishop Reynaud of East Zhejiang, avoided direct confrontations with Lebbe but was no more sympathetic than the others. In a letter to the Propaganda prefect in 1919, Reynaud writes, referencing the “voluminous report” just described: “Mr. Lebbe’s great offence (tort) is to have caused aspirations to be born and to grow that are too precocious for the present state of the Chinese Church.” Lebbe praised to Reynaud a catechist who led a demonstration against Bishop Dumond in Tianjin—a sad example, writes Reynaud, “of [Chinese] patriots who form a political clique, who wish to emancipate the Chinese Church

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and to rule it and who, in order to obey the Pope, begin by disobeying their bishop, who, they say and believe, is disavowed by Rome.” This is the start of schism.32 Lebbe, asserts Reynaud, is less culpable than Cotta with respect to his designs but is more dangerous because of his influence. Lebbe’s contention that among the Chinese clergy are those worthy of the episcopate in eminence, virtue, endowments, and capacity is the secret of his great popularity. Such ideas, which the Chinese would not conceive on their own, inflame national vanity, provoke grumbling, and spread division. For his part, Reynaud has forbidden to his priests the reading of the Yishibao, for its Protestant outlook and tendencies.33 The views of Reynaud in this letter would appear to have represented those of the majority of his colleagues. Lebbe’s Analysis of Missionary Strategies The most elaborate of Lebbe’s compositions in this period had the title Aperçu historique, or “Historical Overview.” In February 1918, Lebbe offered Vanneufville the composition of a study on evangelistic methods. Vanneufville encouraged him to produce such a document. Lebbe completed it in October 1918, sent it on to Cotta for editing, and made copies available to selected family and missionaries, as well as to Vanneufville. A version was published in Belgium in 1923.34 After a review of the history of Christianity in China from the Tang dynasty, Lebbe in this essay turns to the various forms that Catholic evangelism has taken after the imposition of the unequal treaties. He asserts that the majority of vicariates can be categorized as belonging to the “negative school,” meaning its apostles have given up. “Life from top to bottom—if it is life—is lethargic: no plan for evangelization, no investigation of the enemy camp, no study of the offensive possibilities, no concerted, organized preparation of future offensives. The watchword is: ‘For the moment there is nothing to be done.’ The variant: ‘God’s hour has not arrived.’ And also: ‘There is only prayer.’”35 Lebbe is describing here the same condition that, at the beginning of the century, Favier and de Guébriant had identified as dominant in the missions. Lebbe then treats several “active schools.” The first described method is “lawsuits,” by which Christians profited in Chinese courts from the treaty privileges of the missionaries. Chinese Christians soon had recourse to the missionary to address their vexations about any subject. Out of attachment to his Christians or out of his sense of power, the missionary took on the new role of pseudo-consul. The prospect attracted converts. “It is easy to imagine from this simple statement the formidable sum of vexation, of injustices, and consequently of hates, of misunderstanding, of dishonor that such a system put in play.” The system was taken to incredible excesses, to the point that

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it has been reined in. Although not absolutely abandoned, it has practically disappeared in the best Christian communities. The legacy of this half-century of lawsuits, however, is “a twisted outlook among the Christians as to the true position of the Church and the duties of its priests; among the pagans, a heritage of contempt and hate that spilt blood has not diminished. . . . Despite the real conversions obtained and kept, it has positively harmed the evangelization of China, because, for one soul saved, it has prevented the salvation of a crowd of others, and in the continuing consequences, it prevents still more.”36 Another approach Lebbe calls the “Spanish method,” referring to the history of coerced conversions by Spain at home and abroad. Lebbe’s example, which could have been drawn from his own early efforts in Wuqing county, involves the demand for an indemnity payment from a village for Boxer damages to the local Christians, beyond what the village can afford. The missionary tells the village that conversion of all inhabitants would satisfy part or all of the debt. Such conversions, Lebbe says, did not last long, but the resulting resentment did. The third method in Lebbe’s typology is “good works” (oeuvres). He acknowledges their deep roots in Catholic belief. However, he disparages their evangelistic efficacy as currently practiced. The programs of the Holy Childhood Society (l’Oeuvre de la Sainte Enfance) are his chief target. Abandoned children must be cared for, but it would be better to focus on the education of the children of converts. As to dispensaries and hospitals, they overload budgets and consume missionary time, out of proportion to their evangelistic rewards. He acknowledges the need for these charitable functions but urges that the missions refashion them for more conversion power, as, in his view, the Protestants have done. In his critique of “good works,” Lebbe expresses some of the same reservations as had Bishop Jarlin of Beijing. Yet in Lebbe’s analysis of the fourth “positive” method, that of “charity” or “the dole” (aumône), Jarlin is the primary culprit in its misdirection. As described earlier, the chief elements of Jarlin’s approach to evangelism were focusing on peasants, establishing religious schools in the villages, and supplying candidates for religious education and baptism with sustenance through grants of money. Lebbe lauds Jarlin for his zeal and energy. He acknowledges Jarlin’s virtuous rejection of the use of legal cases for mission advantage. But, like Ying Lianzhi, he focuses on the abuses of what, he says, is better called “evangelization by millet” or, even more accurately, a debased form of commerce. In the pursuit of Jarlin’s method, there soon developed a price schedule for steps on the road to baptism: so much for showing up, so much for each lesson learned, so much for children and the disabled, so much for reaching the stage of baptism. The enterprise has become too large for the individual missionary, so catechists have become recruiters, and catechists have subcontracted pagans to gather in

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more catechumens (that is, prospective converts). The process has become entrepreneurial. “There remains of all this activity only a puddle of mud between the Church and the honest portion of the people, an obstacle which they are loathe to cross.”37 Lebbe concedes that a small number of sincere practitioners of this method, by serious organization, relentless surveillance, and careful follow-up, manage “more consoling results.” More numerous, however, are missionaries who, by keeping up the numbers, aim only at satisfying the bishop and disclaim responsibility for the ugly consequences. Meanwhile, the method has reinforced the anti-Catholic prejudice of the pagans, who believe that the individual missionary makes a profit from the baptisms. That brings Lebbe to the final “positive” method, the method of Tianjin—his own. He begins by listing obstacles to the growth of Catholicism in China. The first is one he identified soon after arrival in China: its foreign character. Chinese, he asserts, are no more xenophobes than would any other people be if placed in similar circumstances. But the Catholic Church flaunts its foreign character, not just in its architecture and art, but also in its staffing. Take the case of the representative bishop, who retains the outlook and some of the prejudices of the country of his birth and of Europe: This bishop is, or rather steadfastly believes himself to be, of a superior race, and not even every virtue can prevent this conviction from seeping into his acts and his words. His country is, or he believes it to be, far superior to that of this Chinese, who comes to prostrate himself at his feet, and whom he will still suspect of pride and of an inveterate xenophobia, who will offer him his soul, and whom he will still suspect of duplicity and lack of trust.38 The pagans are aware of these attitudes. The first reform must be for missionaries, as much as possible, to make themselves Chinese when with the Chinese. They should study intently the customs, language, and literature; learn about the people’s outlook; and enter into all that is not condemned by the gospel. They should seek pardon for the title of foreigner, immerse themselves in the population, dwell in Chinese-style houses, and dream of building Chinese-style churches. The second obstacle is the pervasive scandal caused by the more widespread and persistent of the intrusive methods of evangelism, that is to say, the use of lawsuits and the marketplace of baptisms. To dispense with them is easier said than done. Lebbe points to the tenacity with which Jarlin holds to his “charitable” method, unwilling to see or hear about its defects. He cites his own experience, when, as director of the Tianjin missionary district, he disciplined one of his priests who was

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taking the method to unacceptable excess.39 Jarlin, who was then still Lebbe’s bishop, retaliated by withholding funds from Tianjin the next year, which was 1910. Such was Jarlin’s determination. As a side benefit, this action made the further purchase of converts out of the question. The Tianjin mission then experimented with other means of evangelism and never returned to Jarlin’s method. A third obstacle is the general ignorance of Catholicism. Lebbe attributes this condition to the neglect of preaching, of actively reaching pagans with the gospel. He says that no one, least of all bishops, has been preaching the Catholic message regularly to non-Christians. Missionaries and their Christians should go out among the pagans, attend their meetings, visit their schools, and join their charitable activities. He offers the model of the lecture halls of the Tianjin mission, as well as its periodicals, as ways to reach out. Under the heading of making the gospel appreciated, Lebbe argues that most missionaries, separated from the Chinese people, have not realized the enormous changes in China over the previous twenty years. Along with the growing progressive movement have emerged large openings for Catholic influence, although the best opportunities have already passed. The crucial strategy is to study the needs and aspirations of the population and to explain the gospel in terms of its response to these needs and aspirations. As to the manner or spirit in which the Tianjin reforms have been pursued, Lebbe holds that there is nothing basically new in this (he had adopted it at the outset of his apostolate), but at the same time it has stirred up strong opposition: We would go to this dear people with love, a love that did not hide its face, a love made tender and full of respect. This love was not difficult, since the missionaries who took on the task of opening the new way were quite sincerely smitten with China and its people. They believed in its virtues, genuinely excused its faults, and had faith in its future.40 They upheld as a primary tenet the equality of races. They decided to act with complete impartiality, the principles of which they found in the Gospels. They adopted China as their country, for the love of Jesus. It was this attitude and this conduct that opened doors and brought down barriers, considered by missionary tradition to be unbreachable. Opportunities to demonstrate this spirit came with the Twenty-One Demands of Japan, when Catholics in Tianjin joined the popular movement of opposition, and the Laoxikai struggle, in which Catholics were at the forefront. These accomplishments came from missionaries sinifying themselves, but the mission remains foreign. Lebbe’s conclusion is that what is needed henceforth is a

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Chinese church, having at its head Chinese bishops. If this happens, the church will live. If not, it will die.41 Before Lebbe composed the two pieces just described, he was buoyed by news from Rome. Perhaps the news emboldened him to dispense with any reticence about radical solutions. In a letter home in August 1917, Lebbe reported that his friend Vanneufville had written, saying: “You will soon be rewarded for what you have suffered.” And, “I haven’t been charged to tell it to you, but I say to you with all personal certainty: console your friends over there; tell them that the hour of justice will soon sound.” Lebbe told his father that he cried with joy on reading this encouragement. He hoped to see Tianjin and its people again.42 Indeed, wheels had begun to turn at the Vatican. “Lebbe and company” would have reason, during the next few years, to feel that their efforts had had great effect on the church. Satisfaction in that accomplishment would, however, be their primary reward.

Alphonse Favier, after many years as a leading missionary in Beijing, became bishop there in 1898 and survived the Boxer siege of 1900, along with some 3,000 Chinese Christian refugees. Well connected with high Chinese officials and foreign diplomats, he served informally as a central liaison for the otherwise decentralized Catholic Church in China. Henri-Joseph Leroy, En Chine au Tché-ly S.-E.: Une mission d’après les missionnaires (Bruges: Desclée, De Brouwer, 1900), 409

Originally built on land granted by the Qing emperor in the late seventeenth century, the North Church (Beitang) became Beijing’s Catholic cathedral. The structure shown here, with its European aesthetic, was a new version built in the late nineteenth century after the old site was repossessed by China’s effective ruler of the time, the Empress Dowager. Photo by Michael J. Young

Johann Baptist Anzer became the first bishop of a new Catholic jurisdiction known as South Shandong in 1885, under the administration of a primarily German missionary organization. He effected the first breach in the French Religious Protectorate by switching to German protection, and he was a keen supporter of Germany’s seizure of a port in Shandong in 1897. Karl Joseph Rivinius, Weltlicher Schutz und Mission: Das deutsche Protektorat über die kqtholische Mission von Süd-Shantung (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 1987), frontispiece

A forensic photo of the wounds of Jiang Zhaotang, taken by Chinese authorities in the wake of the highly controversial death of this Nanchang county magistrate in Jiangxi province in 1906. In the belief that the French head of the Catholic mission in Nanchang had cut Jiang’s throat, citizens assembled, killed nine foreign missionaries, and burned mission buildings. British Foreign Office Archives (FO 228/2402)

Ying Lianzhi, a Manchu Catholic, founded and edited a major Chinese newspaper, the Dagongbao, at the beginning of the twentieth century. Active in many social and political causes, he wrote eloquently in criticism of the European management and domination of the Chinese Catholic church. China Economic Net

The Belgian Lazarist missionary Vincent Lebbe addresses an audience in what was widely testified to be fluent Mandarin Chinese. Given charge in 1906 of the Catholic mission in the northern city of Tianjin, Lebbe introduced new methods of evangelism, including the establishment of public lecture halls open to all. Sociėtė des Auxiliaires des Missions (S.A.M.) Archives

The missionary reformer Vincent Lebbe (seated, center) is dressed in Chinese garb, surrounded by his family (parents and siblings—two of whom were also in religious orders) in Ypres, during a tour of Europe in 1913. The boy standing at the far left is Ying Lianzhi’s son, whom Lebbe escorted to Europe for further education. S.A.M. Archives

Lebbe greets Paul Dumond, who was made bishop when the Tianjin Catholic district was separated from Beijing’s jurisdiction in 1912. In 1916, Lebbe was in effect sent into exile from Tianjin, and Dumond and other bishops worked to prevent his return. S.A.M. Archives

Lebbe’s closest collaborator in the effort to break with the French Religious Protectorate and to indigenize China’s Catholic church was the Egyptian Lazarist missionary Antoine Cotta (left), who was eventually also exiled from Tianjin. He and Lebbe, who both took up Chinese-style pipe smoking, worked together to bring the condition of the church in China to the attention of the Vatican. S.A.M. Archives

Ma Xiangbo had briefly been a Jesuit father but, after leaving the priesthood in the 1870s, engaged in a wide array of public activities with Qing officials, political reformers, and revolutionaries. A distinguished intellectual, he remained a major Catholic voice in the early twentieth century, calling for improved Catholic educational institutions and for Chinese leadership in the church. Zhu Weizheng, Ma Xiangbo zhuanlüe (Shanghai: Fudan Daxue Chubanshe, 2005), 34

Conscious of the opposition of foreign prelates of the Catholic church in China to indigenous bishops, the Vatican in 1926 invited six Chinese priests to Rome to be consecrated as bishops in St. Peter’s by Pius XI himself. Here the six new bishops pose with (at the center, from the left) the secretary of the Propaganda (Marchetti), the prefect of the Propaganda (Van Rossum), and the pope’s representative in China (the apostolic delegate, Costantini), who had brought the Chinese priests to Rome. S.A.M. Archives

9 The Vatican Engages and Catholics in China Respond

as pope leo XIII had learned, any attempt to change the order of things in the China mission field could elicit a surge of resistance. An alliance of the French government with the overwhelming majority of bishops, as well as with many ordinary European missionaries, formed spontaneously to check papal initiatives. When the Vatican started to focus on the China missions in the late teens of the twentieth century, it soon rediscovered that the way would not be smooth. But many Chinese Catholics welcomed the Vatican’s initiatives. The pope who embarked Catholic missions on a new course, notably in China, was Benedict XV (Giacomo Della Chiesa). He was elected in September 1914. A contrast with his predecessor Pius X in various ways, he immediately ended the heresy hunt for Modernists in the church. Beginning his pontificate just after war had broken out, he pronounced his dismay at what he called “the suicide of Europe” and sponsored humanitarian activities for prisoners of war and for displaced civilians. Having previously served the Vatican as a diplomat, he persisted over the next years in calling on the warring parties to settle, suggesting arbitration and offering papal mediation.1 These repeated interventions did not endear him to the belligerents. As an example, although France had initially welcomed his election, Georges Clemenceau, made French prime minister a second time in 1917, was reported to have decided Benedict XV was, under his Italian exterior, a boche (“kraut”), whose neck he would like to wring as he would break a baguette. Benedict’s wish to have a representative seated at the postwar peace conference was thwarted. Indeed, the exclusion of the papacy had already been secretly agreed to on the Allied side during the war.2 185

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In retrospective discussions of Benedict XV’s motive for taking an unprecedentedly intrusive stand regarding the direction and temper of Catholic missions in 1919, the point is often made that he likely found in the missions a vehicle for having a wider role in world affairs.3 In other words, he sought compensation for being kept out of the Paris Peace Conference. Such a motive cannot be dismissed, but it would not be a full explanation. The papacy’s unhappiness with the organization of its missions in China and with the distance from them imposed by the French Religious Protectorate had surfaced repeatedly in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Further, there is evidence that news of the turmoil in Tianjin, as well as the state of Catholic missions in China generally, had already raised concerns in the Vatican well before the war’s end.4 The Attempt to Return the Dissident Priests to Tianjin When Lebbe was sent south of the Yangzi in March 1917 and Cotta defied his Lazarist superiors’ order dispatching him to Quito, the Propaganda’s leadership in Rome decided to intervene. Toward the end of that month, the Lazarist head in Paris was startled, and not a little peeved, to be told that the Propaganda would not authorize the transfers of Lebbe and Cotta. He responded that he had believed the matter to be settled and had so informed the French government. When it arrived, he would forward the report on the Tianjin controversy made by the Lazarist visitor, Father Guilloux. He was worried about the reaction of the French government to a change of plans.5 Despite these objections, in April 1917 the Propaganda by both telegram and letter directly ordered Bishop Dumond in Tianjin to suspend Lebbe’s removal.6 Such interventions by the Vatican about ordinary missionaries, against the personnel decisions of both a bishop and the head of a missionary order, were extremely rare if not unprecedented in the history of the China missions. (When the Propaganda removed Barnaba Da Cologna and a colleague from North Shanxi in 1901, there was at the time no bishop in place. Da Cologna was acting head of the vicariate.) Bishop Dumond sent rebuttals in April and May. He asserted that, because of his repeated refusal to leave the vicariate or to quit his post, Cotta had been suspended from priestly functions. Lebbe’s transfer, already accomplished, had been decided by Dumond’s religious superiors and was now out of his hands. Back in October 1916, the bishop had reported that he would recall Lebbe to Tianjin once calm had returned, but instead matters had heated up. As evidence, he referred to a six-month strike in the French concession, to abusive attacks issued by the strike committee against the French minister in Beijing and the consul in Tianjin, to an anti-French

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campaign of the Yishibao (“founded by Lebbe”), and to criticisms of the bishop himself by partisans of Lebbe and Cotta. The French minister had demanded the departure of these two and would consider Lebbe’s return as a personal insult and an attack on the French Religious Protectorate. Dumond claimed support from his neighboring bishops, who worried that the agitation would affect their own vicariates. Disapproval by Rome would completely destroy his authority, he wrote. In that event, he asked to be relieved of his position.7 Judging by a comment of the French minister, who was apprised of the Propaganda’s instruction, it appears that Bishop Dumond was counting on the report of Guilloux and that priest’s upcoming trip to Rome to change minds there.8 As late as June 1917, however, the Propaganda prefect was expressing his discontent with Lebbe’s exile and the treatment of Cotta. The Lazarists reminded the prefect that the measures had been taken “to grant satisfaction to the French minister, protector of the missions, who was threatening to take the most severe measures if we did not.”9 Bishop Jarlin in Beijing volunteered to the same prefect: “I am persuaded that the residence of Cotta in Tianjin and the return of Lebbe would be disastrous for the missions of the North and would be the triumph of intrigue and of disobedience.”10 The matter was temporarily tabled. In March 1918, a new Propaganda prefect was appointed, Willem van Rossum. He was a Redemptorist and a Dutchman, who remained in this post until his death in 1932. He inaugurated an era in which, according to a leading authority on the Vatican, the Propaganda was “easily the most innovatory congregation in the Curia.”11 Van Rossum soon took up the challenge of refashioning the Chinese church. For him, too, the backlash was daunting. At the end of July 1918, Van Rossum and the Propaganda secretary (the second highest executive post) jointly wrote to Bishop Dumond. In this letter, they express a wish that the prolonged cases about Cotta and Lebbe be settled. Regarding Cotta and his disobedience and indocility of spirit, they suggest that the bishop accept a letter of apology from the priest, as a prelude to some indulgence on the bishop’s part, that is, the lifting of the censure, followed perhaps by transfer to another jurisdiction. They add that they have enclosed a letter to Cotta urging this course on him. As to Lebbe, they refer to the effort of the previous Propaganda prefect to prevent Lebbe’s transfer away from the Tianjin vicariate. Showing that one can be sarcastic in Church Latin, they respond with a certain edge to the excuse that the instruction came too late, after Lebbe’s departure. They propose that the remedy would have been simple—to recall him. Enough time now has passed so that tempers will have cooled. They ask Dumond to show this letter to his superiors and to effect

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the reinstatement in the Tianjin vicariate of Lebbe, Morel, and the other exiled missionaries.12 The letter from the Propaganda reached its destination in October 1918. There followed a barrage of telegrams and letters, addressed both to the Propaganda prefect and the Vatican’s secretary of state and objecting to the return and rehabilitation of the disciplined priests of Tianjin. Jarlin in Beijing had already registered his view. Now he was joined by representatives of the other Lazarist vicariates in north China, as well as the Jesuit bishops of Southeast Zhili in the north and Jiangnan in central China, and the bishop of the North Henan vicariate, assigned to the foreign missionary society of Milan. They included Jean de Vienne, bishop of West Zhili, where Lebbe had received three months’ refuge after his initial departure from Tianjin in June 1916. Lebbe optimistically thought him to be a sympathizer. The campaign of protest had been organized by the Dutch Lazarist bishop of East Zhili, Ernst Geurts, who was impelled by his concern that Bishop Dumond in Tianjin might accede to this second round of intervention from the Propaganda.13 The short telegraphic messages to the Vatican pressed for a deferral of the order. Then most sent follow-up letters, elaborating the reasons that the return of the Tianjin contingent of priests would be so damaging to the missions. The common theme was that their reinstatement would validate the insubordination of the Chinese clergy. (Even though only one of the five disciplined Lazarist priests was Chinese, they were all seen as agitators on behalf of an indigenous church.) For example, in an extended disquisition, the Jesuit coadjutor bishop of Southeast Zhili asserts that the affair puts in question the authority of the church in China. Missionaries agree on the ultimate goal of an indigenous episcopate, he writes, but it is at present impossible to be realized in practice. Chinese priests are inferior socially, inadequately educated (even in the Chinese language), too timid of temperament for leadership, and lacking a capacity for financial management. Furthermore, they have a national spirit and are concerned more for China than the church. If in charge, they will gradually loosen the Catholic tie with Rome and proceed on a path toward schism. “It seems that the European Catholic episcopate will remain for a long time yet the only safeguard of the Catholic link with Rome and the sole upholder of practical belief in the infallible magisterium of the church.” The Propaganda copy of this letter is blue-penciled with question marks and comments: “And why?” “And whose fault is that?”14 As in the previous year, French diplomats in China were alerted to the Propaganda’s moves regarding Lebbe and Cotta. The French minister in Beijing (no longer Conty) in late October 1918 alleged that Lebbe, although transferred

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to distant Ningbo, still exerted “total influence” over the Chinese press in Tianjin. He suggested that the government in Paris take advantage of the pressure it could put upon a congregation with its motherhouse in France and compel Cotta’s departure from China, and that the Belgian government be mobilized to persuade the Vatican to remove Lebbe, who was more dangerous and “the instigator in China of a campaign of xenophobia.”15 The Quai d’Orsay believed it had successfully committed the Lazarist acting head in Paris to urge Rome to transfer them out of the country.16 The Propaganda granted a suspension of the order for the return of the priests exiled from Tianjin.17 But Antoine Cotta had some success for a while with his rearguard action: refusing to move. His argument was that neither his bishop, Dumond, nor the Lazarist visitor for North China, Desrumaux, would name his derelictions or transgressions. Until the charges were specified, he could not formulate an appeal. And he would not leave his post until Rome had adjudicated his appeal. He believed that he had on his side the laws of the church and the opinions of the best theologians. One can understand how those attempting to remove Cotta found him litigious. However, they did show unseemly reticence in formulating their charges against him. Posted at the time outside the city of Tianjin, Cotta had not been involved in the development of the Laoxikai affair. He was sure that, although his superiors would not acknowledge it, he was being punished for supporting Lebbe in the wake of Lebbe’s letter to the French minister in June 1916 and more particularly for doing so in communications to Paris and Rome. Once he had resisted early attempts to dismiss him from the Tianjin vicariate, the charge became one of disobedience. Cotta’s response was that he was only following the rules.18 In late 1918, urged on by the French legation with the support of Allied diplomats, Chinese authorities ordered Cotta’s arrest on grounds of his Austrian nationality. The rubric here was the deportability of subjects of the central European powers that had just been defeated in war. (Although their deportation had been called for since China’s joining the Allies in August 1917, it proved to be unworkable until the war’s end.)19 German, as well as Austrian, missionaries were vulnerable. Vatican diplomacy managed to blunt action in this direction, though China did expel some German priests—twelve from the South Shandong vicariate.20 The first attempt to arrest Cotta at his parish residence in Tianjin failed over police confusion about his name. A second effort, on March 25, 1919, was obstructed by a pro-Cotta crowd of citizens, Catholic and non-Catholic. The police retreated. Cotta was now arguing that his professed Austrian nationality, which he had offered in 1915 on his bishop’s advice as the reason he could not accept the Lazarist superior general’s summons to France, had dissolved. It had been based on his father’s

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citizenship in Capo d’Istria, which had just become Italian by postwar arrangements. In any case, he was really Egyptian by birth and ethnicity, and, although he spoke eight languages, he knew no German.21 Aside from being deployed to avoid deportation, Cotta’s almost playful statements about his nationality seemed to be mocking the very categories at issue. Meanwhile, perhaps in response to telegrams on Cotta’s behalf from Lebbe and from the former Chinese prime minister Xiong Xiling, the Vatican instructed Bishops Jarlin and Dumond in Beijing and Tianjin to stop the attempt to expel Cotta.22 The Question of Obedience The Chinese police did not arrest Cotta. However, some of his comrades had not welcomed his feistiness. Monsignor Vanneufville, conduit to the Curia for the missionary reformers, had written to Cotta in November 1917 to the effect that he should first obey and then appeal. By resisting his bishop’s orders, he was damaging his cause.23 Soon, Vanneufville was reporting to the Propaganda his doubts about Cotta’s spiritual qualities—what one might call character traits. Cotta had courage and integrity, but he took too eagerly to argument and spiced his zeal for justice with a certain asperity. With Lebbe, by contrast, one could count on “the total obedience of this saintly missionary.”24 For his part, Lebbe did not think that the matter of clerical obedience was simple. He had responded to Vanneufville’s original injunction to practice “heroic obedience” with a discussion of the difficulties. About three months into Lebbe’s exile, the Lazarist North China visitor said to him: “Yes, everyone acknowledges that you have never disobeyed an order—but you do not come to be what your superiors would want you to be.”25 To Vanneufville, Lebbe confirmed that, while not violating positive prohibitions, he had never satisfied the deeper intentions of his superiors, since he believed that some of their policies were ruinous to the mission. For example, when he embarked on a program of preaching directly to non-Christians in his lecture halls, in preference to Jarlin’s policy of purchasing converts, he knew he was on the edge of disobedience.26 Yet he accepted his assignments away from Tianjin without complaining to his Lazarist superiors, even when he was put under the authority of a more junior missionary or sent off to another language area. (Whether purposefully or no, the dispatch and docility with which Lebbe acted on his transfers had the effect of underlining his victimhood in the eyes of those following these events sympathetically.) Lebbe in turn reproved Cotta about obedience, although at first with a gentleness and indirection that seemed designed to preserve their friendship and collaboration.

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Describing his reaction to the punitive pronouncements following Guilloux’s visit to Tianjin in March 1917, Lebbe had written Cotta: I felt my whole life would henceforth be given over to struggles, to anguish, to every sort of suffering, and that our way of the Cross had only just begun. . . . We indeed have Rome, the Vicar of Jesus Christ and all the instructions of the Propaganda. . . . But they have been trampled under foot for centuries, and who are we to declaim it and make it known? . . . I myself am not discouraged, but I believe we must draw deeply on our strength, in prayers, mortification, total self-denial, and prepare ourselves for a life without any human consolations.27 A year later, Lebbe registered his disagreement with Cotta’s reasoned resistance to orders. “In a word, my notion is that I must submit without evasion, loyally, right to the completion of all they conscientiously ask of me, while presenting my viewpoint when the orders seem to carry consequences—even at the price of obeying absolutely, whatever the manner in which my remarks are received. And on the other hand to continue to reveal faithfully to Rome what I believe is the truth about the present situation.”28 After Cotta had expressed his unwillingness to follow the Propaganda prefect’s injunction first to submit to the bishop by an apology and then to make his appeal, Lebbe, in a series of communications in the fall of 1918, urged him to accept. Surely Cotta had not been perfectly irreproachable in his relations with Dumond, so his apologies need not be insincere. As to the practical effect, Lebbe observed that a gentle, agreeable, and humble manner, with rare and brief exceptions, was the one that prevailed. Rome was reportedly satisfied with their appeals and their general stance. It disapproved of insubordination with respect to bishops. Its slowness to act was not for him to judge and was no reason to cease submission.29 Cotta did indeed pen his letter of apology to Bishop Dumond in November 1918, as the Propaganda had requested.30 It was anything but effusive, and Cotta did not vacate his parish post in Tianjin. In August 1919, Lebbe wrote to his Benedictine brother of his reservations about Cotta’s determined course: “My apprehensions about him have not dissipated.” Rome’s intervention had regularized the situation (for example, mandating material sustenance), and Cotta was awaiting Rome’s response to his appeal. “But his spirit frightens me.”31 The next month, in a long, anguished letter, he presented to Cotta his concerns that “the present Tianjin movement” has become “completely sidetracked, departing more and more from the Catholic spirit,” in danger of invalidating the efforts of these last years and ending in the ruin of souls. “And I believe that your responsibility

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in the face of this is large, larger still than mine, which I do not hide. Because I think this evil (ce mal) is the logical fruit of your principles.” Lebbe cites a couple of instances: long absences of a Chinese priest from his parish and his trip to Beijing with some leading Tianjin citizens, despite the bishop forbidding him from leaving the vicariate, and a publication by a prominent Catholic layman that took the episcopate to task and cited scripture to do so. He says he fears inflicting distress on Cotta and alienating his affection, but “it is necessary to expound again to our priests and to our Christians, sweetly but forcefully, the Catholic teaching on obedience and the respect owed the hierarchy . . . , to those who have lost it.” He asks Cotta to convey to his brethren in Tianjin the entirety of his thinking on this.32 Lebbe here came close to joining the chorus of bishops who saw subversion of the church and the seeds of schism in Cotta’s behavior. The timing suggests that Lebbe was concerned to put the best possible face on the Tianjin reform movement in preparation for the forthcoming inspection by an “apostolic visitor,” appointed by Rome. Cotta soon had occasion to justify, in interviews with the apostolic visitor, the “disobedience” of the Chinese secular priest, Yang Zengyi ( Joseph Yang). Yang’s absences from his parish, explained Cotta, were actually to assist his European successor in various start-up problems at the more central parish from which the Chinese priest had been transferred after ten years of service there, as part of Dumond’s displacement of the disloyal. Yang’s political trips to Beijing were either to assist in the anti-Japanese boycotts of the 1919 May Fourth Movement during his vacation time or to lobby the president of China for the release of Catholic students arrested in connection with the May Fourth demonstrations (which objected to the decision at the Paris Peace Conference to accept Japanese administration of former German holdings in Shandong province, instead of their reverting to China). Yang had been invited to make the lobbying trip by some Tianjin notables, and Cotta had counseled him to accept, despite Bishop Dumond’s injunction.33 The collaboration of Lebbe and Cotta was not ruptured by this disagreement about the demands of obedience. Cotta apparently responded to Lebbe’s strictures with good grace.34 Yet there was a perceptible distancing between them over the next few years. Lebbe used whatever weight his voice had with Bishop Dumond and with Rome to protect Cotta from retribution, but that may not have fully compensated for Lebbe’s blunt disapproval of Cotta’s last stand in Tianjin. Another Bid for Sino-Vatican Relations After the very public failure of the attempt at formal diplomatic relations between the Chinese state and the Vatican in 1886, there had been numerous quiet explorations

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of the idea, without result. In July 1918, both sides tried again in the glare of journalistic attention. The initiative, to which the Holy See responded quickly, came from the Chinese government. It somewhat subverts the common view that Catholics were absent from modern China’s political leadership if we recall that, in the years 1912 through 1920, during more than half of that time the foreign minister of the Republic of China was a Catholic. Lu Zhengxiang, born in 1871, had been a prominent diplomat under the Qing. He served four different terms as foreign minister after the 1911 Revolution and very briefly as prime minister. He had been raised a Protestant Christian, attended special schools established by the government in the late nineteenth century to train experts in “Western learning” (the Jiangnan arsenal school in Shanghai and the Tongwenguan for foreign languages in Beijing), married a Belgian women in 1899 while serving in the Chinese legation in St. Petersburg, and converted to Catholicism in October 1911. Following his wife’s death in 1926, he joined the Benedictine order in Belgium, where he resided the rest of his life.35 Before taking up his fourth term as foreign minister, Lu participated in the negotiations around China’s entry into the war against Germany and Austro-Hungary in August 1917. At about the same time, the Vatican was informed of China’s renewed interest in entering into diplomatic relations.36 After becoming foreign minister again in the late fall of 1917, Lu Zhengxiang, in a conversation with the French chargé d’affaires in Beijing, floated the idea of diplomatic relations with the Vatican, but the French chargé reported that the idea had been scratched as inopportune, owing to Allied allegations of Benedict XV’s pro-German sentiments.37 Nonetheless, a formal proposal arrived at the Holy See on July 6, 1918, along with the designation of China’s representative. Four days later, the Vatican’s secretary of state officially welcomed both the suggestion and the named envoy, and in turn proposed as nuncio to the Republic of China the current apostolic delegate in the Philippines.38 The arrangement was then announced and defended in the Vatican newspaper, Osservatore Romano. The newspaper articles argued that a nuncio in China would not impinge on French treaty rights or on the French Religious Protectorate. Rather, reciprocal cooperation between the nuncio and the French minister would advantage both the church and France.39 It was soon apparent that the French government did not agree, no more than it had in earlier rounds on the issue of a papal representative in China. When informed of the démarche in July 1918, it was not long before the French foreign minister, Stéphen Pichon, who had been minister in Beijing at the time of the Boxer affair, was informing his representatives in Beijing and Rome that diplomatic relations between the Holy See and China were incompatible with France’s Religious Protectorate. This was more especially so in the absence of diplomatic relations

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between the Holy See and France. He judged that the Chinese government was out to rid itself of the Religious Protectorate and that the Vatican was seeking a seat at the peace conference. If a representative of the Vatican were to be installed in China, the French government would have nothing to do with him. Missionaries who addressed themselves to him would lose French protection for themselves and their Chinese Catholics, unless they were French nationals, and even then their concerns as Catholics would not be defended. He asked the French minister in Beijing so to inform the Catholic missions.40 Perhaps France’s opposition, yet again, would have been enough to shoot down Lu Zhengxiang’s project. The decisive move, however, was that of the American government, which declared that the Vatican’s nominee for nuncio, well known to the Americans from his service as apostolic delegate in the Philippines, was close to one or more prominent Germans and was therefore unacceptable.41 A second Vatican candidate for nuncio was deemed even more of a germanophile. French authorities were quick to adopt the view that the whole affair had been a German conspiracy from the beginning.42 Before the end of August, the Chinese government dropped this hot potato. On September 1, 1918, Lu Zhengxiang apologized to the French minister for the “misunderstanding.” China, he said, would not want to make its allies unhappy.43 He had bigger issues on his plate, including the recovery of Japanese-held portions of Shandong province, the remission or reduction of Boxer indemnity payments, and the revision of the unequal treaties and the tariff schedule (which since the 1840s had been set by treaty). In all of these matters great-power sympathy would be crucial. Chinese officials looked especially to the United States for support.44 The reception within the Chinese church regarding the news of the proposed establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the Holy See was manifestly divided. Expressions of joy emanated from parts of the Chinese Catholic community in missives to Rome.45 The foreign bishops were ominously silent, and publications under their influence purveyed a good deal of negative comment. Among those encouraging Lu Zhengxiang to establish China’s relations with the Vatican was Ma Xiangbo, the most prominent Chinese activist for Catholic causes in these years.46 Both Ma’s parents were from old Catholic families, on his father’s side converted in the late Ming. Ma Xiangbo was born in 1840. After an early classical education, he studied in a Catholic school in Shanghai. He became a Jesuit father, but left the order and the priesthood in 1876 out of dissatisfaction with the way he was treated by his foreign superiors. He then received various government appointments under the patronage of the leading Qing official Li Hongzhang, as did his two brothers, and had a family of his own. He traveled to Japan, Korea, the United States, and Europe, usually on official business. In the mid-1890s, after the deaths in

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succession of his wife and his mother, he reconciled with the Jesuits, though remaining a layman. Among Ma Xiangbo’s notable accomplishments was a major role in the founding of three institutions of higher learning that became universities: first Zhendan (or Aurora) in 1903, followed soon after by Fudan, both located in or near Shanghai, and then later in the mid-1920s (more by advocacy and inspiration than administration), Furen in Beijing. In the 1890s he associated with Liang Qichao, the eminent political activist, reformer, and essayist, who chose Ma to be head of an attempt at a political party in 1907 (Zhengwenshe), until it was banned the next year by the government. In the wake of the 1911 Revolution, Ma was successively the mayor of the city of Nanjing under the revolutionaries and acting governor of Jiangsu province. He was briefly president of Peking University. He had honorary appointments from President Yuan Shikai and, in the late 1930s, from Chiang Kai-shek, although he was at various times a severe critic of both men. Over a long lifetime, he struck a remarkable array of links with quite diverse currents in Chinese society.47 His relations with the foreign Catholic establishment in China, however, were vexed. He eventually mended his 1876 rupture with the Jesuits, but, when French Jesuits took over and gave an objectionable direction to the Zhendan academy that he had founded and financed, he endorsed the student walkout that was the origin in 1905 of Fudan University.48 Apparently, he was not forgiven for his independence by some in the missionary hierarchy. When Beijing bishop Jarlin exploded in anger at Lebbe for launching a religious weekly newspaper in 1912, he declared that the paper’s congratulations to Ma Xiangbo, “a defrocked priest,” for becoming governor of Jiangsu province was reason enough to ban the publication.49 Ma was indeed a critic of the foreign domination of the Chinese Catholic church. During World War I he noted that the French government was conscripting missionary priests into its armed forces to fight Germany. “If suddenly China and France fell out of harmony, what would prevent [the foreign priests] from being called upon to attack China?” Our evangelizers as our attackers? Believers and ecclesiastical authorities had to remove the colonial character of the Chinese church, he asserted. All its managers were foreign-born. “These days when Confucianists (ruzhe) interrogate me, I do not know what to reply.”50 In the first years of the Republic, Ma was a leading voice in opposition to giving Confucianism a privileged place in public education, in official ceremonial, or in the Chinese constitution.51 During these campaigns, in which Lebbe’s Yishibao and his Catholic Action Association became vigorous participants and which took freedom of religion as their rationale, Ma deepened his acquaintance with both Lebbe and Cotta. In the first months of 1917, he was recruiting them to urge his friend Lu

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Zhengxiang, then between stints as foreign minister, to act on his inclination to be China’s official legate to the pope.52 The missionary reformers, along with many Chinese Catholics, including Ma Xiangbo, considered it scandalous that not a single bishop in China publicly defended the pope in this matter of diplomatic relations with China.53 Lebbe appealed to his own bishop of the moment, Paul Reynaud, doyen of the Catholic episcopate in China, to speak out in support of his pope and in refutation of the calumny of German plots in the Vatican. Reynaud demurred: he was not feeling well.54 A Chinese Catholic of the Jesuit-run vicariate of Southeast Zhili reported that, when some of the vicariate’s faithful sent a letter to Tianjin’s Catholic weekly (one of Lebbe’s projects) in defense of the pope over this issue, they were sharply reprimanded by order of their bishop.55 A Chinese Lazarist priest in the East Zhili (Yongpingfu) vicariate wrote to the Propaganda prefect: “Often I am asked, why do the bishops of China seem not to want the nuncio, who is, however, so necessary for the good of the church in our country?”56 Once it was known that the démarche toward diplomatic relations had failed, Lebbe proposed a counterattack by keeping alive in the press the prospect of a postwar renewal of the idea. He also called on Rome to dispatch as soon as possible a papal representative, not to the Chinese government, but to the Chinese church.57 Although Lebbe did not know it, the Vatican had already set in motion a process that would result in the appointment of just such a papal inspector the next year. A Papal Visitor for China With the evident backing of Pope Benedict XV and his secretary of state, Pietro Gasparri, the Propaganda had begun intervening in the upheavals in the Tianjin mission from the early months of 1917. The interventions were successfully resisted. When he acceded to the position of prefect of the Propaganda in March 1918, Willem van Rossum paid further attention to the particular troubles arising in Tianjin. His efforts, too, were deflected. Then the agenda widened. Concern was now extended to the state of the China missions in general. The Holy See’s positive response to China’s wish for formal state-to-state relations could be added to the list of the Vatican’s engagements with China. Even as that matter was under way in the summer of 1918, Van Rossum was preparing for the dispatch of a papal investigator. And a papal decree on missions was to come soon. Its preparation, too, was likely already underway in 1918. The pace of the Vatican’s moves regarding the Chinese Catholic church was accelerating. Van Rossum’s first step toward the appointment of an apostolic visitor, the formal title of the papal investigator, was to ask six missionary bishops to respond

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individually to ten questions about Catholic evangelism in China. The request was sent from Rome on July 12, 1918.58 Because of temporary absences and postal delays, the replies were not all in until April 1919. Bishop Jarlin of Beijing and North Zhili was not among the six, but two other Lazarists were. Also included was one bishop each from the MEP, the Jesuits, the Franciscans, and the Society of the Divine Word. By nationality, they were three Frenchmen, one Dutchman, one Italian, and one German. This exercise was not only the gathering of information to prepare an agenda. It also turned out to be an audition for the role of apostolic visitor. The Propaganda’s ten questions were general in nature, yet detectably informed by the stream of mail coming from the Tianjin reformers. Three questions pertained to Chinese clergy, touching on their training, their qualities, their status with the faithful, the mission posts open or closed to them, and their relationship with the European clergy. Other questions sought opinions about European missionaries, Catholic schools, the level of religious instruction of neophytes before baptism, the quality of religious life among the faithful, and the reputation of the Catholic religion among the general population, as well as anything else the Propaganda should know about evangelization in China. If Van Rossum was expecting some breach in the wall of opposition to the reformers’ call for Chinese bishops, he was disappointed. Each of the chosen six opposed the elevation of Chinese priests to executive positions in the missions. The unanimity included the two bishops who had seemed comparatively friendly to the reformers. One was de Vienne of West Zhili, whom Lebbe had found sympathetic, if cautious, while temporarily taking refuge in his vicariate in the summer of 1916. The other was de Guébriant, recently made bishop in Guangzhou (Canton), whose call for reform from a former post in Sichuan had reached the Vatican at the beginning of the century and who in the early months of 1916 had expressed admiration for Lebbe’s pre-exilic projects in Tianjin and for the Yishibao.59 De Vienne, like several of the other responders, pointed to the inadequate education of the Chinese clergy, a consequence of their lowly social origins and lack of a high-quality Chinese education before entering seminary, where they were asked to master both classical Chinese and Latin. Further, he would fear a deficiency in self-sacrifice and impartiality if they were to head the administration of a mission. There might be exceptions, but the day had not come, he wrote, for Chinese to occupy the offices of apostolic vicar, vicar general, procurator general, or head of seminary. Someday they would pass muster. The bishops wished to prepare for “this emancipation of the indigenous clergy.” “But presently the Chinese clergy is not ready; it is utopian to think it is.”60 De Guébriant joined the others in reporting that, whatever the theory, in practice Chinese priests were never put in authority over European missionaries, no matter

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how senior and experienced the Chinese priest might be. He allowed that more scope should be offered to the indigenous clergy and that perhaps the missions tolerated their inferior education as providing an excuse for keeping them in subordinate roles. In any case, the result was that the non-Christian community looked down on the Chinese priest, as “a man who, in their view, depends entirely on foreigners and is nothing without them.” This disdain, he wrote, was especially marked in the official world. “I note in passing that this by itself would have sufficed to the present day to render the position of a Chinese bishop impossible.”61 The argument did not escape a degree of circularity. Because of their subordinate and dependent place within the foreign-run Catholic Church, officials disregarded the Chinese priest. Because officials disdained the Chinese priest, that priest was not suitable for a bishopric and hence had to remain subordinate to and dependent on the Europeans. Among the responders, Bishop Henninghaus of South Shandong offered the most positive evaluation of the contributions of the Chinese clergy. Although he gave their educational level a mixed report, he stressed the advantages they had over European missionaries by reason of their facility in going among the people, in bonding with them through common language, customs, and way of life. The Propaganda reader underlined this passage. But Henninghaus went on: “Nevertheless, in my judgment, the Catholic mission in China is not yet at the point where the indigenous clergy by itself, without the help and direction of the European priesthood, under present circumstances, can be trusted with the full care of the faithful and the work of propagation of the faith.” He declared that he had taken care to limit the established custom of giving all European priests precedence over Chinese priests in the refectory and in church. “But as for [indigenous priests] being appointed apostolic vicars, it is evident that the time has not yet come.”62 Some of the respondents expressed themselves about the upheaval in Tianjin. Their remarks were repetitive in the case of three of them, who at about the same time were part of the campaign to persuade Rome to rescind its instruction to Bishop Dumond of Tianjin to recall Lebbe. (Van Rossum would not have known this at the time the Propaganda selected the respondents.) They blamed Lebbe and Cotta for destroying discipline by their call for the emancipation of the indigenous clergy, for rupturing the previous concord based on the subordination of Chinese priests.63 Only Bishop Henninghaus, of the German order of the Society of the Divine Word, had words of admiration for Lebbe. He had heard of his “great talent” and his “conspicuous success” in reaching the cultured and elite parts of the community with public addresses, as well as organizing a popular association for expanding the Catholic Church. He had also heard that all this zeal and talent had ended in trouble

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through involvement with Chinese hypernationalism and agitation against French initiatives. He declined to offer a judgment at a distance, as he did also with the issue of diplomatic relations between China and the Holy See.64 Not asked directly about the French (or any other) Religious Protectorate, the respondents generally did not treat the matter. Henninghaus, whose German vicariate lost its foreign protection when China declared war, held that such protection was “certainly to be counted among the more serious difficulties” for evangelization.65 The Italian bishop believed fervently in the continuing need for foreign protection, although not necessarily by France.66 De Guébriant appended to his response a considerable list of further items, including a concern about the isolation of missionaries, as contributing to a sag in morale and a passivity that undermined the evangelical spirit. He found too much idleness, avarice, and indiscipline among them. He called for better Chinese language skills. He also touched on the jealous territorialism of the missionary societies. He recommended the dispatch of a delegate to perform a six-month investigation, interrogating the bishops closely and reporting to Rome. He also suggested that the pope issue a letter to the apostolic vicars of China, with appropriate portions of praise and counsel. These last two suggestions approximated what was at that time being prepared in the Vatican (with more counsel than praise in the pope’s letter, as well as a broader audience). He learned in May 1919 that there was to be a delegate of the sort he had suggested and that he was the choice.67 In September 1919, de Guébriant began his official visit on behalf of the pope, “who is desirous of being informed on the state of evangelization in China and on matters that are in question among apostolic workers, or that impose themselves for the sake of the future.” With this preface, on October 1 he circularized the missionary bishops with a list of thirty questions posed by the Propaganda on behalf of the pope and announced his intention to meet not only with heads of mission but also with ordinary missionaries, indigenous priests, and even certain laymen. This time, the lead questions pertained to dissolving the foreign appearance of the church in Chinese eyes and to the matter of foreign protection. His schedule called for an accounting in Rome in April 1920.68 Region by region, de Guébriant dutifully assembled the bishops, of whom there were over fifty. He held meetings with a limited number of foreign missionaries and a select few Chinese priests.69 He gathered information, otherwise difficult to obtain, on vicariate finances. He assessed opinion about critical issues. He sent the Propaganda sketches of his meetings with the bishops as they occurred and submitted his written report in June 1920. But had it all been pointless? At the end of November 1919, when de Guébriant was in the early stages of his investigations, Benedict XV issued an “apostolic letter”

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on foreign missions, Maximum illud. (The document was frequently referred to at the time and subsequently as an encyclical, which is technically a different category of papal pronouncement.) Though China was not singled out, it was evident to those who had been following developments that China was the primary case in mind. De Guébriant had not only been upstaged. Also the purpose of his mission, to supply information and opinion to the Holy See so that it could formulate a China policy, was moot. The policy had already been declared. It seems the pope and his leading lieutenants felt well enough informed to go ahead without waiting or thought the matter so urgent that they could not wait. Perhaps they had come to the view that the apostolic visitor was not likely to advance matters in desired directions.70 When the full text of the apostolic letter reached China in early February 1920, de Guébriant’s reporting now included the initial reaction to it in the missions. One clear accomplishment of de Guébriant’s apostolic visitation was to remove both Antoine Cotta and Vincent Lebbe from China. Whether the Propaganda had suggested precisely this result, it seems to be the case that it had asked de Guébriant to take on the Tianjin imbroglio, with broad, though not unlimited, authority to resolve it. When de Guébriant had learned of his appointment as apostolic visitor, he dutifully informed French authorities. Stéphen Pichon, foreign minister in Paris, pronounced his approval of the appointee, “whose patriotic zeal and great energy could only help us.”71 Pichon, as French minister to China, had worked in 1899 with de Guébriant, who was then representing the Sichuan bishops in negotiating indemnities.72 In 1902, in order to enable the establishment of a French gunboat station in Xuzhoufu (or Yibin, known to the Europeans as Suifu), a key node on the Yangzi in Sichuan but not a treaty port, de Guébriant used the special rights of missionaries to effect surreptitiously the purchase of the required land on behalf of French authorities.73 When he was a candidate for bishop of a new vicariate in Sichuan in 1910, the Quai d’Orsay noted the special qualities of the man, an intellectual with both worldly and religious sides, who was highly regarded in the Vatican.74 The French consulate in Chengdu at the time described him as the best guarantee of French influence in the province.75 As de Guébriant began his new assignment, France was attentive. In preparation for his arrival as apostolic visitor, the French legation in Beijing produced a memorandum on Lebbe and Cotta. It lists their offenses, attributing to Lebbe the 1916– 1917 strike in Tianjin, as well as a persistent anti-French campaign in the Yishibao, which called for war against France. Under Austro-German pressure, the note alleges, the two priests established the principal organization of Chinese Christians against the Allies.

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The memorandum itemizes the impressively numerous demands by French authorities to the Lazarists that the two be disciplined. As long as “the Austro-Levantine element” (Cotta) is not removed, there will be no hope of calm in Tianjin. The Allied ministers in Beijing officially decided on his repatriation as an Austrian. The Chinese government agreed but has put off his arrest because of popular opposition, concludes the note.76 This extravagant communication from the French legation, replete with wildly inaccurate allegations, would have left de Guébriant no doubts about official French hostility toward these two missionaries. When they heard about the appointment of an apostolic visitor, Lebbe and Cotta went back and forth regarding their hopes for de Guébriant. After an initial meeting in Shanghai with de Guébriant in early October, Lebbe was persuaded of his good intentions and urged Cotta up north to be open and agreeable when his turn came.77 In four interviews with de Guébriant from mid-October well into November, Cotta rehearsed the Laoxikai events and his complaints against Bishop Dumond and Father Fleury, whom he characterized as “a merchant, a usurer, a man of scandal and lewdness.” He defended his resistance to what he saw as an illegitimate use of authority by his immediate superiors. He said that he was truly amazed that “the missionaries of China and the bishops look on the consuls and ministers as gods.”78 Early on, de Guébriant told Cotta that, for the general good, it would be necessary for him to leave Tianjin at least temporarily, for Ecuador, Rome, or Paris. As the conversations became heated, according to Cotta’s extensive record, de Guébriant peremptorily ordered Cotta, in the name of the pope, to leave China. Partway through, Lebbe was informed by a third party that Cotta had cut off his relations with de Guébriant. In a panic, he wrote Cotta to submit.79 Cotta did, on November 20, 1919.80 De Guébriant had expressed his sympathy to the point of saying, “I am with you, and so is Rome.” But because of his disobedience, Cotta must go to Rome, give his views, and then possibly return. De Guébriant assured him that he embodied important capital for the China missions, which de Guébriant would not allow to be lost. Cotta remarked to Lebbe: we are dealing either with a saint or a first-rate politician.81 Cotta left for Europe the next month. De Guébriant secured for him French papers, on grounds that he was protected by France as a Catholic missionary.82 One more nationality of convenience for Cotta. In an interim report to the Propaganda on the situation in Tianjin, after having met with the north China bishops, de Guébriant painted a picture of disarray and disregard for authority. A claque of Chinese priests carried the rest along in attitudes of coldness toward the bishop. Some organized anti-Japanese and anti-European societies. Chinese female religious (from the Josephines) went to patriotic meetings

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and disobeyed their superiors. Boy and girl students from the Catholic schools were taking part in school strikes and boycotting things Japanese. The Yishibao approved all this “childishness,” appealed to the pope against local Catholic authority, and published socialist articles. De Guébriant’s remedy to what he perceived as the misguided activism of the Tianjin Catholics was to instruct them to cease their agitations and to suggest to the Vatican that the neighboring Jesuits of Southeast Zhili annex Maritime Zhili, that is, the vicariate with its see in Tianjin. The few remaining Lazarist missionaries could be reassigned.83 De Guébriant was, in effect, describing the excitement and radicalization in major parts of Chinese society during the May Fourth Movement of 1919, as it affected a Catholic slice of that society. In a reiteration of the effervescence around the Laoxikai affair over two years earlier, Catholics in Tianjin participated energetically in the May Fourth moment, including a citywide strike and the organization of a Catholic Society for National Salvation (Gong jiao jiuguo tuan). The Catholic daily, the Yishibao, did support the highly political Tianjin Student Union at this time. It enlisted one of the student union’s emerging (non-Catholic) leaders, Zhou Enlai, subsequently a central figure in the Chinese Communist Party and then in the People’s Republic, as a correspondent when he went to Europe as a student in 1920.84 De Guébriant reported to Rome that he had persuaded Cotta to leave, with his censure lifted. He would ask the Lazarist superior general in Paris to reassign Cotta “in mission.” In addition, de Guébriant counseled Bishop Dumond to effect Fleury’s departure, as soon as his superiors found another place for him. The Propaganda prefect thanked de Guébriant for persuading Cotta to leave and approved Fleury’s removal.85 Regarding Lebbe, after preliminary conversations with him, de Guébriant reported his view that “this good missionary, so generously gifted in so many respects, was unfortunately not complete. He lacked judgment and consistency.” He should be used for the profit of the China missions, and de Guébriant would later submit a plan for that purpose.86 Lebbe had his own ideas about his future, over which he mulled in the depression triggered by Cotta’s departure. He envisioned operating independently, albeit under some bishop—de Guébriant, if he would have him—to work with students and other upper-class Chinese through the press and by lecturing, presenting a Catholic ideal of social action. He also contemplated inaugurating a Shanghai Yishibao, with the particular goal of forestalling a Protestant version of a successful daily there. He had found a greater reputation in the south of China for the Tianjin Yishibao than he had imagined.87 As to the pope’s apostolic letter on missions, Maximum illud, Lebbe was not alerted to its full significance by the brief wire-service report of it at the time of its

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proclamation.88 It was not until early February 1920 that he saw the text. His joy was boundless. To his Benedictine brother he exclaimed: “We can say truly that the holy cause to which we have consecrated our lives, Cotta and me, is in principle won across the board.” The terms of the letter, he wrote, were so precise and decisive that there was no doubt of the Holy See’s determination to act.89 De Guébriant invited Lebbe to return to Shanghai in late February 1920 for a gathering of chiefs of the Jesuit and Lazarist vicariates of Jiangsu, Anhui, and Jiangxi provinces, as well as various missionaries and one Chinese Lazarist. De Guébriant reported briefly to the Propaganda on his conversations with Lebbe, and thirteen years later Lebbe recorded a more circumstantial account of what transpired with respect to his future.90 The two accounts agree that Lebbe acceded to the proposal that he go with de Guébriant to Europe, where he would minister to Chinese students there for a limited time, perhaps two years, after which he would return to China. As de Guébriant wrote, there was “a sudden craze” for France among young Chinese, who should not be abandoned there to Protestant or other inducements. Lebbe was uniquely qualified for the task. Lebbe later added to this sparse account that this job was first suggested by the Lazarist procurator in Shanghai. He recounted how he intensively interrogated de Guébriant on the point of his early return to China and was given every assurance. Lebbe was protected by the papal letter, Maximum illud, said de Guébriant, and moreover would be able to go to Rome and see the pope. Lebbe obtained de Guébriant’s agreement to cast the plan as an order, which he would obey. A Chinese priest from Lebbe’s Zhejiang vicariate came to Shanghai and tried to persuade him not to accept the job, which, he argued, was a trap to get Lebbe away from China permanently. After Lebbe departed for Europe, the same priest wrote him to say he had later overheard the procurator boasting (in French, assuming incorrectly that the Chinese priest would not understand) that he had fooled that rogue, Father Lebbe, who fell for the scheme. Lebbe recorded that de Guébriant opined that the time for having Chinese bishops was between fifty and a hundred years away. On the voyage to Europe together with Lebbe, de Guébriant persisted in arguing that the consecration of Chinese bishops would tear the church apart.91 In his final report to the Propaganda in June 1920, de Guébriant suggested that it would require a future papal legate to China to establish as many as three indigenous vicariates, but that a completely Chinese-run church in China was as remote as two or three centuries away.92 Here was gradualism taken to an extreme: half a millennium or more of continuous Catholic evangelism by foreigners in China was required before a fully indigenous leadership of the church could be put in place. De Guébriant, in another contrast with Lebbe, told the Propaganda that, under present circumstances, the foreign protectorates were

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in practice indispensable and that the missions of all nationalities unanimously held to this view.93 The available evidence, evoked by de Guébriant’s visit, indicates that Chinese Catholic clergy and laypeople had quite a different take from him on these and other issues about the church in China. Chinese Catholics on the State of the Church Catholics in China were generally aware that the pope had decreed an apostolic visitor for China. In de Guébriant’s announcement to the bishops of his visitation and his agenda, there was the promise of consultation beyond the bishops themselves. Yet some Chinese, both priests and laymen, who had hoped for a chance to express themselves to the pope’s representative, felt that they had not been heard. The visitor’s consultations had not included them, even when they had requested an audience. On the other hand, a Chinese translation of the pope’s questionnaire was published in Tianjin’s Catholic weekly newspaper.94 Although efforts were made in Beijing to discredit the questionnaire as a forgery or to destroy copies, the word was out.95 Chinese Catholics, on grounds that the pope had invited their opinions, responded to the questions that de Guébriant had circulated. Some of these responses have been preserved. Thirty-eight Chinese priests (out of a contingent in the vicinity of fifty, excluding the contemplative Trappists) of the Lazarist-run vicariate of Beijing and North Zhili put their names on a collective letter responding to the pope’s thirty questions. Nineteen Chinese priests (out of about thirty) of Southeast Zhili, a Jesuit-run vicariate, did the same, though framing their own topics. Lay Catholics of Beijing, forty-eight of them signing, also produced a text, which they urged be kept confidential even from their own priests. An individual Chinese priest, serving in Wuqing county within the Beijing and North Zhili vicariate, who had signed the collective response of the priests of his vicariate, also composed a very detailed one of his own. Ma Xiangbo, the prominent Catholic layman, wrote comments on most of the questions. And a young Catholic student from Zhejiang at Zhendan (Aurora) University in Shanghai—he was an acquaintance of Lebbe’s and was about to go to Europe for study—wrote a set of responses to many of the questions, even though he could not have imagined himself as a potential interlocutor during the apostolic visitation.96 All but the last of these responses were addressed to the pope or the Propaganda prefect. Together, they provide an unusually untrammeled expression of Chinese Catholic opinion in a period when Europeans (and the first Americans, recently arrived) governed the Chinese church.97 Each text in this collection of Chinese statements regarding the state of the Catholic Church in China speaks forcefully about the inequality between

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European and Chinese priests. The pope’s first question asks how to convince the people that Catholicism is not a foreign religion and that it does not serve as an agent of European countries. The primary reason for the problem, write the North Zhili priests, is the absence of Chinese clergy, not only from the episcopate, but also from positions of authority generally. Chinese priests cannot become bishops, nor provicars (second in command), nor directors of regions within the vicariate, nor directors of seminaries, nor members of the bishop’s council. Their opinions are not asked regarding the selection of a new bishop. Old and experienced Chinese vicars serve under young European curés or pastors. In short: Our bishop and his arms, that is, the four councilors and the four district directors, treat us like their workmen. They distribute to us nourishment through the year, so that we work for them. If one of us omits some duty, he is harshly rebuked, first by the director, then by the bishop. In contrast to us, there are the European missionaries, who are apostolic missionaries [a distinction implying a special charge from the pope and denied to Chinese priests]. Not a few of them are scandalous and daily torment the Christian flock. But our superiors never offer them a word of admonition.98 Ma Xiangbo also describes the status of Chinese priests as lowly servants—a condition quickly remarked upon by non-Catholics. He notes that Buddhism and Islam are conspicuously foreign in origin, with original scriptures in other languages, but are not suspected by the Chinese of foreign agency. The simple explanation for the difference is their indigenous leadership. He suggests that European missionaries be required to adopt Chinese citizenship.99 The Catholic laymen of Beijing, although also noting the subordination of the Chinese clergy, put the shedding of foreign protection at the top of their suggestions for ridding Catholicism of its foreign odor. So does the Chinese priest writing from Wuqing county in Zhili, who points to the revealing contradiction of the French government protecting Catholics in China but not in France, not to mention French behavior in Vietnam and in the Laoxikai incident, and the blocking of China’s relations with the Holy See. If the Vatican cannot on its own account prevent France’s interventions, it should establish an ecclesiastical hierarchy in the country and replace French bishops with British, Italian, or American ones, or Chinese ones. As long as the French Religious Protectorate continues, papal encyclicals or papal visitors and delegates will be ignored, he argues. The Chinese priests of Southeast Zhili charge that the foreign Jesuit fathers “often speak with passion about the power and glory of their terrestrial

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homeland; they often exhort the Christians to love France.” Even in their sermons, they proclaim: “France is the Church and the Church is France.” This leads to the Christians distancing themselves, and the pagans see the missionaries as exploiters.100 These various Chinese Catholic voices, perhaps surprisingly, are unanimous in disparaging the quality of education acquired by the generality of Chinese priests. There is agreement that the training of priests has been better in the past but that the products of China’s seminaries are currently often below par. Explanations vary, but a shared theme is that the management of the seminaries by European priests is defective. These foreign directors are insensitive to the problems of training in Chinese literature and writing. They hire unqualified Chinese instructors. In any case, they favor seminarians who excel in Latin. Ma Xiangbo adds that the level of learning among the European missionaries themselves is not high, so one may doubt that they could provide enlightenment to the Chinese students, even on religious matters. Like Ma, the Beijing lay Catholics urge that Chinese priests be trained also in the “new learning” (referring to the Western-influenced curriculum of the new schools in China). As things stand, they assert, there are priests who cannot even write a letter in Chinese and hence earn no respect from the pagans. The North Zhili Chinese priests charge that these results are intentional: “For many years and still today we hear it put forward by our superiors: it would not be good if the seminarians were to be fully instructed in more advanced knowledge. If they actually were to acquire the knowledge, they would not humbly subordinate themselves to us, after they have been ordained as priests.”101 (This passage merited an exclamation mark by its Propaganda reader.) All those who followed the agenda of the pope’s questions respond favorably to the idea of sending promising seminarians to Rome for further education—a proposition of long standing. Ma Xiangbo cautions that those sent should already be well schooled in Chinese literature. The determination of the bishops, to date, not to accommodate the Vatican’s wishes in this matter confirms the impression that the Europeans do not want a well-educated Chinese clergy, the better to control them. (In the report of 1920 on his visitation, de Guébriant noted that one of the reasons the missionary bishops resisted sending Chinese seminarians for further education in Rome was that these aspiring priests would return with an inconvenient sense of empowerment.102 Three years later, there was still not one Chinese seminarian at the Propaganda’s Urban College in Rome.)103 Despite the critical judgment about the recent training of Chinese priests, when asked to name worthy ones—worthy in virtue, learning, and capacity—the responders are able to produce lists of names, in some cases overlapping each other.

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About European priests, the statements, with the exception of that of the Zhendan University student, are highly critical. Regarding a papal question about ways of increasing foreign missionary numbers, the lay Catholics of Beijing declare that there is no need to have more, since those already on site do not concern themselves with evangelizing. None keep the vow of poverty. Although most can speak Chinese, they have only a smattering of literacy in Chinese, and none can fathom the customs and feelings of the Chinese. The Chinese priests of the same vicariate make similar points: “All the European missionaries are our superiors, in whom we do not perceive the virtue of poverty. Whatever they like, they buy. They eat and drink and wear whatever pleases them.”104 To this, they add the fault of indolence: the four young foreign district directors leave the work to the indigenous priests. As to preaching to non-Catholics, it never happens. Even to the Christians the European priests preach only once or twice a year. Their bishop, Jarlin, during his twenty years in that post, has not preached even once. These disparagements are raised under the heading of Chinese language ability, with the intimation that the missionaries lack the level of Chinese required to preach, especially to non-Christians. Ma Xiangbo asserts that fewer than ten or twenty percent of Western priests can speak the language, at least at the level required for intercourse with the educated classes. Only old Christians can understand the missionaries’ sermons. Cut off from the Chinese world, Ma writes, the bishops live in seclusion in their residences. To document their charge that some European missionaries torment the faithful by their scandals, the North Zhili Chinese priests specify the misbehavior of five missionaries of their vicariate, identified by name. One gives himself over to daily beatings of servants, catechists, and especially students, while giving vent to obscene language. And he refuses to dismiss an adulterous servant, who bought a pagan concubine with money from the European priest, who in turn is favored by his superiors for his success in purchasing baptisms. Another missionary, a district director, loves idleness, and, having many subordinate Chinese vicars, neither preaches nor hears confessions, even when directly asked by penitents. He has no functions other than receiving money from the vicariate’s procurator and distributing it to his vicars. These same Chinese priests name two European missionaries for their sexual indiscretions, one unspecified, and the other, a ten-year relationship between the vicariate’s provicar and a young Chinese priest. A fifth named missionary struck his Chinese vicar on the ear for borrowing vestments to celebrate mass. The vicar was ordered to tell no one else, when he reported the incident to his bishop. To this list, the North Zhili priests add the charge that missionaries

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as they travel are known to strike out at ordinary folk who do not give way. The priests of Southeast Zhili also comment on the tendency of missionaries to lose their temper, notably when confronted by someone who acts or speaks in an unsuitable fashion—a failing to which peasants are prone. The missionary may reprove the unfortunate roughly or even hit him with the hand or foot, sometimes even in the case of women, which completely contravenes Chinese custom. In contrast to the picture of European missionaries cut off from ordinary Chinese society by their inarticulateness and illiteracy in the Chinese language and their ignorance or disrespect of Chinese mores, there is an admiring portrayal of Vincent Lebbe. The priest writing alone from Wuqing county in Zhili declares: “Only one missionary, namely Father Lebbe, truly loves the Chinese and is himself loved by all Chinese, whether believers or unbelievers. . . . Because almost all the well-known men of the north [of China] know and love Father Lebbe and know him to be a true, holy and upright missionary. . . . If all missionaries in China were to be like Father Lebbe, they would assuredly soon convert the whole of China.”105 In response to the request to name the best missionaries, the lay Catholics of Beijing list Lebbe and Cotta as those most loved and worthy, and add that they had not heard of any others. The responding Chinese priests of the North Zhili vicariate mention Jean de Vienne, who had just been made their coadjutor bishop, as one of the only two European missionaries of their own vicariate whom they can recommend.106 In the eyes of these Chinese priests as well as of the faithful, they assert, the rest are remarkable for nothing except cruelties (atrocitates) and scandal. But elsewhere there is a model: Vincent Lebbe, who ranks as the first missionary among all, whether European or indigenous, is loved everywhere by the faithful, the pagans, and the civil magistrates. He rises daily in the early morning before four and gives long and glowing speeches, right through to the evening. He takes one simple meal a day. He preaches frequently to the pagans, so that we indigenous priests and the faithful often say to each other: when we see the missionary Lebbe, we have now seen Saint Francis Xavier. Nevertheless at the same time all European missionaries regard him as an enemy and a sectarian [sectae factorem].107 Others compare him to Matteo Ricci. Lebbe became a legend in his own time. Beijing’s Chinese priests recognize Bishop Jarlin as a man of zeal, but the excesses of his policies, they feel, have caused much harm. In the three Lazarist vicariates in

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Zhili that have followed his methods, 300,000 have been baptized in fifteen years, but the process is brief and rewards the neophyte with a five-dollar prize (about three taels). Many reprobate (improbi) pagans sign up, and sometimes more than once. The Wuqing priest calculates that the actual total expenses of bringing one person to baptism is three or four taels. The bishop allots five taels per baptism. “For the required timely accounting and for the resulting profit, the missionaries seek out catechumens and baptize them, so as to deceive the bishop, who delights in large numbers and employs them to lead astray the Holy See and the whole world.” Almost all neophytes in the North Zhili vicariate are baptized without faith, without doctrine, and without discipline. The method is “diabolical, simoniacal, and commercial.”108 All the respondents address the pope’s question about the Protestants in China: their organization, the reasons for their successes, and ways of neutralizing them. They express themselves as impressed by the array of strategies with which Protestant societies woo China’s upper class: books, good works, public preaching, schools, and the YMCA. The YMCA, as described in these Catholic letters, has the special features of surmounting the divisions among the Protestants and of seducing the comfortable classes in the large cities, where YMCAs prosper and win non-Christian support. The Association for Catholic Action, which Lebbe and others launched as a Catholic answer to the YMCA, lost its initial impetus after Lebbe’s exile. Many bishops prohibit it. The memorializing Chinese priests of North Zhili surmise that their superiors live in fear of being driven away. When a Chinese priest moved to establish a branch of the Association for Catholic Action in Beijing, Bishop Jarlin reproached him for wanting to be bishop of Beijing and to drive Jarlin out of China, and he transferred the priest to a distant post in the mountains. The Protestant investment in higher education is also underlined as an unmet challenge. The responders decry the lack of a Catholic university or normal school north of the Yangzi, and call as well for a broad development of middle and high schools. In 1912 Ma Xiangbo, with his friend Ying Lianzhi, had asked the Vatican for a Catholic university in Beijing.109 In his 1920 response to the pope’s inquiry, Ma stresses the urgency of the development of scholarship by the Catholic Church in China and the need for the coordinated support of the bishops in such an effort. The Wuqing priest reports missionaries as objecting to the costs of establishing higher schools but notes that they have enough money to buy neophytes, build fine houses, drink and eat well, and spend extravagantly. How much would there be to spare if the missionaries lived like frugal Chinese? He admits he cannot be precise, since the Chinese staff is not privy to the finances of the vicariate, even including the size of the Boxer indemnities.

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These various Chinese Catholic rejoinders to the pope’s inquiry amounted to cries of anger at the current state of the church. Nor were these believers made particularly hopeful by de Guébriant’s visit. The Wuqing priest asked rhetorically why the European missionaries were so fearful in anticipation of the visit, and why they seemed so delighted and satisfied after it. However, many of these same missionaries were not so content with the word out of Rome that punctuated de Guébriant’s sojourn among the vicariates.

10 The Papacy’s New China Policy

a papal pronouncement on Catholic missions in November 1919 was surely prompted by a variety of circumstances. An ever-louder voice for change was emerging from the China mission field from the beginning of the century, a voice stimulated in part by changes in Chinese society and politics. There was the particular effect of the European war, both on the cohort of French missionaries, subject to military conscription, and on German missionaries, who in many places were in danger of expulsion from their assigned territories in the war’s aftermath. These circumstances dramatized the fragility of dependence on foreign evangelists for the future of Catholicism in the non-Western world. More particularly, the indenture of so many missions to France looked increasingly foolhardy, given French opposition to change (the sabotage of China–Holy See relations in 1918 was the recent example) and French exhaustion from the war. And there was the possible papal motive of finding in the missions a vehicle for the insertion of the Vatican into world affairs. There are several candidates for the role of primary influence on the actual content of the apostolic letter, Maximum illud. Fathers Cotta and Lebbe immediately saw their own hands in its thrust and even in its formulations.1 So did their clerical enemies. Close students of this papal initiative have tended to stress the impact of Cotta’s long essays to the Propaganda, dispatched in 1917, as did Cotta himself in his reminiscences decades later.2 The ideas in Cotta’s missives were eloquently expressed also in Ying Lianzhi’s essay, which was carefully read in Rome, and in Lebbe’s pieces. Just as important, the tumult engendered in Tianjin brought critical issues into the light of day and forced their discussion. In this the reformers 211

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were empowered by a burgeoning Chinese nationalism, making new demands on the Catholic church. There is also a case to be made for contributions from de Guébriant, not through his final report as apostolic visitor (which came months too late, as did the Chinese Catholic memorials of 1920), but by virtue of his earlier response to the Propaganda’s ten questions of July 1918.3 However, his contributions were too minor and his evident opposition to some of the propositions of Maximum illud too important to weigh his role heavily. In addition, there was a part of the apostolic letter that focused not on the field but on the organization of mission support in Europe and America, and here there was a different set of influences, primarily Italian.4 In the end, of course, Pope Benedict XV and Van Rossum, the Propaganda prefect, shaped the message and determined its tone and timing. Maximum illud : The Pope on Missions A conspicuous feature of Maximum illud was the lack of any mention of China or, for that matter, of any other specific mission field. Since some passages were harshly critical regarding past performance in the missions, the omission might be considered diplomatic. It also gave the document a universal applicability that it otherwise might have lost. The pope was addressing all missions, as well as all Catholics, on the topic of missions. This had not previously been done by the head of the church in the modern era. He was making the missions integral to the Catholic church as a whole, challenging the division between Christendom and the rest. Scholars of the church have seen in this apostolic letter the seed of Vatican II and its approach to global Catholicism.5 Yet the many connections of Maximum illud with the discourses arising from the disturbances in the China mission field and, in particular, the Tianjin mission virtually compel an understanding of the first two of the three parts of the letter as comments on the Chinese church. The three parts of Maximum illud are addressed severally to missionary bishops, to foreign missionaries generally, and to the churches in the West.6 After an introduction containing a capsule history of the spread of the church from the time of the first apostles, the letter discusses various desiderata regarding missionary bishops. Echoing complaints going back to Alphonse Favier in his reform memoranda at the turn of the century, it warns against stagnation, against resting content with caring for a few thousand of the faithful, when there is a huge population out there unevangelized. The missionary bishops should keep their priests energized and spur on their labors with full diligence. The letter also touches on both Favier

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and de Guébriant’s theme of broad interaction with other bishops to overcome the trap of isolation. Another pitfall is treatment of one’s evangelistic jurisdiction as property, jealously resisting any sharing or outside assistance. Although Maximum illud gives no cases, a very recent one was the cold shoulder offered at first by the bishops of China to the newly created Maryknoll society of American Catholic missionaries, when it sought from 1915 some territory for its evangelists. It was de Guébriant, newly ensconced as bishop in Guangzhou, who eventually accommodated them.7 The longest and most biting passages devoted to the bishops concern indigenous clergy. The primary responsibility of those in charge of the missions, says the letter, is the raising and training of a clergy recruited from the native population. Such priests will have superior powers of persuasion and greater access (as Bishop Henninghaus of Shandong, like Lebbe and Cotta, had argued). Their education, however, should not be inferior to that of the priests of the West. They should not be trained for assisting roles, subordinate to foreign missionaries. And once adequate numbers emerge, the missionaries must withdraw. The letter points out that this has long been papal policy. Yet, notwithstanding the Roman Pontiff ’s insistence, it is sad to think that there are still countries where the Catholic faith has been preached for several centuries, but where you will find no indigenous clergy, except of an inferior kind; . . . [nations] which for many centuries have come under the salutary influence of the Gospel and the Church, and have yet been able to yield neither bishops to rule them, nor priests to direct them. Therefore, to all appearances, the methods used in various places to train a clergy for the missions have up to now been defective and distorted.8 Numerous foreign and Chinese observers had commented on the inadequate education of Chinese priests and their subordinate roles in the missions. The directness of the pope’s critique, however, caused some consternation in the China missions, especially since it was so closely linked to a charge of delinquency with respect to producing indigenous bishops. Addressing missionaries more generally, the pope excoriates any tendency to serve the “earthly glory and power” of one’s own country, over the “divine task” of spreading the gospel. In its most quoted phrase, the letter calls such a tendency “a plague most deadly” (pestis teterrima). Suppose him [the missionary] then to be in any way preoccupied with worldly interests, and, instead of acting in everything like an apostolic man,

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to appear to further the interests of his own country, people will at once suspect his intentions, and may be led to believe that the Christian religion is the exclusive property of some foreign nation; that adhesion to this religion implies submission to a foreign country and the loss of one’s own national dignity. To register the point that this is not just a theoretical problem, the pope goes on to say that certain recent mission publications “make very painful reading for Us, as We find therein an anxiety not so much to extend the kingdom of God as to increase the power of the missionary’s own country.”9 It was a measure of waywardness in the China missions that these injunctions appeared to be a serious critique of accumulated practices there. But the absence of any reference to the French Religious Protectorate, or to the newer Italian version, suggests the limits to which the Holy See was ready to take this theme. Another injunction to missionaries that seems to target the Chinese case is to acquire advanced language skills. It is not enough to have a preliminary knowledge. One must develop “a fluent and elegant command,” appropriate to discourse with “influential men” or “to address an educated body.” The diligent missionary should undertake the explanation of Christian doctrine himself and not leave it to a catechist.10 By every indication, the foreign missionary cohort in China had a long way to go to meet these standards.11 Aside from language, the papal letter encourages prospective missionaries to acquire broad erudition, “profane as well as sacred,” the better to deal with difficult questions and to gain respect from the host country. It warns against the pursuit of material gain and the vice of avarice. It enjoins missionaries to be an example of humility, obedience, chastity, and piety. In its final section, the pope’s message urges the faithful in the old Christian countries to contribute to the support of missions and to pray for them. It reflects on the scarcity of missionaries, aggravated by the war, and calls on the missionary orders to select the most virtuous and zealous. Yet the orders and congregations should also be ready to move on, once a church has been founded in the evangelized nation. The letter acknowledges the contributions of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, the Holy Childhood Society, and the like and makes special mention of a new initiative, based in Italy but with branches elsewhere, called the Missionary Union of the Clergy (L’Unione Missionaria del Clero), to recruit missionaries. An unspoken addendum, barely hinted at in the letter, was a simultaneous campaign to bring the Society for the Propagation of the Faith from France to Rome and put it under a more international and clerical leadership.12

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The Reception among the Missionaries Would the potency of the papacy bring the prelates of the China missions to attention? De Guébriant reported that the text of Maximum illud arrived in February 1920 as he was convening a meeting in Hankou of representatives, mostly apostolic vicars, of eleven vicariates. In a spirit of submission to the guidance of the Holy See, they welcomed the apostolic letter and its message of change. A little over a week later, however, a similar set of meetings in Shanghai struck quite a different note. A representative of the Jiangnan vicariate under the Jesuits (the bishop was ill and absent) held forth with critical comments, summarized by de Guébriant in a letter to the Propaganda as follows: The Holy Father is badly informed. His apostolic letter is harsh in its formulation and wrongful in its essence. The missions until now have done all that they could; they are doing all that they can, and it is vain to ask more from them. The pope’s letter will be injurious to the Catholics of Europe, to the priests and to the Chinese Christians.13 Others participants gave signs of assent to these remarks. De Guébriant concluded that no one present at those meetings would think that the missions of China were about to agree on how to understand and follow the pope’s instructions. One of those present, at de Guébriant’s invitation, was Vincent Lebbe, who some years later recalled the words of another high-ranking Jesuit father: “How could we obey this order! We can’t endure it. What is Maximum illud? . . . We know there is an urchin whose words can be found phrase for phrase in Maximum illud. How could we endure that? This is truly unbearable for us.”14 From the Lazarist visitor for South China, de Guébriant received a letter complaining in a similar vein that Maximum illud had been too much inspired by the ideas of a rebellious priest (presumably Cotta).15 Three months later in his final report on the visitation, de Guébriant himself gently reproved the pope for issuing a document that had not been vetted by a veteran of the China missions. Such a vetting would have ensured that the papal statement could not be accused of being “wrongful in essence and formulation” (a virtual quote from the first Jesuit critic in Shanghai) and could not be considered as “the echo of false and tendentious information entertained by the Holy See.”16 Perhaps he was giving vent to his own wounded pride. Lebbe quoted de Guébriant as commenting in February 1920 on the proclamation of the apostolic letter: “Rome handles matters in this fashion, without informing me; they have me make an investigation and don’t even wait for my report on the matter. That’s how they handle matters!”17

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The network of dispersed reformist priests compared notes over the next months about the missionary reception in China to the pope’s initiative. Their surveys found that among missionary publications only the American Maryknoll journal, The Field Afar, wrote favorably about it. Jesuits in China publicly ignored the event and did not publish the text. Even in Paris, it was hard to find. Most publications in China under other Catholic missionary societies printed only extracts. They presented commentary that, generally speaking, acknowledged the theoretical desirability of the aims of the Vatican but argued against the applicability of the criticisms to the China mission field and against the feasibility of Chinese bishops under present circumstances.18 On the first anniversary of Maximum illud, Cotta, confined to Paris by his order, undertook to collate all the published objections to it, with his rebuttals. Most of the arguments are by now familiar. About the training and promotion of Chinese priests, Cotta perceived two contradictory points made by the opposition: that the pope’s criticisms could not pertain to the China missions since a fine job was being done and the Chinese clergy stood proud and tall, and that, owing to their low-class origins and lack of intellectual sophistication, Chinese priests were not qualified to become bishops. Another opposing argument was that Chinese priests had no special legal standing before Chinese authorities and could not defend their flock. Cotta countered with the advantages a Chinese bishop would have as a Chinese citizen, and that in any case the dependence on foreign force was contrary to the faith and alienating for the rest of the population. As to dependence on European funding, Cotta argued that one should not underestimate the potential contributions of Chinese Catholics and that, in addition, the church was well supplied with wealth from the accumulated indemnities. In response to the charge of endemic xenophobia among Chinese and the dangers of having a Chinese bishop in these times of chauvinism, Cotta asked whether Chinese were any more anti-European than Europeans were anti-Chinese. If extremes of chauvinism infecting Chinese Catholics were a problem, they would be much better kept on a proper track by Chinese bishops than by distrusted foreigners. Cotta dismissed as simply uninformed concerns that Chinese were too addicted to Confucianism to be true Catholics and would be candidates for schism, or that Chinese priests themselves would oppose non-European bishops. To the prediction of disorder in the wake of a Chinese episcopate, Cotta admitted that there was no magic wand to bring about the transformation, but the change could be accomplished smoothly if European priests stayed on loyally as subordinates for a period.19 Would the Holy Father stand firm in the face of so much resistance to his encyclical (the word commonly used for this apostolic letter)? After the initial euphoria

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among the reformers, their confidence was somewhat deflated as the signals from Rome became ambiguous. Lebbe’s bishop, Paul Reynaud, happened to be in Rome just after Maximum illud was issued and wrote Lebbe of his audience with the pope and his conversations with the Propaganda prefect. He claimed that Cotta was thought (the implication was, by the pope, the prefect, or both) to have “a heretical temperament,” unable to acknowledge error, and that Lebbe was seen as “a good little missionary, well equipped, but led astray by liberal illusions that carried him away too quickly and too far.”20 Perhaps Reynaud heard only what he wanted to. While praising Maximum illud to the pope and in print, he was alleged to have addressed a meeting of priests in Dax, saying: “For the purposes of his encyclical, the pope has been ill informed; and then he reproaches us for engaging in politics. It is not we who engage in politics in China; it is they who do it in Rome.”21 Cotta, in Paris from early in 1920, was encouraged by a visit in March from a leading French cleric in Rome, a friend of Vanneufville, who assured Cotta that the pope regarded his recent encyclical as embodying the leading idea of his pontificate and that these ideas were shared by the energetic Propaganda prefect and “all the cardinals in Rome.” When Cotta urged the immediate creation of some Chinese bishops, however, the visitor’s response was to question whether there were Chinese currently capable of the position and whether schism was indeed a risk.22 Two months later, the Lazarist superior general told Cotta that Van Rossum did not wish him to return to China and that de Guébriant, during his brief stay in Paris, had said nothing to the superior general about Cotta’s return to China or about a promised sojourn in Rome. Although Cotta had his doubts about their reliability, he was told by confreres recently returned from Rome that the pope had come to realize he had been ill informed and was retreating from the encyclical.23 At the beginning of the next year, Louis Morel, another displaced member of the old Tianjin reformist contingent, wrote from his new Jiangxi vicariate that word from Paris was that Cotta would not be allowed back in China and Lebbe could return only if with a Chinese bishop. The encyclical was held to be unworkable, went the report, and if it was put into effect, it would result in the disowning of the Protectorate, the summoning of Chinese priests before magistrates, the seizure of church property, and the departure of European missionaries for Europe.24 It was hard to tell how much of all this was disinformation. It is remarkable how profound were the divisions in the Chinese church and among the missionaries. In one form or another, the battles went on right up to the success of the Communist revolution in 1949 and continued even beyond that decisive moment within the missionary diaspora, long after Lebbe had died. The Holy

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See, for all the apparent clarity of the papal letter, would proceed with caution and would not satisfy all the particular hopes of the reformers. Some of the reformers themselves had become radioactive, and the Vatican would go only so far in endorsing them. Nonetheless, the papacy had embarked on a new course with respect to the China missions. Developments in that country would soon put the new policy to the test. The student-led demonstrations of 1919 (the May Fourth Movement), against the decision of the Paris Peace Conference to leave Japan in possession of former German positions in Shandong province and against the Chinese officials who had conspired to let that happen, were major markers in modern Chinese history. In their immediate aftermath, it might have been hard to tell that Chinese nationalism had entered a new phase. National disunity and endemic civil war continued. Military commanders—warlords—dominated national and most regional politics for a few more years. However, attitudes toward culture and politics were rapidly changing. By mid-1926 a vigorous armed movement for national unification and for liberation from the constraints of foreign imperialism was underway. Missions, both Catholic and Protestant, were for a time besieged in broad stretches of the country. The national arrangements that emerged in 1928 and 1929 abjured the peaks of mid-decade radicalism, but there was no return to the self-assured mastery that foreigners and foreign institutions had enjoyed in China before 1919. From the end of World War I, the French Religious Protectorate was no longer a major factor in embittering Sino-foreign relations. It was not abandoned, however. It retained its role in shoring up France’s prestige in China. French officials continued to stand guard against its enemies. French influence was still engaged in trying to preserve a foreign-run Catholic church in China as a necessary part of the Protectorate. The policy continued even as the numerical dominance of the French within the Catholic missionary cohort was replaced by a mere plurality.25 The new Vatican policy toward China, though consciously avoiding a direct confrontation with the French protection system, in effect undermined it and pointed toward its demise. The only question was how strongly Rome would press its initiatives. Tending to the Aftermath of the Tianjin Upheaval Jean-Baptiste Budes de Guébriant as apostolic visitor to China in 1919 and 1920 had effected the departure from the country of the most articulate and conspicuous of the missionary reformers, Antoine Cotta and Vincent Lebbe. No one was more struck than they by the irony that the triumph of their advocacies, in the form of the

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pope’s letter on missions, Maximum illud, coincided with their removal from the field of their endeavors. They had de Guébriant’s assurances that each would return soon to the scene of their successes. How could they not, with the pope endorsing their positions? Within a few months of his arrival in France, it was apparent that there was no prospect that Cotta, the rebellious priest, would be allowed to return to China. The Propaganda tried unsuccessfully to place Cotta in the San Francisco archdiocese. Then, acting on a suggestion by Lebbe, it proposed to the Lazarists that he be given a post in the Propaganda’s own archives to work on publications useful to the missions. The Lazarist superior general vetoed this idea, saying, “We would not willingly see a confrere who has left such painful impressions in China leave for Rome and occupy there a choice post.” It would seem like “a reward for his bad disposition (mauvais esprit).” Rather, wrote the Lazarist head, he should be sent to America (as if it were Catholicism’s Siberia) to teach Chinese to prospective missionaries there.26 Dispatched to the United States he was, but in a few years, he left the Lazarists (or Vincentians, as they are known there) for the Maryknolls—formally, the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, founded in 1911. Subsequently known as Anthony Cotta, he served on the faculty of their seminary in Ossining, New York, where he lived out his days, never returning to China.27 Meanwhile, the Propaganda sought a resolution of the Tianjin mess, where a discredited bishop presided over a decimated, restive staff and an alienated Catholic flock. De Guébriant had proposed that the nearby Jesuits of Southeast Zhili take over the Tianjin vicariate. When the Propaganda prefect tried the idea out on the responsible parties of the Jesuit and Lazarist orders, they vehemently objected. The Jesuits’ chief in Rome passed on a memo from the Southeast Zhili leadership, giving the reasons for not taking this road: Lazarist hostility; the French nationality of the Southeast Zhili Jesuits (from the province of Champagne), which would provoke Christian and pagan rejection in Tianjin; the gangrenous condition of the Tianjin vicariate, infected by a spirit of disobedience; a lack of personnel; financial constraints; and, insofar as the arrangement would involve sacrificing parts of Southeast Zhili to others, despair at abandoning some of their constituency. The current bishop was quoted as being “appalled” (épouvanté) by the prospect. The memo made a counterproposal: let de Guébriant take on Tianjin himself.28 In turn, the Lazarist superior general wrote that the absorption of Tianjin by the Jesuits would be most humiliating and sad for his congregation, with its memories and its martyrdoms there. If it was to be turned over to other management, why not to Beijing’s, also Lazarist?29 The Propaganda dropped the notion. When he learned that his first solution had been given up, de Guébriant offered another. He emphasized that something must be done soon to forestall a worse

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explosion of discontent. It should be accompanied by an appreciation of what was legitimate in the “Tianjin movement.” It should not be the reattachment of Tianjin to the Beijing vicariate, which was suffering scarcely less than Tianjin and where evangelical methods had gone off course to the point of atrocious abuses. Rescue for Tianjin would best come from putting in charge Jean de Vienne, currently coadjutor bishop in Beijing, a man widely esteemed, of good judgment, tact, and charity, though without extraordinary qualities. Under him, the question of what to do with Cotta and Lebbe might be resolved, and the successful daily newspaper, the Yishibao, could be saved for Catholicism. Dumond, the failed bishop in Tianjin, could be transferred to Jiangxi province, where there was room for a new vicariate.30 This second plan of de Guébriant was taken up by the Propaganda and approved. A long report on Tianjin (with supporting documents, 68 pages) was put together for the attention of the Propaganda’s executive committee of cardinals, in preparation for its congresso or plenary meeting on July 12, 1920. The seven cardinals at the meeting approved the creation of a new vicariate in Jiangxi province, already under the Lazarists, and the transfer of Monsignor Dumond to it, away from Tianjin. It was also decided to entrust the Tianjin vicariate to de Vienne. He would become its “apostolic administrator,” while retaining his position as coadjutor bishop in Beijing.31 De Vienne moved to Tianjin and in a couple of years became its bishop outright, ceding his Beijing position. News of the appointment raised Lebbe’s hopes for returning to Tianjin, since he considered de Vienne a friend and supporter. Putting the more flexible de Vienne in charge in Tianjin had the immediate results of improving relations between the mission and the Yishibao and of opening the way for the Jesuits to establish a higher school in the city in 1921. The school was called the Institut Supérieur d’Industrie et de Commerce (Higher Institute for Industry and Commerce, Gongshang daxue, renamed Gongshang xueyuan in 1933).32 In the 1920s and 1930s, it was often home to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit priest and renowned philosopher and paleontologist. Attending also to the many reports of aberrant evangelistic methods in the Beijing and North Zhili vicariate, the Propaganda asked de Vienne to comment. He confirmed the critical portrayals of purchased baptisms, poor screening and training, and postbaptismal defection. The Propaganda then called Bishop Jarlin to account and told him to cease paying the newly baptized. Jarlin responded that his critics were insufficiently informed about the complexities on the ground. He rested his case on the enormous numbers of converts since he became the superior of the vicariate in 1905. Nonetheless, he would convey to his priests the Propaganda’s reproaches and would instruct them to conform to the Propaganda’s instructions and to increase their surveillance of the process.33

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Lebbe in Rome The change in command in Tianjin did not lead to Lebbe’s return. After his arrival in France in April 1920, Vincent Lebbe entered into his new assignment of evangelizing and providing support to Chinese students in Europe. Like Cotta, he was kept on a tight leash by his order and was not permitted to go to Rome. He managed, however, to be received in Brussels by Désiré Joseph Mercier, archbishop of Maline and Belgian primate.34 Cardinal Mercier, whom he had already met in 1913, became a fan. Lebbe got permission from the Lazarists to visit Mercier again in December 1920 but conveniently omitted the detail that Mercier was in Rome at the time. By this ruse, Lebbe accomplished the feat of presenting himself at the Vatican. With introductions from Cardinal Mercier, he had an extraordinary array of interviews (or audiences) between late December 1920 and late January 1921. They included several sessions, separately, with Van Rossum, Propaganda prefect, and Camillo Laurenti, Propaganda secretary. He was received individually by Pietro Gasparri, who was papal secretary of state, and by Pope Benedict XV. He had other meetings with Mercier, Ceretti (secretary of Extraordinary Affairs), and his old Roman contact, Vanneufville. Lebbe wrote extensive accounts of these high-level conversations, which on the whole were encouraging for his hopes regarding the Chinese church, but with shadings.35 Mercier, after his own talks with the Propaganda prefect, warned Lebbe that Van Rossum was doubtful about the availability of Chinese priests suitable for bishoprics and wished to go slow. To Lebbe, Van Rossum said that having an indigenous episcopate in China was his greatest wish, but he emphasized the need, given the general opposition, for an exceptionally commanding and capable candidate. Lebbe, who pressed in his discussions in Rome for quick action regarding Chinese bishops, responded with an annotated list of four Chinese priests who filled the bill. Pope Benedict asked Lebbe for assurances that there were worthy candidates for the episcopate among Chinese priests, about whose level of instruction the pope had doubts (European and Chinese observers had sent the Vatican an abundance of comment on this point). Lebbe affirmed that there were. The pope also expressed concern that he had been a bit too strong in his encyclical (that is, Maximum illud). Lebbe assured him that it had been on target by the standards of truth and justice. In addition, the pope took from a drawer 100,000 lire and asked Lebbe to see that the money went to famine victims in China. Later, he acceded to Lebbe’s request for a papal note of blessing for the Yishibao. The mere fact of a private papal audience of close to half an hour was quite enough to vindicate Lebbe’s visit to Rome.

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From Laurenti, the Propaganda secretary, Lebbe received a lecture on the pitfalls of an exaggerated Chinese nationalism. Laurenti said he was speaking as a priestly confrere rather than as Propaganda secretary. Before Lebbe left Rome, Laurenti confirmed that the pope and the Propaganda prefect were absolutely decided to produce a Chinese bishop and mentioned the first name on Lebbe’s list as the likely prospect. Although Lebbe had only twenty minutes with Secretary of State Gasparri, it was with him that he found the greatest unalloyed enthusiasm for the cause. An indigenous episcopate, Gasparri said, was the only way to go in the Far East. An apostolic delegate, that is, a papal representative in residence, was needed to make the Vatican’s pronouncements effective against the entrenched opposition. One would be appointed soon, as preliminary to a nuncio (the latter necessitating diplomatic relations with the Chinese government, which the Vatican still anticipated). Lebbe did not get anywhere in urging the Propaganda prefect to lift the Lazarist disciplinary regime afflicting Cotta, at the time still in Paris. Whatever the technicalities, Cotta had defied his superiors, whereas Lebbe had saved the day by his willingness to suffer on behalf of religious obedience. “Well, my dear friend,” said Van Rossum in Lebbe’s account, “without you, all had been lost (his emphasis) and that is why I have thanked you and I do it again: it is your absolute obedience, without selfish motive, that has allowed us to do what we have done. Mind you, we wouldn’t have been able to give the support of our authority to the thesis of a priest whose conduct was not absolutely transparent.”36 What next, then, for the indispensable Lebbe? Despite the warm welcome he had received from the highest authorities of the church, those clouds that had followed him in China—the widespread sense that there was something untamed and potentially disruptive about him—had left their traces on Vatican perceptions. The previous summer, de Guébriant had shared with the Propaganda his concern that Lebbe’s Lazarist superiors, who were uneasy with Lebbe’s presence in Paris and had alerted the French foreign ministry, would expel him from France and prevent his return to China.37 Van Rossum and Laurenti in reply agreed that it would be deplorable to lose Lebbe, who, if “well directed” (bien conduit), could give precious service in China.38 The qualification was telling. In Rome, Lebbe asked the Propaganda prefect for help in returning to China and in traveling there through the United States. The American trip would be for the purposes of recruiting correspondents for the Yishibao, obtaining scholarships for Chinese students at American Catholic schools of journalism (Notre Dame and Marquette), raising funds for the newspaper, enlisting the Knights of Columbus to establish Catholic versions of the YMCA in China, and setting up some sort of Catholic service for Chinese students in the United States.39 As to returning to

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China, Lebbe spoke to Van Rossum about the urgency of his attending in person to the Yishibao. He pointed to the opening provided by de Vienne’s appointment to Tianjin. Lebbe had the impression that Van Rossum would write to de Vienne in support of Lebbe’s request, but he also heard from Vanneufville that de Vienne’s attitude toward Lebbe had turned negative.40 As Lebbe was leaving Rome, Van Rossum decided that, in light of all the excitement in China, he should first consult with de Guébriant and de Vienne on both counts, that is, Lebbe’s return and his American trip. Neither approved of Lebbe’s plans. De Guébriant responded that Lebbe should not be returned to China unless invited by a head of mission there—perhaps after the general synod under consideration—and that an American trip could only make sense as a preliminary to return.41 De Vienne explained his refusal to have Lebbe, whom he had known for twenty-five years, by saying that Lebbe’s presence would undermine religious obedience and discipline and bring discord to Tianjin. Lebbe was, in effect, the chief of a party favoring a sudden and poorly understood emancipation (de Vienne’s word) of the indigenous clergy, the conversion of pagans through nationalist propaganda, and opposition to the Religious Protectorate. De Vienne objected not to these ideas in the abstract, but to the excess and unreasonableness with which Lebbe pursued them. He warned that the prelates in China—perhaps all of them—feared for their authority if Lebbe returned.42 These were not new positions. They were already on record in the confidential responses of de Guébriant and de Vienne to the Propaganda’s questions in 1918 and in subsequent communications. If Lebbe had retained any illusions about their sharing his vision, he would now be shedding them. So it was, too, with Bishop Reynaud in East Zhejiang, from whom came word at about this same time that he would no longer receive Lebbe in his vicariate.43 Voices calling for Lebbe’s return were still being raised. The Chinese editors of the Yishibao addressed the pope in August 1921 to urge that Lebbe’s guidance was all the more necessary as new and harmful doctrines (Bolshevism) were spreading in China. Cardinal Mercier urged the Propaganda to have Lebbe sent back.44 But it was through Mercier that Lebbe learned that the Propaganda, for all its praise of him, found it advisable to proceed cautiously.45 In Paris, Lebbe’s Lazarist superiors blamed him for the humiliation of Dumond’s transfer from Tianjin to Jiangxi province and complained about his tricky way of getting to Rome. Lebbe reflected in that same summer of 1921 that each forward step taken by the Vatican regarding China worsened his relations with his order and that Rome did nothing to rescue him.46 The prospect of a prompt return to China faded. His job with Chinese students in Europe became a multiyear enterprise. He devoted himself energetically to his new tasks, but he still yearned to be in China

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and was willing to accept any future restrictions on his activities, if that were the price of being a missionary there again. As late as 1926, non-Christian social leaders in Tianjin petitioned the Vatican for his return.47 A Papal Representative in China The death of Benedict XV in January 1922 did not diminish the commitment of the Vatican to address the state of the Catholic Church in China. His successor, the scholarly librarian Pius XI (Achille Ratti), retained Pietro Gasparri as secretary of state and Willem van Rossum as Propaganda prefect, both associated with the impulse toward reform in the China missions. In a few months, the plan to dispatch an apostolic delegate was put into effect. The appointment went to Celso Costantini, from northeast Italy, who had served during his early priestly career as pastor, military chaplain in World War I, and museum curator. Like Lebbe, he had dabbled in the ideas that were later condemned as Modernism by Pius X, and, also like Lebbe, he made the necessary concessions to retain his standing in the Catholic church.48 Before his lengthy sojourn in China, he was best known as a scholar of Christian art and for his two-year service by special appointment in 1920 as apostolic administrator in Fiume (or Rijeka), during the highly controversial occupation of that city by the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio and his irregulars. Costantini distinguished himself for his coolheadedness during that complicated contest among Croatians and Italians.49 In June and July 1922, he was apprised of his new job in China and began his briefings at the Propaganda. The Vatican was acutely conscious of the several previous failures at establishing a permanent papal representative in China. The French government had regularly blocked efforts to have an official papal legate in Beijing, although it had sometimes suggested that a purely “spiritual” representative might be tolerable. This time, the Propaganda carefully avoided any public knowledge about the appointment and instructed Costantini to make no announcement, even to the bishops there, until his arrival at Hongkong, which was in November 1922. Although there were unconfirmed reports out of Singapore as his ship passed that way, he reached Hongkong with no advance warning. Startled French officials scrambled to figure out how to understand this fait accompli and how to respond to it. The French minister in Beijing at the time was reassured by Costantini’s early statement that his mission was purely religious (that is, he was not representing the pope to the Chinese government), which was confirmed by French inquiries at the Vatican, and that he would reside in Hankou, in central China, rather than in the national capital of Beijing. The minister noted that neither China nor the papacy had ever formally consecrated the French Religious Protectorate as a right and

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that an agreement between those two could end it. But he did not believe that the apostolic delegate had been assigned the task of making such an arrangement with China. Costantini would find that most Catholic missions were strongly attached to the French Protectorate. Considering these circumstances, the minister said he was not disposed to protest this act by the Vatican.50 It helped that France had recently reestablished diplomatic relations with the Holy See. The Quai d’Orsay confirmed that France was not in a position to oppose this papal representative, as long as he was accredited only to the clergy. His communications with the Chinese government should be only through the French legation’s agency.51 The French minister in Beijing instructed his consuls to accompany Costantini on any visits he made to Chinese authorities.52 The French consul-general in Guangzhou was the first French official to interview Costantini. He learned that the apostolic delegate’s purposes were to encourage the growth of an indigenous clergy and its assumption of greater responsibilities, to impart a greater unity of action to the work of the Catholic missions, to develop Catholic scholarship and teacher training, and to resist the impetus of Bolshevik ideas. Contrary to the intentions of the French minister in Beijing, Costantini made his own visits to the civil and military governors of Guangdong province, without being accompanied by any French official. The Guangzhou consul-general summarized his judgment about Costantini’s presence this way: “From every indication, the mission of the apostolic delegate marks a dangerous turning-point for the exercise by France of the Protectorate of Catholic missions in this country.”53 Indeed, within a few months, Costantini moved his residence from Hankou to Beijing—though not within the diplomatic quarter, the city’s foreign enclave. The French consul-general in Shanghai reported that the Shanghai procurators of the various missionary organizations had kept him informed of Costantini’s every move since he came to China. “All our missionaries without exception—including especially the Jesuits—look on the arrival of the apostolic delegate with anxiety,” he wrote. They feared his support for the ever more pronounced nationalist tendencies of the Chinese clergy, as well as of ordinary Catholics. Pointing to particularly French issues, the consul-general also recorded concerns regarding a possible Italian patriotism on the part of the apostolic delegate and a favoring of American influence on Chinese Catholicism.54 To this, the French minister in Beijing added the regrets of the bishops for the loss of their accustomed independence.55 The French consul in Hankou, where Italian missionaries predominated, reported that Costantini was “little welcomed” because the Holy See would now exercise its authority regarding questions previously left to the judgment and experience of missionaries alone.56 Compare the reaction to the establishment of a permanent apostolic delegate in the United States in 1893, which

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alarmed both conservative and liberal American bishops for the resulting enhancement of Roman supervision.57 Costantini later published a long memoir about his time in China, drawing extensively from a diary and other contemporary documents. As he sailed from Hongkong to Shanghai in late 1922, he recorded his first reflections on the issues facing him. A totally foreign-led church, he observed, made Catholicism look foreign to the Chinese. He judged that a church could not be based on foreign supervision and protection. It appeared that there was no movement to hasten the advent of Chinese bishops, a situation underlined by the determination of the missionary societies to hold on to their territories. Although favoring the advancement of Chinese priests in theory, the general missionary attitude was opposed to Chinese bishops in practice, even as there seemed to be some softening of the resistance. He treated skeptically the assertions he had already heard that Chinese priests were content with their subaltern status. He noted that the Roman view differed. He had already been exposed to “a certain aversion” among missionaries to Lebbe and Cotta, despite their absence from China. Their reports to Rome had allegedly influenced the pontifical declaration, Maximum illud. Costantini’s position was that such allegations were irrelevant, once the pope’s program was proclaimed, and in any case others, like Canon Léon Joly (author of a 1907 study of the Catholic churches in East Asia), had spoken earlier in much the same vein. Another issue was the claim of racial superiority, espoused by the whites, especially the British, when the truth was that all souls were equally precious before Christ.58 This was Costantini’s take on the situation as he began his apostolic delegation—no doubt considerably shaped by his conversations with the Propaganda prefect and others in Rome as he had prepared for the job. It informed his policies over the next decade. Costantini’s first assignment was to accomplish a nationwide meeting of Catholic leadership. One of the remarkable features of the Chinese mission field was the previous lack of any such convocation. The contrast with the Protestant China missionaries, who had been meeting periodically in conclaves across denominations since the 1870s, was sharp and much noted. A general synod for China’s Catholic missions had been proposed in the late 1840s, but French and Portuguese official interventions had blocked it. Various gestures in the direction of a general meeting recurred occasionally, including at the Vatican Council in Rome in 1869 and 1870, where some missionary bishops from China caucused. The upshot was instead regional synods, which did not fulfill the need and lacked energy. In 1911, after some preliminary soundings, the Propaganda mandated a preparatory commission for a national synod. However, the Chinese revolution of 1911 and then the world war got in the way, and the project withered. The Propaganda renewed the call in late 1920, and regional meetings of bishops to prepare themes

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for such a synod had already occurred when Costantini appeared on the scene. It was up to him to bring the threads together and make the national gathering happen.59 He proceeded to do so. The conclave took place in Shanghai, lasting a month from mid-May 1924. He judged it important that there be Chinese participation, not only in the preparatory commissions but also in the actual deliberations. For this purpose, he managed to create two new apostolic prefectures by early 1924. This required the concession of space by missionary organizations. Costantini was turned down by the Society of the Divine Word bishop in South Shandong and the Jesuit bishop of Southeast Zhili. Despite the Italian bishop’s reluctance, a prefecture was cut out of a Franciscan vicariate in central China’s Hubei province. Another came from a Lazarist vicariate in central Zhili province in the north. Chinese priests were appointed as heads of each, as apostolic prefects. The blow to the established order of things was softened by naming Chinese who were members of the respective governing orders of these particular territories, Franciscan and Lazarist, rather than secular priests. Further, the districts were rural and relatively remote.60 In a pattern that persisted when other Chinese-led districts were created, resident foreign missionaries of these districts decamped, leaving the prefectures almost entirely to Chinese staff.61 Nonetheless, the maneuver qualified two Chinese, though with a lesser title than apostolic vicar, to be full members of the national convocation, which was given the formal name, Primum Concilium Sinense, “The First Chinese Council.” The council was not open to the public and did not attract much press attention. Van Rossum, in anticipation of the meetings, mandated that there should be no act that might indicate acknowledgment of foreign protectorates, and there should be no flags displayed except those of the pope and of China. In the event, any serious discussion or pronouncements about the Protectorate were avoided, for fear of the divisiveness of the matter.62 A Vatican injunction not to hang national flags inside churches was read, but Costantini left the matter to the “prudence” of the bishops. Attention instead focused on the admission of Chinese clergy into all functions for which they were qualified. Costantini attempted to allay the evident unease in the council at Maximum illud’s criticisms of the missionary record in China, by pointing to the universality of the letter’s application and to its looking to the future.63 Commissions were created to carry on various approved projects, including scriptural translation, standardizing prayers and catechisms, and developing schools and the press. Claude Soetens, a leading scholar of the modern history of Catholicism in China, has written that the Council lacked “a vigorously prophetic message” and left solutions to the apostolic delegate.64

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Creating Chinese Bishops amidst Revolution Costantini in his memoirs reflected that the convocation of this first all-China council of Catholic prelates had just barely been accomplished in time. The upheavals arising from the revolutionary events of the 1920s in China justify this judgment. Already by 1922, new movements of intellectuals and students were refurbishing animadversions against Christianity and its missions for being political instruments of imperialism and were adding charges of cultural aggression and subversion of Chinese identity. Publicity for a conference of the World’s Student Christian Foundation, an international gathering of Protestants, to be held in Beijing in April 1922, stimulated the organization of Chinese anti-Christian associations and considerable polemics. From 1924, Chinese educators, student organizations, and political parties, as well as government offices, took up the issue of the sinification of mission schools, including their curriculum and administration. The primary targets were upper-level schools (high schools, colleges, and universities), a category in which Protestant institutions far outnumbered Catholic equivalents.65 In 1925, the politics of the country were infused with new energy by what is known as the May Thirtieth Movement, set off by fatal shootings in Shanghai by British-officered police of unarmed protestors. Similar incidents occurred in other cities, notably Guangzhou, with more Chinese deaths. Demonstrations in opposition to the oppressions of foreign power in the country occurred broadly. The organization of workers, peasants, women, and students deepened the general radicalization of society. At the beginning of 1926, Costantini elaborated to the French minister in Beijing his understanding of the proper Catholic stance toward all this political effervescence. While resisting the influence of antireligious Bolshevism, coming from Moscow, the church needed to take account of Chinese nationalism. Required steps included appointing Chinese bishops, forswearing any great-power protectorate for the Chinese faithful, and restricting official foreign protection of missionaries to one’s own nationals. If some, such as Belgian or Spanish missionaries, wished to continue resorting to French protection, they would not be barred by the policy of the Holy See, but Chinese Catholics must not be included. The French minister opined in his report to Paris that Costantini was pursuing a plan designed in Rome, a plan perhaps accelerated by the rising political temperature in China. For France, he concluded, the only option was to continue exercising its transnational Protectorate as fully as possible.66 Vincent Lebbe in the spring of 1926 continued from Europe his advocacy of Catholic removal from France’s oversight in a letter to Van Rossum, Propaganda prefect: The French Protectorate in China is a great, a very great obstacle to conversions of the elite. How many times, and for a long time now, have notables told

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me that it was impossible for them to become Christian as long as this blemish went with affiliation of Chinese to the Catholic Church: to be a French dependent. . . . ALL Chinese students, without exception, are hostile to this Protectorate. All hope ardently that it be denounced, or at least that a nuncio from Rome put an end to it in practice.67 In the summer of 1926, armies of a reorganized and radicalized Nationalist Party (Guomindang), incorporating an energetic young Chinese Communist Party and with warlord allies and assistance from the Soviet Union, launched a campaign to unite the country under their authority. The campaign, called the Northern Expedition, started from Guangdong province in the south. Sun Yat-sen had died the previous year. Chiang Kai-shek was the Expedition’s primary military leader. It had striking early successes. Large stretches of the country, especially the Yangzi provinces plus Fujian and Zhejiang, were engulfed in turbulence. Although not primary targets, both Catholic and Protestant missions, notably in central China, suffered the occupation of their establishments by armies and by local radical organizations, as well as much looting and occasional personal violence. The general disorder enabled depredations by bandits. Costantini urged priests to stay at their posts as much as possible. Reports from the vicariates indicated that most bishops did, although missionaries in outlying stations often sought safety in the central cities of their regions. Spanish mission personnel and their wards fled from Fuzhou in Fujian province, following charges of child murder upon the excavation of twenty bodies at the Dominican orphanage there. (Costantini in his memoirs did not hide his fury at the stupidity of burying the bodies of deceased children on the orphanage premises and at the fact that there was not one Chinese Dominican priest in the province.)68 When contingents of the Northern Expedition army took Nanjing from warlord troops in March 1927, six or seven foreigners were killed, among whom were two European Jesuit fathers. Under cover of shelling by American and British warships, inflicting Chinese casualties, foreigners were ferried from Nanjing to Shanghai. Catholic missionaries were included. The Catholic bishop for the area had long had his residence in Shanghai, where there had been a defensive buildup of foreign troops. Chinese Catholic priests of Nanjing were asked to remain behind.69 This violence precipitated a more general exodus of Protestant missionaries, so that by July 1927 only about 500 of 8,000 were still at their posts. Of foreign Protestant refugees, one-third retreated to the coastal ports, and two-thirds left China altogether. A portion left permanently.70 Despite some seeking of safe havens, most Catholic missionaries, as well as most Chinese priests (one, along with a catechist, was killed in Jiangxi), stayed at or near their postings.71 The departure of many

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American Catholic priests and sisters, instructed by their consuls to evacuate, was an exception to the general picture.72 Acknowledging the Protestant need to ensure the safety of missionary families, Catholic reports nonetheless took some satisfaction in the contrast between Protestant flight and Catholic pertinacity.73 Costantini was advocating acceptance of the nationalism that was such a conspicuous part of the May Thirtieth Movement and the Northern Expedition and distinguished it from the antireligious Bolshevism that also had considerable currency in those same movements. (He was well aware that many Nationalists had their own critique of the missions.) He praised those prelates, like Bishop Antoine Fourquet in Guangzhou, who worked at accommodation with the revolutionary forces. Both in Guangzhou, where the Northern Expedition was organized, and in Wuhan (combining the riverine cities of Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang), where the revolutionary movement established its government from December 1926, the local Catholic bishops established cordial relations with the government’s foreign minister, Chen Youren (Eugene Ch’en). Chen had attended Catholic school in Trinidad and favored the missions with special passports and promises of protection, though he did not always deliver.74 Neither Chen nor any other representative of the Nationalist Party at this time accepted the validity of the unequal treaties. It appeared to Costantini that, aside from facilitating evacuation, the protection of Catholics advertised by foreign powers had become worthless.75 When the Northern Expedition began in the summer of 1926, Costantini and the Vatican were already preoccupied with the next steps toward a Chinese-led Catholic church. Early in the year, Costantini had been preparing for the first full-fledged vicariate under Chinese leadership—northwest of Beijing, near the Great Wall, in a Lazarist area centered on Xuanhua, where Catholicism was relatively flourishing. His candidate for bishop was Zhao Huaiyi (Philip Tchao), a secular priest of the Beijing vicariate, in his late forties, of an old Catholic family, his father a Boxer victim. Zhao had topped Lebbe’s list, transmitted to the Propaganda prefect in early 1921, of suggested Chinese candidates for the episcopate.76 Costantini had taken him on as secretary soon after coming to China. Meanwhile, in February 1926, Pius XI issued an encyclical on missions, Rerum Ecclesiae. It amounted to a reaffirmation of the ideas of his predecessor’s Maximum illud, which it liberally referenced and quoted. Pius XI used even stronger language in promoting the importance of the indigenous clergy. He reiterated Maximum illud’s lament at the absence of indigenous bishops in countries with a long history of a Catholic presence and stressed that the local clergy not be relegated to the role of assistants to foreign missionaries. On the contrary, native priests should be preferred, as the future of the church.

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The pope in this encyclical envisaged the possibility of countries where a changed government might decree the departure of certain categories of missionary or where an anticolonial revolution might expel missionaries along with their colonial rulers. “Everyone can see what great harm would accrue to the Church in that land in the circumstances, unless a native clergy had been spread beforehand through the country like a network and were, by consequence, in a position to provide adequately for the population which had been converted to Christ.”77 Van Rossum wrote from Rome in March 1926 that the pope himself had agreed to consecrate the incoming Chinese bishop of Xuanhua and possibly other new Chinese bishops. Seizing the opportunity, Costantini arranged that the superiors of the two apostolic prefectures already under Chinese leadership would be designated bishops, as Van Rossum had suggested, and added three more vicariates to that of Xuanhua. The new vicariates were carved out of Franciscan Shanxi (Fenyang), Lazarist Zhejiang (Taizhou) and Jesuit Jiangsu (Haimen). The heads of these new vicariates were to be Chinese, apostolic vicars with the title of bishop, and all six were to be consecrated by Pius XI himself, at St. Peter’s in Rome. The date was set for October 28, 1926.78 Arrangements went smoothly. Costantini accompanied the six appointed Chinese priests to Rome, the ceremonies were impressive, and the consecrations were followed by a celebratory tour by the new Chinese bishops in Italy and France, and by some of them in Belgium and the Netherlands. Except for one delayed by illness, they had returned to China by March 1927 and assumed their responsibilities.79 For Catholics, it was a conspicuous historical milestone, enhanced by the pope’s personal participation. For Vincent Lebbe, it was also an opening to return to China. He had managed to be present at the consecrations in St. Peter’s. He accepted the invitation of Bishop Sun Dezhen (Melchior Souen), Lazarist, to serve in his prefecture at Lixian (soon to be a vicariate, centered instead at neighboring Anguo), in Zhili province (about to be renamed Hebei). Still under Lazarist discipline, Lebbe petitioned the order’s superior general for permission. He felt it necessary to promise an uncontroversial apostolate, far from urban centers, and to observe that no one could say that it was a promotion from his previous job in north China as vicar general in Tianjin.80 With Costantini’s support, the permission was granted, though his movements in China outside his district were to be restricted.81 Lebbe might have been amused at the spin that the French ambassador to the Holy See put on these papal consecrations of Chinese bishops. After commenting on the formal splendor of the event, the ambassador noted that having six Chinese bishops out of China’s seventy did not seem excessive, considering the fact that some two-fifths of all Catholic priests in the country were Chinese. “It is, in any case, a

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generous idea. And as for so many other generous ideas, its origin is French. It is a French Lazarist, Father Lebbe, who became its advocate before and during the war.” De Guébriant, too, came to favor it after 1919. Moreover, the majority of the Chinese clergy had been trained by the French, “thanks to the special skill of our race in winning over indigenous peoples and in making ourselves understood by them.”82 In response to this happy picture came pointed corrections from the French minister in Beijing. De Guébriant, he wrote, had sided with the Vatican’s campaign for Chinese prelates as a career move, with hopes of being the choice for apostolic delegate and then nuncio to China.83 (He had become the global head of the MEP in 1921.) Lebbe, a Belgian, was a declared enemy of French influence in the Catholic missions and an initiator of the new Vatican policy to purge the Chinese Catholic church of all foreign elements. It had been at the request of the French legation in Beijing that he had been sent away from the Tianjin vicariate for his anti-French campaign over Laoxikai. His imminent return to China was against the wishes of the European Lazarist bishops and even of the Lazarist superior general in Paris, who was ordered by Rome to permit it. In defense of France’s Religious Protectorate, the ambassador should point out to the Vatican that the dispatch to China of a person “so notoriously anti-French as Father Lebbe” was an unfriendly provocation and should be rescinded.84 Nonetheless, Lebbe did journey to his new assignment in China, where his colleagues were all Chinese. He soon completed the procedures to adopt Chinese nationality, something he had been exploring before his departure for Europe in 1920.85 He thereby personally escaped the framework of the unequal treaties, which otherwise operated on behalf of foreigners whatever their own preferences might be. Indigenization of the Chinese Catholic church still had a long way to go. Costantini persisted in implementing the Vatican’s agenda, as long as he was supported from Rome. The political implications of these changes, however, continued to challenge the French Religious Protectorate and elicited the resistance of a portion of the missionary establishment. As it turned out, the new papal policies fell short of their goal.

11 Falling Short

celso costantini, the apostolic delegate, returned to China in March 1927. It was the eve of Chiang Kai-shek’s overt turn to the right and his attack on radical left tendencies within the Nationalist Party, especially the Chinese Communist Party contingent, which had up to then enjoyed dual party membership. Between April 12, when Chiang launched a bloody purge in Shanghai (with the cooperation of French authorities in that city),1 and the following July, important elements of the Nationalist Party in Wuhan initially resisted his coup but gradually came around. Links to the Soviet Union were severed. Out of these arrangements came a renewal in April 1928 of the Northern Expedition in order to include north China under Nationalist Party authority. This was accomplished with the assistance of allied warlords. The result was a form of national unification, although afflicted by superficiality in major regions of the country. In 1928, a new national government was established, with its capital in Nanjing. Further Implementation of the New Papal Policies In his memoirs and in interviews with him recorded by French officials in late 1927 and in 1928, Costantini registered his opinion that the Catholic missions had survived the recent revolutionary upheaval rather well, despite the depredations.2 He insisted that the Catholic acceptance of Chinese nationalism, the distancing from foreign intervention, and the beginnings of Chinese leadership in the persons of the new Chinese bishops had all contributed to this result. Although the French minister in Beijing held that Chinese bishops had not managed to move Chinese 233

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authorities in desired directions, Costantini argued that they certainly did no worse in that respect than did the foreign bishops. And it had been a major argument against an indigenous episcopate that it could not match the prestige and influence of the foreign version. Indeed, Costantini noted that, although the first Chinese-led prefecture in Hubei (Puqi) had been hit hard, the new vicariates at Haimen and Taizhou (in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces), under Chinese bishops, had avoided the violence suffered by others in the same areas.3 Costantini then set about establishing good relations with the new national government in Nanjing. He was assisted in this by a declaration on behalf of the pope, issued August 1, 1928. It was addressed to the Catholic prelates, priests, and faithful of China and through them to all Chinese people. The statement describes the pope as advocating that China be treated with perfect equality and with very special sympathy. He rejoices at the end of its civil war and hopes that internal and external peace for China be enduring and prosperous. “In order to attain this peace, His Holiness wishes the full recognition of the legitimate aspirations and the rights of a people who are the world’s most numerous, a people of ancient culture, who have known periods of grandeur and splendor, and who, if they keep to the way of justice and order, will certainly have a great future.”4 Costantini, who felt the message sounded just the right note, immediately circulated translations among the bishops and the newspapers. Many French missionaries, including one bishop publicly, and some in the diplomatic corps expressed their unhappiness with the papal statement. But representatives of the new government, as well as Chinese Catholics generally, were most appreciative. Costantini, who had never acceded to the official French wish that he be accompanied by diplomats on his visits with Chinese authorities, now took what had been largely ceremonial contacts to the level of serious political discussions. In early 1929, he went several times to Nanjing or Shanghai for talks with the recently appointed foreign minister of the new national government, Wang Zhengting (C. T. Wang), a man of Protestant Christian background, with a Yale University degree, who had by this time served in many prominent official and business posts in China. In these talks, Costantini and Wang sketched the elements of an eventual convention between China and the Holy See. They explored provisions for guarantees of religious freedom, a new regime for missionary property, and arrangements for church-run schools. Costantini had declared himself satisfied that Sun Yat-sen’s formulations of the Three Principles of the People, which had become the orthodoxy of the new Chinese government, could be incorporated into the curriculum of Catholic schools, with suitable explanations. He also held that bowing in school to Sun Yat-sen’s picture was not idolatrous.5 On his side, Wang said that he would not handle questions about Catholic missions with foreign diplomats, but only with the pope’s representative.

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However, Wang had his hands full with negotiations about other issues with various other countries, including difficult ones with France over China’s relations with Indochina. Both missionary and French official opposition to Costantini’s policies generally, including any deal with the Chinese government that would undercut the French Religious Protectorate, was simultaneously becoming vociferous. In Costantini’s view, the moment had been right for a Sino-Vatican agreement but passed without formal results.6 By the end of the 1920s, Costantini and the Propaganda had instituted various changes in the ordinary practice of Catholic missions in China. Among the earliest was abolition of the koutou, or kneelings and prostrations, by the Chinese faithful on the occasion of meeting with their priests. The Propaganda discouraged the display of the missionary’s national flag in churches. The designation of foreign priests as “apostolic” missionaries, implying a special endowment from the pope and thereby justifying their precedence over Chinese priests, was withdrawn. New standards in Chinese-language training for new arrivals were decreed.7 Costantini overcame the long-term unwillingness of the European bishops in China to send Chinese to Rome for religious education. Between 1923 and 1931, forty-seven Chinese seminarians attended the Propaganda’s university there.8 He urged the adoption of a Chinese sensibility in Catholic art and architecture in China and led by example in his own chapel, adorned with a portrayal of the Madonna and Child suggestive of Chinese representations of Guanyin (goddess of mercy).9 Costantini ruled that missions should not seek indemnities for the killing of missionaries. For example, he wrote the relevant bishop that there should be no indemnity for the two Jesuits, one Italian and one French, shot in Nanjing in March 1927.10 Official French policy had long excluded requests for compensation for priestly deaths, although some exceptions were made for Belgians in the Boxer aftermath, and most Italian missions followed their own course. Costantini was not as innovative on this score as he thought, especially since, like the French government, he approved of “moral reparations,” such as the funding of a Catholic hospital, considered appropriate compensation for the murder of a priest. He also agreed to “reasonable” indemnification for property losses. The big change was the installation of Chinese bishops and its long-run implications for any foreign regime of religious protection. He continued to arrange for their creation. By mid-1930, there were seventeen Chinese heads of mission (Lebbe had anticipated a more rapid increase).11 Also challenging to the French position was the rapid parcellation of existing vicariates, not only on behalf of Chinese bishops but also for a wide range of new missionary organizations, including American, German, Austrian, Irish, Swiss, and Canadian ones. Since 1924, the number of

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ecclesiastical jurisdictions (mostly apostolic vicariates, some apostolic prefectures) had increased by forty-two to a total of ninety-eight. Only five of the new units since 1920 were headed by French missionaries. Of all Catholic jurisdictions, forty-three were reported in 1930 to adhere to the French Religious Protectorate. Although these included Belgian, Spanish, Dutch, and even a couple of Italian-led missions, as well as French ones, they amounted to less than half the total.12 The Sharpening of Controversy As late as the spring of 1925, the French minister in Beijing considered Costantini to be of moderate temperament and deferential to the French legation and urged support for his retention.13 By the end of the year, however, Costantini had effected the suppression of the important French-language newspaper in Shanghai, L’Echo de Chine, which was controlled by the MEP. He charged it with maintaining an anti-Chinese posture. The suppression was unpopular in French circles in China.14 By 1928, the same French minister to China was characterizing Costantini as an open enemy of the French Religious Protectorate and a friend of the new Nationalist Party government.15 The particular issue that precipitated a couple of years of open struggle between Costantini, on the one hand, and a coalition of missionary and diplomatic Frenchmen, on the other, was the establishment of higher-level schools in Beijing. At about the same time as Costantini’s appointment as apostolic delegate, the Vatican approved the idea for a Catholic university in Beijing, long advocated by the prominent lay Catholics Ying Lianzhi and Ma Xiangbo. In 1924, the Vatican entrusted the university’s organization and administration to an American Benedictine congregation. After the preliminaries of acquiring suitable facilities and staff and receiving official Chinese recognition, the university opened in the fall of 1927. It was called Furen, carrying on a name already applied to one of his earlier educational projects by Ying Lianzhi, who had died the previous year.16 French officials were disappointed that this Catholic educational flagship in Beijing was not French.17 After a trip to Europe, Beijing’s coadjutor bishop, Joseph Fabrègues, announced in 1926 the imminent founding of another school, the character of which was at first left ambiguous. It turned out to be funded mostly by the French government and would be managed by French Dominicans. Fabrègues sought from the Chinese government the school’s registration as a daxue, or university, though he assured Costantini that this new institution would amount to a middle school for boys and girls—that is, it would not compete with Furen University. Fabrègues’s project was inaugurated in September 1928 with 400 students under the name Daoming.

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It immediately ran into trouble, as the first cohort of students realized they were not in a university, as had been advertised. When the students organized in protest, Fabrègues expelled the leaders, who took the matter to the General Union of Students in Beijing and to the government. The incident revived charges of foreign cultural aggression and mission schools as instruments of foreign oppression. The students deserted the school, which disintegrated.18 Costantini believed that the miserable collapse of the Daoming project sharpened the tension between him and, on the other side, the French legation and the French missionaries of north China.19 Earlier in the year, the French minister in Beijing had made Fabrègues a knight of the Legion of Honor, for his “fidelity to the Protectorate,” among other qualities. Costantini was dismayed by the affront to the sensitivities of the new China constituted by this and similar public celebrations of the church’s foreign linkages. Doubts about Fabrègues’s adherence to papal policy mounted. As the Daoming affair was reaching its climax and as it became apparent that Fabrègues had acted deceptively, the Propaganda appointed an apostolic visitor to look into the circumstances of the Beijing vicariate. The French legation was convinced that the appointment was at Costantini’s request, as was surely the summons in late October or early November 1928 from the Propaganda for Fabrègues to come to Rome.20 The apostolic visitor to Beijing, who also spent time in Tianjin, was Bishop Antoine Fourquet of Guangzhou and the MEP. He was French, as were all members of the MEP. When he was first proposed as bishop, French officials endorsed the choice, but in the years after his installation in 1923, he showed an unwonted disregard of the French Religious Protectorate.21 In 1924, he proposed the creation of a new apostolic prefecture out of parts of his own vicariate and of the neighboring MEP vicariate of Shantou (Swatow). In this new jurisdiction, MEP, Maryknoll, and Chinese priests would work together under a Chinese superior. De Guébriant, former Guangzhou bishop and now head of the MEP in Paris, turned down the plan as “utopian.”22 Costantini often praised Fourquet for his independence. In his memoirs, however, he elides discussion of Fourquet’s 1928 visitation. The French legation in Beijing reported that Fourquet suggested to de Vienne that he give up his post as bishop in Tianjin and move to another vicariate. His replacement in Tianjin, in this plan, would be Vincent Lebbe. The visitation was still underway when the news arrived that Fabrègues, whose return to China had in any case been in doubt, had unexpectedly died in late November 1928 during his journey to Rome. His vacated position presented opportunities for new arrangements in north China. Fourquet spoke of appointing a Chinese priest as Beijing coadjutor bishop, who would likely soon succeed the aged Jarlin. The French legation urged Paris to intervene with the Holy See

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to put an end to these plans. When Rome denied that Fourquet had pressured de Vienne to resign (de Vienne refused to go), the French legation insisted that it was a clear fact, widely verified.23 Adding fuel to this flare-up was Costantini’s decision to have a secular French priest of the Beijing vicariate expelled from the country. He was Henri Garnier, who made it his task to expose the villainies of Father Lebbe and the ruination that his ideas had brought to the missions. Garnier’s first major interpolation was a book, Le Christ en Chine (Christ in China), published in 1928. Costantini in his memoirs itemized what he saw as Garnier’s errors. The book, wrote Costantini, amounted to an un-Christian rant against Lebbe. Like the rest of us, Lebbe had his faults and in his zeal may have made some mistakes, Costantini conceded, but he served everyone without distinction of color or race and followed Rome’s directives with a will. Who of his adversaries could read Chinese like Lebbe, let alone write it? The core problem with Garnier’s book, Costantini emphasized, was its radical opposition to papal policy, particularly the Chinese episcopate. Garnier espoused the supremacy of the white race, upon whose domination he believed the future of Christianity depended, and he maligned the Chinese, even the Catholics among them. Costantini saw this book as infected by the attitude described in Benedict XV’s Maximum illud as “a plague most deadly” (pestis teterrima), the pursuit by a missionary of his national interest over that of the church’s. This was illustrated by Garnier’s attack on the establishment of a “Germano-American” university in Beijing (that is, Furen), in a region that was, in Garnier’s words, “a French-language fief.”24 In late December 1928, Gasparri, Vatican secretary of state, telegraphed the order for the expulsion, with which Garnier expeditiously complied. A curious addendum to this affair was that the French legation had to refuse Garnier an ordinary French passport because he was an insoumis, that is, the French version of a draft dodger. The legation gave him a temporary pass and told him to present himself to the military authorities in Paris to straighten things out.25 Garnier’s forced return to Europe did not quell his literary energies. During the next two years, he continued the struggle from France with a sixteen-page polemic, Le Diable en Chine (The Devil in China), and a twelve-page pamphlet, Un Péril Mondial: Le Fascisme Catholique Exotique (A Global Peril: Exotic Catholic Fascism). According to this latter pamphlet, the global peril began with Lebbe’s declaration of war on the West in his Tianjin public talks in the 1910s. In their doctrine and activities, Lebbe and his satellites drew simultaneously from Fascism—mixing politics, race, and nation into evangelism—and Bolshevism—preaching xenophobia to the Chinese and advocating war against the white missionary.

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Unfortunately, Garnier continued, Costantini as apostolic delegate adopted Lebbe’s doctrine and imposed it on the bishops and missionaries in the dictatorial manner of Mussolini. As for those who opposed the delegate, he ruined their lives by expelling them from China (Garnier apparently refers here to himself ) or by sending them to die in Siberia (a reference to Fabrègues, who expired on his way to Rome). Meanwhile, the poisonous newspaper founded by Lebbe in Tianjin persisted. “The politico-religious epidemic” inspired by Lebbe had infected the rest of the world of missions, not only in China but also by osmosis in other parts of Asia and even Africa. Recently, it had reached Indochina.26 Garnier’s formulations were certainly at one extreme within the missionary community. There was, however, some resonance there, as demonstrated by the reprinting and distribution of his pieces. Along with Bishop Jarlin, he had been an informational resource for the French legation regarding Fourquet’s personnel maneuvers.27 During the next year, Costantini later wrote, “a small group of missionaries” who had applauded Garnier now directly attacked Costantini in a series of anonymous articles in a French periodical, Le Journal de Pékin.28 All this amounted to a sharpening of the conflict over the Vatican’s policies in China. Mission Property in a Changing Environment An underlying issue raised by the appointment of Chinese bishops emerged near the center of official French concerns at this time: the question of property. Some Catholic missions in China had come to administer considerable wealth. Each time a new vicariate or other ecclesiastical unit was created out of an older one, there was the expectation of a division of invested assets. When the new unit was run by a member of the same order or missionary society, the arrangements might well be amicable, even generous to the new unit. When this was not the case, as with the increasing number of Chinese bishops who were secular clergy, allotting endowment could be sticky. Whose assets were they, after all? Who should manage them under changing circumstances? De Guébriant had raised the issue in his report as apostolic visitor in 1920. Property possessed by the missionary orders was not subject to transfer, even from one order to another, he noted, and still less from an order to an indigenous church.29 Or was it? Costantini thought it was. He held, “In order to establish Chinese missions, one needs to touch the capital of the procuracies [that is, the in-country treasuries of the orders].”30 However, new vicariates experienced difficulty in getting an old vicariate to pass on money, if the new one was not of the same missionary society. For example, when American Maryknoll missionaries started up a jurisdiction in Manchuria,

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they were unsuccessful in seeking some of the very considerable Boxer funds belonging to the MEP Shenyang mission.31 Zhao Huaiyi, the bishop of Xuanhua, a vicariate excised out of the Beijing vicariate’s territory in 1926, asked for part of Beijing’s abundant revenues. The leadership of the Beijing vicariate successfully resisted the request until the death of Coadjutor Bishop Fabrègues in late 1928. At that point, a commission with Bishop Fourquet in charge assigned Xuanhua $300,000 of real estate and $100,000 in cash (monetary unit of uncertain provenance) from Beijing holdings. The French legation labeled this an act of “spoliation” by Costantini, aimed at undermining the French Religious Protectorate and its French missionary adherents.32 French officials who attended to the legalities recognized the ambiguity embedded in the church’s property regime as established by the Berthemy Convention of 1865. This and other arrangements with the Chinese government provided that the acquisitions of missions outside the treaty ports were owned by the local Catholic community. Hence the property could be removed from any foreign control by the indigenization of the hierarchy.33 In the wake of the pope’s consecration of the first six Chinese bishops in 1926, Costantini assured an inquiring consul that, although the vicariates of the Chinese bishops should get their share of income from preexisting capital, the funds would continue to be managed by the foreign bishops—a measure offered as a compromise by the Propaganda.34 The assurance was inadequate from the point of view of the French legation, however, which envisioned the day when the Chinese bishops would demand control. Ways must be studied for safeguarding French property for French authority. The French minister suggested that the Holy See be persuaded to order the Chinese bishops not to alter any French establishments that they might inherit in their district.35 About the valuable property attached to the North Church in Beijing, the legation was particularly possessive and argued that its revenues should be denied to any future Chinese bishop, on grounds of French ownership.36 Official French anxiety about mission property was heightened by a decree of July 1928 from the new Nanjing government that foreign mission societies could only rent—not own—land in “the interior” and that rentals of land and the construction or purchase of buildings required the permission of local authorities. Such land rentals and acquisition of buildings could not exceed the needs of the mission and could not be used for income. The French government both refused to recognize this abrogation of earlier Chinese commitments (the Berthemy and Gérard Conventions) and simultaneously extracted a Chinese statement that these new regulations were not retroactive with respect to property already acquired.37 Although the large missionary investments inside foreign concessions in the treaty ports were in practice

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beyond the reach of Chinese law, even that sanctuary seemed of uncertain longevity. In 1927, the British had surrendered two concessions along the Yangzi during the revolutionary surge of the Northern Expedition. One should not neglect the property issue as a factor in the continuing resistance, by missionary and diplomat, to a Chinese ecclesiastical hierarchy. The Disintegration of the Reform Coalition The visitation of Bishop Fourquet to north China and his attempted personnel interventions at the end of 1928 had the effect of mobilizing the opponents of Costantini’s principal policies, that is, downgrading the linkage of the Catholic Church in China with foreign secular power and sinicizing the church’s leadership. By the end of the next year, French officials were congratulating themselves on having averted the prospect of a Chinese coadjutor bishop in Beijing and on having sidelined the dangerous Father Lebbe.38 Costantini actually had only limited contact with Lebbe. When they initially met at the consecration of the first six Chinese bishops in Rome, Costantini treated him coldly, according to Lebbe’s later report. When Lebbe returned to China in 1927, his movements were restricted. He was told that Costantini had ruled that he should not go to Tianjin and should confine his projects to his vicariate. In the event, his bishop permitted him trips to see Costantini, to visit in the nearby Xuanhua vicariate, and to attend to management issues concerning the Yishibao.39 Although Costantini in his memoirs recorded occasional meetings with Lebbe, during which he apparently received Lebbe cordially, he was far from acknowledging him as a crucial counselor, as the French legation would have it.40 He was impressed with Lebbe’s calm reaction to Garnier’s diatribes, to the point of Lebbe declining an offer from the distinguished Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain to mount a rebuttal. While acknowledging Lebbe’s historical role in raising the issue of a Chinese episcopate, however, he also regularly cited Lebbe’s excessive zeal and minimized public appearances with him.41 As Lebbe remarked, Costantini was persecuted in part because of his supposed ties to Lebbe and hence had to distance himself.42 In a letter to his old friend Cotta in 1930, Lebbe wrote that he believed he would never again be permitted to go to Tianjin. He characterized his situation this way: You have no idea of the malicious gossip that circulates here on my account, of all that the French-language newspapers and periodicals print. While I don’t ever think about them (not out of disdain, but became I don’t have the time), they reckon that I spend all my time plotting their fall, the fall of

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the missionaries, their repatriation, that I am making hate propaganda against Europe and especially France! In short they live in a nightmare, and that makes them crazy, and makes them fear my presence more than that of the devil.—If that didn’t considerably hinder the good, the work to be done, it would truly be funny.43 What slowed the further forward movement of Costantini’s projects was not the allegations of guilt by association so much as the changing scene in Rome. Already in early 1929, there was evidence that the papal secretary of state, Gasparri, and the Propaganda prefect, Van Rossum, were sending Costantini different messages. French officials interpreted this development as the secretary of state wanting to avoid a fight with France over China, which could cause trouble for the church elsewhere.44 In November 1929, the French ambassador to the Holy See could claim victory, after almost a year of negotiations and some frank talk with Gasparri, in securing an acceptable French successor to Fabrègues as Beijing’s coadjutor bishop with right of succession. Moreover, the choice was Jarlin’s preferred candidate.45 In a letter of the middle of 1930, Lebbe referred to “the war which has lasted two years, and ended in defeat—the general of our army, Msgr. Costantini, having asked for peace, for the sake of peace and because Rome does not do all that he wishes with the congregations [i.e., the missionary orders].”46 Despite the initiatives of two popes, then, the French government could still work its will on major matters regarding the Catholic Church in China. Nineteen twenty-nine had been the year of the Lateran Pacts. After a sixty-year standoff, the Vatican was reconciled with the Italian state. Among the effects was to make the papacy financially secure after a long stretch of relative penury.47 In February 1930, the aged Secretary of State Gasparri was replaced by Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pius XII), whose brother had negotiated the arrangements with Mussolini. Costantini seemed ready to resign and, with thoughts of not returning to China, asked the Propaganda’s permission to travel to Italy.48 In Rome in December 1930, he was apparently encouraged to return to his post in China. However, in his memoirs he recorded that, in his conversations with the pope, the new secretary of state, and the Propaganda prefect, only the latter, Van Rossum, straightforwardly endorsed the continuation of the new policies.49 Van Rossum died within a year and a half. Citing his own health problems, Costantini left China definitively in February 1933. Among the high ecclesiastical authorities who had pressed for fundamental change in the Chinese church, only Pope Pius XI was left, and in the 1930s, he was preoccupied with developments in Europe. For his part, Secretary of State Pacelli was less

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inclined than his predecessor to support indigenization in China.50 The persistence of the French Religious Protectorate, with its dependence on foreign bishops, was thereby countenanced. It was a refrain in Costantini’s account of his service in China that Catholic missionaries had planted missions in China but not the church.51 “Centuries have passed,” he wrote, “and the missions have remained foreign fiefs, without ever becoming local churches.”52 What was lacking was not an indigenous clergy, but a hierarchy consisting of indigenous clergy. When he left China for the last time, he could point to the nineteen percent of ecclesiastical units in the country that were headed by Chinese priests, twenty-three of 121, up from zero when he first came.53 The proportion of Chinese superiors would not grow over the next few years.54 As he was homeward bound, Costantini reflected that he had come to China with a clear program, as set out in Benedict XV’s Maximum illud. “In truth the encyclical contained the outline of a radical missionary reform, but it ran up against the dead weight of a tradition of over three centuries and against the power and property of the congregations.”55 Despite considerable achievement, he was departing with a sense of not having attained his goals. Lebbe Goes to War Vincent Lebbe, who with his partner, Antoine Cotta, had done so much to raise the issues of the indigenization of China’s Catholic church and of a break with the French Religious Protectorate, turned to other projects. Soon after arrival in April 1927 at his subordinate post in a rural district of central Zhili province (soon to be renamed Hebei), he organized, with his Chinese bishop’s blessing, two nonpriestly religious congregations. One was of brothers (Little Brothers of Saint John the Baptist, Yaohan xiaoxiongdi hui), and the other was of sisters (Little Sisters of Saint Theresa, Delai xiaomeimei hui). Pius XI in his encyclical Rerum Ecclesiae had called for the creation of indigenous Catholic congregations. Following a Benedictine model, Lebbe established stringent rules for a regimen of simplicity and poverty, along with the daily offices, into which he introduced more Chinese language and for which he composed music.56 In 1933, Lebbe petitioned the Vatican’s Holy Office and the Lazarist superior general for his release from the Lazarists and for his enlistment in the congregation he had founded, the Little Brothers of Saint John the Baptist. With support from his bishop and Costantini, his petition was approved.57 Through naturalization as a Chinese citizen and through membership in a China-based religious organization, Lebbe had completed his personal transformation, even as the transformation of the Chinese Catholic church seemed stalled.

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A continuing project for Lebbe was oversight of the daily newspaper that he had founded in 1915, the Yishibao. During his absence in Europe, the paper had suffered some indignities, including the arrest of its chief Tianjin editor and manager, Liu Junqing, fallout from ill-considered involvement in warlord politics. Warlord authority imposed incompetent management for a time. Liu returned to the helm in 1928 and, together with Lebbe, staged a revival.58 Loans were floated, new machinery was purchased, the operation was incorporated with a board of directors, and new talent—many were Catholic graduates of the well-regarded Nankai University in Tianjin—was recruited. The most prominent recruit was Luo Longji, a politically engaged, liberal intellectual (not a Catholic). After schooling at Qinghua (also spelled Tsinghua) University, the University of Wisconsin, and the London School of Economics, he received a PhD from Columbia University. In 1930, Luo was forced out of his academic job in Shanghai and briefly imprisoned for his outspoken criticism of the Nationalist Party government. In January 1932, at about age thirty-six, he became the Yishibao’s chief editorial writer.59 Interwoven with his sponsoring religious orders and overseeing the Yishibao was Lebbe’s overriding preoccupation during the 1930s until his death in 1940: resisting Japan’s encroachments on China. In the wake of the Mukden Incident of September 18, 1931, which began the Japanese seizure of the northeastern Chinese provinces of Manchuria, he fully adopted the stance of a patriotic Chinese. Lazarist authorities prevented him from testifying before the investigating commission of the League of Nations, but he did join with sixteen Chinese apostolic vicars and prefects in a letter seeking justice for China from the League.60 The Yishibao lent its voice to the call for military resistance. As Chinese forces withdrew without much of a fight and as the national government under Chiang Kai-shek appeared passive in the face of further Japanese pressure, Luo Longji’s editorials appealed for facing off against Japan. They lambasted the government for its cravenness, its dictatorship, and its misplaced focus on extirpating the Chinese Communists, who at the time maintained bases in various rural areas. In later testimony, Luo recalled Lebbe as strongly supporting these editorial calls for resistance to Japan and, despite the paper’s Catholic commitments, as being open to Luo’s advocacy of arrangements with the Chinese Communists for that purpose.61 At the same time, Lebbe offered himself, his Little Brothers, Little Sisters, and Chinese Catholics generally to the war effort, wherever it could be found in north China. The story is complicated, involving more than one puzzle. The following narrative touches only on a few highlights.62 By 1933, Lebbe was leading parties of stretcher-bearers, who administered first aid at the short-lived clashes going on between Chinese and Japanese troops near the Great Wall. When the opportunity

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arose, he persisted with organizing teams for the care, transportation, and rehabilitation of the Chinese wounded. Although he and his monks did not bear arms, he recruited lay Catholics as sharpshooters and spoke of creating a Catholic army (Chinese authorities turned down this last suggestion). He was helped in the initiation of these activities by the eminent and now quite ancient lay Catholic, Ma Xiangbo.63 His work won not only the gratitude of the troops but also the attention of the national government. After Japan’s broad attack on China, he was called to Wuhan in 1938 to discuss plans with Chiang Kai-shek and his staff. Later in the year, he was in Sichuan, whither the Nationalists had taken their retreating government, for further planning and for public addresses to arouse patriotic feeling. Chiang Kai-shek assigned him the job of rallying folks to the national cause behind enemy lines in the north and gave him the military rank of colonel, then general.64 In a letter at that time to his brother, Lebbe rhapsodized: So we are at war, for the good. A fine war (on the side of the Chinese, naturally, since the other side is atrocious), and it seems to me that these are the most beautiful days of my life. I thank the good Lord for having allowed me to work with these people, whom I love more than ever, and to be able now to suffer with them, like them.65 Did Lebbe also take on the task of gathering intelligence about the rapidly expanding Communist forces in the area? Or instead was he unwitting about the placement among his followers of agents of Dai Li, head of an important strand of Chiang’s secret police? The testimony is mixed.66 Although from the time of the Russian Revolution, Lebbe spoke consistently against Bolshevism, he participated keenly in the United Front policy that, on paper from 1937 and for a while in fact, suspended the civil war between the Nationalists and Communists. His stretcher-bearers served Communist as well as Nationalist troops. He had met Zhu De and Liu Bocheng, top Communist commanders. Zhu De had attended a mass at which Lebbe and a Chinese bishop officiated and had welcomed Catholics in confronting the common enemy. In reporting this to Apostolic Delegate Zanin (Costantini’s successor), Lebbe referred to the role assigned to the “former red army” in its United Front with the Nationalists and commented: “It is common knowledge that this army is the best of all, the bravest, the most disciplined, and because of that the most popular. Moreover, in places where the Catholics and their priests do their duty as citizens (as here), not only do they not oppose us, but they show themselves to be best friends of my mission.”67

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These remarks preceded Lebbe’s sessions with Chiang Kai-shek, about whom he wrote admiringly in letters to his family. As the United Front frayed, Lebbe seems to have become more skeptical about the Communists.68 Then in March 1940, he was arrested and detained by Communist forces, who simultaneously executed some of his Little Brothers in another part of north China. His imagined friendship with Zhu De and Liu Bocheng availed him nothing, except that Liu stopped by to visit and Lebbe was released unharmed after thirty-eight days.69 But he was not well. It turned out he was suffering from the last stages of jaundice and perhaps other ailments.70 He was flown to Chongqing, the wartime capital of the Nationalist government. He died there on June 24, 1940. Before his arrest by the Communists, Lebbe’s escapades in wartime China had attracted some favorable press in Europe. The vigilant Henri Garnier, who had publicly attacked Lebbe and Costantini ten years earlier, in 1939 challenged the heroic portrait of the “Chinese general who was a Belgian missionary.” No longer a missionary since his departure from the Lazarists, wrote Garnier, Lebbe “has joined the Communist army of Zhu De, man of Moscow.” As Zhu De’s intermediary, Lebbe “has enticed men to enlist—Christians, unhappily; they behave like mercenaries, adorned with the name of guerillas, who are in no way different from Zhu De’s bandits.” Garnier added that Lebbe was “the creator in the Chinese church of a morbid and anti-missionary nationalism, which has already borne its fruits.”71 Garnier was to revive this last theme in the 1950s: Lebbe’s encouragement of Chinese xenophobia had prepared the way for the Communists, who, using his very arguments, were completing his project.72 Even from the grave, Lebbe drove his enemies crazy. The Twilight Years of the French Religious Protectorate Costantini’s successor as apostolic delegate in China was, after a short interval, Mario Zanin. He occupied the post until the end of World War II. He lacked Costantini’s purposiveness. Nonetheless, there was no formal renunciation of previous policy. It was not until after Costantini’s departure that a first-class city became the seat of a Chinese bishop. That was accomplished with the new vicariate of Nanjing, a product of the gradual division of the exceptionally large Jesuit vicariate of Jiangnan, which had formerly extended over the whole of two provinces, Jiangsu and Anhui. Shanghai and the lion’s share of the area’s Catholics remained with the European Jesuits, but in 1936 Yu Bin (Paul Yu-pin) became the apostolic vicar in Nanjing, the national capital. Originally from Heilongjiang province in the far north, Yu Bin had received his higher education and priestly ordination in Rome

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in the 1920s, courtesy of Costantini’s opening the path to Rome for Chinese seminarians. As bishop, he soon became an influential figure in Nationalist Party politics.73 This placing of a Chinese cleric in charge of a major center remained exceptional until after World War II, but it was a significant step in the direction of articulating a Chinese hierarchy. How was the French Religious Protectorate faring in these changing circumstances? In 1936, the French official network in China was put to the task of reporting the extent of adherence to the Protectorate in each consular district, including Manchuria. The ever-growing number of Catholic missionary societies working in China exceeded twenty. Moreover, the senior missionary orders, like the Lazarists, Jesuits, Franciscans, and Dominicans, increasingly turned over parts of their missionary jurisdictions to previously unrepresented branches of their orders—often American ones. The French legation aggregated the results of the survey by the nationality of the bishop, even though the actual priestly staff of a vicariate was often multinational.74 All the Belgian, Spanish, and Hungarian bishops, according to the reporting consuls, were loyal to the French Protectorate. They and their missionaries received their passports from the French legation in the time-honored manner. (The Nationalist government had recently agreed to certifying French-supplied passports for missionaries, after some years of balking at the old forms.) Two new German missions in Fujian had recognized the French Protectorate and took French passports, though other German missions did not. Three French Canadian missions had joined with France, but the anglophone Canadian Scarboro missionaries had not. All the Italian-led vicariates had by this time peeled off and looked to Italian protection. Some American missionaries had for a time taken French passports, but now none did and were sometimes quite rude about it, according to French consuls. Chinese bishops, of course, did not need passports, and none had otherwise sought support from French authority. Though patchy, this picture of some continuing non-French participation allowed French authorities to persist in the characterization of their protection regime as transnational. More surprising was the mixed response from French bishops. Most could be counted as loyal to the French Protectorate, but not all. As already observed, MEP Bishop Fourquet of Guangzhou supported accommodation to Chinese nationalism and sinicization of the church. The French consul in his city reported that Fourquet, though French, systematically ignored French authorities, and the consul had never had any business relations with him. The consul found the situation embarrassing.75 The consulate in Guangxi province complained that the French MEP bishop at Nanning and his missionaries, although they treated with the consulate regarding passports and land purchases, held to the following

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view: “We have not come here to make French propaganda, which the French government, with its anti-clerical inclinations, does not in any case deserve. We are missionaries before being French. Our purposes eschew temporal power.”76 At Chengdu in Sichuan province, the acting consul opined that, because foreign protection and the unequal treaties were the bêtes noires of Chinese intellectuals, the bishops were inclined to attribute the alienation of their faithful to the unfavorable effects of the Protectorate.77 Overall, some form of the French Religious Protectorate had survived the Chinese upheavals of the 1920s and Costantini’s efforts to reduce its relevance. But it was showing signs of exhaustion. French officials were uncertain of its durability. Nevertheless, they persisted with it for a few more years. The Japanese occupation of Manchuria and the establishment there in 1932 of a subordinate state—named Manzhouguo (or in the spelling of that time, Manchukuo)—presented Catholic authority with a challenge. Rome temporized and, from a Chinese nationalist point of view, failed the test. While declining to send a separate apostolic delegate to Manzhouguo, the Vatican in 1934 made the three provinces of Manchuria a mission field apart from that of the rest of China and designated the sitting bishop of Jilin in Manchuria a “temporary special delegate” for the whole area. Japanese authority claimed that this amounted to papal recognition of its client government. The temporary special delegate dealt with Manzhouguo’s foreign minister and was received in audience by its emperor (who as a child had been the last Qing emperor). This concession to Japanese aggression—which could also be described as the Vatican’s adjustment to a fait accompli—was an irritant in the Holy See’s dealings with Chiang Kai-shek’s national government.78 The French consuls in Manchuria reported that the French Religious Protectorate lived on in this changed environment. Most missionaries there were French, and they continued to seek help from the consuls when needed, for example, in matters of land registry, arms permits, litigation with local authorities, and passports. However, there had been difficulty with Japanese military officers not recognizing the traditional Sino-French passports, so the consuls issued the missionaries Franco-Japanese permits countersigned by Japanese authority. The French legation in Beijing (which had been renamed Beiping by the Nationalist government) informed Paris that, for all the adjustments, the principle of France’s Protectorate was unimpaired.79 Full-scale war between Japan and China began in July 1937, with invading Japanese armies taking major cities up and down the coast and soon occupying large parts of the country: much of the north, well up the Yangzi River in central China (short of Sichuan), and along the southern coast. There remained throughout the war considerable unoccupied portions of the country, “Free China,” notably in the west, with

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further scattered zones beyond Japan’s limited reach. In occupied areas, Chinese Communist guerrilla units and others (Lebbe’s operation was a small example) resisted Japanese forces and collaborating Chinese units. Like the French ambassador, the pope’s representative in China, Mario Zanin, remained in the part of China occupied by Japan. He delegated an American Franciscan to handle affairs in the Nationalist-held areas.80 French diplomats worked with him in the persisting tasks of their Religious Protectorate. Detailed investigations would no doubt discover numerous instances, beyond Lebbe’s activities, of missionary and other Catholic participation in resistance to the Japanese occupation. One alleged by the Japanese military was collusion between the Jesuit Xianxian mission in southeast Hebei and anti-Japanese guerrillas in September 1941. Some Chinese troops under Japanese authority had been killed near mission headquarters. The Japanese planned a court-martial of complicit Catholics, including the Jesuit Chinese bishop, Zhao Zhensheng, who with about sixty others had been arrested. There was talk of executions. French diplomats, who were now taking their orders from Vichy, not Paris, intervened in Tokyo. They underlined “the right of protection that France exercises in China over all Catholic missions” and reminded the Japanese foreign ministry of the current friendship of Japan and France regarding Indochina (a reference to the colonial government’s accommodation of Japanese bases in Vietnam). The intervention had some effect, and all but one Chinese priest were released. The price was that the church would remove from his post the Chinese bishop, whose refusal in the past to meet with Japanese authorities was blamed for the crisis.81 Generally, most Catholic missions in the occupied areas of the country, like most people caught up in the same play of forces, adjusted to the rule of the Japanese and their collaborating Chinese recruits.82 In early 1938, Lebbe wrote Apostolic Delegate Zanin at least three times to complain of foreign missionaries who counseled defeatism to their Christians, who assisted in the formation of collaborationist governance, who showed sympathy with the Japanese enemy in word and deed, or who proclaimed to their congregations that it would be better for the church if Japan won. Lebbe proposed that such missionaries be asked to leave the country for the duration of the war.83 For his part, Zanin mandated neutrality for Catholics. In a circular to the bishops in March 1939, he asked that their priests be warned “to avoid even the appearance of any action that . . . could give an excuse for retribution against the mission residences.” “Do not let the whole community perish on account of one person’s imprudence.” All involvement in political matters was strictly forbidden, he wrote.84 In conversation with the French ambassador, he expressed his anxieties about the anti-Japanese attitude of Catholic priests in the occupied areas but said he was taking

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stern measures against any expression of it.85 The ambassador reported that Catholic schools had gradually adjusted to Tokyo directives: to make Japanese a required language, to adopt new programs and textbooks, and to install Japanese “counselors” in all educational establishments.86 As the war became global, complexities abounded. The German occupation of Paris in 1940 produced a new French government in the town of Vichy, responsive to the German overlord but clinging to a degree of autonomy and persisting with its own policies. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the participation of the United States and Britain as belligerents in a Pacific and Asian war against Japan, the nationals of the Allied countries in occupied China became subject to expulsion or internment by Japanese authorities. Germans, Italians, and Hungarians faced restrictions in Free China. Vichy France, by contrast, remained neutral, continuing to operate on both sides of the Sino-Japanese war. French consuls stayed at their posts, reporting to the French ambassador from Free China as well as from the Japanese-occupied parts of the country. The ambassador remained in the occupied zones, even though he was accredited to the Nationalist government, which had moved to Chongqing in Sichuan, and not to the new collaborationist government of Wang Jingwei in Nanjing, subordinate to the Japanese and unrecognized formally by France. He reminded his consuls on both sides of the line that the French Religious Protectorate obliged them to intervene in favor of Catholic mission members whatever their nationality, if local or occupying authorities unjustifiably obstructed their ministry.87 In 1943, the belligerents in Asia, courting Chinese favor, competed in declarations of China’s release from past derogations of sovereignty. Japan had long asserted that one of its primary purposes in China was to free it from Western imperialism.88 For more than one reason, it had arranged the dissolution of British and American concessions in areas of China under its occupation after December 1941 and made its own gestures to the Wang Jingwei regime to bolster that government’s Chinese credentials. In January 1943, it announced the retrocession of its concessions to the puppet government in Nanjing and the end of its extraterritorial rights. Almost simultaneously, the United States and Britain, by agreement with the Nationalist government in Chongqing, dissolved the nineteenth-century treaties that had enshrined their privileges in the country. Joining in the rush, the Vichy government in February 1943 declared its intention to abandon its extraterritorial privileges and to renounce its administrative rights over its various concessions in China. With the implications for the French Religious Protectorate in mind, the Vichy foreign ministry instructed its consular network to conduct an inventory of the property of French missions and missionary organizations in China.89

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The complexity of France’s position with respect to the East Asian war tempered the significance of this statement. When Japan formally gave up its legal privileges in China, it did so in favor of the Chinese authorities it had recently put in office. The United States and Britain ended their inherited special rights in negotiation with the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek in Chongqing. France, instead, was still attempting to satisfy both sides in the China war and was resisting Japanese pressure to recognize Wang Jingwei’s puppet regime in Nanjing (primarily out of concern for its Indochinese colony). So its declaration was unilateral, addressed to everyone at once and committed to no particular timetable for its execution. It embodied a strategy of accommodation and delay. However, French authorities found that, because of Japan’s insistence, they could not long postpone the shedding of their old concessions located in occupied China. The climax came in July 1943, when, after other retrocessions, French representatives handed over the French concession in Shanghai to Chinese officials who were in reality subordinate to the Japanese occupiers. In response, the Nationalist government in Chongqing broke diplomatic relations with Vichy, without actually expelling French consular officials from its territory.90 Meanwhile, the Vatican and the Chinese Nationalist government had negotiated the semblance of diplomatic relations, although no Vatican envoy was sent to Chongqing, in deference to Apostolic Delegate Zanin’s continuing presence in Japanese-occupied China.91 One might mark the end of the French Religious Protectorate at this point. The treaties on which the claim to the right of protection was based had been renounced, even if with no clarity about actual enactment. In the Free China areas, during the previous year the Nationalist government had ceased validating French passports unless the recipients were actually French citizens. This change undermined the transnational character of the French Religious Protectorate, one of the features that distinguished the institution from the ordinary protection of one’s own nationals.92 The decisive nail in the institution’s coffin would seem to be the establishment of relations, albeit tenuous, between the Vatican and the Nationalist Chinese government, though the latter had been ousted from much of its territory. France had expended considerable diplomatic energy over the previous eighty years precisely to prevent these pieces from falling into place. Between the End of the Protectorate and the Communist Victory Yet a reprieve for the Protectorate, if a somewhat illusory one, intervened. The Vichy government, which had declared its intention to abrogate France’s nineteenth-century treaties with China, would itself soon dissolve and be declared illegal by its successor

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regime. When Charles de Gaulle’s Provisional Government of the French Republic took up the reins of French diplomacy after the liberation of Paris in August 1944, the French Religious Protectorate in China was on its list of items to address. A long memorandum within the foreign ministry explored the current state of France’s relationship to Catholic missions there.93 It described the French Religious Protectorate as “crumbled” under the weight of the growing challenge to it by the Nationalist government since 1928, of the recent opening of diplomatic relations between China and the Vatican, and of the disaffection from it even of French missions. It noted the future inevitability (discounting Vichy’s moves in this direction) of France following the examples of Britain, the United States, and others in abandoning extraterritoriality and their concessions in China. It held that France should prepare itself for such a renunciation. Once this was accomplished, the primary concern for French policy in China would be the protection of French mission property, which was admitted to be a thorny issue. With the end of World War II, it turned out that China’s Nationalist government was in charge of something of much more interest to the French government than were the tattered remnants of the Religious Protectorate and the ghosts of its old concessions. By agreement among the Allies at Potsdam, China was to share with Britain the acceptance of the surrender of Japanese forces in France’s old colony of Indochina, centered on Vietnam, where Japanese authorities had replaced (and selectively interned) French personnel just months before the war’s end.94 The British occupiers in the south, including Saigon, facilitated French colonial recovery. In the north of Vietnam, the Chinese occupiers instead allowed Ho Chi Minh, the Communist leader and Vietnamese nationalist, to consolidate a united-front government in August 1945, which declared Vietnam’s independence in September. In February 1946, agreements were struck between China and France whereby France renounced (again) its old treaty rights and its former concessions in China, including railways, and China assented to the replacement of its occupation army in northern Vietnam by French forces.95 This deal was background to the negotiation in March of an arrangement between Ho Chi Minh and the French, which broke down by the end of the year. Another twist to this century-long story of the French Religious Protectorate: its demise was joined to the starting point of the Vietnam War in its French phase. With France’s opposition disarmed by the renunciation of the unequal treaties, the Vatican recast the organization of the church in China. In April and May 1946, an ecclesiastical hierarchy was decreed, with twenty archiepiscopates (only three of the archbishops were Chinese), with the seventy-nine apostolic vicariates endowed with the dignity of dioceses, and in addition a number of apostolic prefectures.96

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The wartime delay in exchanging diplomats between China and the Holy See could be ended. An internuncio (one step below a nuncio), accredited to Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government, which had returned to Nanjing, replaced the apostolic delegate.97 Yu Bin, the bishop of Nanjing since 1936, who had spent the war in Chongqing and abroad and who had been active in the postwar reorganization of the Chinese church, was made archbishop at Nanjing with jurisdiction over Jiangsu province.98 A particularly dramatic appointment was that of Tian Gengxin (Thomas T’ien) to the archiepiscopate of Beijing, with responsibility for Hebei (formerly Zhili) province. Tian was a priest of the Society of the Divine Word, who had been a bishop in Shandong province since 1939. He had been made a cardinal, China’s first, in February 1946. He arrived in Beijing in June 1946, displacing the Frenchman whose appointment as coadjutor in 1929 had blocked an earlier effort to have the post of Beijing bishop go to a Chinese priest. (Meanwhile, Jarlin had died in 1933.) Tian took up residence in the North Church complex. In a radio speech, Tian spoke of the continuing need for foreign missionaries in view of the inadequate numbers of Chinese clergy and their deficient training. “On the other hand,” he said, “we are convinced missionaries will understand the new confidence of the Chinese clergy as it has developed through the bitter experiences of the last fifty years.”99 At a welcoming banquet, he declared, “In the project of proselytism, we will do away with the divide of nationality among the congregations and vicariates.”100 The welcome was not universal. The foreign bishop of another Shandong diocese assigned to the Society of the Divine Word wrote in October 1946 that Tian was tight with money, chauvinistic about China, and resistant to the advice of foreigners. He concluded: “Even if the Church here is de jure independent, it is de facto in as much need of help as before: missionaries, material help and financial support.”101 Under the new dispensation of an ecclesiastical hierarchy, Europeans still predominated at the episcopal level. In 1948, of the 146 ordinaries or superiors of the archdioceses, dioceses, and apostolic prefectures, only thirty-five were Chinese, or twenty-four percent.102 France continued to lobby for prelates of French nationality.103 French officials still intervened “unofficially” on behalf of the missions. The French ambassador reported that these interventions had not elicited any complaints from the Chinese foreign ministry.104 The French consul-general in Yunnan province even argued that, although the unequal treaties had been abolished, the February 1946 agreements with China had not explicitly terminated the protection of Catholic missions. Yunnan authorities, he reported, had not contested French intervention in favor of missionaries of various nationalities. If occasions were infrequent, the reason was the policy of the church to forgo such protection.105

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The French Religious Protectorate cast a shadow, even after it was no more. The illusion would not last, however. Full-scale civil war between the Nationalist government and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party erupted in the second half of 1946. Catholics who were caught up in the violence suffered. During 1948, the tide turned against the Nationalists. In that same year, the dispute over the disposition of the North Church and its attached properties reached a climax. The French government had periodically reminded everyone that it owned the church, by virtue of funds that Louis XIV donated to the French Jesuit mission in China in the seventeenth century and by subsequent confirmations (not immune from challenge) of France’s special rights in the matter. The Lazarists said they had received these properties from the Jesuits toward the end of the eighteenth century. France was all right with that, as long as there was a Frenchman in charge. Cardinal Tian, the Chinese archbishop of Beijing, insisted that the North Church and its attachments had all passed to his archdiocese in 1946 by the terms of his appointment, and only the church of St. Michael in the former Legation Quarter and the Zhalan seminary remained to the Lazarists. The Propaganda called for a local settlement. But Tian refused the mediation of the internuncio and declared he would leave if the North Church after all belonged to the Lazarists.106 Saying he needed treatment for his eyes, Tian took a leave of absence in June 1948, left Beijing for Shanghai and Hongkong, and never returned.107 At the end of October 1948, the French consul-general in Beijing (the ambassador resided in Nanjing, the national capital) declared: “The Communists are at our gates. That is not a reason to throw in one’s hand, quite the contrary.” Holding steadfast to the rights of France, he argued, would show Rome the value of French support as the Christians of China were threatened by tribulation. The Vatican secretary of state expressed his own irritation with Cardinal Tian’s obstinacy and argued that, in the event of a Communist takeover, the church’s establishment would be better defended with the support of France and the Lazarists.108 The China policy of Popes Benedict XV and Pius XI seems to have been forgotten in the Vatican, or considered obsolete. Chinese Communist forces received the surrender of the Nationalist commander in Beijing in January 1949. They reached Shanghai by May. All of China but Taiwan, Hongkong, Macao, and some small islands was soon consolidated under the People’s Republic of China (PRC), formally declared on October 1, 1949, in Beijing. The world had radically changed for the approximately 3.3 million Catholics in China, as indeed it had for all citizens of the People’s Republic. For about a year and a half, there were no abrupt changes in the cities, although a social revolution was

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underway in the countryside. The internuncio, Antonio Riberi, had been encouraging the formation of the Legion of Mary (Shengmujun, literally, “Army of the Holy Mother”) among the Catholic laity as the Communists were nearing victory. With its provocative, military-sounding name, it was accused, whether accurately or not, with organizing material resistance to the new government.109 In 1951, Riberi was expelled from the country, as were many other foreign clerics, Protestant as well as Catholic. Of about 5,500 male and female foreign Catholic missionaries in China in 1949, 723 remained in the PRC at the end of 1952 and only about twenty at the end of 1955. A few Catholic clergy, both foreign and Chinese, were imprisoned, some with long sentences.110 The French Religious Protectorate had become only a memory, which many would have preferred to forget. Reflections In contemplating the record of the French Religious Protectorate and the character of the Catholic church in China in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, some features stand out. One peculiar attribute was that the pact between Catholic missions and representatives of the French government in China in this period was never mutually specified. French officials periodically described for themselves what they called their Religious Protectorate but regularly acknowledged it to be their own invention. No person or authority, no provision in international law, had assigned to France the protection of all Catholics in the country. Rather, it was a point of pride that the role had not been conferred by the pope but was based on (one might say, extrapolated from) treaties forced on China and, accordingly, was a product of French arms and French diplomacy alone. Nor was there any agreement with some entity that might represent the Catholic church in China, which lacked a countrywide organization of any kind before the 1920s. A primary task of French diplomacy regarding China had been to prevent the Vatican from establishing any such organization. Though conjured up by French diplomats, their Religious Protectorate was nonetheless real. It was in effect negotiated and reinforced every time a Catholic bishop or missionary in China requested official French assistance—something that happened with great frequency. The position of France in China was constructed from the mid-nineteenth century onward in important measure out of these Catholic appeals for help, which provided occasions for asserting France’s influence in the country and securing its place there as a leading foreign power. The prominence of these transactions had begun to decline even before World War I, but they persisted in various ways well into World War II—an instance of the self-perpetuating power of institutions.

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An essential feature of the Protectorate was the ready acceptance by Catholic missionary organizations and their bishops of the French offer to compel Chinese officialdom not only to protect their presence and their evangelistic works but also to underwrite them by judicial favoritism and generous indemnities. The careers of mandarins deemed hostile or negligent were in jeopardy. Foreign missionaries in China were inclined to perceive hostility in their environment. There certainly were elements in Chinese society disposed to oppose and sabotage any exercise of Christian evangelism, even though it was allowed by the treaties. Once the new regime of missionary privilege and the ancillary empowerment of Chinese Christians was in operation, it became impossible to distinguish objections to Christianity itself from resentment at the disproportionate advantages enjoyed by foreign and Chinese Christians in local conflicts. In a vicious circle, resort to foreign secular protection seemed to become all the more necessary in the eyes of many—probably most—missionaries. The Protectorate was generally popular with the Catholic missionary establishment. Though hesitant to subscribe to all the theories propounded by French officials in the administration of their Protectorate, the Protestant powers generally adopted the same practices with respect to the Protestant missions. The French Protectorate had an array of significant opponents, or at least skeptics, including various other foreign governments, the Chinese government, and sometimes the pope. Because French authorities considered their Protectorate so crucial to France’s position in China and at the same time thought it to be fragile, they were inclined to overperform, to accede even to dubious missionary requests, and to exact extravagant compensation for any purported injury. These tendencies set a high bar for all the protectors of missions, Catholic and Protestant. In these ways, the French Religious Protectorate contributed importantly to the embitterment of Sino-foreign relations in the period of the unequal treaties. The early-twentieth-century story is more varied. Criticism of the status quo from within the missions, rare in the nineteenth century, gained volume. Toward the end of the first decade, French authorities and foreign Catholic prelates became more selective in their interventions in local conflicts, without divesting themselves of the option. Still, it was not until the outbreak of something like a resistance movement among a few Catholic missionaries in the city of Tianjin from 1916, responding to a growing Chinese nationalism, that the Catholic church’s links to French policy were openly challenged. The missionary rebels had allies among Chinese Catholic priests and some prominent laymen, notably Ying Lianzhi and Ma Xiangbo, as well as among ordinary Chinese Catholics and even in the non-Christian community. Though the movement began as Catholics participated in the opposition to a French

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land-grab, the central proposition of the dissidents was the need for the indigenization of the Chinese church. Most simply, this meant more dignity for the Chinese clergy and the appointment of Chinese bishops, of whom there were then none. As the dissidents intended, this proposition struck at the heart of the French Religious Protectorate. It was a feature of the Protectorate that it depended on a foreign Catholic episcopate to justify its interventions. The prospect of Chinese bishops also threatened the inherited jurisdictions of the Catholic missionary societies and their accumulated wealth in China. The call for the church to distance itself from French policy and for a Chinese Catholic hierarchy evoked a combined campaign by French officials and Catholic prelates to repress the dissidents, of whom the most prominent were the Belgian missionary Vincent Lebbe and the Egyptian missionary Antoine Cotta. Most likely the subsequent repression would have ended the movement, at least for some years, if the particular leadership in the Vatican in the late 1910s and the 1920s had not decided to intervene and lend its authority to reforms. This was not the first time that a pope had been concerned about the constraints on the Chinese church imposed by the French Protectorate, but this time the Vatican was able to force the issue. Pope Benedict XV declared a policy of reform for the missions, and his successor established a representative in China, Celso Costantini. The Vatican began to inject Chinese bishops into the church’s leadership. There were no clear winners in the struggle that ensued. Although important steps toward indigenization were taken in the 1920s, the pace slowed before anything like a Chinese-run Catholic church in China had emerged. Resistance to the policy continued, and the Vatican did not sustain its focus.111 By the time the unequal treaties were fully abrogated and the French Religious Protectorate was no more, China was on the eve of a civil war, which in three years would bring to power the Chinese Communist Party. A noteworthy feature of this drama was the intensity of the conflict between the defenders of the status quo and the reformers. The issues that had divided the Catholic church in China before the Communists came to power were not forgotten in the missionary diaspora. When an admiring biography of Vincent Lebbe was published in 1955 by Jacques Leclercq, professor at the Louvain Catholic University, some exiled Catholic missionaries declared their objections. Twenty-three members of the Association of Former China Missionaries, including fourteen archbishops and bishops, signed a public letter complaining that the book reinforced Communist accusations of missionary collusion with great-power policies and that it glorified Lebbe’s “equivocal and off-hand” attitude in his relations with his superiors.112

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In a separate statement, the association’s Belgian president, the former archbishop of Suiyuan, claimed that, but for Lebbe, there would have been no Laoxikai affair and that, as to the subaltern position of the Chinese clergy, “the fact is that Father Lebbe introduced a sinister ferment among the seminarians and indigenous clergy, who were thereby imprudently prodded towards an extreme nationalism, which is at the root of the present ‘progressive Church’ [that is, Chinese Catholics cooperating with the government of the People’s Republic of China].”113 The former bishop of Yongpingfu wrote in response to Leclercq’s book that the old evangelical methods had worked just fine and that the French Religious Protectorate, so vilified by Lebbe and his biographer, had rendered inestimable services to the church in China.114 Much changed radically after 1949, but there was a provocative parallel in the relationship of the new government in China to the Chinese Catholic church and that of the old French Religious Protectorate to the same church. In each case, a secular (and secularizing) power formulated policies to make use of that church for its own purposes and, as much as possible, to subordinate it to those purposes. The French Religious Protectorate and the government of the People’s Republic of China both met resistance from within the church. They both accused the resistance of disloyalty, subversion, and incitement to violence. Their responses included removal or exile of its leaders (and in the case of the PRC government, which had incomparably more coercive power, frequent imprisonment). In both cases, the objections and interventions of the Vatican were an unresolved problem for the policy makers.115 In a clash between the Beijing government and the Vatican over the appointment of new bishops in 1957 and 1958, the schism between some significant portion of Chinese Catholics and the papacy, so often predicted by opponents to a “complete Chinese clergy,” was realized. The Catholic church in China developed contrasting and sometimes rivalrous “patriotic” or “open” and “underground” or “clandestine” components.116 These dispiriting circumstances could also be understood as fulfillment after 1949 of Pius XI’s warning in 1926 of the possible consequences of not achieving real indigenization in advance of revolution. Leclercq and others who sought to memorialize Lebbe’s accomplishments represented a tendency quite different from that of the exiled clerics of the Association of Former China Missionaries—a tendency that seems to have included the aspiration for Lebbe’s ultimate canonization. Yu Bin, former archbishop of Nanjing, addressed Leclercq from New York to the effect that his book spoke the truth, a truth that was painful to hear for those bishops and missionaries who had been expelled from China by the Communists.117 In and around 1977, several collections of fond memories about Lebbe were published in Taiwan on the occasion of the centennial of his birth.118

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Pope John Paul II convened a synod of Asian bishops for 1998, which was not attended by any prelates from the People’s Republic of China, although two (and only two) had been invited.119 In their response to the Vatican’s statement of issues— the lineamenta—in the initial summons, the Catholic bishops of Taiwan included a recommendation to pay greater attention to evangelization through inculturation. They listed among historical exemplars Matteo Ricci and Xu Guangqi in the late Ming and in the modern period Vincent Lebbe, Celso Costantini, and Yu Bin.120 A news report on the actual sessions in Rome held that “the Asian bishops had overwhelmingly reaffirmed the need to ground the local churches in Asian culture and context by breaking away from Catholicism’s Western and often colonial heritage.”121 The era of the French Religious Protectorate and the struggles against it still reverberated.

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Notes

Abbreviations Used in the Notes ADNantes AMAE AMEP AnnalesCM ASVat AVLebbe FO FranA JWJAD LazA MethA

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Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes, documents of the French legation in Beijing (“Pékin”), by file-box (“carton”) number. (Nantes) Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, by series (“n.s.” = new series) and volume number. (Quai d’Orsay, Paris) Archives of the Société des Missions Etrangères, by volume number. (Paris) Journal: Annales de la Congrégation de la Mission (Lazaristes) et de la Compagnie des Filles de la Charité. Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Segretaria di Stato, by year, index number (rubr.), and fascicle (fasc.). (Vatican) Archives Vincent Lebbe, by category and volume. (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) Archives of the British Foreign Office, by file numbers. (National Archives, London) Franciscan Archives: Curia Generalizia OFM, Archivio Generale, Sinae, by volume number and shelf code. (Rome) Published archives: Jiaowu jiaoan dang [Archive of Christian affairs and jiao’an] (Taibei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1974–81). Lazarist Archives (uncatalogued when researched). If available, codes indicating location are appended. (Paris) Archives of the United Methodist Church, by accession and folder numbers. (Drew University, Madison, NJ)

262 NA RG PEC1

PEC2 PEC3 PropA

ZZD

Notes to pages 1–3 U.S. National Archives, by record group numbers, consulate, and volume. (Washington, DC) Book: Pour l’Eglise chinoise. I. La visite apostolique des missions de Chine, 1919–1920, ed. Claude Soetens (Louvain-la-Neuve: Publication de la Faculté de Théologie, 1982). Book: Pour l’Eglise chinoise. II. Une nonciature à Pékin en 1918? ed. Claude Soetens (Louvain-la-Neuve: Publication de la Faculté de Théologie, 1983). Book: Pour l’Eglise chinoise. III. L’encyclique Maximum illud, ed. Claude Soetens (Louvain-la-Neuve: Publication de la Faculté de Théologie, 1983). Propaganda Archives: Archivio Storico, Congregazione per l’Evangelizzazione dei Popoli o “de Propaganda Fide,” new series, by volume and index number (rubr.) [when specified]. (Rome) Book: Zhang Zhidong, Zhang Wenxiang-gong quanji [Complete works of Zhang Zhidong], 6 vols., ed. Wang Shutong (Taibei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1970). Introduction

1. Auguste Gérard, Ma mission en Chine (1893–1897) [My mission in China, 1893–1897] (Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie, 1918), 249–251. 2. Tang Ruiyu, Qing ji Tianjin jiaoan yanjiu [Study of the Tianjin jiao’an in the late Qing] (Taibei: Wenshizhe chubanshe, 1993), 19–29; Albert Sohier, “Mgr Alphonse Favier et la protection des missions en Chine (1870–1905)” [Msgr. Alphonse Favier and the protection of missions in China (1870–1905)], Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft 25 (1969): 1–3. Many accounts, including Tang Ruiyu’s, assert that 21 foreigners were killed, and some assume the religious sisters were all French. One of the two killed priests, both usually counted among the foreign victims, was actually a Chinese Lazarist, and only six of the ten murdered sisters were French. O. D. Rasmussen, Tientsin: An Illustrated Outline History (Tianjin: The Tientsin Press, 1925), 50, names the foreign victims and the Chinese priest but omits one of the three Russian victims. See also Octave Ferreux, “Histoire de la Congrégation de la Mission en Chine—(1699–1950)” [History of the Congregation of the Mission in China (1699–1950)], AnnalesCM 127, nos. 503–506 (1963): 187–189. 3. Richard Madson and Lizhu Fan, “The Catholic Pilgrimage to Sheshan,” in Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China, ed. Yoshiko Ashiwa and David L. Wank (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 86. Jesuits in Shanghai, exercising more sensitivity, changed the dedication of a Marian shrine there in 1871 from “Our Lady of Victories” to “Our Lady, Help of Christians.” Ibid., 80–83. 4. Hosea Ballou Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire. Vol. 1: The Period of Conflict, 1834–1860 (London: Longmans, Green, 1910), 518. 5. Sohier, “Mgr Alphonse Favier,” 2–4, 12. A photograph, dated 1871, of the Wanghailou church shows the façade and towers, as well as at least one wall, still standing. O. D. Rasmussen, Tientsin: An Illustrated Outline History (Tianjin: The Tientsin Press, 1925), opposite p. 45. 6. Gérard, Ma mission en Chine, xxi, 194–195, 249. 7. Mouilly to Paris, “Note relative au Consulat de TienTsin et à la légation de Peking,” Paris, November 25, 1877, LazA, dossier 163–120, Pékin, 11. I. Document. D/16.1.I [5]. A. Favier, “Mémoire justificatif présenté par M. Favier, Vic. G’le de Péking,” June 1892. LazA, dossier IX.

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8. Examples in Brenier to Favier, “Lou-pa-miao,” September 18, 1877, and September 20, 1877; and Mouilly, Paris, November 25, 1877: LazA, dossier 163–120, Pékin (11. I. Document. D/16.1/I.). Gérard, Ma mission en Chine, xxi, speaks to Favier’s general expertise in directing construction. 9. Mark Elvin, “Mandarins and Millenarians: Reflections on the Boxer Uprising of 1899–1900,” in An Old State in New Settings: Studies in the Social Anthropology of China in Memory of Maurice Freedman, ed. Hugh D. R. Baker and Stephan Feuchtwang (Oxford: JASO, 1991), 229–230. Barend J. ter Haar, Telling Stories: Witchcraft and Scapegoating in Chinese History (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 110–112, gives evidence of the long history of fears regarding the use of children’s bodies for the foundation of buildings and other mysterious purposes. 10. This account of the dedication of Wanghailou in June 1897 is drawn from A. Vissière, Acting Consul, Tianjin, June 22, 1897, ADNantes, 418; Alphonse Favier, Beijing, June 25, 1897, AnnalesCM 63 (1898): 74–82; and Gérard, Ma mission en Chine, 249–251. 11. Alphonse Favier, Peking ( June 25, 1897), in AnnalesCM 63 (1898): 80. 12. Paul Boell, Le protectorat des missions catholiques en Chine et la politique de la France en Extrême-Orient [The protectorate of Catholic missions in China and French policy in the Far East] (Paris: Institut scientifique de la libre-pensée, 1899), 67. 13. A. Vissière, Acting Tianjin consul, Tianjin June 22, 1897, ADNantes, 418. 14. Jacques Gernet, China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 247. For a more measured discussion of philosophical discrepancies and correspondences between seventeenth-century Catholicism and Confucianism, see Nicolas Standaert, Handbook of Christianity in China. Volume One: 635–1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 653–667; and 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. 15. Wm. Theodore de Bary, “Reflections on the Chinese Rites Controversy,” in Mungello, Chinese Rites Controversy, 293–294. Xiaochao Wang, Christianity and Imperial Culture: Chinese Christian Apologetics in the Seventeenth Century and Their Latin Patristic Equivalents (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 231. Roger Hart, “Translating the Untranslatable: From Copula to Incommensurable Worlds,” in Tokens of Exchange: The Problems of Translation in Global Circulations, ed. Lydia H. Liu (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 45–73. Paul A. Rule, “Does Heaven Speak? Revelation in Confucian and Christian Traditions,” in China and Christianity: Burdened Past, Hopeful Future, eds. Stephen Uhalley Jr., and Xiaoxin Wu (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2001), 63–79. Willard J. Peterson, “Learning from Heaven: The Introduction of Christianity and Other Western Ideas into Late Ming China,” in China and Maritime Europe, 1500–1800: Trade, Settlement, Diplomacy, and Missions, ed. John E. Wills Jr. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 133. Gail King, “Christian Women of China in the Seventeenth Century,” in Pioneer Chinese Christian Women: Gender, Christianity, and Social Mobility, ed. Jessie G. Lutz (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2010), 55–86, provides a close reading of Chinese Christian material of the era and finds the full range of Catholic doctrine. 16. Paul A. Cohen, China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860–1870 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), especially pp. 262–273. 17. The classic statements are in J. K. Fairbank, “Patterns behind the Tientsin Massacre,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 20, nos. 3 and 4 (December 1957): 480–511; Cohen, China

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Notes to pages 8–12

and Christianity, 77–109; and Paul A. Cohen, “Christian Missions and Their Impact to 1900,” in The Cambridge History of China. Volume 10. Late Ch’ing, 1800–1911, Part I, ed. John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 543–590. Cohen’s discussion is notably comprehensive and nuanced, allowing for a variety of factors. Wang Di, Kuachu fengbi de shijie— Changjiang shangyouqu shehui yanjiu [Breaking out of a closed world—a study of the society of the upper reaches of the Yangzi River (1644–1911)] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1993), 681–686, describes the cultural, economic, political, and psychological circumstances of elite resistance to missions in Sichuan in the late Qing. 18. Ter Haar, Telling Stories, 154–201, 331–347. 19. Barend J. ter Haar, White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious History (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 112–113, 202–207, discusses two examples. 20. Lü Shiqiang, Zhongguo guanshen fanjiao de yuanyin (1860–1874) [Origin and cause of the anti-Christian movement, 1860–1874] (Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo, 1966). The PRC literature representing the approach in this paragraph is large. Recent examples can be found in Zhang Li and Peng Zhaogui, eds., Jindai Zhongguo jiaoan yanjiu [Studies on modern Chinese jiao’an] (Chengdu: Sichuansheng Shehui Kexueyuan Chubanshe, 1987). An elegant presentation of the view that Chinese opposition to Christian evangelism stemmed from its links with imperialism can be found in Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 68–95. 21. Wang Minglun, Fanyangjiao shuwen jietie xuan [Selections of anti-Christian formal writings and placards] ( Jinan: Qilu Shushe, 1984), 1. Chapter 1 1. From the 1630s, there was a growing presence of other religious orders in China as well: Dominicans, Franciscans, and Augustinians. For a vigorous statement of their contributions, see Pascale Girard, Les religieux occidentaux en Chine à l’époque moderne: essai d’analyse textuelle comparée (Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2000). 2. Donald L. Lach and Edwin J. Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 3, A Century of Advance, Book One: Trade, Missions and Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 261. 3. A detailed account of the genesis of the 1692 Edict of Toleration is given in D. E. Mungello, The Forgotten Christians of Hangzhou (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), 61–64. 4. Standaert, Handbook of Christianity in China, 382–384. Among those citing 300,000 as the number of Chinese Christians in 1700 are Lach and Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, 266; Bernard Henry Willeke, Imperial Government and Catholic Missions in China during the Years 1784–1785 (Saint Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1948), 7; Claude Soetens, ed., Pour l’église chinoise [On behalf of the Chinese church], vol. 1, La visite apostolique des missions de Chine, 1919–20 [The apostolic visitation of China’s missions, 1919–1920] (Louvain-la-neuve: Publications de la Faculté de Théologie, 1982) [henceforth, PEC1], 99. The figure of 200,000 is also used by Jean Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter-Reformation (London: Burns and Oates, 1977), 65. For a discussion of the uncertainty of such estimates, see Ferreux, “Histoire de la Congrégation,” AnnalesCM 127, nos. 503–506 (1963): 74–77. 5. Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, 92, 171–179.

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6. Joseph Bergin, Church, Society and Religious Change in France, 1580–1730 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 225, 403, 407–408, 410, 423. 7. John E. Wills Jr., “From Manila to Fuan: Asian Contexts of Dominican Mission Policy,” in Mungello, Chinese Rites Controversy, 113–114. A Dominican friar had obtained from the Vatican in 1645 an adverse judgment about customary Chinese rituals for the deceased, but at the instance of the Jesuits, it was interpreted broadly, leaving the issue up to the various missionaries until 1704. Eugenio Menegon, Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009), 274. See ibid., 260– 300, for a general discussion of the Spanish Dominican treatment of the issue in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 8. Nicolas Standaert, “Christianity as a Religion in China: Insights from the Handbook of Christianity in China: Volume One (635–1800),” in Cahiers d’Extrême-Asia 12 (2001): 9. John W. Witek, S.J., “Christianity and China: Universal Teaching from the West,” in Uhalley, China and Christianity, 22. A Jesuit history reports that Christians in Jiangnan went from 100,000 at the end of the seventeenth century to 30,000 by the end of the eighteenth. J. de la Servière, Histoire de la mission du Kiang-nan, Jésuites de la Province de France, Vol. 1: jusqu’à l’établissement d’un vicaire apostolique jésuite (1840–1856) [History of the Jiangnan mission, Jesuits from the province of France, Vol. 1: to the establishment of a Jesuit apostolic vicariate (1840–1856)] (Paris: P. Guenther, 1914), 10–11. In some regions, Christian adherents increased. 9. Fortunato Margiotti, “La Cina cattolica al traguardo della maturità” [Catholic China as it reached maturity], in Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide Memoria Rerum, 1662–1972: 350 anni a servizio delle missioni [History of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, 1662–1972: 350 years in the service of the missions], Vol. 3, Part 1, ed. Joseph Metzler (Rome: Herder, 1975), 510. The figure of thirty missionaries in 1810 does not include priests in Macao, which was administered by Portuguese authorities. Louis Wei, La politique missionnaire de la France en Chine, 1842–1856: l’ouverture des cinq ports chinois à commerce étranger et la liberté religieuse [French missionary policy in China, 1842–1856: the opening of five Chinese posts to foreign commerce and religious freedom] (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1961), 95, cites a publication of 1822 for the figures of thirty-one European missionaries and eighty Chinese priests in China in 1810. He reports that perhaps twelve foreign Catholic missionaries were officially executed between 1724 and 1842. Ibid., 53. A Catholic periodical in the early twentieth century listed twenty-three martyred China missionaries in the same period, all but two as a consequence of imprisonment or execution. Les Missions de Chine et du Japon [Missions of China and Japan], 5th year (Beijing: Imprimerie des Lazaristes, 1923), 524–526. 10. Robert E. Entenmann, “Christian Virgins in Early Qing, Sichuan,” in Lutz, Pioneer Chinese Christian Women, 141. Similar figures, with emphasis on setbacks (especially 1810–1818) followed by renewed growth, as well as a discussion of phases in the proscription of Chrisitianity, are presented in Qin Heping, Jidu zongjiao zai Sichuan chuanbo shigao [Historical sketch of the propagation of Christianity in Sichuan] (Chengdu: Sichuan chuban jituan, 2006), 14–17, 190–206. Menegon, Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars, 142, writing about a region in northeast Fujian province (Mindong), records 8,000 Catholics in 1744 and 13,000 in 1838. He attributes the growth of those Catholic communities to successful accommodations with the general population in the area and with local officials, despite the formal law. For a vivid portrayal of official tolerance toward Catholics in Sichuan in the late eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth, see Robert Entenmann, “Chinese Catholics and Their Relations with the State during the Campaign

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Notes to pages 13–14

against White Lotus,” in Contextualization of Christianity in China: An Evaluation in Modern Perspective, ed. Peter Chen-main Wang (Sankt Augustin: Institut Monumenta Serica, 2007), 227–242. For a discussion of new scholarship on imperial policy in the first years of the nineteenth century (including changed approaches to sectarians), see William T. Rowe, “Introduction: The Significance of the Qianlong-Jiaqing Transition in Qing History,” Late Imperial China 32, no. 2 (December 2011): 74–88. 11. This point emerges in various places in the narrative in Willeke, Imperial Government and Catholic Missions, for example, page 10. See also Ferreux, “Histoire de la Congrégation,” 84; Susan Naquin, Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 577–580. These exempted priests in Beijing numbered over twenty as the prohibition against Christianity was decreed in 1724. Zhang Li and Liu Jiantang, Zhongguo jiaoanshi [History of jiao’an in China] (Chengdu: Sichuan-sheng Shehui Kexueyuan Chubanshe, 1987), 156. 12. Lars P. Laaman, Chinese Heretics in Late Imperial China: Christian Inculturation and State Control, 1720–1850 (London: Routledge, 2006), 28–29, 30, 42–44, 46, 60–61, 66–67, 74–75, 89. Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 192–213, 770–771. 13. Laaman, Chinese Heretics, 46–47, suggests that, in periods of persecution, Chinese officials were inclined to be more lenient with Chinese Christians who could claim that their religion was inherited, because its practice was thereby legitimated by filiality. It is the thesis of Eugenio Menegon’s book, Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars, that Christianity was transformed into a local religion in China during the late empire and on up to the present, at least in Fuan and vicinity in Fujian province. 14. The first Protestant missionary arrived in China in 1807. There had been only ten Protestant baptisms by 1833, and there were fewer than 400 Chinese Protestant Christians by the time the treaties were fully in place in 1860. Samuel Hugh Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume II: 1500–1900 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2005), 286–289, 463–472. 15. The topic is surveyed in Standaert, Handbook of Christianity, Vol. 1, 449–452, 462–466. Liam Matthew Brockey, Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2007), 143–148, reports the reasons offered by European Jesuits in the seventeenth century for their reluctance to qualify Chinese priests. They included probable deficiencies in either their Latin education or their expertise in Chinese literature, their questionable loyalty to the Jesuit order, and the scandal that would result from defections after admission. In 1845, the prefect of the Propaganda, J. Fransoni, summarized three centuries of papal policy as one of urging upon bishops in various parts of the world “the formation with indefatigable zeal of an indigenous clergy,” to prepare the way for indigenous bishops. Reprinted in Joseph Gabet, Les Missions Catholique en Chine en 1846: coup d’œil sur l’état des missions en Chine, présenté au Saint-Père le Pape Pie IX [Catholic missions in China in 1846: a look at the state of missions in China, presented to the Holy Father, Pope Pius IX] (Paris: Valmonde, 1999), 67–76. Rome was not perfectly consistent in pressing for Chinese prelates. Two cases in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, where promising proposals for Chinese bishops fell short of accomplishment, are related in Wei, Politique missionnaire, 65–70. Nor were China missions alone in dragging their feet: the Catholic church in India and Spanish America are further examples. C. R. Boxer, The Church Militant and Iberian Expansion, 1440– 1770 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press), 2–29; J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 200, 406; Moffet, A History of Christianity in Asia, Vol. 2, passim.

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16. Laaman, Chinese Heretics, 4–5, 77. 17. Margiotti, “La Cina cattolica,” 510. Standaert, Handbook of Christianity, Vol. 1, 301–303, differs slightly in counting missionaries and Chinese clergy. 18. Louis Wei, Le Saint-Siège et la Chine de Pié XI à nos jours [The Holy See and China from Pius XI to the present] (Sotte-ville-les-Rouen: A. Allais, 1971), 121–122; Menegon, Ancesters, Virgins, and Friars, 112–113; Brockey, Journey to the East, 135–136. He was Luo Wenzao (1616?– 1691), a Dominican priest from Fuan in Fujian province. 19. Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, 83. Standaert, Handbook of Christianity, Vol. 1, 286–287. Christina Min Bing Cheng, Macau: A Cultural Janus (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1999), 54. 20. Lach and Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, 222–224. Jean Beckmann, “La Congrégation de la Propagation de la Foi face à la politique internationale,” in Les cahiers de la Nouvelle Revue de Science Missionnaire [Papers of the New Review of Missionary Science] (Schöneck Beckenreid: Administration de la Nouvelle Revue de Science Missionnaire, 1963), 6–10. 21. For a discussion of the canonical differentiation between diocesan bishops and apostolic vicars with episcopal character, see Claude Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire du Saint-Siège sous Léon XIII (1878–1903): centralisation romaine et défis culturels [The missionary strategy of the Holy See under Leo XII (1978–1903): Roman centralization and cultural challenges] (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, Palais Farnèse, 1994), 178–179. 22. Beckmann, “Congrégation de la Propagation de la Foi,” 18–20. 23. Lach and Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, Vol. 3, 198. Jean Beckman, “La Congrégation de la Propagation de la Foi,” 21. 24. Wei, Le Saint-Siège et la Chine, 122–123. 25. José Hermano Saraiva, Portugal: A Companion History (Manchester, U.K.: Carcanet, 1997), 99. 26. Margiotti, “La Cina cattolica,” 512–514. 27. Standaert, Handbook of Christianity, Vol. 1, 317–354. There were also small numbers of Spanish Augustinians. 28. Wei, Politique missionnaire, 83–84. Latin texts of the letters are given in Servière, Histoire de la mission du Kiang-nan, Vol. 1, appendixes 1 and 2. Wei, Politique missionnaire, 62, 450–451, charges that the Beitang was sold by a Portuguese priest in 1826. The sad fate of the other three Catholic churches in these years is recounted in ibid., 57–64. Sohier, “Mgr Alphonse Favier et la protection des missions en Chine (1870–1905),” questions whether Louis Wei has reliable sources for the matter of the sale of the Beitang. Alphonse Favier, Péking: Histoire et Description (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1902), 203, states that the Beitang was sold to an official by order of the emperor for 5,000 taels and was torn down in 1827. Lamaan, Christian Heretics, 73 and 78, writes of the demolition of the Beitang in 1827, without addressing the issue of its possible sale the previous year. Naquin, Peking, 584, writes of its confiscation in 1826. 29. Wei, Politique missionnaire, 84; Lamaan, Christian Heretics, 80. 30. Wei, Politique missionnaire, 87–91, 183–189, 470–473. Details regarding Count Besi’s mission to China, including his conflicts with the Jesuits, can be found in Servière, Histoire de la Mission du Kiang-nan, Vol. 1, 15–108. 31. Regarding Lazarist organization from the late eighteenth century until the 1840s and the transition in the 1840s from Portuguese to French leadership, see Joseph Loftus, “Dancing in Tight Shoes: The Vincentian Mission,” in The Catholic Church and the Chinese World: Between

268

Notes to pages 17–19

Colonialism and Evangelization (1840–1911), ed. Agostino Giovagnoli and Elisa Giunipero (Rome: Urbaniana University Press, 2005), 142–148. 32. Joseph de la Servière, La nouvelle mission du Kiang-nan (1840–1922) [The new Jiangnan mission (1840–1922)] (Shanghai: Imprimèrie de la Mission, 1925), 16. 33. Wei, La politique missionnaire, 466–469. 34 . Details of these reforms can be followed in ibid., 91–92, 466–469; Margiotti, “La Cina cattolica,” 516–519; Patrick Taveirne, Han-Mongol Encounters and Missionary Endeavors: A History of Scheut in Ordos (Hetao), 1974–1911 (Leuven: Leuvan University Press, 2004), 166– 167. Similar changes, along with similar resistances and controversies, marked the Catholic presence in Ceylon, Malaya, and India. Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, Vol. 2, 336– 358, 431–433. 35. Brockey, Journey to the East, 174, suggests that the faster growth of Chinese Christian communities than the increase in missionaries had by the end of the seventeenth century led to a loss of missionary control. By the end of the next century, this loss of control would have become much more pronounced. 36. The “inculturation” of Christianity in this period and its interaction and mutual borrowing with Chinese folk religion is a major theme in Lamaan, Christian Heretics. Françoise Aubin has examined closely the infusion of original Chinese elements into Catholic ritual up into the twentieth century: “La vision catholique de la religiosité Chinoise et Mongole: l’expérience des missionnaires de Scheut en Mongolie Chinoise (XIXe–XXe siècles)” [The Catholic vision of Chinese and Mongolian religiosity: the experience of Scheut missionaries in Chinese Mongolia (19th and 20th centuries)], Mélanges de l’école française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée 101, no. 2 (1989): 1017–1026; “About Chinese Catholics (Late Qing-Early Republican Era),” in Historiography of the Chinese Catholic Church: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. Jeroom Heyndrickx (Leuven: Ferdinand Verbiest Foundation, K. U. Leuven, 1994), 63–72. 37. An example from 1879 of such acceptance is given in: Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 367. 38. Richard F. Madsen, “Beyond Orthodoxy: Catholicism as Chinese Folk Religion,” in Uhalley, China and Christianity, 240–244. R. G. Tiedemann writes of the emergence in this period of “a kind of Chinese ‘folk Christianity’ ” in “Christianity and Chinese ‘Heterodox Sects’: Mass Conversion and Syncretism in Shandong Province in the Early Eighteenth Century,” Monumenta Serica 44 (1996): 368, 373–374, 378. See also William T. Rowe, Hankow: Conflict and Community in a Chinese City, 1796–1895 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989), 261. 39. Bernard Plongeron, “‘Imperatores’ et ‘Piscatores’ devant l’Asie au XVIIIe siècle: théologie et mission” [“Commanders” and “fishermen” in the presence of Asia in the eighteenth century: theology and mission], in Les réveils missionnaires en France du moyen-âge à nos jours (XIIe–XXe siècles) [Missionary awakenings in France from the middle ages to our day], ed. Guy Duboscq (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984), 154. 40. Eugenio Menegon, “The ‘Teachings of the Lord of Heaven’ in Fujian: Between Two Worlds and Times,” in Time, Temporality, and Imperial Transition: East Asia from Ming to Qing, ed. Lynn A. Struve (Honolulu: Association for Asian Studies and the University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), 205–208, discusses degrees of resistance to the Dominicans’ efforts to end ancestor reverence among Christians in Fuan and vicinity in Fujian. In Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars, 274– 300, Menegon analyzes the manner in which Dominicans in Fujian treated the issue in practice and suggests that they offered their constituents a new, accommodating Catholic version of filial piety. Mungello, Forgotten Christians of Hangzhou, 156–163, describes an essay by the Chinese

Notes to pages 19–20

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Christian Zhang Xingyao (1633–1715) arguing in favor of the ancestral rites. In “The Problem of Chinese Rites in Eighteenth-Century Sichuan,” Uhalley, China and Christianity, 127–136, Robert Entenmann finds resistance in Sichuan to the papal rites decrees until the mid-eighteenth century, but accommodation thereafter. 41. Lamaan, Chinese Heretics, 20–21, 36. 42. George Minamiki, The Chinese Rites Controversy: From Its Beginnings to Modern Times (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985), 81, 91–93. 43. Wei, Politique missionnaire, 85–86. 44. Ibid., 467–473. Joseph Van den Brandt, Les Lazaristes en Chine, 1697–1935 [The Lazarists in China, 1697–1935] (Beiping: Imprimerie des Lazaristes, 1936), #69. Servière, Histoire de la Mission du Kiang-nan, Vol. 1, 93–96. For a more detailed account of these complex circumstances in Jiangnan, see Eric O. Hanson, Catholic Politics in China and Korea (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1980), 17–20; R. G. Tiedemann, “Indigenous Agency, Religious Protectorates, and Chinese Interests: The Expansion of Christianity in Nineteenth-Century China,” in Converting Colonialism: Vision and Realities in Mission History, 1706–1914, ed. Dana L. Robert (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), 215–218; R. G. Tiedemann, “The Controversy over the Formation of an Indigenous Clergy and the Establishment of a Catholic Hierarchy in China, 1846–1926,” in Light a Candle: Encounters and Friendship with China, ed. Roman Malek and Gianni Criveller (Sankt Augustin: Institut Monumenta Serica, 2010), 347–350. To the European Lazarists, Shen (c. 1790–1879) was known as Matthieu Chen de Segueira. 45. Servière, Histoire de la Mission du Kiang-nan, Vol. 1, 25–26. 46. Ibid., 26–28, 91. A similar set of problems accompanying the return of Catholic missionaries in force to India in the 1830s is described in Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society, 1700–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 428–437, 448–452. Bayly argues that what the European missionaries saw as “corruptions” of ritual among old Christians were actually understandable adaptations to local history and local concerns. 47. Brockey, Journey to the East, 366–401. 48. R. G. Tiedemann, “Indigenous Agency,” 211–220. Robert E. Entenmann, “Christian Virgins in Eighteenth-Century Sichuan,” in Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, ed. Daniel H. Bays (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 180–193. Raymond Renson, “Virgins in Central Mongolia,” in The History of the Relations between the Low Countries and China in the Qing Era (1644–1911), ed. W. F. Vande Walle and Noël Golvers (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), 343–367. D. E. Mungello, Drowning Girls in China: Female Infanticide since 1650 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), 107–111. R. G. Tiedemann, “A Necessary Evil: The Contribution of Chinese ‘Virgins’ to the Growth of the Catholic Church in Late Qing China,” in Lutz, Pioneer Chinese Christian Women, 87–107. Menegon, Ancesters, Virgins, and Friars, 89, 301–339. See ibid., 317–318, for a listing of the various terms used in Chinese for these Virgins. Beatrice Leung and Patricia Wittberg, “Catholic Religious Orders of Women in China: Adaptation and Power,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 43, no. 1 (March 2004): 69–70, catalogue other Chinese versions of sisterhoods of unmarried adults. 49. Servière, Histoire de la Mission du Kiang-nan, Vol. 1, 24–25. Count Besi wrote to the Propaganda of the serious troubles arising from the Virgins in Jiangnan: they had come “diaconesses, and diaconesses more powerful than those of Christian antiquity.” Wei, La politique missionnaire, 285–287.

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Notes to pages 21–22

50. Entenmann, “Christian Virgins in Eighteenth-Century Sichuan,” 189–191. 51. Susan Naquin, Millenarian Rebellion in China: The Eight Trigrams Uprising of 1853 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 22, 41–42, 47–48. Perhaps another clue to the emergence of female Catholic leadership in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a relative immunity from official retribution. “Evidently, women were not normally prosecuted as principals in criminal cases involving heretical sects.” Ibid., 299. 52. The local rules for the Virgins that were developed in the mid-eighteenth century and then in 1784 were ratified and expanded in Rome are translated in Entenmann, “Christian Virgins in Early Qing,” 141–158. The effort by the missions to transform the Chinese Virgins into more conventional female religious communities is related in Handbook of Christianity in China. Volume Two: 1800 to the Present, ed. R. G. Tiedemann (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 121, 125, 241–244, 587–599. 53. In 1892, there were 1,060 Christian Virgins in Sichuan, and the numbers subsequently increased. Entenmann, “Christian Virgins in Eighteenth-Century Sichuan,” 192. A report of June 30, 1911, by the vicariate of East Sichuan (assigned to the MEP, with its see at Chongqing) described the recruitment and lifestyle of members of the Institute of Chinese Virgins, reorganized in 1779 or 1780. The same report expresses the wish that these women be transformed into regular female religious but acknowledges their importance to church schools. PropA, 503 (1911), 727r–727v. The vicariate of North Sichuan, with its see in Chengdu, reported 861 Chinese Virgins in 1903. State of Mission, “Exercise 1902–1903,” August 16, 1903. AMEP, Vol. 529B. Other indications of the flourishing of Chinese Virgins in the early twentieth century include 200–300 in the Guangdong apostolic prefecture, under the MEP, in 1914; 53 in the East Jiangxi vicariate, under the Lazarists, in 1913; 676 in the Southeast Zhili vicariate, under the Jesuits, in 1913; 220 in the North Zhili vicariate, under the Lazarists, in 1913; 492 in South Shandong, under the Society of the Divine Word, in 1914; 820 in Jiangnan, under the Jesuits, in 1914. PropA, 547 (1914), 221r–230v, 378v, 454v; PropA, new series, rubrica 130, anno 1914 (unbound, lacking volume number), 22r–v, 360r–362r. Richard Madsen, “Beyond Orthodoxy,” 244, reports meeting women carrying on this tradition in Tianjin in 1993. Alan Richard Sweeten, Christianity in Rural China: Conflict and Accommodation in Jiangxi Province, 1860–1900 (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 2001), 253, reports an interview in 1996 with the last of the “consecrated virgins” of the rural Christian community at Jiudu, Jianchang county, Jiangxi province. Menegon, Ancesters, Virgins, and Friars, 353, 365–366, reports 328 beatas (or consecrated Virgins) in Fuan country, Fujian province, in 1949, and describes their reemergence in that area after the Cultural Revolution. 54. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 256. The Sichuan Institute of Christian Virgins required that the members be supported by their natal families. Entenmann, “Christian Virgins in Eighteenth-Century Sichuan,” 191. R. G. Tiedemann indicates that the Catholic Virgins were generally supported by their families, implying a certain affluence, but that others might support themselves by labor, for example, in textile production, or might receive mission subsidies, as described in this quotation. “A Necessary Evil,” 99–100. A similar portrait is given in Menegon, Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars, 332–342. 55. Ferreux, “Histoire de la Congrégation, ” 134–135; Alphonse Morelli, Notes d’histoire sur la vicariat de Tcheng-ting-fou, 1858–1933 [Historical notes on the vicariate of Zhengdingfu, 1858– 1933] (Beijing: Imprimerie des Lazaristes, 1934), 15–21; Wei, Politique missionnaire, 466–467; Tiedemann, Handbook of Christianity in China, Vol. 2, 129–130.

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56. Wei, Politique missionnaire, 468–469. 57. Jean-Claude Baumont, “La naissance de l’idée missionnaire en France au début du XIXe siècle” [Birth of the missionary idea in France at the beginning of the 19th century], in Dubocq, Réveils missionnaires en France, 201–222. 58. The Society for the Propagation of the Faith raised almost two million francs for missions in 1839. The Holy Childhood Society (Oeuvre de la Sainte Enfance) was founded by Charles de Forbin-Janson, bishop of Nancy, to care for and baptize unfortunate children in China. It set aside for China missions 300,000 francs each year from 1843 to 1854. John F. Cady, The Roots of French Imperialism in Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1954), 26. In 1869, it raised nearly two million francs. Henrietta Harrison, “‘A Penny for the Little Chinese’: The French Holy Childhood Association in China, 1843–1951,” American Historical Review 13, no. 1 (2008): 73. 59. Joseph Michel, “Géographie de l’élan missionnaire français” [Geography of the French missionary impulse], Duboscq, Réveils missionnaires en France, 387. 60. Fernand Boulard, ed., Matériaux pour l’histoire religieux du peuple français, XIXe–XXe siècles [Materials for the religious history of the French people, 19th and 20th centuries] (Paris: Editions de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1982), 600. 61. Wei, Politique missionnaire, 505. 62. Pär Kristoffer Cassel, Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), explores the intricacies of consular jurisdiction and extraterritoriality as practiced in nineteenth-century China. 63. Treaties, Conventions, Etc., between China and Foreign States, Vol. 1 (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1917), 771–813. 64. Cady, Roots of French Imperialism, 68–69. 65. Wei, Politique missionnaire, 306–346. Texts are given at pp. 562–564. 66. A French official explained to a missionary bishop that Lagrené had not pressed for the free circulation of Catholic missionaries in China because it would have been refused and because, if won, it would also cause harm by indirectly acquiring the same rights for Protestant missionaries, as well as other Europeans. Wei, Politique missionnaire, 320–321. 67. Cady, Roots of French Imperialism, 73, 77–78. Lagrené’s successor as chief French representative in China found certain missionaries “imprudent” with regard to their illegal sojourns in the “interior” and refused to protest with Chinese officials their occasional arrests, but he also did not stop their behavior. Wei, Politique missionnaire, pp. 479–483. On the eve of the 1848 revolution in France, Guizot had been contemplating regulations for disciplining missionaries who violated the treaties, but they were not enacted. 68. Wei, Politique missionnaire, 380, 398. Cady, Roots of French Imperialism, 62. 69. Wei, Politique missionnaire, 407–431, 446–448. 70. Wei, Politique missionaire, 496. Shen Weibin and Yang Yonggang, “1844–1858 nian waiguo chuanjiaoshi dui Zhongguo neidi de shentou” [The infiltration of foreign missionaries into the Chinese interior in the years 1844 to 1858], in Zhang and Peng, Jindai Zhongguo jiaoan yanjiu, 452–453, count only fifty-two illegal missionary intrusions, mostly Catholic, beyond the treaty ports in the specified years. 71. Chapdelaine is accused of having committing various serious crimes against Chinese subjects in Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 341, 775. Jean Charbonnier, “The Activity of the Paris Foreign Missionary Society (MEP),” in Giovagnoli, Catholic Church and the Chinese World, 133–136, vigorously contests the allegations. A British interpreter reported being told by the

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abducted governor-general of the area that Chapdelaine was locally believed to be a Cantonese in cahoots with rebels, presumably the Taipings, and that Chapdelaine (improbably) did not identify himself as French. J. Y. Wong, Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism, and the Arrow War (1856–1860) in China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 267. 72. The texts of these passports are given in “Protection des missions catholiques en Chine et la diplomatie,” ADNantes 59. 73. “Tableau des Traité, Conventions et arrangements divers, relatifs au Protectorat de La France sur les chrétientés en Chine,” Paris, May 10, 1900, ADNantes 59. (Emphasis in the original.) As we shall see, by this date one whole vicariate, staffed by Germans, had removed themselves from French protection, circa 1891; hence “all foreign ecclesiastics” was not quite accurate in 1900, even for Catholics. For non-French testimony regarding the superiority of French passports, see Domenico Cannone, L’evangelizzazione della provincia cinese del Ho-non nella seconda metà del secolo XIX [The evangelizaion of the Chinese province of Henan in the second half of the 19th century] (Naples: Pontificio Instituto Missioni Estere, 1987), 116. 74. Taveirne, Han-Mongol Encounters, 214, cites a letter from the French chargé d’affaires in Beijing advising the Scheut missionaries to avoid intervening on behalf of the material interests of Chinese Catholics, since the French legation could do little, even if the Catholic was being unjustly harassed or arrested. 75. G. Cogordan to Foreign Minister, Beijing, April 12, 1886, in ADNantes 18. On the eve of the Boxer affair, French authorities were still celebrating the uniqueness of France’s commitment to Chinese Catholics. “Droit d’intervention de la France en faveur des Missions et chrétientés de Chine,” May 11, 1900; “Note pour le Ministre,” Paris, May 21, 1900: ADNantes 59. 76. Treaties, Conventions, Etc., between China and Foreign States, Vol. 1, 888. 77. Wei, Politique missionnaire, 563. 78. Although there were gray areas, nonmissionaries were not considered to have the right to acquire landed property in “the interior” even after the 1858 and 1860 treaties. Westel W. Willoughby, Foreign Rights and Interests in China, Vol. 2 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1927), 692–698. 79. Wei, Politique missionnaire, 456–459, holds the missionaries uniquely responsible. Cady, Roots of French Imperialism, 255, argues that the official French representative, Baron Gros, was a coconspirator. Wang Zhongmao, “WanQing Tianzhu jiaohui zai neidi de zhichanquan shulun” [An account and discussion of the right of the Catholic church to purchase real estate in the interior in the late Qing], Qingshi yanjiu 3 (August 2007): 89–90, argues against Baron Gros’s complicity. 80. Willoughby, Foreign Rights and Interests in China, Vol. 2, 706–713. Charles A. Litzinger, “Patterns of Missionary Cases Following the Tientsin Massacre, 1870–1875,” Papers on China 23 ( July 1970): 89–91. 81. The official was Li Hongzhang. Wang Zhongmao, “WanQing Tianzhujiao,” 90–91. 82. As the French minister in Beijing explained two decades later: “it was to preserve the advantages of this provision [permission for missionaries to purchase land in the interior as provided in the Chinese text of the Beijing Convention of 1860] without having to invoke it that M. Berthemy entered into talks with the Zongliyamen.” G. Cogordan to foreign minister, Beijing, April 12, 1886, in ADNantes 18. 83. The Chinese text of the Gérard Convention, which includes the Berthemy Convention within it, can be found in ADNantes 609.

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84. ADNantes 59. 85. Publishing in the 1920s, Willoughby, Foreign Rights and Interests in China, Vol. 2, 709, notes that “the Chinese have sought to have the doctrine established that the title to the lands sold becomes vested in the collectivity of the Chinese converts, rather then in the legal entity of the foreign missions.” 86. G. Cogordan to the foreign minister, Beijing, April 12, 1886. ADNantes 18. 87. The Chinese text can be found in ADNantes 609; the French translation, in ADNantes 59. For a more detailed discussion of the legal issues regarding missionary acquisition of property in this period, see Sweeten, Christianity in Rural China, 99–107. 88. Wang Zhongmao, “WanQing Tianzhujiaohui,” 92. Zhang Zhidong was among those expressing concern. 89. Willoughby, Foreign Rights and Interests in China, Vol. 2, 707–709. 90. Roger Thompson, “Twilight of the Gods in the Chinese Countryside: Christians, Confucians, and the Modernizing State, 1861–1911,” in Bays, Christianity in China, 54–60. “Tableau des Traités, Conventions et arrangements divers, relatifs au Protectorat de la France sur les chrétientés en Chine,” Paris, May 1, 1900, ADNantes 59. 91. One example was the use of the French state’s prerogative of militarily conscripting priests to block the disapproved appointment of a West Sichuan bishop in 1915. Marcel Launay and Gerard Moussay, eds., Les Missions Etrangères: Trois siècles et demi d’histoire et d’aventure en Asie [The Foreign Missions [of Paris]: Three and a half centuries of history and adventure in Asia] (Paris: Editions Perrin, 2008), 289. Other cases will emerge in our subsequent narrative. Chapter 2 1. A famous instance was James Legge, the missionary translator of important parts of China’s classical literature, who in 1886 admitted avoiding missionary gatherings for fear of being stigmatized. Norman J. Girardot, “The Victorian Text of Chinese Religion: With Special Reference to the Protestant Paradigm of James Legge’s Religions of China,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 12 (2001): 49–50. On the critical reaction to Legge and other Protestant clergy who spoke well of aspects of Chinese culture in this period, see Gary Tiedemann, “Social Gospel and Fundamentalism: Conflicting Approaches of Protestant Missionaries,” in Giovagnoli, Catholic Church and the Chinese World, 93–94. Prosper Giquel was a former French naval officer who served from 1866 to 1874 as director of the Fuzhou Shipyards under the Chinese government, who opposed both extraterritoriality and the French Religious Protectorate, and who was denounced for his views. Steven A. Leibo, Transferring Technology to China: Prosper Giquel and the Self-Strengthening Movement (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1985), 134–138. 2. Immanuel Hsü, China’s Entrance into the Family of Nations: The Diplomatic Phase, 1858–1880 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 142. 3. For an examination of the contest between moderates and ideological fundamentalists in the bureaucracy and court, see Lloyd E. Eastman, Throne and Mandarins: China’s Search for a Policy during the Sino-French Controversy, 1880–1885 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967). 4. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 40–52, 169–170. An example was an interrogation from the bishop of North Gansu to the Propaganda as to whether it was permissible for Catholic

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merchants to accept opium in payment of debts and later to sell it, because such transactions were crucial to trade. The issue was passed on to the Holy Office, which gave permission. Hubert Otto (apostolic vicar of North Gansu) to the Propaganda, Liangzhoufu, December 9, 1909; Propaganda to the Assessor of the Holy Office, February 15, 1910; Propaganda to Otto, September 9, 1910: PropA, vol. 492, rubr. 130, pp. 491r–492r, 494r, 500r–v. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 150, referring to this deference to the Holy Office and the influence on the Propaganda prefect of other Curia cardinals, especially the secretary of state, registers his view that too much could be made of the sobriquet “red pope.” 5. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 221–224. The required five-year questions rose to 55 in 1861 and became 63 in 1877. 6. Thomas J. Reese, Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 231–234, 303. 7. Peter Hebblethwaite, In the Vatican (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1986), 60, 92–95. 8. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 339–349. 9. Ibid., 317–320. An interesting exception to the general rule came in 1904, when the Propaganda passed over the first choice (Freinademetz) of the superior general of the Society of the Divine Word for the bishopric of South Shandong. The Propaganda was apparently swayed by the objections of the German government on grounds of Freinademetz’s Austrian nationality. Fritz Bornemann, As Wine Poured Out: Blessed Joseph Freinademetz SVD, Missionary in China, 1879–1908 (Rome: Divine Word Missionaries, 1984), 420–425. 10. This sytem of “double authority” is usefully explored in Taveirne, Han-Mongol Encounters, 312–315. 11. Both organizations called themselves oeuvres (in the SPF case, after an initial existence as an association). In this usage, the word does not translate easily. “Work” is awkward. Perhaps “project” approximates the sense. The SPF long used “society” in English, and in deference to this tradition, I extend the use to the translation of Oeuvre de la Sainte Enfance, while acknowledging that the translation “Holy Childhood Association” is just as good: Harrison, “‘A Penny for the Little Chinese’: The French Holy Childhood Association in China, 1843–1951.” 12. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 71, 414–439 (after World War I, the receipts of the SPF increased greatly by virtue of growing American contributions). Richard Drevet, “L’Oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi et la propagande missionnaire au XIXe siècle” [The Society for the Propagation of the Faith and missionary propaganda in the nineteenth century], in Une appropriation du monde: mission et missions, XIXe–XXe siècles [Assimilating the world: mission and missions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries], ed. by Claude Prudhomme (Paris: Publisud, 2004), 23–43. James Patrick Tudesco, “Missionaries and French Imperialism: The Role of Catholic Missionaries in French Colonial Expansion, 1880–1905” (PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1980), 42–43. 13. Quoted in Alain Sauret, “China’s Role in the Foundation and Development of the Pontifical Society of the Holy Childhood,” in Heyndrickx, Historiography of the Chinese Catholic Church, 256. The bishop also declared the purpose of increasing the numbers of local clergy and training auxiliaries, but these additional aims were soon dropped. 14. M. L. H. [anon.], Sister Xavier Berkeley (1861–1944): Sister of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. Fifty-Four Years a Missionary in China (London: Burn Oates, 1949), 77. A letter from an MEP missionary in Sichuan in 1887 described the strategy of opening a pharmacy, offering free remedies for children, and identifying and baptizing those whose lives seemed in danger: “The little one

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who dies goes off to Paradise. . . . Here, with a sou, one can send a little angel to Paradise.” Henri Alliot, Un apôtre du Su-tchuen à la fin du XIXe siécle. René Usureau, ami intime et collaborateur très devoué du Père de Guébriant à ses debuts [An apostle of Sichuan at the end of the nineteenth century. René Usureau, close friend and very devouted collaborator of Father de Guébriant at his first appearances] (Angers: Imp. F. Gautier et A. Thébert, 1917), 37–38. 15. This logic is explored in Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 404–408; and Harrison, “‘A Penny for the Little Chinese,’” 79–83. Harrison also treats the issue of Catholic payments for foundlings, 83–88. Mungello, Drowning Girls in China, 80–89, emphasizes the purpose of rescuing Chinese children from infanticide. 16. Sauret, “China’s Role,” 254–255. 17. Harrison, “‘A Penny for the Little Chinese,’” 73. Sauret, “China’s Role,” 254–255, 261. 18. As an example, Sweeten, Christianity in Rural China, 187, records that from 1870 to 1886 the Catholic vicariate of North Jiangxi took about 6,000 children into its orphanages, of whom 4,000 died, and additionally baptized 100,000 dying children. 19. Mungello, The Spirit and the Flesh in Shandong, 1650–1785 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 18. Entenmann, “Chinese Virgins in Eighteenth-Century Sichuan,” 187–188. Gabriel Palâtre, L’infanticide et l’Oeuvre de la Sainte-Enfance en Chine [Infanticide and the Holy Childhood Society in China] (Shanghai: L’Orphelinat de Tou-sè-wè, 1877), chap. 6. 20. “Crise de notre Protectorat religieux en Chine (1886–1892)”: ADNantes 59. The memorandum is not dated. Internal evidence suggests that it was written about 1898. Since one German-staffed vicariate had already departed from the French Protectorate, the reference to “all” missionaries was not exact. 21. Quoted in Wei, Le Saint-Siège, la France et la Chine, 30–31. See also Launay, Missions Etrangères, 284. 22. Jean-Marie Mayeur and Madeleine Reberioux, The Third Republic from Its Origins to the Great War, 1871–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 100. 23. Circular to the bishops and superiors of the various Catholic missions in China, from Patenôtre, Beijing, April 21, 1879: ADNantes 418. In a similar vein in 1906, the new French minister asked the bishops to correspond with him regularly regarding the political, personnel, and economic affairs of their locality. Edmond Bapst to foreign minister, #60, Beijing, June 11, 1906, Annex, circular to the apostolic vicars, Beijing, June 4, 1906: AMAE, n.s. 312 (1902–1906). 24. Luciano Trincia, “Francia, Cina e Santa Sede: la ‘querelle’ intorno alla nunziatura di Pechino nel 1886” [France, China and the Holy See: the “quarrelling” about the Beijing nunciature in 1886], Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 51, no. 1 (1997): 3. M. C. Troy (vice-consul) to Indochina governor-general, Longzhou, January 22, 1921: AMAE, Asie 1918–1929, Chine, 65, p. 24. Goffe to Carnegie, telegram, Chengdu, July 9, 1906; Fox to Jordan, private letter, Chengdu, June 1, 1907; W. H. Wilkinson to Jordan, letter, Chengdu, June 14, 1911: FO 228/1729, FO 228/1660, and FO 228/1799. A case of enthusiastic reporting by an American Methodist missionary to an American consul regarding a Chinese arsenal makes no mention of payments. Jacob F. Peat to Wilcox (consul-general at Hankou), Chengdu, July 24, 1902 and August 22, 1903: NA RG 84, Hankou (C8), vol. 36. 25. “Note générale sur le protectorat des missions catholiques en Extrême-Orient,” February 18, 1906: ADNantes 59. 26. Delcassé to Beau (minister in Beijing), #153, Paris, September 4, 1901: ADNantes 59. The previous minister in Beijing, Pichon, had made a similar point when he wrote regarding the

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exaction of fees for the French government from indemnities: Pichon to Delcassé, #33, Beijing, April 27, 1900: AMAE, n.s. 323 (1899–1901). 27. An example was a Catholic hospital for Nanchang, Jiangxi province, negotiated with the Chinese government by the French minister, which the bishop of the area characterized as a “donum quod est onus grave” (a gift that is a heavy burden). He wrote that he would delay the project as long as he could. Louis Ferrant to Fiat (superior general of the Lazarists), Jiujiang, July 21, 1906: LazA. 28. Ferrant to Fiat, Nanchang, December 27, 1902 [original emphasis]: LazA, Letters. The French official campaign of pressure to establish this secondary school can be traced in L. Fatiguet (provicar of the North Jiangxi vicariate) to Dautremar (Hankou consul), Nanchang, March 19, 1898; Bezaure (Shanghai consul-general) to Hanotaux (foreign minister), #60, Shanghai, April 2, 1898; Bezaure to foreign minister, Shanghai, October 28, 1898: AMAE, n.s. 322. Bezaure hoped that “this potent agent [the school] will soon spread our influence over the large province of Jiangxi, one of the richest of the Yangzi valley, from which the British seek to expel us at any cost.” 29. For example, the bishop of the East Sichuan vicariate complained of official French interventions in the management of a mission hospital: F. S. Chouvellon (East Sichuan bishop) to Pierre Bons d’Anty (consul), Chongqing, March 12, 1900, and Bons d’Anty to Pichon (minister), Chongqing, March 14, 1900, both annexes to Pichon to Delcassé, #33, Beijing, April 27, 1900: AMAE, n.s. 323. See also note 27. 30. In the late 1890s, the Quai d’Orsay was anxious that Britain not take the lead in Sichuan, and the governor-general of the French colony of Indochina (Paul Doumer) wished to expand on the recent extraction of rights to a railway from Vietnam into Yunnan province and to create a French sphere of influence in Sichuan as a hinterland to Indochina. Hervé Barbier, “Les canonnières du Yang-tsé, 1900–1941” [The gunboats of the Yangzi, 1900–1941], in La France en Chine (1843–1943) [France in China, 1843–1943], ed. Jacques Weber (Nantes: Presse académique de l’ouest, 1997), 132–134. 31. Many letters from missionaries in Sichuan (especially Chongqing) on Yu Dongchen and Fleury’s kidnapping are in AMEP, 536B. The seized missionary published a detailed narrative of his experience: François Fleury, “La persécution au Su-tchuen et ma captivité” [Persecution in Sichuan and my captivity], Annales de la Société des Missions-Etrangères 13 (1900–1901): 2–51. The best account in English is in Judith Wyman, “Social Change, Anti-Foreignism and Revolution in China: Chongqing Prefecture, 1870s to 1911” (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 1993), 192–203, 216–220. 32. Qin Heping, Jidu zong jiao zai Sichuan, 216–217. S. Pichon to Delcassé, #12, Beijing, February 7, 1899: AMAE, n.s. 323 (Sichuan 1899–1901). The Chongqing consul’s full list included a French consulate in Chengdu (the provincial capital) and the extension of missionary rights to Tibet. Judith Wyman, “The Ambiguities of Chinese Antiforeignism: Chongqing, 1870–1900,” Late Imperial China 18, no. 2 (December 1997):108–109. This and other cases of linkage between missionary cases and commercial concessions, as well as the objection of the Chinese government, are discussed in Edmund S. Wehrle, Britain, China, and the Antimissionary Riots, 1891–1900 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Prss, 1966), 105–106, 114–115. 33. Foreign minister to Gélhin (Beijing legation), n.d. (refers to an 1898 communication): AMAE, n.s. 312 (1902–1906).

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34. I have previously used the translation “religious cases” but have been persuaded that such an expression would be an anachronism. Nicholas Standaert, “Christianity as a Religion in China”; Ter Haar, White Lotus Teachings. Since the syllabification of the word as rendered by pinyin rules might be obscure to those not familiar with the Mandarin sound system, I have added an apostrophe to indicate the appropriate break. 35. Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 762–889, lists 603 cases from 1861 through 1911 (and 380 for the years 1860 through 1899). Zhao Runsheng and Zhao Shuhao, “WanQing jiiaoan qiyin de lianghua fenxi” [A statistical analysis of the causes of late Qing jiao’an], Renwen zazhi 2 (1996): 112–113, counts 1,671 cases from 1861 to 1911. One of these authors in a subsequent article arrives at the figure of 1,921 for the years 1861 to 1911: Zhao Shuhao, “WanQing jiaoan fazhan jieduan xintan” [New inquiry into the stages of the development of late Qing jiao’an], as cited in Taveirne, Han-Mongol Encounters, 500. 36. For a survey of research in China on jiao’an to about 2000 and a discussion of the debates regarding the phenomenon, see Zhao Shuhao, “Jianguo yilai fanjiaohui douzheng yanjiu de huigu yu zhanwang” [Retrospect and prospects for research after 1949 on anti-Christian struggles], in Yihetuan yanjiu yibainian [Centennial of research on the Boxers], ed. Su Weizhi ( Jinan: Qilu shushe, 2000), 203–238. 37. Chen Yinkun, Qingji minjiao chongtu de lianghua fenxi (1860–1899) [Statistical analysis of conflict between the people and Christians in the late Qing, 1860–1899] (Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1991), 16–17, 44. In his statistical treatments, Chen varies his base number of cases in calculating proportions and trends. I do not attempt to unravel the resulting complexities and hence confine my use of his numbers to rather broad conclusions. Citing the same Zongli yamen collection of documents, Lanxin Xiang counts 700 “major religious disputes which involved missionaries” from 1856 to 1899. The Origins of the Boxer War: A Multinational Study (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 38. 38. Sweeten, Christianity in Rural China, 59, describes a special multicounty investigation by county officials that uncovered cases of conflict involving Christians that were settled locally and not reported further by either side. Regarding another Jiangxi county with a considerable Catholic and missionary presence during these years, he notes that there were no jiao’an and “most problems and quarrels were not litigated.” Ibid., 178. 39. Aggregated figures for missionaries in China vary a good deal from source to source, and it is often unclear as to who is included (nuns, brothers, priests in Macao and Hongkong, contemplatives, freelancing evangelists, missionary wives, Chinese clergy, etc.). I have extrapolated (and rounded off ) the figures here from Moffett, History of Christianity in Asia, Vol. 2, 463–500; Claude Soetens, L’Eglise catholique en Chine au XXe siècle [The Catholic church in China in the twentieth century] (Paris: Beauchesne, 1997), 23–24; Imperii sinensis missiones catholicae breviter indicantur. Secondum Descriptionem. a.d. 1901 S. Congr. De Prop. Fide: ADNantes 18; and Cohen, “Christian Missions and Their Impact,” 554–558. Soetens, Eglise catholique en Chine, 15, counts 417 Chinese Catholic priests and 350 Chinese Catholic female religious in 1900 but does not include the much larger number of consecrated Virgins. 40. Chen Yinkun, Qingji minjiao chongtu, 19–24, 32–35. The figures for Jiangsu are melded into the figures for the vicariate of Jiangnan, which included the two provinces of Jiangsu and Anhui. In any case, the number of Catholic jiao’an for Jiangnan was low. Chen’s listing of Zhili’s population is implausibly small. Chen counts Protestant jiao’an in the period 1885–1899 as most frequent in Sichuan, next in Hubei, and then at the same level in Shandong, Guangdong, and

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Manchuria. Also consulted for the Catholic estimates: “Tableau de l’Etat des Missions Catholique en Chine,” Missiones Catholicae cura S. Congregationis de Propaganda Fide descriptae 1890. On disturbances in Guangdong during the Sino-French War, see Eastman, Throne and Mandarins, 165. The totals of jiao’an for Sichuan in Wang Di, Kuachu fengbi de shijie, 686–687, are similar to Chen’s. Chen’s higher count for the last 15 years of the nineteenth century would appear to arise from his practice of counting all counties affected by Yu Dongchen’s uprising as separate cases. 41. The proportion of Catholic jiao’an was either 77.5 percent or 78.3 percent of all discernible cases, as calculated from the figures in Chen Yinkun, Qing ji minjiao chongtu, 30, 44. In a different study of jiao’an in the years 1870 to 1875, of 44 identifiable cases, 27 or 61.4 percent were Catholic cases, and 38.6 percent Protestant, at a time when Catholics were overwhelmingly more numerous (in 1869–1870, 400,000 Catholics and 6,000 Protestants). Litzinger, “Patterns of Missionary Cases,” 91–93. Xiang, Origins of the Boxer War, 38, lists a much lower proportion of Protestant-related jiao’an, but an even lower proportion of Protestant adherents. Reporting the research of Li Wenhui, Menegon in Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars, 361, records that in Fujian from the 1850s until 1900, jiao’an involving Protestants were 74 percent of the total, against only an identifiable 23 percent involving Catholics. One would need more detailed numbers to calculate exactly the average number of jiao’an per missionary. 42. Chen Yinkun, Qing ji minjiao chongtu, 62–65. Chen counts 1,903 non-Christian Chinese killed in the course of jiao’an in this period, many as a consequence of the collusion of bandits. A Catholic annual of 1923 listed 33 foreign Catholic missionaries (priests, sisters, and brothers) as martyrs between 1860 and 1899, including 11 in the Tianjin affair of June 1870. Les Missions de Chine et du Japon, fifth year (1923), 527–532. 43. Chen Yinkun, Qingji minjiao chongtu, 88–103,121–124, 206–210. 44. As an example, Zhao Runsheng, “WanQing jiaoan,” 111–114, is primarily devoted to this thesis. 45. Allen Richard Sweeten also argues against the relative importance of religious issues and of gentry instigation in Jiangxi jiao’an in this period. “Catholic Converts in Jiangxi Province: Conflict and Accommodation, 1860–1900,” in Bays, Christianity in China, 24–40. 46. These dynamics are explored in Charles A. Litzinger, “Rural Religion and Village Organization in North China: The Catholic Challenge in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Bays, Christianity in China, 41–52. 47. Chen Yinkun, Qingji minjiao chongtu, 74–86. For descriptions of some of the causes of jiao’an, see Cohen, “Christian Missions and Their Impact,” 559–573; Gianni Crivelier, “The Roman Seminary in Southern Shaanxi,” in Giovagnoli, Catholic Church and the Chinese World, 190–195. 48. R. G. Tiedemann, “Indigenous Agency,” 236, and “Yihetuan yu Tianzhujiaotu zai Huabei de wuzhuang chongtu” [Armed conflict in north China between Boxers and Catholics], Lishi yanjiu 5 (2000): 82, 87. Jiang Sun, “Yangjiao or the ‘Other’? Christianity and Chinese Society in the Second Half of the Ninetenth Century,” Frontiers of History in China 6, no. 1 (March 2011): 53–73. In a similar vein, Henrietta Harrison attributes Boxer violence in central Shanxi province to intervillage violence over water supply. “Village Politics and National Politics: The Boxer Movement in Central Shanxi,” in The Boxers, China, and the World, ed. Robert Bickers and R. G. Tiedemann (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), 8. 49. Some instances of the use of gunboats in jiao’an by the United Kingdom, France, and Germany are listed in Chen Yinkun, Qingji minjiao chongtu, 154.

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50. Eastman, Throne and Mandarins, 175, 189, 202. Chen Yinkun, Qing ji minjiao chongtu, 163. 51. Chen Yinkun, Qing ji minjiao chongtu, 45, 153–155. 52. Patrick Taveirne, “The Religious Case of Fengzhen District. Reclamation and Missionary Activities in Ĉaqar during the Late Qing Dynasty,” in Vande Walle, History of the Relations, 413, holds that “staunch supporters” of the French Religious Protectorate among French diplomats were the exception. Time and again, however, one sees even the ambivalent among French officials meticulously performing the protectionist function that French policy required. 53. Gérard Moussay and Brigitte Appavou, eds., Répertoire des membres de la Société des Missions Etrangères, 1659–2004 [Directory of the members of the Society for Foreign Missions, 1659–2004] (Paris: Archives des Missions Etrangères, 2004), 110. 54. JWJAD 1, #3: 1129–1131, 1139–1140, 1146 (documents 1258, 1260, 1274, 1286). 55. Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 397–398. Bradly W. Reed, Talons and Teeth: County Clerks and Runners in the Qing Dynasty (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 28. Wang Di, Kuachu fengbi de shijie, 685. JWJAD 1, #3: 1156–1157, 1191–1195, 1208–1209 (documents 1296, 1326, 1327, 1342). 56. Dabry (Hankou and Jiujiang consul) to Berthemy (Beijing minister), Hankou, October 17, 1864, quoting Father Mabileau of East Sichuan: ADNantes 32. 57. See the summary in Wei, Politique missionnaire, 540–541. 58. Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 398–400, 403–404. Qin Heping, Jidu zong jiao zai Sichuan, 228, 313–320. Qin on page 316 puts deaths in the second incident at close to 1,000 but refers to “over 200” deaths on page 228, and Zhang and Liu (405) have the figure 145. The two books also differ on the amount of the indemnity exacted on behalf of the Catholic missions: Qin (315), 110,000 taels; and Zhang and Liu (400), 80,000 taels. Further accounts are cited in the next note. 59. JWJAD 2, #2: 1110–1113, 1117–1138, 1142–1153, 1157–1158 (documents 870, 875, 881, 898). Cohen, China and Christianity, 134, 177–178, 208–218, 315 (notes 3 and 26). Wei, Politique missionnaire, 541. The settlement for this second Youyang incident provided for some executions of culprits and an indemnity put variously at 30,000 taels (Zhang and Li, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 404) and 42,000 taels (Qin Heping, Jidu zhongjiao zai Sichuan, 318–319). 60. Qin Heping, Jidu zhongjiao zai Sichuan, 250. 61. A detailed account of this jiao’an at Qianjiang, attached to Youyang in southeast Sichuan, 1873 to 1875, is given in ibid., 320–325. 62. Rochechouard to Louis Descazes (foreign minister), #78, Shanghai, May 7, 1876: AMAE, Politiques Intérieure 55, 155–157. Rochechouard alleged that the East Sichuan mission in the past dozen years had more disturbances (tracas) that all the other missions combined, but the allegation had to be hyperbole. By my count of jiao’an recorded in Jiaowu jiaoan dang 1, 2, and 3, for the years 1865 through 1876, Sichuan as a whole had more jiao’an than any other province, but only sixteen percent of those of all missions. 63. Brenier de Montmarand to Paris, #6, Beijing, October 6, 1876: AMAE, Correspondence Politique 55, 342–346. At the time, viceroy was the usual foreign term for the post of governor-general. The French minister’s charge against Desflèches of tax-farming—an illegal but common late Qing practice known as baolan—with respect to his Christian constituents was also leveled by Chinese officials. JWJAD 3, #2: 1316, 1323 (documents 954, 967). 64. Montmarand to Paris, #33, Beijing, February 12, 1877, and #34, Beijing, February 18, 1877: AMAE, Politique Intérieure 56, pp. 41–55, 63–69.

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Notes to pages 50–52

65. JWJAD 3, #2: 1316, 1320, 1321, 1323–1325 (documents 954, 964, 965, 967). The quotation is from page 1320. 66. Montmarand to Paris, #6, Beijing, October 6, 1876: AMAE, Correspondence Politique 55, 342–346. Montmarand to Paris, #34, February 18, 1877: AMAE, Politique Intérieure 56, 63–70. Zongli yamen to Montmarand, February 15, 1878, enclosed in Montmarand to Paris, #71, Beijing, March 25, 1878: AMAE, Politique Intérieure 57, 77–86. JWJAD 3, #2: 1321–1323 (document 965). See also Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 419–420. 67. Desflèches to Guilaume de Roquette, Chongqing, April 28, 1876, and de Roquette to Rochechouart, Beijing, May 23, 1876, enclosed in Rochechouart to Paris, #81, Beijing, May 25, 1876: AMAE, Correspondence Politique 55, 175–186. 68. Louis Descazes to Beijing, #18, Paris, July 13, 1876: AMAE, Correspondence Intérieure 55, 231–232; Descazes to Beijing, #24, Versailles, December 15, 1876: AMAE, Politique Intérieure 55. 69. Brenier de Montmarand to Paris, #34, Beijing, February 18, 1977, and telegram #2, March 5, 1877: AMAE, Politique Intérieure 56, 63–69, 107. Bande (ambassador to Holy See) to Paris, Rome, March 26, 1877, and #34, April 8, 1877: AMAE, Politique Intérieure 56, 153. 70. Rochechouart to Paris, #81, May 25, 1876; Rochechouart to Paris, #84, June 7, 1876; de Roquette (chargé d’affaires) to Paris, #3, July 6, 1876; Montmarand to Paris, #6, October 6, 1876; Montmarand to Paris, #12, November 3, 1976: AMAE, 55, 187–188, 193–197, 225–230, 342–346, 420–421. The new Sichuan governor-general, Ding Baozhen, recruited a Catholic bishop in Shandong (where Ding had been governor) to write the Vatican of the need to remove Desflèches for the sake of social peace and stability. Qin Heping, Jidu zong jiao zai Sichuan, 252–253. 71. JWJAD 3, #2: 1320 (document 964). See also JWJAD 3, #2: various documents, 1256– 1325. 72. JWJAD 3, #2: 1331–1343 (documents 968, 970, 979, 982, 986). 73. Descazes to Beijing, #21, October 16, 1877; Montmarand to Paris, #63, December 12, 1877: AMAE, Politique Intérieure 56, 379, 497. The indented quotation is from: Paris to Beijing, #4, June 26, 1878: AMAE, Politique Intérieure 57, 141–144. 74. Montmorand to Paris, #80, “Tchefou,” July 9, 1878: AMAE, Politique Intérieure 57, 155– 156. The two remaining East Sichuan cases were indeed settled during July 1978, although, in the official Chinese account, not without strong pressure from the new Sichuan governor-general. JWJAD 3, #2: 1340–1343 (documents 986, 987). 75. Quoted in Wyman, “Social Change,” 41. For a discussion of the methods of acquisition of land by the Catholic Church in Sichuan and the amounts acquired, see Qin Heping, Jidu zong jiao zai Sichuan, 182–183. 76. Chen Yinkun, Qingji minjiao chongtu, 161–165. 77. S. Pichon to Delcassé, Beijing, January 25, 1900: AMAE, n.s. 323 (1899–1901). 78. In retaliation for antimissionary riots in Chengdu, the Sichuan capital, in 1895, which started with incidents involving Protestant missionaries but then extended to Catholic establishments, the Chinese government was pressed to exclude from further official service the governor-general at the time, even though he had reached the end of his term in Sichuan. Although no foreigners had been seriously injured, thirteen accused rioters were executed, eleven more Chinese officials were dismissed, and large indemnities were paid, especially to the Catholics (who got 730,000 taels). In addition, the French minister at this juncture dispatched warships to Nanjing to underline French requests for agreement to a railway into Yunnan province, which was granted. Irwin Hyatt, “The Chengtu Riots (1895): Myths and Politics,” Papers on China 18 (1969): 26–54.

Notes to pages 52–56

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79. P. D. Coates, The China Consuls: British Consular Officers, 1843–1943 (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1988), 371–372. 80. Wehrle, Britain, China, and the Antimissionary Riots, 64. From the 1860s, British officials in China concluded that they could not restrict their missionaries as long as the French and others seemed to be allowed free rein. Cohen, China and Christianity, 225, 337. 81. Wehrle, Britain, China, and the Antimissionary Riots, 192–196. On Protestant jiao’an and the responses of British and American authorities, see Tiedemann, Handbook of Christianity in China, Vol. 2, 310–313, 322–339. Chapter 3 1. W. A. P. Martin, A Cycle of Cathay (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1900), 449. A similar remark was attributed to the leading official, Li Hongzhang: Albert Sohier, “La diplomatie Belge et la protection des missions en Chine, jusqu’à la séparation de l’église et de l’état en France” [Belgian diplomacy and the protection of missions in China, until the separation of church and state in France], Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft 23 (1966): 273. 2. Cohen, China and Christianity, 252–255; Ku Wei-ying., “The Shaping of the Late Qing’s Policy toward Christianity,” in Heyndrickx, Historiography of the Chinese Catholic Church, 111. 3. “Dépêche de Comte de Rochechouart au Tsong Li Yamen en Réponse à la Circulaire Concernant les Missionnaires”: LazA C164 I-6 (Favier letters). For the British, French, and American responses, see JWJAD 3, #1: 39–49 (documents 71, 73, and 74). 4. An early example: in the wake of the 1865 jiao’an in Sichuan, officials there proposed a set of rules for handling relations with the Christian missions. The Zongli yamen approved the rules, but the opposition of the French legation ended the effort. Qin Heping, Jidu zongjiao zai Sichuan, 245–249. 5. A detailed account of the attempt at Sino-Vatican relations in the mid-1880s and of the moving of the North Church is given in Luo Guang, Jiating yu Zhongguo shijie shi [History of envoys between the Vatican and China] (Tainan: Guangqi chubanshe, 1961), 187–210. 6. Albert Sohier, “La nonciature pour Pékin en 1886,” Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft 24 (1968): 4. 7. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 441–456. 8. Sohier, “Nonciature pour Pékin, ” 5. 9. The text of the pope’s letter is in Henri Cordier, Histoire des relations de la Chine avec les puissances occidentales, 1860–1900, vol. 2 (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1901), 591–593. Li Hongzhang’s explanation to the Zongli yamen is quoted in Gu Weimin, Zhonguo yu Luoma jiaoting guanxi shilüe [A brief history of the relations between China and the Vatican] (Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe, 2000), 109. 10. Paul Wang ( Jiyou), Le premier concile plénier chinois (1924): Droit canonique missionnaire forgé en Chine [The first plenary Chinese council: missionary canon law devised in China] (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 2010), 170–171. 11. François-Hubert Wijnhoven to French minister, Tianjin, June 27, 1885: ADNantes 18. Louis Wei, “Le Saint-Siège, la France et la Chine sous le pontificat de Léon XIII: Le projet de l’établissement d’une Nonciature à Pékin et l’affaire du Pei-t’ang, 1880–1886” [The Holy See, France and China under the pontificate of Leo XIII: the project of establishing a nunciature in Beijing and the Beitang affair, 1880–1886], Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft

282

Notes to pages 56–59

20 (1966): 34–37. François Tagliabue, Beijing bishop at the time, was reported to have charged Germany and Italy with cooperating in Britain’s conspiracy. Trincia, “Francia, Cina e Santa Sede,” 14, 19. 12. Already in 1874 the court had proposed that the North Church be moved at Chinese expense, but the project was then suspended. JWJAD 3, # 1: 93–107. Cordier, Histoire des relations, 2:605–609. 13. Dunn’s letter of March 5, 1886, to the papal secretary of state, quoted in Wei, “Le Saint-Siège, la France et la Chine,” 41–42, and in Sohier, “Nonciature pour Pékin,” 13. 14. Trincia, “Francia, Cina e Santa Sede,” 13–28. Gianni Criveller, “China, the Holy See and France: The Giulianelli Mission to the Chinese Emperor and Its Aftermath (1885–1886), in Yihetuan yundong yu Zhongguo Jidu zongjiao [The Boxer movement and Christianity in China], ed. Lin Ruiqi et al. (Taibei: Furen Daxue Chubanshe, 2004), 58–59, reads the opinions of the cardinals differently. 15. Sohier, “Nonciature pour Pékin,” 13, 94. Wei, “Le Saint-Siège, la France et la Chine,” 51–52. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 471–476. 16. Sohier, “Nonciature pour Pékin,” 95–96, 98. 17. Ibid., 102–103, which postulates an approach by Favier to the French prime minister immediately after the formal announcement of the apostolic delegate; and Wei, “Le Saint-Siège, la France et la Chine,” 60–62, which focuses on Favier’s earlier pro-French proposals to Vatican officials. See also Sohier, “Mgr Alphonse Favier,” 7–9. According to Hsiao Liang-lin, China’s Foreign Trade Statistics, 1864–1949 (Cambridge, MA: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, 1974), 190, 350,000 taels in 1886 would translate to about 2.2 million French francs. 18. “Mémoire Justificatif présenté par Monsieur Favier, Vic. G’le de Péking,” June 1892: LazA, dossier IX. The French ambassador to the Holy See at the time, Lefebvre de Béhaine, reported to Paris regarding Favier’s “precious” assistance in trying to derail the pope’s moves toward diplomatic relations with China. Trincia, “Francia, Cina e Santa Sede,” 30. 19. Documents diplomatiques français (1871–1914), 1st series (1871–1900), vol. 6 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1934), 287–288, 290–291. Lefebvre de Behaine (ambassador to the Holy See) to Herbette (Directeur du Cabinet et Secretariat), Rome, September 10, 1886. AMAE, Affaires diverses politiques, Chine, 6. 20. Wei, “Le Saint-Siège, la France et la Chine,” 63–66; Sohier, “Nonciature pour Pékin en 1886,” 103–105. 21. P. Ristelheuber to Kruetzer (chargé d’affaires, Beijing), Tianjin, August 17 and August 18 (telegram), 1886: ADNantes 612. In 1820, the French Lazarist Louis-François-Marie Lamiot wrote a long defense of the proposition that the North Church belonged to the French king by virtue of Louis XIV’s financial contributions to its support and was thereby properly in the custody of French Lazarists (his competitors of the moment were Portuguese Lazarists). An anonymous memorial of 1822, attributed to Lamiot, made a similar argument. Printed in Xavier Walter, La troisième mort des missions de Chine, 1773–1838 [The third death of the China missions, 1773– 1838] (Paris: François-Xavier de Guibert, 2008), 618–627, 633. 22. Sohier, “Nonciature pour Pékin en 1886,” 105. 23. Wei, “Le Saint-Siège, la France et la Chine,” 70. The report of this French victory by the French ambassador to the Holy See is in Documents diplomatiques français (1871–1914), 1st series, vol. 6, pp. 310–311. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 476–480, 487, argues that the failure of this Sino-Vatican démarche was owed, in addition to official French opposition, to (1) uncertainty

Notes to pages 59–61

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at the Vatican about the Chinese government’s commitment to Catholic protection; (2) the opposition of the heads of missions and of certain missionaries; and (3) Pope Leo’s problematic wish for both direct and primary authority over the missions and the French Religious Protectorate. Gianni Criveller, “China, the Holy See and France,” 62, asserts that Leo’s retreat owed as much to the opposition of French Catholic leaders as it did to that of the French government. But it was the French government that put the Catholic Church in France in the position of hostage, threatened with retribution. 24. Ministry of foreign affairs to French minister in Beijing, Paris, September 18, 1886 (telegram): ADNantes 608. 25. P. Ristelhueber (consul) to Constans (minister), Tianjin, September 25, October 9, and November 17, 1886: ADNantes 612. Cordier, Histoire des relations, 2:617–618. 26. Sohier, “Nonciature pour Pékin,” 105. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 484. 27. Sohier, “La diplomatie Belge, ” 273. 28. Favier to Fiat, Beijing, August 15, 1890: LazA, C168 Ib-40, Pékin 24 (1888–1892). Favier did not even make the three-man terna: Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire,” 504. One clue might be a letter to the superior general from the previous Beijing bishop shortly before his death, complaining of extreme pressure on him by “the candidate of whom I spoke” (apparently Favier), who held that only he could handle the job of bishop and that his name alone should be proposed to Paris and Rome. Tagliabue to Fiat, Beijing, January 27, 1890: LazA, #9. Perhaps such naked displays of ambition could be disqualifying. 29. J. B. Sarthou to Fiat, Beijing, February 14, 1891: LazA, C168 Ib-40, Pékin 4 (1888–1892). 30. The narrative of the previous two paragraphs is drawn particularly from the following documents. Ristelhueber (chargé d’affaires in Beijing) to Ribot (foreign minister), Beijing, July 29, 1891: ADNantes 59. “Gerachia in Cina”: ASVat, 1900, rubr. 242, fasc. 6, pp. 48–51. J. B. Anzer to papal secretary of state, Poli, October 5, 1891: ASVat, 1900, rubr. 242, fasc. 5. Nuncio (Domenico) to the papal secretary of state, Paris, September 17 and October 14, 1891: ASVat, 1900, rubr. 242, fasc. 5, pp. 18r–19v, 33r–36v. Nuncio to papal secretary of state, Paris, May 27 and June 27, 1892: ASVat, 1900, rubr. 242, fasc. 5, pp. 52r–53v, 74r–76v. Favier (vicar general in Beijing) to papal secretary of state, Beijing, January 16 and August 24, 1892: ASVat, 1900, rubr. 242, fasc. 5, pp. 58r–69v., 108r–115r. In an undated letter from Anzer to the Propaganda, which appears to have been written in late 1892, Anzer registered his support for foreign protectorates and opposition to a nuncio or an ecclesiastical hierarchy, but he favored an apostolic legate as spiritual head of the China missions: ASVat, 1900, rubr. 242, fasc. 5, pp. 71r–73v. Favier to papal secretary of state, Beijing, November 17, 1892: ASVat, 1900, rubr. 242, fasc. 5, pp. 126r–128v. Gustav Detring to Secretary of State Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro, Tianjin, November 22, 1892: ASVat, 1900, rubr. 242, fasc. 5, pp. 133r–134v. Li Hongzhang to Cardinal Rampolla, Tianjin, October 1, 1892: ASVat, 1900, rubr 242, fasc. 6, pp. 4v–9v. “IIème PARTIE. Tentatives faites en vue de l’établissement d’une hiérarchie ecclésiastique en Chine et de l’envoi d’un représentant diplomatique du Saint Siège ou d’un délégué apostolique à Pékin,” February 1901: AMAE, n.s. 311 (1901). 31. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 386–387, 393–398. 32. “Mémoire Justificatif présenté par Monsieur Favier, Vic. G’le de Péking,” Beijing, June 21, 1892; account of meeting of Bishop Sarthou (of Beijing) with the French minister (Lemaire), May 26, 1893: LazA. Sarthou to Meugniot (Lazarist visitor in China), Beijing, June 2, 8, and 28, 1892; Sarthou to Fiat (Lazarist superior general), Beijing, June 8 and November 12, 1892: LazA, C168 Ib-40, Pékin 34 (1888–1892).

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Notes to pages 62–64

33. “La Protectorat Catholique de la France en Chine,” February 1901: AMAE, n.s. 311 (1901). Dubail (minister) to foreign minister, Beijing, August 20, 1905: AMAE, n.s. 312 (1902–1906). La Bella, “Pius X,” in Giovagnoli, Catholic Church and the Chinese World, 54–58. 34. Taveirne, Han-Mongol Encounters, 574–576. 35. Chao-Kwang Wu, The International Aspect of the Missionary Movement in China (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1930), 85–87. In 1879 and 1885, Spain attempted to assert its protection over the Spanish Augustinian missionaries in Hunan. Chris Guiguet, “Le protectorat religieux français en Chine: le cas des Missions du Hunan, Hubei et Henan (1842–1911)” [The French Religious Protectorate in China: the case of the missions of Hunan, Hubei and Henan, 1842–1911]; Weber, La France en Chine, 45. 36. “Protection des Missions Catholiques en Chine et la Diplomatie,” ADNantes 59. Cannone, L’evangelizzazione della provincia cinese, 119. Cannone writes that the Italian bishop of North Henan resisted the Italian minister’s efforts in 1885 to issue Italian certificates to replace French passports. 37. Gu Weimin, Zhonguo yu Luoma jiaoting, 116–117. 38. Ferdinand De Luca (Italian minister to China), Shanghai, November 19, 1888: PropA, vol. 43, rubr. 50, pp. 198r–v. 39. North Shaanxi vicariate to the Italian minister, January 6, 1889; Cariati (Italian chargé d’affaires) to the Italian bishops, Beijing, December 10, 1889: PropA, vol. 43, rubr. 50, pp. 204r–v, 217r–220r. The Propaganda at this time also enjoined the vicariates from accepting official Italian subsidies, if they entailed any right of oversight or protection. “Protection des Missions Catholiques en Chine et la Diplomatie”: ADNantes 59, pp. 19–20. 40. “Note pour le Ministre,” Paris, November 25, 1891: ADNantes 59. 41. John E. Schrecker, Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism: Germany in Shantung (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 12. Karl Josef Rivinius, Weltlicher Schutz und Mission: das deutsche Protektorat über die katholische Mission von Süd-Shantung [Worldly protection and mission: the German protectorate over the Catholic mission of South Shandong] (Köln: Bohlau, 1987), 221–222. 42. Hermann Fischer, Father Arnold Janssen: A Modern Pioneer in Mission Work (London: Alexander Ouseley, 1934), 100–101. 43. Xiang, Origins of the Boxer War, 55–56. George Steinmetz, The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 414–421, sees Anzer as reflecting both the disparaging and the more favorable view of China and the Chinese that characterized the contemporary German outlook. 44. Schrecker, Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism, 12–13. Xiang, Origins of the Boxer War, 55–61. Rivinius, Weltlicher Schutz, 310–415. Anzer to Lemaire (French minister in Beijing), Puoli, January 8, 1889, Beijing, September 7, 1889, and June 23, 1890; Chargé d’affaires at Holy See [Monbel?] to Paris, Rome, September 27, 1889: ADNantes 27bis. Lemaire to Paris, Beijing, June 24, 1890: ADNantes 59. “Mémoire Justificatif présenté par Monsieur Favier, Vic. G’le de Péking,” June 1892: LazA. “Note pour le Ministre,” Paris, November 25, 1891; Ristelhueber (chargé d’affaires) to Ribot (foreign minister), Beijing, July 29, 1891: ADNantes 59. The Quai d’Orsay believed that the Vatican’s neutrality regarding the choice of South Shandong’s protector was a product of disagreement between the secretary of state, Rampolla, who favored staying with French protection, and the Propaganda prefect, Simeoni, who favored Germany. “Crise de notre

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Protectorat religieux en Chine (1888–1892)” (n.d., probably written in 1898): ADNantes 59. Tiedemann, “Yihetuanmin,” 88, argues that Anzer used the imperial rivalry between Germany and France to advance the church, the Society of the Divine Word, and his own ambition. 45. Schrecker, Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism, 1–35, 85–101. Steinmetz, Devil’s Handwriting, 416–435, 455–457. Karl Josef Rivinius, “Mission and the Boxer Movement in Shandong Province with Particular Reference to the ‘Society of the Divine Word,’” in Yihetuan yundong yu Zhongguo Jidu zongjiao [“The Boxer movement and Christianity in China”], ed. Lin Ruiqi et al. (Taibei: Furen Daxue Chubanshe, 2004), 278–282. 46. Documents diplomatiques français (1871–1914), 1st series (1871–1900), vol. 15 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1959), 333–337. 47. This point is made by R. G. Tiedemann, “Christianity in a Violent Environment: The North China Plain on the Eve of the Boxer Uprising,” in Heyndrickx, Historiography of the Chinese Catholic Church,” 141, and in “Yihetuanmin,” 93. 48. Xiang, Origins of the Boxer War, 66–67. 49. Anzer began his campaign to add Jiaozhou to his vicariate promptly after the German takeover. J. B. Anzer to Ledóchowski (Propaganda prefect), Berlin, December 28, 1897: PropA, vol. 213, pp. 692r–693r. Reports on the campaign over the next several months are in ADNantes 23 bis. Anzer’s partial victory is registered in French ambassador to the Holy See to the foreign minister, Rome, July 9, 1898, in ibid. Well after Anzer was gone, the vicariate of North Shandong, predominantly Italian Franciscans in the Boxer era, became mostly German and came under German protection in 1914. French vice-consul at Yantai (“Chefoo”) to the legation and the department, Yantai, May 26, 1914: AMAE, Asie 1918–1929, Chine, 65. All German protection ended with China’s entry into World War I. 50. Anzer to Propaganda prefect, Tianjin, September 15, 1899: PropA, vol. 193, rubr. 130, pp. 2r–2v. Pichon (minister to China) to Delcassé, #137, Beijing, November 3, 1899: AMAE, n.s. 309 (1899). 51. Schrecker, Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism, 91–103. The new policy was decided in May 1899. 52. Anzer to Propaganda prefect, Steyl, April 7, 1900: PropA, vol. 193, rubr. 130, pp. 20r–21v. Marquis de Noailles (ambassador in Berlin) to foreign minister, Berlin, April 12, 1900, and February 2, 1901: ADNantes 27 bis. 53. This saga is presented at length, though with certain reticences, in Bornemann, As Wine Poured Out, 115–403. 54. Arnold Janssen (SVD superior general) to the Propaganda, January 30, 1895; “Summarium accusationum latarum contra Rdm. Episc. Anzer,” Steyl, January 7, 1895: PropA, vol. 261 (1903), pp. 817r–822v. 55. Josef Freinademetz (provicar), South Shandong, May 27, 1895: PropA, vol. 261, pp. 832r–833r. In the late 1890s, Steyl headquarters considered inducing Anzer to resign, but no action was taken. Bornemann, As Wine Poured Out, 393–394. 56. Jos. Freinademetz, Th. Vilsterman, R. Pieper, and A. Henninghaus, South Shandong, August 20, 1901: PropA, vol. 261, pp. 847r–856v. Although the letter has four signers, it is written in the first person singular, and from the content, the author is apparently Freinademetz. The passage charging a priest with pederasty: “Director seminarii horrendum crimen paedasteriae cum variis e suis seminaristis commiserat. ”The word that I translate here as pederasty differs from the form in Latin dictionaries (“pederastia” or “paederastia,” derived from the Greek). The

286

Notes to pages 64–68

context and the orthographic similarities lead me to believe that the author intended to signify pederasty. A successor bishop of South Shandong reported that students entering a minor seminary were ordinarily between 10 and 14 years old. A. Henninghaus to the Propaganda, Yanzhoufu, November 10, 1918: PropA, vol. 633, pp. 189r–204v. Charges of sexual malfeasance against priests crop up occasionally in the internal discourse of the missions. A sensational case in the 1760s and 1770s in Fujian, implicating a number of priests and a bishop, as well as some consecrated Virgins, is described in Menegon, Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars, 342–352. 57. In urging the German governor at Qingdao to launch a punitive expedition, Anzer deceptively withheld the information that a settlement had already been reached. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising, 188–189. 58. Jos. Freinademetz, R. Pieper, and A. Henninghaus, South Shandong, August 20, 1901: PropA, vol. 261, pp. 847r–856v. Josef Freinademetz had become the provincial of the China province of the Society of the Divine Word in 1900, perhaps giving him standing to raise these issues, as well as the responsibility to do so. His cosigners were his “consultors” in that office. Freinademetz’s letter was sent on to the Propaganda prefect with a covering letter by Janssen, endorsing Freinademetz’s character and offering confirming testimony by veterans of South Shandong now in Europe. Arnold Janssen to Ledóchowski, Treves (Belgium), December 3, 1901: PropA, vol. 261, pp. 857r–858v. 59. Ernest Brandewie, The Last Shall Be First: The Life of Thomas Tien Keng-hsin, China’s First Cardinal (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 2007), 17. 60. Ledóchowski to Janssen, Rome, June 11, 1902, quoted in extenso in Janssen to Gotti (new Propaganda prefect), Mödling, August 6, 1902: PropA, vol. 261 (1903), pp. 870r–872r. Taveirne, Han-Mongol Encounters, 315, notes that the Propaganda was inclined to defend the prerogatives of apostolic vicars against encroachments by missionary institutes. Often, however, it was the Propaganda that gave way, as it soon would in this case. 61. Anzer to Propaganda prefect, Rome, March 3, 1900: PropA, vol. 193 (1900), rubr. 130, pp. 11r–14r. It was the case that Janssen had earlier become a critic of Anzer and that their relationship had soured. Bornemann, As Wine Poured Out, 324–330. 62. Césaire Schang (bishop of East Shandong), April 26, 1902: PropA, vol. 261, rubr. 130, pp. 865r–v. Reporting a conversation with Schang regarding Anzer, French ambassador to the Holy See to foreign minister, Rome, November 28, 1897: ADNantes 27 bis. For an account of Anzer’s focus on Yanzhou: Steinmetz, Devil’s Handwriting, 417. A Franciscan attempt to establish a mission in Yanzhou reportedly precipitated a wave of persecution in the early eighteenth century. R. G. Tiedemann, “Christianity and Chinese ‘Heterodox Sects,’” 351–352. 63. P. Henricus Erlemann, “Declaratio juramento munita de causa Revmi Domini Joannis Bapt. De Anzer, Vicarii Apostolici Sciantung meridialis, quam voto regularis obedientiae compulsus edidit,” Collegio ad St. Gabrielem, August 21, 1902: PropA, vol. 261, pp. 878r–881r. 64. Prospero Paris (bishop of Jiangnan), Shanghai, January 24, 1903: PropA, vol. 261, pp. 898r–899r. Bishop Paris was apprised of the situation in South Shandong by one of his priests, Father Tschepe, who had conducted several retreats there and had counseled Freinademetz regarding the 1901 letter about Anzer. Bornemann, As Wine Poured Out, 344, 348, 396, 401. 65. “Relazione Verbale. Protocollo N. 55041,” n.d.: PropA, vol. 261, pp. 915r–926v. The Propaganda’s request to Anzer to come to Rome did not inform him as to the reason for the request: Propaganda to Anzer, May 12, 1903: ibid., 927r–v. Anzer’s reply, accepting the order, was sent on September 15, 1903: ibid., 941r.

Notes to pages 68–72

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66. Baron Rotenhan (Prussian minister) to Gotti (Propaganda prefect), Rome, November 24, 1903; Janssen to Propaganda, n.d.: PropA, vol. 327, rubr. 130, pp. 320r, 323r–v. Prinet (chargé d’affaires in Berlin) to Delcassé (foreign minister), Berlin, December 4, 1903: ADNantes 27bis. 67. The rejection of an Italian ultimatum and China’s preparation for war with Italy is recounted in Xiang, Origins of the Boxer War, 79–103. 68. Sohier, “La diplomatie Belge,” 273–276. “Note pour le Ministre,” Paris, October 17, 1899: AMAE, n.s. 309 (1899). The murdered Belgian missionary was Victorin Delbrouck. On Belgium’s pursuit of a concession in Hankou (successful in 1902), see Lin Jinshui, “Sino-Belgian Relations during the Reign of Leopold II: A Brief Historical Account Based on Chinese Documents,” in Vande Walle, History of the Relations, 452–454. 69. Quoted from an 1898 despatch: “Le Protectorat Catholique de la France en Chine,” February 1901: AMAE, n.s. 311 (1901). 70. Documents diplomatiques français (1871–1814), 1st series (1871–1900), vol. 15, p. 335. 71. Xiang, Origins of the Boxer War, 211–212. 72. Favier to Rampolla, Beijing, May 29, 1898: ASVat, 1900, rubr. 242, fasc. 7, pp. 45r–48r. 73. Pichon to Delcassé, #8, Beijing, January 26, 1899: AMAE, n.s. 309. 74. Pichon to foreign minister, #2, Beijing, January 12, 1899: AMAE, Vol. 309. Two decrees, one of July 12, 1898, and the other of October 6, 1898, calling for the protection of missionaries, Chinese Christians, and foreign travelers, might seem supernumerary but perhaps were part of setting the stage for new ways of handling jiao’an. Cordier, Histoire des relations, 3:464–467. French embassy to the Holy See, “Note” for the secretary of state, Rome, January 27, 1899: ASVat, 1900, rubr. 242, fasc. 7, pp. 80r–v. The Chinese texts are in ADNantes 609. 75. Favier to Pichon, Beijing, March 17, 1899: ADNantes 609. The Chinese text, dated March 15, 1899, as received by Favier from the Zongli yamen, is attached. Internal evidence suggests that Favier actually transmitted the text to Pichon four days later and that this letter dated March 17, 1899, was actually written later to provide cover. Favier to Pichon, March 21, 1899: ADNantes 609. 76. De Belmonte (nuncio in France) to secretary of state, #487, Paris, March 15, 1899: ASVat, 1900, rubr. 242, fasc. 7, #49307, pp. 91r–93r. In a letter to Leo XIII in August 1890, Li Hongzhang had expressed the disappointment of the Chinese government that Favier had not been made the new Beijing bishop. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 505–506. 77. Pichon to Favier, March 23, 1899; Leduc to Favier, Beijing, March 24, 1899; Favier to Leduc, Beijing, March 24, 1899; Favier to Pichon, Beijing, March 24, 1899; Favier to Leduc, Beijing, March 26, 1899; Favier to Ronglu and Ronglu to Favier, March 24, 1899 (in Chinese); Pichon to French consuls, March 27, 1899: ADNantes 609. 78. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 494–495. A. Nisard (ambassador to Holy See) to Delcassé, #87, Rome, May 29, 1899: AMAE, n.s. 309. Papal secretary of state to Favier, Rome, May 27, 1899: ASVat, 1900, rubr. 242, fasc. 7, #50296, p. 99r. 79. Chouvellon to Cottin, Chongqing, August 23, 1899 and October 16, 1899: AMEP, 536B (#475 and #481, East Sichuan, 1877–1903). 80. Ferrant (coadjutor bishop of North Jiangxi) to Pichon, Nanchang, May 5, 1899; Casimir Vic (bishop of East Jiangxi) to Pichon, Shanghai, June 8, 1899: ADNantes 32. 81. Pichon to Favier, Beijing, March 29, 1899, and May 22, 1899: LazA, C164 I-6. These two letters are both marked “copies.” 82. Favier to the Lazarist superior general, Beijing, June 29, 1899: LazA, C164 I-6.

288

Notes to pages 72–75

83. Delcassé to A. Nisard, #108, Paris, May 20, 1899; A. Nisard to Delcassé, #87, Rome, May 29, 1899: AMAE, n.s. 309 (1899). 84. Delcassé to Pichon, #95, Paris, May 31, 1899: AMAE, n.s. 309. 85. Untitled memorandum on the stationery of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dated May 27, 1899: AMAE, n.s. 309. Another memorandum stressed that Chinese officials will have an incentive to settle matters with the bishops, so as to keep them out of the political arena. “Reconnaisance officielle de la religion catholique en Chine,” May 23, 1899: AMAE, n.s. 309. 86. The commissioning of the local bishops to negotiate settlements with high provincial officials in the wake of the 1895 jiao’an in Chengdu is documented in: A. Gérard (French minister in Beijing) to Bishop Dunand (apostolic vicar of East Sichuan), Beijing, February 22, 1896, AMEP, 529B; Father Pontvianne (provicar of West Sichuan), Chengdu, June 27, 1895, in Bulletin de l’oeuvre des partants, no. 29 (October 1895): 410–427. 87. Pichon to Delcassé, #95, Beijing, 25 July 1899: AMAE, n.s. 309. Pichon had earlier sent a telegram, in which he claimed to have rescued the official French right to sign off on agreements. S. Pichon, telegram #65, Beijing, May 22, 1899: ibid. 88. “Note pour le Ministre,” Paris, October 17, 1899: AMAE, n.s. 309. 89. We benefit from fairly recent, fine book-length monographs on this event in English. For a study of the social and cultural seedbed of the Boxer movements and their formation in the last years of the nineteenth century, see Esherick, Origins of the Boxer Uprising. Paul A. Cohen, History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), explores the broad cultural and even mythic resonances of the whole story. For the tangled and failed diplomacy that allowed an avoidable tragedy to unfold, see Xiang, Origins of the Boxer War. There are also useful earlier studies, and many articles. 90. The idea of removing her was indeed current among the powers: in mid-May 1900, the French minister in Beijing described Germany, Britain, and the United States as seeking this result. Pichon to Delcassé, Beijing, May 20, 1900, in Documents Diplomatiques Français, 1871–1914, 1st series, vol. 16, p. 235. Xiang, Origins of the Boxer War, 211 and 224, records a report that on May 28, 1900, the German minister advocated removing the Empress Dowager from power and notes that Francis Bertie, Assistant Undersecretary for Far Eastern Affairs in Britain’s Foreign Office, was considering in early June a foreign intervention to restore the emperor to power. 91. I adopt here Paul A. Cohen’s estimate, based on a comparison of sources: History in Three Keys, 354, n. 72. 92. Margiotti, “La Cina cattolica,” 528, counts fifty foreign Catholic missionaries killed, including bishops, priests, sisters, and brothers. A listing of violent deaths of Catholic missionaries (by name) in Les missions de Chine (1923), 532–537, amounts to forty-one by the time of the lifting of the siege in Beijing and adds three more by the end of August, for a total of forty-four, of whom five were bishops. Gianni La Bella, “Pius X,” 51, puts Catholic missionary deaths at fifty (like Margiotti), over 100 deaths among Chinese priests and nuns, over 30,000 Chinese Catholics killed, and 2,000 Chinese Protestants. The numbers of Chinese Christians who were killed as part of the Boxer incident, whether by Boxers or by Chinese government troops, are most uncertain. They are derived from the missions, which were inclined toward exaggeration and usually reported such losses in suspiciously round numbers. This uncertainty explains the great differences in the literature. Compare Tang Yi, ed., Jidujiao shi [History of Christianity] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1993), 464–464; and Moffett, History of Christianity in Asia, vol. 2, 486. Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (London: Society

Notes to pages 75–79

289

for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1929), 509–510, accepts the figure of 15,000–20,000 deaths in Favier’s Beijing and North Zhili vicariate alone. In an early narrative, Favier did claim “at least 15,000 victims” in his vicariate. Favier to the Propaganda prefect, Beijing, September 29, 1900: PropA, n.s. 262 (1903), p. 358v. However, in numerous other documents of the time, Favier wrote of 6,000, itself a figure he made no attempt to verify, e.g., Favier letter, Beijing, April 17, 1904, in AnnalesCM, 69 (1904): 333. 93. Favier, “Exposé de l’affaire de Ly-yuen-ts’oun et notes diverses sur cette affaire,” January 6, 1898; De Marchi (bishop of North Shandong) to Favier, telegram, September 18, 1899: ADNantes 27. 94. Favier to Pichon, Beijing, May 19, 1900: ASVat, 1903, rubr. 242, fasc. 1 (57501), pp. 18r–19r. In an earlier report to the French minister, Favier spoke only of attacks on Chinese Catholics in the vicinity of Baoding. Favier to Pichon, Beijing, April 22, 1900: ADNantes 612. Xiang, Origins of the Boxer War, 193–195, emphasizes Favier’s role in persuading the Beijing diplomats of the dangers, including by exaggeration of the facts. 95. Favier to secretary of state, #61, Beijing, May 21, 1900: ASVat, 1903, rubr. 242, fasc. 1 (57501), pp. 21r–24v. 96. The Vatican’s annoyance with Favier for the bad timing was reported in Nisard (ambassador to the Holy See) to Delcassé, #217, Rome, November 29, 1900: AMAE, Chine, Protectorat Religieux de la France, 310 (1900). 97. In December 1900, Favier reported to the Propaganda prefect that, more than ever, governmental power was in the hands of the Empress Dowager, “whom long public experience, an intelligent wish for peace and the counsels of responsible ministers predisposed to goodwill towards us.” Favier to Ledochowski, Rome, December 23, 1900: PropA, n.s. 262 (1903), p. 277r. Favier sometimes put the number of persons under seige in 1900 in the North Church at 3,800. Ferreux, “Histoire de la Congrégation,” 243–244, 249, gives an itemized accounting, which would produce the number of 3,395 for Chinese and foreigners in the compound, of whom 403 died. 98. Pichon to Delcassé, #137 and #142, Beijing, November 3 and November 18, 1899: AMAE, n.s. 309 (1899). The second of these dispatches is printed in: Documents diplomatiques français (1871–1914), 1st series (1871–1900), vol. 16, pp. 1–3. 99. Delcassé to Pichon, Paris, April 5, 1900: ADNantes 27 bis. 100. Chester C. Tan, The Boxer Catastrophe (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), 97–98, 112–115, 122. 101. Pichon, June 3, 1899: “the creation of spheres of influence inevitably runs counter to [the protection of missions]. . . . It will become less and less easy to give indications to the Chinese government of possible military interventions on our part to bring justice to our protégés.” Documents diplomatiques français (1871–1914), 1st series, vol. 16, p. 336. Chapter 4 1. A recent study vividly describes the atrocious behavior of some Allied forces in China at this time: Anand A. Yang, “(A) Subaltern(’s) Boxers: An Indian Soldier’s Account of China and the World in 1900–1901,” in Bickers, Boxers, China, and the World, 55–59. 2. Wang Shuhuai, Gengzi peikuan [The indemnity for 1900] (Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo, 1974), 1–60. Tan, The Boxer Catastrophe, 223–233. John S. Kelly, A Forgotten Conference: The Negotiations at Peking, 1900–1901 (Geneva: Librairie E. Droz, 1963), 151–173.

290

Notes to pages 79–81

Fourteen countries successfully made claims, even when their participation in the events had been small. The largest shares were those of Russia, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, Italy, and Belgium, in that order. Min-ch’ien T. Z. Tyau, The Legal Obligations Arising out of Treaty Relations between China and Other States (reprint of the 1917 publication; Taibei: Ch’eng-wen, 1966), 215–224; Wang Shuhuai, Gengzi peikuan, 27. Payment from Chinese revenues was to be made to a consortium of foreign banks in Shanghai, which would in turn make payments to the indemnified countries. Although the Qing negotiators conceded the indemnity without much struggle, several leading officials registered their dismay at the likely consequences of such a large debt for China, the Chinese, and social stability. Ibid., 104–109. 3. For an effort to tally this part of the indemnity, which divides what I call the “irregular indemnity” into two parts, the “local indemnity” and the “anonymous indemnity,” see Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 610–614. A pungent account of American missionaries personally engaged in collecting indemnities is in Marilyn Blatt Young, The Rhetoric of Empire: American China Policy, 1895–1901 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 187–197. Latourette, History of Christian Missions, 521–525, briefly treats the topic, particularly the Protestant part of the process. 4. Favier to Secretary of State, Beijing, August 17, 1901, ASVat, 1903, rubr. 242, fasc. 2, pp. 45r–49v. 5. Pichon to de Marcilly (consul-general at Hankou), Beijing, April 7, 1901: ADNantes 20. Pichon’s successor, Beau, was concerned that the Vatican be reminded that only France defended the right of Chinese Christians to an indemnity, against the declarations of the British, American, and German governments. Beau to foreign ministry, Paris, November 15, 1901: ADNantes 18. 6. Beijing’s coadjutor bishop, Stanislas Jarlin, telegraphed the proposal to Favier, who was on a trip to Europe. Li Hongzhang reportedly urged Favier to return to Beijing. Jarlin to Favier, Beijing, November 14, 1900 (telegram): PropA, vol. 262 (1903), rubr. 130, p. 285r. This Chinese initiative casts doubt on Favier’s assertion that, but for him and other missionaries, there would have been no compensation given to Chinese Christians. 7. In terms of deaths of foreign Catholic missionaries in the Boxer affair, however, according to one tabulation, the Beijing vicariate lost six, which, with the addition of four Jesuit deaths in Southeast Zhili, totaled ten for the province. The vicariates of North Shanxi (Franciscan) and South Manchuria (MEP) suffered twelve missionary deaths each. The total by this listing of all Catholic missionary deaths by violence in the summer of 1900, male and female, came to forty-six. Les missions de Chine (1923), 532–537. 8. In 1901, one tael exchanged for about 3.75 French francs (but went for about 3.25 francs the next year). In February 1902, the French legation was listing the North Zhili share of the global indemnity at 2,972,952 taels, to which should be added 280,000 taels separately listed for Tianjin. These numbers were subject to adjustment downward in 1903. North Zhili’s “irregular” indemnity arrangements were reported at 3,133,550 taels. Beau, minister in Beijing, to Delcassé, foreign minister, Beijing, February 8, 1902: AMAE, n.s. 312. Zhang Li and Liu Jiantang, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 611, offer the figure of 11,124,000 taels for the “local indemnity” for Beijing and Zhili province and note that it is an incomplete figure, though by far the largest for any province. Zhili province was at that time divided into four vicariates, of which Favier was reporting about only one, and Zhang and Liu are including the Protestant share. 9. Henri Maquet, Zhangjiazhuang, September 16, 1901: PropA, vol. 213, p. 935v.

Notes to pages 81–82

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10. Henri Maquet to the Propaganda Prefect, Xianxian, August 18, 1902. PropA, vol. 237 (1902), p. 382v. 11. Foreign ministry to ministry of finance, Paris, July 15, 1903, reporting the allocations to China’s vicariates by the Commission de R éparation de l’Indemnité Chinoise: AMAE, n.s. 312. 12. Zhu Jinfu, ed., Qingmo jiaoan [Jiao’an in the late Qing], vol. 3 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998), 73–74, 82. In the governor’s count of July 10, 1901, thirty-nine Christian churches were damaged in 1900: twenty-nine French, five American, three British, and two German (plus twenty-three related buildings). Seven months earlier, the British consul in Jiujiang reported twenty-three Catholic churches damaged, one or more American Methodist stations destroyed, and “some” China Inland Mission stations also destroyed. Walter J. Clennel to Satow, Jiujiang, January 14, 1901: FO 228/1405. Early reports of deaths of Chinese Christians amounted to 108 for the province at a maximum, but later reports imply much lower, but uncertain, figures. Casimir Vic (bishop of East Jiangxi) to the Propaganda prefect, Shanghai, December 25, 1900: PropA, vol. 262 (1903), rubr. 130, pp. 391r–392v. AnnalesCM 66 (1901): 257–260; AnnalesCM 67 (1902): 81–86, 234–238. 13. Of an early claim by the Jiangxi Catholic missions of over one million taels—roughly four million French francs—some 568,140 taels had been contracted locally by May 1902, with payments well under way, according to reports to the French legation. Notes on the indemnity for Jiangxi, headed: “11 et 12. Kiang-si”: ADNantes 274. Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 611, list the “local indemnity” for Jiangxi province at 300,000 taels but specify that it does not include churches, for which they have no figure. The Chinese governor of the province reported that 600,000 taels were going to the repair of churches and 200,000 taels as consolation money for Chinese Christians, Protestant and Catholic. Zhu Jinfu, Qingmo jiaoan, vol. 3, 80–84, 90–91. The British consul in Jiangxi estimated that Catholics in the province had collected 1.5 million taels for 1900, and Protestants were possibly getting $35,000 for the destruction of stations of the China Inland Mission and the American Methodist Mission. Clennel to Satow, Jiujiang, August 12, 1902: FO 228/1456. The discrepant amounts in reports on the irregular indemnity are one index of its ad hoc character. 14. Coqset (bishop of South Jiangxi) to Beau (French minister in Beijing), Shanghai, May 12, 1902: ADNantes 274. In the vicariate of North Jiangxi, the mission received 15,000 taels for all missionary losses directly from the provincial governor by July 1901. The claims of Chinese Christians were settled on the spot. The proceeds were handed over to the missionaries, who distributed them. Ferrant (bishop-coadjutor of North Jiangxi) to Beau, Jiujiang, May 31, 1902: ADNantes 274. In the East Jiangxi vicariate, the bishop reported that indemnities for Chinese Christians had been agreed to by local authorities and missionaries, had for the most part been paid, and had been distributed by the missionaries. Vic (bishop of East Jiangxi) to the French minister in Beijing, Raozhou, May 18, 1902: ADNantes 274. 15. Protestant and Catholic accounts, necessarily second or third hand, generally agreed on the personal responsibility of the governor in these deaths, as did some later Chinese testimony. Roger R. Thomson argues that the evidence instead points to mob violence for the Taiyuan killings. “Reporting the Taiyuan Massacre: Culture and Politics in the China War of 1900,” in Bickers, Boxers, China, and the World, 79. Henrietta Harrison, “Village Politics and National Politics,” 4–5, suggests that the execution of the foreigners in Taiyuan involved an interactive process between the governor and the Boxers.

292

Notes to pages 82–84

16. Barnaba Da Cologna to the French Minister in Beijing, Zhengdingfu, March 19, 1901: ADNantes 20. 17. A copy of the circular, in the form of a letter to the Italian minister in Beijing, Salvago-Raggi, sent by this association from Florence to Italian bishops in China, dated December 31, 1900, claiming Propaganda permission for resorting to the Italian legation for indemnities, is in ADNantes 20. On the origins of the National Association of Florence and the Vatican’s attitude toward it, see Prudhomme, Stratégy missionnaire, 513–516. 18. For example, the French minister in China: “To it [the Propaganda] belongs the sole responsibility for the insubordination of its religious and for the hesitations of its policy.” Beau to French foreign minister, Beijing, June 13, 1901: ADNantes 20. In his turn, Vatican Secretary of State Rampolla criticized the French authorities for tolerating the presumptions of the Italian minister in Beijing. De Navenne, chargé at the Holy See, to Delcassé, Rome, September 13, 1901: ADNantes 18. In reply, Paris blamed the Vatican. Delcassé to Nisard (French ambassador to the Holy See), Paris, # 190, October 11, 1901: AMAE, n.s. 311 (1901). 19. French foreign minister to French minister in Beijing, Paris, June 24, 1901 (telegram): ADNantes 20. The Chinese government was informed that the French legation had stopped handling the affairs of the North Shanxi misionaries. Surprise! They were now Italians. French minister in Beijing to Prince Qing and Li Hongzhang, Beijing, July 1, 1901: ibid. 20. Franciscan archives support Barnaba Da Cologna on this point. On the back of the copy of his telegram seeking permission to go with the National Association, there is a note to the effect that the Propaganda did not wish to commit itself to either yes or no. There are copies of a telegram from Baruffi, in charge of Franciscan missions, addressed to Barnaba and saying what Barnaba subsequently claimed it did: use the best method for settling the indemnity, including for the murdered bishops and missionaries. FranA, vol. 12, no. SK 557, pp. 472, 529r. 21. Barnaba to Most Reverend Father, Tianjin, August 20, 1901: FranA, vol. 12, no. SK 557, pp. 519r–521v. Also, Barnaba Da Cologna to Reverend Father, June 24, 1901: ibid., pp. 503r–v. 22. Barnaba to Most Reverend Father, Tianjin, August 1, 1901: FranA, vol. 12, no. SK 557, pp. 517r–v. 23. Cardinal Giotti, Propaganda Prefect, to Msgr. Agapito Fiorentini, Apostolic Vicar of North Shanxi, Rome, February 20, 1904, affirmed that the bishop, in dealing with the question of Italian or French protection, was free to choose that which he judged most useful to his mission. FranA, vol. 13, no. SK 553, pp. 32r. The decision to allow this choice was made on February 4, 1904 at a meeting of the Council for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, attended by the Curia’s top cardinals. La Bella, “Pius X,” 61–62. 24. Petition of Chinese priests of North Shanxi vicariate, Taiyuan county, February 17, 1902: FranA, vol. 12, no. SK 557, pp. 537r–v. 25. Hofman, OFM, to Most Reverend Father, North Shanxi, February 1902: FranA, vol. 12, no. 557, pp. 549r–553v. 26. Trincia, “Francia, Cina e Santa Sede,” 20. The Propaganda secretary was Domenico Jacobini. The Hongkong procurator was Timoleone Raimondi, later a critic of the French Religious Protectorate. Elisa Giunipero, “Propaganda Fide between European Missionaries and Chinese Clergy,” in Giovagnoli, Catholic Church and the Chinese World, 75–79. Tiedemann, “Controversy over the Formation,” 358, lists nineteenth-century cases of Chinese clergy expressing grievances. Their bishops regarded such expressions as “rebellion.”

Notes to pages 85–88

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27. “Guibing Luomafu Chuanjiaobu” [Humble petition to Rome’s Propaganda], June 9 and July 18, 1895: PropA, vol. 22 (1895), rubr. 130, 888r–907v. 28. Hardouin, consul in Guangzhou (Canton), to Delcassé, April 13, 1901: AMAE, n.s. 311. 29. Esherick, Origins of the Boxer Uprising, 305–306. 30. In December 1901, the French minister in Beijing reported the difficulty of tracking what I call the irregular indemnity, as to both the amounts and their disbursement. Beau to Delcassé, #56, Beijing, December 1, 1901: AMAE, n.s. 311. 31. This problem was the subject of Beau to Delcassé, #67, Beijing, December 17, 1901: AMAE, n.s. 311. 32. Sohier, “Diplomatie Belge,” 277–281. 33. Delcassé (foreign minister) to Beau (minister in Beijing), Paris, December 12, 1901; Beau to Delcassé, Beijing, December 17, 1901, and annex containing Beau’s circular to the apostolic vicars in China: AMAE, n.s. 311. 34. Foreign minister to the French ambassador to the Holy See, Paris, July 24, 1903: AMAE, n.s. 312. 35. The figure of a bit over twenty-two million francs appears in foreign minister to minister of finances, Paris, July 15, 1903, reporting the conclusions of the commission on the indemnity: AMAE, n.s. 312 (1902–1906). As late as February 1902, the French Beijing legation calculated that 27.5 million francs would be needed to repair damages to the missions, which, after a 10 percent deduction, would have been 24.75 million francs. Beau to Delcassé, #14, Beijing, February 8, 1902: AMAE, n.s. 312 (1902–1906). 36. “Pour le Directeur,” n.d. (probably March 1902); foreign minister to ministry of finance, Paris, July 15, 1903: AMAE, n.s. 312. Kelly, A Forgotten Conference, 157, gives the requested French share of the general indemnity as 75,779,250 taels but notes that there were later adjustments to fit the total of 450 million taels for the final indemnity. I use here the total French share as recorded in Tyau, Legal Obligations, 220 (70,878,240 taels or 265,793,400 French francs). 37. Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 611–613. 38. Hugh, O.M., to “Very Rev F. General,” Baoji, Shaanxi, June 4, 1902: FranA, vol. 12, no. SK 557, pp. 143r–148v. 39. The acting British consul in Chongqing reported that the Catholic mission there had put a portion of its indemnity surplus into a fine, central store, managed by a French merchant, who was actually fronting for the mission. E. C. Wilton to Ernest Satow, Chongqing, August 19, 1902: FO 228/1455. 40. Collected in PropA, vol. 760, pp. 382r–623r. Missing are East Shandong, Macao, West Sichuan, and Ili. South Jiangxi responded that the vicariate could not report in the absence of its bishop, and the reports of East Henan, East Mongolia, and Central Mongolia were incomplete. 41. For example, in its quinquennial report of 1910, the vicariate of Beijing and North Zhili listed its combined receipts from the SPF and the Holy Childhood Society at 76,000 francs (about 22,400 taels) but stated that much more important was the income from funds acquired from the North Church transfer of 1886 and the Boxer indemnities. These funds had been invested in the foreign concessions of Tianjin and Shanghai in revenue-producing buildings and lands and in deposits in European and Chinese banks. S. Jarlin to Propaganda prefect, Beijing, December 6, 1910: PropA, vol. 489 (1910), rubr. 129–130, pp. 769–797. 42. Satow to Grey, Beijing, April 12, 1906: FO 405/166, Part 56, p. 168. 43. Pichon to Delcassé, Beijing, January 6, 1900: AMAE, n.s. 310.

294

Notes to pages 88–91

44. Pichon to Delcassé, Beijing, May 12, 1900: AMAE, n.s. 327. 45. Pichon to minister of foreign affairs, Beijing, December 27, 1900: ADNantes 18. 46. Dunand (apostolic vicar of West Sichuan) to Ambroise, Chengdu, October 6, 1902: AMEP, 529B, pp. 555–556. 47. Malcolm O. Partin, Waldeck-Rousseau, Combes, and the Church: The Politics of Anti-Clericalism, 1899–1905 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1969), 217–218. 48. This account of French legislation regarding the Catholic Church is drawn from ibid. and John McManners, Church and State in France, 1870–1914 (London: S.P.C.K., 1972). 49. AnnalesCM 67 (1902): 5–7, 60–63, 65–75, 205–207. Favier to Bettembourg, Beijing, January 25, 1902: LazA, C168 Ia-120. Favier put the value of the “requisitioning” at 203,047.5 taels. Gu Zhangsheng, Chuanjiaoshi, 205–206, includes an American report that Favier’s requisitioning amounted to a much larger sum. 50. For an account of American and British looting in 1900 and 1901, see Hevia, “Looting Beijing,” 192–213; and Larry Clinton Thompson, William Scott Ament and the Boxer Rebellion: Heroism, Hubris and the “Ideal Missionary” ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), 194–204. 51. AnnalesCM 67 (1902): 64–65, 205–213. Favier to Bettembourg, Beijing, January 25, 1902: LazA, C168 Ia-120. Sohier, “Mgr Alphonse Favier,” 93–94. British military authorities in China established a similar system, a “prize commission,” for apportioning the proceeds of looting. James L. Hevia, English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 210–214. 52. The quote from Mark Twain is borrowed from Young, Rhetoric of Empire, 193. For a recounting of Twain’s critique and the American missionary response: Thompson, William Scott Ament, 205–214. For an overview, see also Hevia, English Lessons, 195–229, 231–240. 53. Michael Hunt, “The Forgotten Occupation: Peking, 1900–1901,” Pacific Historical Review 48, no. 4 (November 1979): 527. Hevia, English Lessons, 217–218. 54. AnnalesCM 67 (1902): 65. 55. Partin, Waldeck-Rousseau, 61. Bezaure, consul-general, to Delcassé, Shanghai, March 12, 1901: AMAE, n.s. 327 (1899–1905). 56. Maquet (bishop of Southeast Zhili) to Gotti (Propaganda prefect), “Taiming,” January 3, 1906: PropA, vol. 358 (1906), rubr. 130. 57. The generality of this misperception seems to stem from taking as authoritative on this point Latourette, History of Christian Missions, 548–549, who relied on Wellington Koo. The claim is belied by Latourette’s subsequent narrative. 58. There were occasions when anticlericalism at home reached China, though not enough to alter the larger policy. Hervé Barbier, Les canonniéres françaises du Yang-tsé de Shanghai à Chongqing (1900–1941) [French gunboats on the Yangzi from Shanghai to Chonqing (1900–1941)] (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2004), 72–77, recounts the censure by a Radical-Socialist deputy, just become navy minister, of a gunboat commander for being overzealous in intervening in Chengdu on behalf of missionaries during Sichuan’s Boxer moment in 1902. Ironically, Catholic missions in French colonies, such as Indochina, where the authorities had a greater array of options, were more subject to marginalization than in China. J. P. Daughton, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 59. Pichon to Delcassé, Beijing, February 24, 1901: AMAE, n.s. 311. In the same vein, a French priest in Beijing reported to the Lazarist superior general in Paris: “Several confreres, immediately

Notes to pages 91–93

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after the rescue, did very regrettable things, likely to scandalize those who had witnessed them, or rather those who, having arrived after the first moment of excitement, had knowledge of these facts.” A. Ducoulombier to Fiat, Beijing, May 15, 1901: LazA, #9. For an illustration of Pichon’s charge of Catholic missionary quarrels with Protestants, see the account of rivalries between a French Jesuit priest and an American Congregationalist missionary (an Oberlin graduate) in extorting “irregular indemnities” in Zhuozhou (“Cho Chou”) and the brief imprisonment of the American at the Jesuit’s insistence: Thompson, William Scott Ament, 206–207. 60. Walter J. Clennel (acting consul) to Ernest M. Satow, Jiujiang, July 27, 1901: FO 228/1405. Clennel did not give the source for his figure. Regarding indemnity payments, Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 607, give the figure 2,166,000 taels as Jiangxi’s yearly contribution to the general indemnity. A booklet, titled Jiaoan shanhou banfa zhangchen [Regulations for recovery from jiao’an] and published by the foreign affairs bureau of Jiangxi province, held that the Boxer indemnity in Jiangxi had been too large and its payment too hurried, so that it had led to endless squabbling between ordinary people and Christians. The booklet is enclosed in Bishop Ferrant to Bapst, French minister in Beijing, Jiujiang, May 20, 1908: ADNantes 609. 61. Louis Ratard (acting consul-general) to Delcassé, Shanghai, July 27, 1901: AMAE, n.s. 327. 62. Delcassé to French ambassador in Constantinople and the French ministers in Beijing and Cairo (n.d.): AMAE, n.s. 312. 63. “Note générale sur le protectorat des missions catholiques en Extrême-Orient”: ADNantes 59. Cris Guignet, “Le protectorat religieux français en Chine,” 50–52. For a recent discussion of the politics in France regarding the continuation of the Protectorate in China at this time, see Launay, Missions Etrangères, 305–307. 64. S. Jarlin to Gotti (Propaganda prefect), Beijing, February 13, 1906: PropA, vol. 490, p. 237r. On the eve of the 1911 Revolution and in its immediate aftermath, the French legation reaffirmed its consular instruction that “France was still continuing to assume the protection of Catholic missions in China, without discriminating by nationality.” Beauvais (consul in Guangzhou) to Conty (minister in Beijing), #75, Guangzhou, March 20, 1913: ADNantes 59. 65. “Protections des Missions Catholiques en Chine et la Diplomatie,” from an article published in Bulletin du Clergé en faveur des Missions (Brussels), October 1927: ADNantes 59. Taveirne, Han-Mongol Encounters, 559–569, recounts the impatience of the Belgian bishop of the vicariate of Southwest Mongolia with the ineffectiveness of the French legation regarding indemnities, to the point of threatening to switch to German protection. But by the end of 1904, a satisfactory settlement had been reached, and indemnities were paid the Belgian Scheut missions through the French government. See also Sohier, “Diplomatie belge,” 277–283, which puts the first partial Belgian breach with the French Religious Protectorate in 1931. 66. For example, the Dutch bishop of South Shanxi, who had a most disparaging view of Chinese generally, wrote in December 1900: “the war has made incomparably more victims among the pagans than has the persecution among the Christians.” J. Hofman to the Propaganda prefect, December 5, 1900: PropA, vol. 231 (1901), p. 961v. The commander of the U.S. expeditionary forces in China at the time (Adna Chaffee) was quoted as saying: “It is safe to say that where one real Boxer has been killed since the capture of Peking, fifty harmless coolies or labourers on the farms, including not a few women and children, have been slain.” Thompson, William Scott Ament, 204. 67. Letter of bishops to the French minister in Beijing, November 15, 1900: LazA, C163; ADNantes 18.

296

Notes to pages 93–97

68. Henri Joseph Bulté to Cardinal Ledóchowski, Xianxian, June 4, 1900; and Alphonse Favier to Cardinal Ledóchowski, Rome, December 23, 1900: PropA, vol. 262 (1903), pp. 48r, 278r. 69. Letter from Clerc-Renaud, Lazarist missionary in Jiangxi, Les Missions Catholiques 34, no. 1726 ( July 4, 1902): 313–314. 70. French foreign minister to Beau (French minister in Beijing), #126, Paris, July 13, 1901: ADNantes 18. 71. Beau to foreign minister, telegram #248, Beijing (n.d., but referencing #126, July 13, 1901, from Paris, in the previous note): AMAE, n.s. 311. For another Chinese official reform proposal at this time, see Zhou Fu, provincial treasurer of Zhili, Beijing, July 5, 1901: AMAE, n.s. 311. 72. Some have postulated a sudden decline: for example, Michael H. Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 291–293; and R. G. Tiedmann, “Baptism of Fire: China’s Christians and the Boxer Uprising of 1900,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 24, no. 1 ( January 2000): 12. Although post-1900 jiao’an were widely distributed, the numbers in Shandong conspicuously decreased. Schrecker, Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism, 153, 252. Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 850–886, record only three Shandong cases between 1901 and 1911. 73. Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 776–886. An effort to collect Chinese documents about jiao’an does not amount to a counting of cases themselves, but nonetheless amply confirms the impression of a large increase in the seven years after 1900: Zhu Jinfu, Qingmo jiaoan, vols. 2 and 3. See also a graphing of the numbers of jiao’an from 1840 to 1930 in Yang Tianhong, Jidujiao yu jindai Zhongguo [“A Study of the Anti-Christian Movement in China”] (Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1994), 18. 74. The phenomenon of the overlap of opposition to missions and reform institutions is treated in Wyman, “Social Change,” 224–231; and Roxann Prazniak, Of Camel Kings and Other Things: Rural Rebels against Modernity in Late Imperial China (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), 148–149, 168–169, 189–193, 206. 75. Wang Di, “Xinhai geming yu fan-yangjiao douzheng” [The 1911 Revolution and the anti-Christian struggle], Jindai Zhongguo jiaoan yanjiu [Studies in modern China’s jiao’an], ed. Zhang Li and Peng Chaogui (Chengdu: Sichuan-sheng shehui kexueyuan chubanshe, 1986), 109–123. Among the new nationalists who struggled with these issues was Chen Tianhua. Ernest P. Young, “Problems of a Late Ch’ing Revolutionary: Ch’en T’ien-hua,” in Revolutionary Leaders of Modern China, ed. Chün-tu Hsüeh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 215–227. An example of the later reassessment of the Boxers was an article by Cai Hesen in the Xiangdao zhoubao in 1924: the Boxers had been deficient in modernity and ideas, but they had “the true spirit of kicking out the foreign imperialists,” a spirit that needed revival. Todd R. Finlay, “Chinese Bolshevik: A Biography of Cai Hesen” (Master’s thesis, Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1983), 55. Chapter 5 1. M. F. A. Fraser, the British consul in Chongqing in 1900, reported the destruction of numerous Protestant and Catholic chapels in Sichuan and the killing of 100 Catholics, including a Chinese priest, in one particular locality. He was concerned to justify his evacuation of British subjects from Chongqing, although no attack on the city eventuated and the French stayed put. Fraser to Claude MacDonald, Chongqing, December 15, 1900: FO 228/1359. He seems to have

Notes to pages 97–99

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lost the confidence of his superiors in the British legation in Beijing, where a note was applied to this despatch: “Mr. Fraser’s Dockets and language become more fantastic daily! He is evidently mad.” Although the province was assessed an indemnity for 1900, the more general judgment supported that of Fraser’s sucessor, who commented that Sichuan remained quiet during the Boxer outbreak, until 1902. E. C. Wilton to Ernest Satow, Chongqing, May 8, 1902: FO 228/1455. The bishop of West (or Northwest) Sichuan wrote that, although his vicariate had suffered more than the rest of Sichuan during the 1900 Boxer moment, only about fifteen Christians had been killed, and that by the end of August, calm reigned. J. Dunand to Propaganda, August 25, 1900: PropA, vol. 193 (1900), rubr. 130, pp. 308r–309r. 2. Zhang Li, Sichuan Yihetuan yundong [Sichuan’s Boxer movement] (Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1982), 34–47. Bishop Dunand to Robert (MEP procurator in Shanghai), Chengdu, May 28 and August 12, 1902: MEP Archives, vol. 529B, pp. 534–537. Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 623–630, 851–884. These events were to a great extent pursued under the rubric of an older popular association, known as the Red Lantern Teachings (Hongdeng jiao). Prazniak, Of Camel Kings, 131–137. 3. Zhang Li, Sichuan Yihetuan, 93–99. Kristin Stapleton, Civilizing Chengdu: Chinese Urban Reform, 1895–1937 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000), 77–78. S. A. M. Adshead, Province and Politics in Late Imperial China: Viceregal Government in Szechwan, 1898– 1911 (London: Curzon, 1984), 30–36. The bishop of West Sichuan asked the MEP procurator in Shanghai to urge French forces to bombard a large city on the Yangzi, for example, Nanjing, to induce the Chinese government to suppress the Sichuan Boxers. Dunand to Robert, Chengdu, August 12, 1902: AMEP, 529B, pp. 536–537. 4. Bishop Dunand to the Superior and the Directors, Chengdu, August 16, 1903: AMEP, 529B, pp. 615–626. Jean Pontvianne (West Sichuan provicar), “Les Boxeurs au Su-tchuen occidental” [The Boxers of West Sichuan], Annales de la Société des Missions-Etrangère 32 (March–April 1903): 65–80. Dunand had put the number of Chinese Christian deaths at 1,500 in mid-August 1902, but the estimate grew to 2,000 by the end of the year. Alex Hosie (consul-general at Chongqing, resident in Chengdu) to Walter Townley (chargé in Beijing), Chengdu, February 21, 1903, #2: FO 228/1499. 5. P. Bons d’Anty to Dubail, Chongqing, May 21, 1903: AMAE, n.s. 324. The self-congratulatory account of the new governor-general, Cen Chunxuan, specified a total indemnity to Catholics and Protestants of 696,366 taels but mentions other more direct payments as well. Zhu Jinfu, Qingmo jiaoan, vol. 3, 617–620. Sichuan’s share of the annual payments on the national Boxer indemnity was 2.2 million taels, second highest to Jiangsu. Wang Shuhuai, Gengzi peikuan, 151, 153. Sichuan’s provincial revenue for 1909 was variously reported at 18,800,000 and 15,320,657 taels. W. H. Wilkinson to John Jordan, Chengdu, February 18, 1910, #14, and Wilkinson to W. G. Max Müller (chargé in Beijing), Chengdu, October 25, 1910: FO 228/1758. 6. E. C. Wilton to Ernest Satow, Chongqing, #26, November 10, 1902: FO 228/1455. 7. E. C. Wilton to Ernest Satow, Chongqing, May 8, 1902: FO 228/1455. 8. Bishop Dunand to Robert (MEP procurator in Shanghai), Chengdu, August 13, 1902, October 15, 1902, and October 28, 1902: AMEP, 529B, pp. 538–539, 557–559. 9. P. Bons d’Anty to Dubail (minister in Beijing), Chengdu, December 29, 1903: AMAE, n.s. 324. The British and China Inland Mission version of these events was reported in Alex Hosie (consul-general) to Ernest Satow, Chengdu, November 30, 1903, #20; and Hosie to Satow, Chengdu, #1, January 5, 1904: FO 228/1549. In this version, a Protestant catechumen was killed,

298

Notes to pages 99–102

and the French tried to mitigate the punishment of the Catholics involved. The report also declared that the expansion of stations by the China Inland Mission had been reckless and should be moderated. Wyman, “Social Change,” 228–229, describes consular and missionary reports of secret society members joining Catholic and Protestant churches to pursue feuds and gain protection. She also cites altercations in Ensi county in 1904 between members of Catholic and Protestant churches who were affiliated with different secret society traditions. Ibid., 111. 10. Herbert Goffe (consul-general) to Ernest Satow, Chengtu, October 10, 1905, October 14, 1905 (#52), and December 31, 1905: FO 228/1591. Goffe to Satow, Chengdu, April 4, 1906: FO 228/1629. Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 876. 11. W. H. Wilkinson to W. Max Müller, Chengdu, #30, April 14, 1910: FO 228/1758. Wyman, “Social Change,” 38, cites an MEP publication that counted 131 foreign Catholic priests in Sichuan in 1910—omitting the female religious and any lay brothers. 12. “Protestant Mission book in Ssuch’uan &c 1907—Report,” enclosure in Chengdu Consulate-General Intelligence Report, June 1908: FO 228/1693. These numbers indicate rapid growth. In figures for the previous year, the total of Protestant missionaries was 277, of whom 160 were women. Harry H. Fox (acting consul-general) to Jordan, Chengdu, June 20, 1907: FO 228/1660. 13. Wang Di, Kuochu fengbi de shijie, 670. 14. Bons d’Anty to Dubail, Chongqing, February 28 and May 21, 1903: AMAE, n.s. 324. The quote is from the second dispatch. 15. E. C. Wilton to Ernest Satow, Chongqing, May 8, 1902: FO 228/1455. 16. Harry H. Fox to John Jordan, Chengdu, October 4, 1907: FO 228/1660. 17. The Chinese text, which is repeated in two literary styles (one more formal than the other), has the title Huangchao zhengyao biandu: FO 228/1660. My translation is of the less formal but more explicit version. 18. Governor-general Xiliang to Herbert Goffe, contained in Goffe to Carnegie (chargé in Beijing), Chengdu, July 9, 1906, #44A: FO 228/1629. 19. Goffe to Carnegie, Chengdu, #43A, July 6, 1906, and #48A, August 13, 1906: FO 228/1629. 20. Wang Di, Kuachu fengbi de shijie, 505–508. The measure is the number of these new schools and their students. Fengtian’s students were a higher proportion of the province’s (much smaller) population. 21. Harry H. Fox to Jordan, Chengdu, June 30, 1907: FO 228/1629. Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 640–641, 879, 883. Zhang Li, Sichuan Yihetuan, 127–130. For a brilliant discussion of the interplay in these years in Sichuan among antiforeign movements, fears of great-power encroachment, resistance to the expensive reforms, anti-Manchu feeling, and anger at officials for siding with missionaries, see Wyman, “Social Change,” 221–230, 260–264, 295–296. 22. B. Twyman (acting consul-general) to Jordan, Chengdu, July 20, 1908: FO 228/1693. Twyman to Jordan, Chengdu, January 29, 1909: FO 228/1727. 23. Henry H. Fox (acting consul-general) to Jordan, Chengdu, June 30, 1907: FO 228/1660. 24. Sweeten, Christianity in Rural China, 17–42. 25. Cohen, China and Christianity, 87–107, 129, 167, 172–173, 218–219. 26. Bray (North Jiangxi apostolic vicar) to Brenier (French minister in Beijing), Jiujiang, November 20, 1877: ADNantes 32. Dubail to Zongliyamen, Beijing, October 2, 1897, and Zongliyamen to Dubail, Beijing, October 6, 1897: ADNantes 32.

Notes to pages 102–105

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27. Richard Sieburth, “Ambassador Poets,” TLS, February 8, 2008, 3–5, 7. 28. Tim Ashley, “Evil genius,” Guardian, August 14, 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/ stage/2004/aug/14/theatre.art?INTCMP=SRCH. 29. Cahiers Paul Claudel, 4, Claudel diplomate (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1962), 104–111. 30. Meugniot to Favier, Shanghai, September 14, 1897: ADNantes 32. 31. Bezaure to Pichon, Shanghai, October 28, 1898: ADNantes 32. In that same year, Claudel was reassigned as vice-consul in Fuzhou. Roger Pérennès, “La représentation diplomatique de la France en Chine (1843–1945)” [The diplomatic representation of France in China, 1843–1945], in Weber, La France en Chine, 169. The acquisition, loss, and recovery of Catholic missionary property in Nanchang between 1862 and 1898 is recounted in Sweeten, Christianity in Rural China, 133–142. 32. Bezaure to Delcassé, #119, Shanghai, October 2, 1899: AMAE, n.s. 327. The French minister in Beijing, Stéphen Pichon, reported that he found the British legation behaving properly in these matters and that he had admonished Bezaure not to lend himself to Catholic-Protestant polemics. He noted, however, that he supported Bezaure’s demands at the Zongli yamen. Pichon to Delcassé, #11, Beijing, February 1, 1900: AMAE, n.s. 327. Despite the admonition, Bezaure’s successor in the Shanghai consulate-general persisted in these concerns about Protestant aggressiveness. 33. Andrew Y. M. Yan (seemingly a Chinese priest, writing in Latin) to Bray, November 24, 1897; and Portes to Meugniot, Nanchang, November 20, 1897: ADNantes 32. Portes wrote: “The American Protestants are the Protestants who pose as enemies of the Christians [i.e., Catholics]— the English Protestants are peaceful.” 34. Annual Report of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 83rd, for the Year 1901 (New York: For the Society, 1902), 102–103. 35. David H. Moore to H. K. Carroll (corresponding secretary for the Board in New York), Shanghai, June 22, 1901: MethA, 74-11/1259-5-3:08. 36. Moore to Carroll, Shanghai, no date, received in New York on January 16, 1902: MethA, 74-11/1259-5-3:08. 37. Minutes of the Twenty-eighth Annual Meeting of the Central China Mission, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held at William Mast College, Kiukiang. Dec. 5–8, 1901 (Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission House, 1902), 25–27. In a study of the attitudes of Protestant missionaries toward the Chinese religious environment, these missionaries are characterized as seeing Catholicism as more threatening to them in some ways than heathenism and as characterizing the “Roman church” as essentially pagan. Eric Reinders, Borrowed Gods and Foreign Bodies: Christian Missionaries Imagine Chinese Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 25, 55, 109–112, 210–211. 38. Ratard (consul) to French minister, Shanghai, July 10 (no year, but from context, 1901): ADNantes 274. 39. “L’Affaire de Sen-Kan [Chigang],” report by Assistant Consul M. L. Gayat, enclosed in Ratard to Beau (minister in Beijing), Shanghai, January 8, 1902: ADNantes 274. 40. Clennel to Satow, Jiujiang, August 15, 1904: FO 228/1555. 41. Li Xingrui ( Jiangxi governor) to the foreign ministry, May 5, 1902, in Zhu Jinfu, Qingmo jiaoan, 299–301. Clennel to Satow, #12, Jiujiang, July 27, 1901, including a dispatch from Governor Li Xingrui to the French and American consuls-general in Shanghai: FO 228/1405. North China Herald, July 17, 1901, 109. M. L. Gayat, “L’Affaire de Sen-kan,”in Ratard to Beau, Shanghai, January 9, 1902: ADNantes 274. There are some differences in the sources regarding total casualties. Gayat’s report emphasized the recent history of Protestant depredations on Catholics of the area.

300

Notes to pages 105–107

42. Clennel to Satow, Jiujiang, August 12, 1902: FO 228/1456. In looking back on the incident, Bishop Ferrant attributed the troubles in Chigang to local displeasure at compensation to Catholic victims for “various molestations and injuries.” In a search for ways to avenge themselves, the adversaries of the Catholics declared themselves Protestants, he argued. Ferrant to the French minister, Nanchang, February 9, 1909: ADNantes 274. 43. Translation of a dispatch by Governor Li Xingrui, addressed to the French and American consuls-general in Shanghai, enclosed in Clennel to Satow, Jiujiang, July 27, 1901: FO 228/1405. 44. Clennel to Satow, #2, Jiujiang, January 8, 1902: FO 228/1456. In 1899, Bishop Ferrant of North Jiangxi wrote the French minister in Beijing that in recent years there were few religious cases involving Catholics and pagans; difficulties usually came instead from those falsely declaring themselves Protestant. As a result, the mandarins feared settling matters. Ferrant to Pichon, Nanchang, May 5, 1899: ADNantes 32. For an illuminating discussion of conflict between Protestants and Catholics in a Guangdong village and of the difficulties it presented for officials, see Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, The Bible and the Gun: Christianity in South China, 1860–1900 (New York: Routledge, 2003), 119–136. 45. M. L. Gayat, “L’Affaire de Sen-kan,” in Ratard to Beau, Shanghai, January 8, 1902: ADNantes 274. 46. Zhu Jinfu, Qingmo jiaoan, 299–301. Clennel to Satow, #12, Jiujiang, July 27, 1901: FO 228/1405. 47. In 1909, Ferrant was still asking the French legation to effect the release of five Catholics convicted in the Chigang case. Ferrant to the French minister, Nanchang, February 9, 1909: ADNantes 274. 48. R. E. Maclean to Dr. Carroll, August 15, 1902, Nanchang: MethA 74-11/12596-2:07. (Emphasis in the original.) 49. “To Bishop David M. Moore. December 21, 1903. Report of the Commission Appointed to Investigate and Report upon Property Conditions in Kiangsi”: MethA, 44-11/1259.5.3:08. This is the second report, which quotes heavily from the first of the previous year. A report by the Catholic bishop of East Jiangxi stressed the American Methodist use of Chinese pastors or preachers, the charging of fees for membership, and their engagement in litigation—though he recognized a recent quiescence. “Notes sur les Protestants,” January 6, 1903, by C. Vic, enclosed in Ratard to Dubail, Shanghai, January 24, 1903: ADNantes 418. 50. Edward J. M. Rhoads, “Nationalism and Xenophobia in Kwangtung (1905–1906): The Canton Anti-American Boycott and the Lienchow Anti-Missionary Uprising,” Papers on China 16 (1962): 174. Ryan Dunch, Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of a Modern China, 1857–1927 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 28–29, notes that the Church Mission Society (Anglican) in these same years in Fujian province was troubled by Chinese church leaders charging nominal adherents for help in lawsuits. In the late 1890s, Baptists in the east Guangdong county of Chaoyang accused a Catholic catechist of charging converts one dollar and promising in return immunity from taxes, debts, and magistrates. Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, “The Lord of Heaven versus Jesus Christ: Christian Sectarian Violence in Late-Nineteenth-Century South China,” in positions: east asia cultures critique 8, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 84. 51. “To Bishop David M. Moore. December 21, 1903. Report of the Commission Appointed to Investigate and Report upon Property Conditions in Kiangsi”: MethA, 44-11/1259.5.3:08. 52. Ibid.

Notes to pages 107–109

301

53. D. H. Moore to Carroll, Chemulpo, February 16, 1904: MethA, 74-11/1259-5-3:08. J. W. Bashford Diaries, Volume 4 (1904), 25–35, Union Theological Seminary. Back home, Nichols defended himself by asserting that “a new order of things in Central China along the lines of more agressive [sic] evangelistic work” had been instituted and then approved by three successive bishops of the mission and that he had been assigned to carry it on. Don W. Nichols to Rev. A. B. Leonard, St. Louis, Missouri, February 23, 1905, and Omaha, Nebraska, April 24, 1905: MethA, 74-11/1259.6.2:20. 54. Annual Report of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 84th, for the Year 1902 (New York, 1903), 143, and Annual Report of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 85th, for the Year 1903 (New York, 1904), 152. What was listed as the Nanchang District for 1902 was renamed the Central Kiangsi District for 1903, among other changes. The “Chienchang” district, which was renamed the “Southeast Kiangsi Dist.” in 1903, suffered a drastric decline similar to that of the Nanchang district, whereas the “Kiukiang [ Jiujiang] District” contracted only about four percent. 55. Spencer Lewis to H. K. Carroll, Nanjing, December 20, 1904: MethA, 74-11/1259-6-1:50. 56. Rev. Edward James, presiding elder of the Southeast Kiangsi District, in Annual Report of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 86th, for the Year 1904 (New York, 1905), 131. 57. Rev. John F. Wilson, presiding elder of the Central Kiangsi District, in ibid., 130. 58. Clennel to Satow, Jiujiang, August 15, 1904: FO 228/1555. 59. The county’s 1917 gazetteer cited missionary protection after 1900 of Catholic converts who were bullies and loafers. Yancheng xianzhi [Yancheng (Xinchang) county gazetteer], reprint of 1917 original, in Zhongguo fangzhi congshu, vol. 281 (Taibei: Chengwen chubanshe, 1975), 609–610. The official French version was that members of the Gong family of Tangpu had gone unpunished for killing several Christians in 1900 and for trying to kill a missionary in 1903. Annex to Edmond Bapst (minister) to foreign minister, #69, Beijing, June 23, 1906: AMAE, n.s. 328. Most accounts reported the arrival in Tangpu of two catechists; in his reports, the Jiangxi governor named three, all killed. Zhu Jinfu, Qingmo jiaoan, Vol. 3, 728, 734–735. 60. Yancheng xianzhi, 609–610. 61. Ferrant to Dubail (French minister in Beijing), Jiujiang, July 18, 1905: ADNantes 274. Ferrant to Fiat (superior-general at Lazarist motherhouse), Jiujiang, September 18, 1904: LazA. A detailed narrative and itemization of deaths and damages was submitted to the authorities: Jinkai Jiangxi Ruizhou-shu Xinchang deng xian jiaomin bei hai qingjie qingzhe [Respectfully submitted accurate accounting of Christian injuries in Xinchang and other counties of Ruizhou prefecture, Jiangxi]: ADNantes 274. 62. Zhu Jinfu, Qingmo jiaoan, vol. 3, 734–735. 63. Clennel to Satow, #15, Jiujiang, September 1, 1904: FO 228/1555. 64. This account of the Tangpu affair of 1904 is drawn from Zhu Jinfu, Qingmo jiaoan, 728, 734–735; Yancheng xianzhi, vol. 2, 609–613; Clennel to Satow, Jiujiang, August 15, 1904: FO 228/1555; Clennel to Satow, #15, September 1, 1904, enclosing the translation of a letter by Chinese Protestants to H. E. Pownall, Xinchang, August 15, 1904, and of two letters to A. Cuff, Ruizhou, August 15 and 25, 1904: FO 228/1555; Clennel to Satow, #16, September 7, 1906: FO 228/1555; Clennel to Satow, #19, September 16, 1904: FO 228/1555; and “Affaires de Sin-tchang-shien ( Jouei-tcheou-fou),” Bishop Ferrant to Shanghai consul-general, Jiujiang, July 18, 1905: ADNantes 274.

302

Notes to pages 109–111

65. “Affaires de Sin-tchang-shien ( Jouei-tcheou-fou),” Bishop Ferrant to Shanghai consul-general, Jiujiang, July 18, 1905: ADNantes 274. 66. JWJAD 7, #2: 726–727, 756 (docs. 622, 624, 577). Zhang Zhidong, Zhang Wenxiang-gong quanji [Complete works of Zhang Zhidong] (henceforth, ZZD), ed. Wang Shutong, vol. 5 (Taibei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1963): 3609. Clennel to Satow, #9, Juijiang, May 23, 1904, enclosing Jiujiang daotai to acting consul H. L. Higgs, July 8, 1903; Clennel to Satow, telegram #3, Jiujiang, August 10, 1904; Clennel to Satow, telegram #4, Jiujiang, August 19, 1904: FO 228/1555. E. T. C. Werner to Satow, #3, Jiujiang, March 20, 1906: FO 228/2404. 67. Clennel to Satow, Jiujiang, July 27, 1905: FO 228/1596. 68. E. T. C. Werner to John Newell Jordan, Jiujiang, January 22, 1908: FO 228/1693. 69. “A Lament for Kiangsi [ Jiangxi],” enclosed in Clennel to Satow, #4, Jiujiang, February 20, 1904: FO 228/1555. As far as I know, the original has not been reprinted. I rely on the translation of the British consulate in Jiujiang. The timing, location, and style of the essay strongly suggest that the author was Chen Tianhua, who had been assigned a special role in Jiangxi by his revolutionary organization. On Chen Tianhua, see Young, “Problems of a Late Ch’ing Revolutionary,” 210–247. 70. Clennel to Satow, Jiujiang, August 15 and September 16, 1904: FO 228/1555. Perhaps the French minister was reporting the same event, although he mentions only the general region and attributes the origin to a new tax for schools. Dubail to Delcassé, #118, Beijing, September 6, 1904: AMAE, n.s. 327. 71. I have previously published an account of the Nanchang affair of 1906: Ernest P. Young, “The Politics of Evangelism at the end of the Qing: Nanchang, 1906,” in Bays, Christianity in China, 91–113. 72. Memorial of April 25, 1906, reporting on the investigation of Zhou Hao, in ZZD, vol. 2, 1170–1175. 73. Father Martin, Jiujiang, March 16, 1906 (“resolute in our lawsuits”): LazA. Telegram of top Jiangxi officials to Zhang Zhidong, February 27, 1906 (“unusually fierce and arrogant”), in ZZD, vol. 5, 3609. 74. Evidence of Ferrant’s special regard for Lacruche, in addition to appointments to leading posts, can be found in Ferrant to Fiat (superior general of the Lazarists, in Paris), Jiujiang, February 2, 1901 (“the best of my people”) and July 2, 1904 (“a top-notch person”), LazA; and Ferrant to Meugniot (in Paris), November 1, 1903 (“excellent missionary [who] has brought to conclusion a good number of our legal cases”), AnnalesCM 69 (1904): 198–200. Between the wounding of Jiang Zhaotang and the killing of Lacruche, Ferrant wrote, “They want to avert the intervention of M. Lacruche, my delegate, because he is very knowledgeable about all these circumstances [the Tangpu matter], because he is capable, and because they do not like his cold tenacity in upholding our rights.” Ferrant to French minister, Jiujiang, February 24, 1906: ADNantes 274. 75. Ferrant to French minister, Jiujiang, March 1, 1906, enclosing “Origine des événements de Nan Chang.” ADNantes 274. Some of these charges appeared in the foreign press in China: North China Herald (March 23, 1906). 76. Clennel to Satow, Jiujiang, January 14, 1901: FO 228/1405. Clennel to Satow, Jiujiang, #15, September 1, 1904: FO 228/1555. Clennel to William Martin (U.S. consul-general in Hankou), March 17, 1906 (“treated me with unfailing courtesy”; “a friendly and efficient official”): NA RG 84, Hankou (C8), Miscellaneous Correspondence, vol. 40. For a biography of Jiang, see Wu Erqi,

Notes to pages 111–114

303

“Jiang Zhaotang pingzhuan” [A critical biography of Jiang Zhaotang], Nanchangxian wenshi ziliao 2 (1988): 20–36. 77. Report on the Nanchang affair, April 25, 1906, in ZZD, vol. 2, 1172. 78. Bapst to foreign minister, #69, annex, Beijing, June 23, 1906: AMAE, n.s. 328. 79. Bapst to foreign minister, #68, Beijing, June 22, 1906: AMAE, n.s. 328. The investigator sent to Nanchang by the French legation reported that he had come to believe that Lacruche, lacking flexibility, had been very demanding about capital punishment for the Xinchang persecutions and about the release of those condemned at Chigang. “The missionary asked too much and threatened the intervention of the Legation.” Report of Vicomte du Halgouet, Nanchang, April 6, 1906, enclosed in Dubail, #41, April 18, 1906: AMAE, n.s. 328. 80. Originals and photographs of some of Magistrate Jiang’s messages to the missionaries are deposited in ADNantes 274. Some of these and other messages are collected in ZZD, vol. 2, 1174, and Jindaishi ziliao [Materials on modern history] 1956, no. 1 (Beijing, 1956): 98–100. 81. Examples of accounts describing Lacruche as Jiang’s murderer include Li Ping, “1906-nian de Nanchang jiaoan” [The Nanchang jiao’an of 1906], Jiangxi daxue xuebao 1985, no. 2: 51–66; Xu Wei, “1906-nian ‘Nanchang jiaoan’ de fandi douzheng” [Anti-imperialist struggle in the Nanchang jiao’an of 1906], Nanchang wenshi ziliao xuanji 4 (n.d.): 101–122; and Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 638–640. For a contrary view, see Zhang Qiuwen, “Guangxu 32-nian de Nanchang jiaoan” [The Nanchang jiao’an of 1906], Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo jikan 12 ( June 1983): 61–80. 82. A Chinese transcript of their testimony can be found in ADNantes 274. One of the servants mentioned Lacruche’s short temper. 83. A telegram from the Acting Provincial Judge of Hubei, Liang Dingfen (head of the Hubei investigation team), April 15, 1906, in ZZD, vol. 5, 3612, noted the failure of officials to ask Jiang Zhaotang detailed questions in the last week of his life. 84. Clennel to Satow, #6, Jiujiang, March 22, 1904: FO 228/1555. Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 863–864, seem to be describing the incident that precipitated the magistrate’s act. Another case of a county magistrate’s suicide in 1897 in face of Catholic demands is cited in Ku Wei-ying, “The Shaping of the Late Qing’s Policy toward Christianity,” in Heyndrickx, Historiography of the Chinese Catholic Church, 119. 85. Dubail to foreign minister, #24, Beijing, March 5, 1906: AMAE, n.s. 328 (1906). Satow to Grey, Beijing, March 12, 1906: FO 405/166, p. 68. The matter was being adjudicated in French courts in Asia. 86. C. H. Dawe, surgeon of the Royal Navy, to Werner, on H.M.S. Snipe, Nanchang, March 3, 1906, enclosed in Werner to Satow, March 20, 1906: FO 228/2404. Report of naval doctor (2nd class), Edouard Fockenberghe, March 10, 1906: ADNantes 274. The head of the Hubei investigation team, in a telegram of April 15, 1906, contended that the French doctor’s analysis of the wounds was inconclusive on the issue. ZZD, vol. 5, 3612. The French naval doctor’s report, just cited, concluded: “I cannnot judge [that it was suicide] in a formal manner, but it seems to me that that is where the probabilities lie.” The report went on to say why. 87. The Chinese text of the leaflet is the tenth enclosure in Werner to Satow, # 3, Jiujiang, March 20, 1906: FO 228/2404. “Civilized resistance” could refer to the strategy of boycotts. 88. ZZD, vol. 2, 1174. Report of Vicomte du Halgouet, Nanchang, April 6, 1906, enclosed in Dubail, #41, April 18, 1906: AMAE, n.s. 328. Werner to Satow, #3, Jiujiang, March 20, 1906, FO 228/2404. Werner gives the names of the four who attended the governor’s meeting.

304

Notes to pages 114–117

89. The former daotai, Zou Linghan, wrote a long letter in Chinese to Bishop Ferrant describing the event and suggesting that he deserved compensation for the damage to his possessions. “Récit des évenements [sic] fait par Tseou,” March 29, 1906: ADNantes 274. In 1895, Zou had contributed to the founding of the Qiangxue hui in Shanghai and participated in establishing the related newpaper, the Shiwubao, projects of Kang Yuwei and Liang Qichao. Chen Yutang, ed., Zhongguo jinxiandai renwu minghao dacidian [Large dictionary of names of modern and contemporary Chinese] (Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji chubanshe, 1993), 395. Zou was named by Liang Qichao as the source for his 1897 biography of Ida Kahn (Kang Aide, originally Kang Cheng), who had her medical degree from the University of Michigan and worked with the Methodist mission in Nanchang as a medical doctor. Hu Ying, “Naming the First ‘New Woman,’” in Rethinking the 1898 Reform Period: Political and Cultural Change in Late Qing China, ed. Rebecca E. Karl and Peter Zarrow (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002): 180, 187. 90. The wounded child was attended by Dr. Ida Kahn (Kang Aide). North China Herald (March 9, 1906): 560. 91. Most Protestant establishments in Nanchang were quite distant from the Catholic compounds. Like the residence of the British Plymouth Brethren family, the compound of A. E. Thor of the China Inland Mission was not far from Catholic headquarters, was briefly threatened, but was rescued by soldiers from a nearby cavalry barracks. A. E. Thor to William Martin (U.S. consul-general, Hankou), Nanchang, March 21, 1906: NA RG 84, Hankou, Miscellaneous Correspondence, Vol. 40. 92. Qun Li, ed., “1906 nian Nanchang jiaoan ziliao jilu” [Compilation of materials on the Nanchang jiao’an of 1906], Jindaishi ziliao 1956, no. 1: 107–113. 93. Among the many references to memorial meetings in honor of Magistrate Jiang and his favorable press, see JWJAD 7, #2: 742 (doc. 660); “Presse du 20 Mars 1906,” French consulate in Guangzhou: AMAE, n.s. 328; Dubail to foreign minister, Beijing, March 21, 1906, April 1, April 4, and April 18, 1906: AMAE, n.s. 328. 94. Dejean de la Bâtie (consul) to Bapst, #41, Hankou, September 29, 1906: ADNantes 31. The North China Herald (March 23, 1906): 645, wrote that Jiang had six sons. 95. A memorial by Hanlin Academy Reader Yun Yuding, March 7, 1906, in JWJAD 7, #2: 738–739 (doc. 653). For a French complaint regarding its reprinting in the Sichuan government gazette in Chengdu, see Note from the French minister, May 9, 1906, in JWJAD 7, #2: 773 (doc. 680). Yun Yuding was a witness to government decisions during the Boxer affair, about which his diary, published later, was a main, if unreliable, source. Xiang, Origins of the Boxer War, 232, 293–296, 355–356. 96. Dubail to French foreign minister, Beijing, April 18, 1906: AMAE, n.s. 328. Father Fatiguet to the French delegate (probably indicating Halgouet), Beitang, April 24, 1906: ADNantes 274. 97. Report of Frederick G. Henke, presiding elder, Jiujiang District, in Minutes of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Central China Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Oct. 18–23, 1906 (Shanghai: Methodist Publishing House, n.d.): 29. 98. Memorandum of meeting with French minister, March 25, 1906, in JWJAD 7, #2: 741 (doc. 659). 99. Note verbale by Dubail, for Satow, April 9, 1906: FO 228/2404. 100. Zou Linghan, the former daotai to whom Lacruche fled for refuge and who was well connected to the high officials of Jiangxi at the time, quoted the Nanchang prefect as saying:

Notes to pages 117–120

305

“Most people among the officials also say that Magistrate Jiang cut his own throat.” “Récit des évenement [sic] fait par Tseou” (in Chinese), March 29, 1906: ADNantes 274. The Jiangxi provincial judge, who was in charge of the official investigation, was quoted by a French naval officer to the effect that Jiang Zhaotang cut his own throat, but perhaps Father Lacruche struck the second blow. “Extrait du rapport de mission du Commandant de l’Olry,” March 12, 1906: ADNantes 274. The same conclusion appeared in a message from the Jiangxi governor and in the report of the Hubei investigative team. ZZD, vol. 5, 3609, 3612–3613. 101. That the additional phrase was a French concession is indicated by statements as late as early May that the French legation had been pressing for a declaration of the mission’s innocence in Magistrate Jiang’s suicide. F. Couget (chargé d’affaires), telegram #26, Beijing, May 2, 1906; F. Couget to foreign minister, #44, Beijing, May 2, 1906: AMAE, n.s. 328. 102. These words, along with the point that Jiang cut his own throat, were in an annex to the Franco-Chinese agreement containing a proclamation to be issued by the governor of Jiangxi. Bapst to foreign minister, #68, Beijing, June 22, 1906: AMAE, n.s. 328. 103. Report of the commander of the gunboat Descartes, March 18, 1906, enclosed in minister of marine to foreign ministry, Paris, May 8, 1906: AMAE, n.s. 328. 104. Louis Ratard to French minister in Beijing, tel. #28, Shanghai, April 10, 1906: ADNantes 274. Ratard to Foreign Minister Bourgeois, #18, Shanghai, May 20, 1906: AMAE, n.s. 328. 105. Ferrant to Fiat, Jiujiang, July 21, 1906, November 23, 1906, and March 15, 1907: LazA. 106. Msgr. Vic to the superior general, November 25, 1910: LazA. 107. “Memorandum communicated to M. Cambon, May 22, 1906”: FO 228/2404. 108. “Affaire de Nantchang. Note du Foreign Office,” Paris, June 14, 1906; foreign minister to Paul Cambon (ambassador in London), #1068, Paris, October 3, 1906: AMAE, n.s. 328. 109. Edmond Bapst to foreign minister, #60, Beijing, June 11, 1906: AMAE, n.s. 312. 110. F. Couget (chargé d’affaires) to foreign minister, #46, Beijing, May 14, 1906; and “Quelques notes sur les Missions en Chine” (probably by Bishop Jarlin of North Zhili), which gives the Latin text: AMAE, n.s. 312 and n.s. 312bis. Gu Changsheng, Chuanjiaoshi yu jindai Zhongguo [Missionaries and modern China] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1983), 248, reports that at this time the responsible Catholic missionary authorities instructed missionaries to reduce or eliminate their management of the lawsuits of their Christians. 111. Bapst telegram #32 and #34, Beijing, April 21 and April 26, 1908; Bapst to Pichon, #98, Beijing, April 27, 1908; and Pichon to Bapst, telegram #28, Paris, April 23, 1908: AMAE, n.s. 312 bis. 112. In a further example, the French minister in Beijing reported to Paris in 1904 that he had reminded “our missionaries” that they must abstain from unwarranted meddling in cases between Chinese Christians and non-Christians and should refer matters to the French legation in an emergency. Dubail to Delcassé, #6, Beijing, January 14, 1904: AMAE, n.s. 312. 113. Minister of foreign affairs to de Margerie (minister in Beijing), Paris, January 13, 1910: AMAE, 312 bis. 114. Dunch, Fuzhou Protestants, 98. 115. Yangcheng ribao [Guangzhou daily], July 20, 21, 22, and 23, 1909. The articles were enclosed in Beauvais (Guangzhou consul) to chargé d’affaires (Beijing), Guangzhou, July 24, 1909: ADNantes 18. 116. Yu Heping, “Cong Henan jiaoan kan Minguo Zhongguo guanmin dui yangjiao taidu he jiaoan xingzhi de bianhua” [Attitudes of Chinese officials and people towards Christianity and

306

Notes to pages 120–126

changes in the nature of jiao’an since the Republic from the perspective of Henan’s jiao’an], in Zhang and Peng, Jindai Zhongguo jiaoan yanjiu, 337–348. Chapter 6 1. H. Bernard-Maitre, “Chine,” in Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclesiastique, vol. 12, column 715 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1912–1956), cited in Soetens, Eglise catholique en Chine, 24. Soetens warns that the statistics are uncertain and notes the somewhat smaller totals for foreign and Chinese priests as of 1897 in Latourette, History of Christian Missions. For another tabulation, see Tiedemann, “Controversy over the Formation,” 375. For the low estimates for the start of the nineteenth century, see Nicolas Standaert, “Christianity as a Religion in China,” 1–21. 2. This aspect of Favier’s activities from the mid-1880s is noted in Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 62. 3. D’Addosio to Fiat (superior general of the Lazarists), Nantang, Beijing, April 21, 1890: LazA. Although Favier was not mentioned by name in this letter, it is apparent at whom the remarks were directed. On the meanings and use of the term curiosities in nineteenth-century European discourse, see Hevia, “Looting Beijing,” 198. 4. J. Capy to Meugniot (Lazarist Visitor at Shanghai), “King t’oung,” January 25, 1897: LazA, C158I. 5. Msgr. Sarthou to Meugniot, Beijing, January 14, 1897; A. Provoss to Meugniot, Beijing, January 14, 1897: LazA. 6. Notes submitted by Msgr. Favier, apostolic vicar of Beijing, to Cardinal Ledóchowski, prefect of the Propaganda, received in congress, December 29, 1900, and January 5, 1901: PropA, vol. 262, pp. 296r–299r, and vol. 213, pp. 740r–742v. (Emphasis in the original.) 7. Note of December 29, 1900: PropA, vol. 262, p. 298r. 8. Note of January 5, 1901: PropA, vol. 213, pp. 740r–742v. 9. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 507–508, asserts that Favier in the late 1890s was critical of the French Religious Protectorate when he wrote to Rome but implies that this was a tactical position, designed to improve his chances of being made metropolitan of Beijing. 10. AnnalesCM 74 (1902): 17. 11. “Rapport sur l’Audience impériale du 23 Fevrier 1902”: PropA, vol. 237, pp. 147r–153v. 12. AnnalesCM 68 (1903): 409–410. 13. Guilloux to Fiat (Lazarist superior general), Beijing, April 28, 1901: LazA, #9. This paragraph also draws on the following letters: Guilloux to Fiat, Shanghai, May 1, 1902; A. Ducoulombier to Fiat, Beijing, May 20, 1902; Guilloux to Fiat, April 26, 1903; Ducoulombier to Fiat, May 3, 1903: LazA, #9. 14. “Gazette de Pékin du 8 avril 1902. Décret Imperial.” ASVat, 1903, rubr. 242, fasc. 2. 15. Ferrant (bishop of North Jiangxi) to Fiat (Lazarist superior general), Jiujiang, November 22, 1900: LazA, Letters. Dunand (bishop of West Sichuan) to Robert (MEP procurator in Shanghai), Chengdu, September 12, 1902: AMEP, 529B (West Sichuan, 1875–1909). 16. Chinese minister in Paris to nuncio, Paris, July 18, 1902 (71540); secretary of state to Favier, July 22, 1902 (71539): ASVat, 1903, rubr. 242, fasc. 2. 17. Favier to French chargé d’affaires, Beijing, August 3, 1902: ADNantes 609. 18. Minister of foreign affairs to Dubail (minister in Beijing), #105, Paris, October 15, 1903; Minister of foreign affairs to Dubail, Paris, April 1, 1904: ADNantes 609. The foreign minister

Notes to pages 126–128

307

wrote to his ambassador to the Vatican that he was “confirmed in my resolution to rebuff all propositions tending to modify the treaties, conventions or agreements governing the exercise of our religious protectorate in China.” Delcassé to Nisard, #57, Paris, March 29, 1904: AMAE, n.s. 312. 19. Favier dispensed with the usual procedures for appointing a coadjutor bishop and went directly to the prefect of the Propaganda with a single name, although with the endorsement of the Lazarist superior general. Fiat to Ledóchowski, Paris, December 10, 1899; Favier to Ledóchowski, December 17, 1899; memorandum by Ledóchowski of papal audience, December 21, 1899: PropA, vol. 193, rubr. 130, pp. 147r–v, 145r–v, 149r. Sources differ on the year of Jarlin’s arrival in China. 20. E. Villette (later superior general of the Lazarist order), “Monseigneur Jarlin,” August 15, 1906: LazA, North Zhili, 1906–1909. 21. Henri Garnier, Stanislas Jarlin (Namur: Collection Lavigérie, 1940), 147. 22. “Notes de M. Ducoulombier sur la Maison de Pékin (Chine),” January 12, 1910: LazA, North Zhili Letters, 1894–1914. This report described Jarlin as intolerant of views other than his own, but a different confrere had earlier said that the bishop accepted criticism in good spirit. Desrumaux to Fiat, Tianjin, April 22, 1907: LazA, North Zhili Letters, 1906–1909. On Jarlin’s service as a soldier, see Sohier, “Mgr Alphonse Favier, ” 9. 23. Sohier, “Mgr Alphonse Favier,” 13. Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 830. Garnier, Stanislas Jarlin, 53–54, gives a slightly different version of the incident, omitting the mission’s attempted detention of the two intruding soldiers. The Lazarist director at Baoding at the time was Paul Dumond, later bishop of a new Tianjin vicariate. 24. Jarlin to Guilloux, Beijing, March 18, 1900: LazA. 25. Jarlin to Vincent Lebbe, Beijing, February 27, 1906: AVLebbe, D.G.t.3, 64. 26. “Quelques notes sur les Missions en Chine,” by Bishop Jarlin (no date), gives the Latin text of the resolution, but adds that France has the right by treaty to intervene if Chinese Christians are persecuted for their faith, and urged further than it would be dangerous to announce that missions will never intervene in lawsuits. AMAE, n.s. 312 bis. 27. Jarlin to Lebbe, Beijing, October 22, 1908: LazA, Jarlin 3o, C170 II.b. 28. Jarlin to Henri Cèny, Beijing, November 26, 1909: LazA, Letters of Jarlin, 2nd set, C170 II-6. (Original emphasis.) 29. Marianne Bastid-Bruguière, “Yihetuan yundong qijian Zhili-sheng de Tianzhujiao jiaomin” (Catholics of Zhili province in the period of the Boxer movement), Lishi yanjiu 1 (2001): 30, 33– 40. Bruguière (West Zhili bishop) to Propaganda prefect, Zhengdingfu, April 29, 1901: PropA, vol. 404, rubr. 130 (1907), pp. 604r–605r. An in-house history of the Lazarists in China attributes the relatively small number of victims in the West Zhili vicariate to the small number of Boxers there as compared with North Zhili, to the negligible support given to the Boxers there by the imperial army, and to the well-organized centers of Christian resistance: Ferreux, “Histoire de la Congrégation,” 279. The first two explanations might be interpreted as effects from the good will accumulated during the previous decade. 30. Th. Festa to Coqset, Ningdu (South Jiangxi), June 20, 1903, in AnnalesCM 68 (1903): 416–418. 31. F. Couger (charg é d’affaires) to foreign minister, #46, Beijing, May 14, 1906: AMAE, n.s. 312. 32. Jarlin to Coqset, Beijing, May 3, 1909: LazA, second set of Jarlin letters, C170 II-6.

308

Notes to pages 128–133

33. Bastid-Bruguière, “Yihetuan yundong,” 36. Jarlin was director of the Baoding mission district from 1894 to 1897. Garnier, Stanislas Jarlin, 48–51. 34. Garnier, Stanislas Jarlin, 122–137, 161. Jarlin to Coqset, Beijing, January 22, 1908; Jarlin to Lebbe, Beijing, May 24, 1909: LazA, C170 II-6, C170 II.b. 35. Bishop Joseph Fabrèques, “Rapport sur l’état de la mission du Tche Ly Central en Janvier 1911,” Baoding, April 15, 1911: PropA, vol. 503, rubr. 130 (1911), pp. 301r–313r. 36. Jarlin to Lebbe, Beijing, August 9, 1905: LazA, C170 II.b, Lebbe. Jarlin to Coqset, Beijing, January 22, 1908: LazA C170 II-6, Divers. 37. Jarlin to Coqset, Beijing, March 26, 1909: LazA C170 II-6. M. Morelli, “Rapport sur la question d’un Université catholique à Pékin” ( July 1906); E. Villete, “Pékin—Affaire de l’Université” (August 15, 1906): LazA, Tché-ly Nord (1905–1909). Jarlin to superior general, Beijing, November 9, 1912; Planchet to superior general, Beijing, August 7, 1913: LazA, Tché-ly Nord (1894–1914). Traveirne, Han-Mongol Encounters, 389–391, concludes from Jarlin’s report on a regional synod of bishops in 1906 that he favored a Catholic university in Beijing and that a shortage of funds and staff explains the failure to establish a higher school, rather than does a rivalry among missionary institutes. Despite this report of a 1906 meeting, the weight of other evidence suggests Jarlin’s opposition to such a school (at least until the 1920s) and the importance of missionary rivalries in delaying such a project. 38. “Etat du Vicariat Apostolique de Péking, Tchély Nord, au 15 Août 1899, d’après les Comptes de Mgr Mouly, VA, au Cardinal Préfect de la Propaganda”: LazA. 39. Jarlin to Gotti (Propaganda prefect), Beijing, December 6, 1910 (five-year report): PropA, vol. 489 (1910), rubr. 129–130, pp. 787r–803r. 40. Maquet to Gotti, Xianxian, September 10, 1911: PropA, vol. 503 (1911), rubr. 130 (1911), pp. 572r–573v. 41. This is not to say that such obtructionism disappeared. For a 1903 report about a county magistrate in Zhili who was “implacable in his hatred of Christianity” and acted on it, see Paul Goffart and Albert Sohier, eds., Lettres du Père Lebbe [Letters of Father Lebbe] (Tournai: Casterman, 1960), 61. 42. “Notes de M. Ducoulombier sur la Maison de Pékin (Chine),” North Zhili, January 12, 1910: LazA, Dossier XV. 43. Jacques Leclercq, Thunder in the Distance: The Life of Père Lebbe (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1958), 1–20. The account of Lebbe’s life in Howard L. Boorman, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 285–288, under his Chinese name, Lei Mingyuan, is unreliable. 44. Quoted in Lester R. Kurtz, The Politics of Heresy: The Modernist Crisis in Roman Catholicism (Berkeley: University of California Pess, 1986), 68. 45. Goffart, Lettres, 24–32. The quote is from pages 29–30. See also Claude Soetens, “Apôtre et Chinois: Vincent Lebbe (Lei Mingyuan),” in Heyndrickx, Historiography of the Chinese Catholic Church, 211–212. 46. Goffart, Lettres, 87–88, 82. 47. Leclercq, Thunder in the Distance, 28–32. Ferreux, “Histoire de la Congrégation,” 350. 48. Goffart, Lettres, 38–39. 49. Jarlin to Lebbe, Beijing, April 17, 1907: LazA, Jarlin 3o, C170 II.b. 50. Lebbe to Cotta, Shaoxing, September 10, 1917, in Goffart, Lettres, 43–44.

Notes to pages 134–137

309

51. This translation is taken from Tiedemann, “The Controversy over the Formation,” 357. See also Giunipero, “Propaganda Fide,” 75, who gives the year 1874 for this collation of views and adds its attribution to Chinese priests of “a profound hatred for foreigners and everything that is not Chinese; they would like to be free of the Europeans and take the lead of their people to be free to do what they want.” Only four of the bishops were judged to have differing views regarding Chinese priests. 52. Quoted in Soetens, Eglise catholique en Chine, 10–11. The book, published in Hongkong, was well received by many missionaries and in the French periodical, Les Missions Catholiques 1119 (February 23, 1912): 95. But it was later withdrawn from circulation by the Scheut mission. Kervyn, having served in the field for only four years, relied for his material on Jesuits and other missionaries. Françoise Aubin, “Vision Catholique,” 1009–1011. 53. Lebbe to dom Bède (Vincent’s brother, Adrien), “Ngan-Kia-Tchwang,” July 13, 1901, in Goffart, Lettres, 39. 54. Goffart, Lettres, 55–59. Jean-Paul Wiest, “The Representations of Boxers in the Christian Theater,” in Yihetuan yundong yu Zhongguo Jidu zong jiao [The Boxer movement and Chinese Christianity], ed. Lin Ruiqi et al. (Xinzhuangshi, Taibei: Furen daxue chubanshe, 2004), 189– 193, details a particular instance of a reconciliation over which Lebbe presided. 55. Leclercq, Thunder in the Distance, 77–84. 56. Zhao Xiaobo, “Merchant Associational Activism in Early Twentieth-Century China: The Tianjin General Chamber of Commerce, 1904–1928” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1995), 124–125, gives the figure 424,566 for 1906 and 719,896 for 1917. In the absence of a reliable census, estimates vary considerably. Lewis Bernstein, “After the Fall: Tianjin under Foreign Occupation, 1900–1902,” in Bickers, Boxers, China, and the World, 134, puts the Tianjin population at approximately 750,000 in 1900. 57. For a study of the allied occupation of Tianjin: Bernstein, “After the Fall,” 133–146. 58. Goffart, Lettres, 69. “Vicariat Apostolique de Pékin et Tchely Septentrional. Rapport Quinquennal. 1905”: PropA, vol. 327 (1905), pp. 713v–749v. 59. Lebbe to “Frater Bone,” Shaoxing, September 8, 1917; and Lebbe to Cotta, Shaoxing, September 10, 1917: Goffart, Lettres, 45–48, 69–71 (original emphasis). 60. Cao Lishan, Chunfeng shinian [Ten radiant years] (Taizhong: Shenghua yuekanshe, 1977), 28. He also developed writing skills, in both wenyan and baihua (classical and vernacular styles), but his publications required polishing by others. 61. Jarlin to Lebbe, Beijing, September 9, 1909: AVLebbe, D.G.t.4 (1906–1913), 89. 62. Ferreux, “Histoire de la Congrégation,” 353–355, as part of a portrayal of Lebbe as a loose cannon, gives extracts from several of Jarlin’s letters to Lebbe, in which Jarlin expressed various complaints about Lebbe’s handling of accounts. More such letters are in Henri Garnier, Introduction à la vie rèelle du Père Lebbe, deuxième partie [Introduction to the actual life of Father Lebbe, part two] (Dijon: Imprimerie Bernigaud et Privat, 1951), 1–9. 63. “Vie du Père Lebbe. Souvenirs et impressions du R.P. Giacone, C.M.” (1944) (henceforth, Giacone memoir): AVLebbe, D.Gt.4, #155, 73–106. 64. These changes are described in ibid. and in Reminiscence of F. Selinka, Tianjin, December 20, 1948: AVLebbe, D.G.t.4b, #151, 62. 65. Jarlin to Lebbe, Beijing, November 11, 1906: AVLebbe, D.G.t4a. A latter-day defence of the Catholic use of the koutou is given in Aubin, “About Chinese Catholics,” 69: “True, Christians

310

Notes to pages 137–139

presented him [the foreign priest] with marks of an utmost respect: koutou, gifts, honorary forms of address. To reproach him would be unfair. As a rule, it was the Christian society which imposed on him a social ritual, more often hard to bear.” John W. Witek, S.J., “Catholic Missions and the Expansion of Christianity, 1644–1800,” in Wills, China and Maritime Europe, 1500–1800, 174, writes that in the eighteenth century Rome decreed the abolition of performances of the koutou in all social and ceremonial settings. Apparently this decree had become a dead letter. 66. Jarlin to Lebbe, November 25, 1909: AVLebbe D.G.t.4 (1906–1913), #93. In February 1908, Lebbe placed F. Selinka, a Lazarist priest of Austrian nationality, in a parish in the southern part of the Tianjin district, where he was a vicar. His curate (superior to a vicar in the ecclesiastical hierarchy) was a Chinese priest. In practice, Selinka was his own boss, since his curate had actually moved his residence to another, distant parish. Reminiscence of F. Selinka, Tianjin, December 20, 1948: AVLebbe, D.G.t.4b, #151, 60. 67. Goffart, Lettres, 85. 68. Tahara Teijirō, Shinmatsu minsho Chūgoku kanshin renmei roku [Biographical record of Chinese officials and gentry in the late Qing and early Republic] (Beijing: Chūgoku kenkyūkai, 1918), 586. Rasmussen, Tientsin, 265–267. Giacone memoir: AVLebbe, D.G.t.4, #155, 77–79. Although active in charitable enterprises and in resistance to French aggrandizement in the Laoxikai affair, Yang Yide also became known for his vigorous repression of the Tianjin student movement during May Fourth in 1919. Li Kejian and Kong Zhaoci, eds., Tianjin jindai renwulu [Biographical dictionary of modern Tianjin] (Tianjin: Tianjin difangshizhi bianxiu weiyuanhui zongbianjishi, 1987), 140–141. 69. Ying’s given name (ming) was Hua, but he has generally been referred to by his style (zi), Lianzhi. In Fang Hao, “Ying Lianzhi xiansheng nianpu ji qi sixiang” [Chronological biography and thought of Ying Lianzhi], in Ying Lianzhi xiansheng riji yigao [Diary and posthumous manuscripts of Ying Lianzhi], ed. Fang Hao (Taibei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1974), 23:9, the editor points out that the birth year of 1866, given in Biographical Dictionary of Republican China and in some other Western historiography, is incorrect. Ying’s dates are properly 1867–1926. 70. The year of his conversion is given variously as 1888 and 1895. Gu Weimin, Zhongguo yu Luoma jiaoting, 131. Donald Paragon, “Ying Lien-chih (1866–1926) and the Rise of Fu Jen, the Catholic University of Peking,” Monumenta Serica, no. 20 (1961): 170. 71. Fang Hanqi, ed., “Dagongbao” bainianshi (1902.06.17–2002.06.17) [The hundred-year history of the Dagongbao: June 17, 1902, to June 17, 2002] (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2004): 5–97. Paragon, “Ying Lien-chih,” 167–182. Vincent Lebbe, “La Presse Catholique en Chine,” Shaoxing, December 28, 1918: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 904–905. The primary fundraiser was Chai Tianlong, Catholic, salt merchant, and factory and store owner. 72. Fang Hao, Ying Lianzhi xiansheng riji yigao, 23:1076, 1082, 1094. 73. Ibid., 1116, 1177. Fang Hao et al., Ying Lianzhi zhuanji ziliao [Materials for a biography of Ying Lianzhi] (Taibei: Tianyi chubanshe, 1978), 23 (81). 74. Zhao Yabo, Ren’ai Zhongguo liang shenfu [Two priests who greatly loved China] (Taibei: Zhengtong wenhua chuban, 1979), 18–20. 75. Tabara Teijirō, Shinmatsu minsho Chūgoku, 22–23. H. G. W. Woodhead, ed., The China Year Book, 1921–2 (Tianjin: Tientsin Press, 1921), 927. Bian Yinchang (1866–1926) was one of the founders of the Tianjin branch of the Red Cross and took the lead in many charitable and political associations. Zhang Xiaobo, “Merchant Associational Activism,” 317–321.

Notes to pages 139–142

311

76. Goffart, Lettres, 92–93. Leclercq, Thunder in the Distance, 115. Yishibao (May 21, 1916) lists lecture topics for the week at the Catholic lecture hall at Dongma Street, which include “the theory of evolution,” “the adequacy of having a good conscience,” and “the way is right but man is evil.” Lebbe and a number of other Catholics in China preferred gong jiao as a translation of “Catholic church” or “Catholicism,” rather than the more common tianzhujiao, which was not so much a translation as a renaming. Gongjiao had been used occasionally in previous centuries, but did not become standard. 77. The booklet and its contents are discussed in A. Sohier to J. Goffart, Beiping, November 26, 1948: AVLebbe, D.G.t vol. 1, #18, 71. 78. Reminiscence of F. Selinka, Tianjin, December 20, 1948: AVLebbe, D.G.t.4b, #151, 61. Selinka was transcribing here from a formal record of 1906–1907 written by Lebbe as director of the district and, years later, passed on to Selinka by Bishop de Vienne. 79. Reminiscence of F. Selinka, Tianjin, January 9, 1949: AVLebbe, D.G.t.4b, #152, 64. In this document also, Selinka was drawing on Lebbe’s formal record as director, for the years 1911 and 1912. Yu Heping, “Cong Henan jiaoan kan,” 345–346, adds to the declared aims of the organization the defense of the country from foreign power. In Shanghai, the president of the branch was Lu Bohong, a businessman who was for many years a prominent Catholic activist in that city. Gu Yulu, Zhongguo tianzhujiao shuping [Commentary on China’s Catholic church] (Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexueyuan chubanshe, 2005), 118, describes the initiative for this organization arising from a Chinese priest in Shanghai. For a brief description of Catholic Action, see Latourette, History of Christian Missions in China, 554. In French-language documents, it was often referred to as the Union de l’Action Catholique Chinoise or U.A.C.C. 80. Jarlin to Lebbe, April 4, 1912 (original emphasis): PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921). Pius X had recently reiterated a ruling that priests had to obtain permission before undertaking any editorship. Kurtz, Politics of Heresy, 158. 81. Goffart, Lettres, 90–91. Lebbe’s expression contained a biblical reference: Jonah 1:12, where Jonah suggests that the sailors throw him into the sea to calm the storm. 82. Fang Hanqi, “Dagongbao” bainianshi, 89, 96–97. Cotta to Jarlin, April 7, 1912, and Jarlin to Cotta, April 8, 1912: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921). Fang Hao, Ying Lianzhi zhi zhuanji ziliao, 26 (84). 83. Lebbe to A. Pottier, on the sea between Colombo and Singapore, January 29, 1914, forwarded to the Propaganda by Pottier, Rome, February 25, 1914: PropA, vol. 633, pp. 171r–172v. Goffart, Lettres, 105–106. 84. Lebbe mentioned the sum of 50,000 francs in a letter to Cotta, Rome, November 13, 1913: Goffart, Lettres, 95. Ferreux, “Histoire de la Congrégation,” 359, puts the sum at 60,000 francs. 85. Lebbe, “La Presse Catholique en Chine,” Shaoxing, December 28, 1918: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 908, 915. Lebbe put the circulation of all editions in late 1918 at nearly 20,000, with the next largest newspaper in North China at 9,000. Rudolf Löwenthal, The Religious Periodical Press in China (Beijing: The Synodal Commission in China, 1940), 51, citing an average circulation for the Yishibao at 30,000 copies, lists it second to the Dagongbao. But a Japanese survey of China’s press issued in 1930 put the circulation of the Dagongbao at 8,000 and the Yishibao (the Tianjin edition only) at 25,000. Gaimushō jōhōbu [Foreign ministry intelligence department], Gaikoku ni okeru shimbun (jōken): Shina kakuchi narabi ni Dairen oyobi Honkon no bu [Foreign newspapers (first volume): section on various parts of China as well as Dalian and Hongkong] (Tokyo, 1930), 45– 46. Also describing the Yishibao as Tianjin’s newspaper with the largest circulation, referring to the

312

Notes to pages 142–144

May Fourth period and the 1920s: Fang Hanqi, “Dagongbao” bainianshi,” 110–112. Most accounts specify the starting date of the Yishibao as October 10, 1915; a few put it at October 1, 1915, which the microfilms of the paper confirm. Ibid., 111, incorrectly puts it at November 7, 1915. 86. Among those whom Lebbe and Cotta cited as expressing interest and support for the launching of the Yishibao, sometimes with copies of their letters, were Bishop Abels, Bishop Van Arstlaer (who took 10 shares at $50 each), and Father Rutten of Mongolia, Bishop Menicatti of North Henan, Bishop Henninghaus of South Shandong, Bishop Chouvellon of East Sichuan (who contributed $50), Bishop Mérel of Guangdong, Bishop de Vienne of West Zhili, Bishop Maurice of Shaanxi, Bishop de Guébriant of Jianchang in Sichuan (who took four shares at $50 each), and various Jesuits, including the provincial in Zhili, Father Héraulle (who contributed $500). Lebbe to Cotta, September 19, 1916; “Extraits de Lettres sur la Presse Catholique adressées d’ordinaire à M. Lebbe, parfois à M. Morel,” enclosed in Cotta, Xianshuigu, January 9, 1919: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 136r–v, 921r–942r. 87. “Rapport Quinquennal, 1905” for the vicariate of Beijing and North Zhili: PropA, vol. 327 (1905), pp. 742r–745r. “Vicariatus Apostolicus Pekini et Tche-ly Septentrionalis. Status Missionis. A die 1 Julii 1910 ad diem 30 Junii 1911”: ADNantes 612. “Etat de la Mission et Resultats Obtenus,” Maritime Zhili, 1915: PropA, vol. 563, rubr. 130 (1915), p. 505. Cotta to Villette, Xianshuigu, July 24, 1916: AVLebbe, D.G.t.7a, #10. 88. Ferreux, “Histoire de la Congrégation,” 357. 89. Goffart, Lettres, 123. 90. One example from 1928: ibid., 265–266. 91. Tremorin to Sohier, 1961, including Verhaeren’s comments on Lettres du Père Lebbe (ed. Goffart): AVLebbe, D.G.t.50, vol. 9, #275. Zhang Xiaobo, “Merchant Associational Activism,” 334, 486–491. 92. Jarlin to Lebbe, March 25, 1912: LazA, Jarlin 3o.C170 II.b. Ferreux, “Histoire de la Congrégation,” 356. 93. Lebbe himself recounted in January 1919 that the American minister in Beijing had intervened to protect the Yishibao from French hostility. In letters of October 1919, he expressed his disapproval of an American identification for the paper, while noting the common charge of American protection: PEC1, 146–149, 189, 199. Jean-Baptiste de Guébriant in 1920 asserted that the Yishibao had recently put itself under American protection. “Réponses aux Questions posées par la S.C. au visiteur des Missions de Chine,” June 1, 1920: PropA, vol. 760, p. 673. 94. An example would be Celso Costantini’s private comments in 1955 on Leclercq’s recently published book on Lebbe. C. Costantini to Gerlier, Rome, August 22, 1955: AVLebbe, D.G.t.50, vol. 7, 227. 95. Soetens, Eglise catholique en Chine, 7–8; Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 195–199. 96. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 201–208, 216–219, 399–404. 97. Simon Leys, “Avant-Propos,” in Gabet, Missions catholiques en Chine, 7–14. C. Costantini to Gerlier, Rome, August 22, 1955: AVLebbe, D.G.t.50, vol. 7, 227. The original of Gabet’s booklet was published in 1848. According to Celso Costantini’s research in the Propaganda archives, the Propaganda withdrew the booklet two and a half years after its publication, without prejudice and to keep the peace, upon complaint from the mission field in China. He had come across a copy in the Catholic mission library in Hankou and discovered that it was unknown to the mission in Beijing. Celso Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina (1922–1933): memorie di fatti e di idee [With the missionaries in China, 1922–1933: memoirs of events and views] (Rome: Unione

Notes to pages 144–149

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Missionaria del Clero in Italia, 1946), 1:466–471. Taveirne, Han-Mongol Encounters, 167, reports that the objection to Gabet’s booklet that led to its recall by the Propaganda came from the MEP apostolic vicar of Manchuria, Emmanuel-Jean-François Verrolles. 98. Gabet, Missions Catholiques en Chine, 27–65. The quotes are from pages 37–39. 99. For comment on Raimondi and translation of his text: Criveller, “China, the Holy See and France,” 51–53, 80–84. The translation has been slightly modified stylistically. Positions similar to those of Raimondi were taken at this time by Simeone Volonteri, bishop in Henan and member of the Foreign Missions of Milan. However, as recounted in chapter 4, this same Raimondi in the 1870s had backed another bishop in the censure of a Chinese priest judged rebellious. 100. A. Flachère, Monseigneur de Guébriant: le missionnaire [Monsignor de Guébriant: the missionary] (Paris: Libraire Plon, 1946), 19–99. Meeting of Third Synod, Chongqing, November 24, 1909; Fleury (of the MEP) to Propaganda Prefect Gotti, Paris, February 7, 1910; de Guébriant to Propaganda, Ningyuanfu, January 31, 1911: PropA, vol. 503, rubr. 129–130 (1911), pp. 255r, 257– 258, 296r–v. 101. De Guébriant to the Propaganda, Ningyuanfu, September 1, 1915: PropA, vol. 563, rubr. 130 (1915), pp. 507–516. 102. Benedetto Lorenzelli (Apostolic Nuncio) to Cardinal Rampolla (Secretary of State), Paris, June 17, 1902: PropA, vol. 237 (1902), rubr. 130, pp. 233r–234v. 103. PEC1, 316. 104. De Guébriant to the Propaganda, Ningyuanfu, September 1, 1915: PropA, vol. 563, rubr. 130 (1915), pp. 507–516. Advocacy of a native Chinese church and disapproval of foreign protectorates are views that have been attributed to de Guébriant, mistakenly for this period. 105. “Copy of a memorial to the Supreme Pontiff, written on the point of death by Father Barnaba Da Cologna, O.F.M., apostolic missionary, for delivery into his Holiness’s own hands” (original in Italian): PropA, vol. 503 (1911), rubr. 130, pp. 413r–447r. Da Cologna’s memorial is described in La Bella, “Pius X,” 63–66. 106. His account of Shanxi in 1900 was published as Storia della persecuzione del San-si (1900) [History of the persecution in Shanxi, 1900], printed as part of Barbarie e trionfi, ossia le vittime illustri del San-si in Cina nella persecuzione del 1900 [Barbarism and triumphs: that is, the illustrious victims of Shanxi in China in the persecution of 1900], ed. Giovani Ricci (Florence: Tipografia Barbèra, 1909). 107. Memorial of Barnaba Da Cologna, PropA, vol. 503 (1911), rubr. 130, pp. 445r–v, 427v–432v. 108. Memorial of Barnaba Da Cologna, PropA, vol. 503 (1911), rubr. 130, pp. 441–442. Barnaba damaged his credibility by leading with a story of conspiracy among the Chinese government, the Protestants, Britain, the United States, and Japan, for the purpose of confiscating all Catholic property in China. He claimed to have seen the plans in a Chinese government office. Perhaps he thought this would get papal attention. 109. Léon Joly, Le Christianisme et l’Extrême Orient [Christianity and the Far East], vol. 1 (Paris: P. Lethielleux, Libraire-éditeur, 1907). Soetens, Eglise catholique en Chine, 58, 68–70. Chapter 7 1. Letter by Cotta in the North China Daily Mail, February 25, 1919; L’Echo de Tientsin, March 8, 1919; Cotta to Dumond, February 24, 1919: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130/1921, pp. 496r–504r, 515r, 525v.

314

Notes to pages 149–153

2. This weighing of the respective contributions of Cotta and Lebbe accords with: Claude Soetens, ed., Pour l’Eglise Chinoise [On behalf of the Chinese church], vol. 3, L’Encyclique Maximum Illud [The encyclical letter Maximum illud] (Louvain-la-Neuve: Publication de la Faculté de Théologie, 1983) [henceforth PEC3], xi. 3. This account is based on Cotta’s minutes of the meeting, which he claimed his bishop had affirmed as accurate. A. Cotta to A. Milon (of the Lazarist motherhouse in Paris), Tianjin, April 30, 1914, in PEC1, 2–7. 4. For example, Laurenti (Propaganda secretary) to Jarlin, Rome, June 7, 1911: PropA, vol. 489 (1910), pp. 805r–806r. 5. PEC1, 9–12. 6. Ibid., 13–16. (Emphasis in the original.) 7. My figures are derived from adjustments of the following discrepant listings: a Japanese survey of 1909, in PropA, vol. 699; a note on the question of an extension, October 10, 1914, in ADNantes, 443; Zhang Xinbo, “Merchant Associational Activism,” 119–122; Yang Daxin, “’Laoxikai shijian’ shimo” [Full account of the Laoxikai Incident], Tianjin wenshi ziliao xuanji [Selections from historical materials of Tianjin] 22 (1983.1): 183; Tianjinshi zhengxie wenshi ziliao yanjiu weiyuanhui, ed., Tianjin zujie [Concessions of Tianjin] (Tianjin: Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 1986), 5, 38–39. Francis Clifford Jones, Shanghai and Tientsin with Special Reference to Foreign Interests (New York: American Council, Institute of Pacific Reltions, 1940), 128– 131, calculating 6.6 mu to the acre, and omitting discussion of the Laoxikai complication, has somewhat different figures. 8. For example, Appendix of October 10, 1914 from Henry Bourgeois to Alexandre R. Conty, #187, Tianjin, October 13, 1914: ADNantes 443. As noted in Tianjinshi zhengxie, Tianjin zujie, 82, sources differ on the size of Japan’s Tianjin concession, with some putting its extent in these years as slightly smaller than that of the French concession. 9. Japanese survey of 1909: PropA, vol. 699. As in most other concessions, there were far more Chinese than foreign residents. The French were perhaps ten percent of their concession’s population. Shang Keqiang and Liu Haiyan, eds., Tianjin zujie shehui yanjiu [Study of Tianjin concession society] (Tianjin: Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 1996), 174. 10. The Guardian, August 14, 2004; Richard Sieburth, “Ambassador Poets,” TLS, February 8, 2008. 11. Paul Claudel to the French minister in Beijing, Tianjin, November 4, 1908, #1038; Gascon Kahn (French consul) to de Margerie (French minister in Beijing), Tianjin, January 24, 1910, #10; Gascon Kahn to de Margerie, Tianjin, January 6, 1911, #3; Gascon Kahn to minister of foreign affairs, Tianjin, December 22, 1911, #114: ADNantes 444. 12. Frederic Wakeman, Jr., Policing Shanghai, 1927–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 65–66, 338. 13. Gauthier, acting consul to Conty (French minister in Beijing), #61, Tianjin, October 21, 1913: ADNantes 444. 14. Yang Daxin, “Laoxikai shijian,” 185. 15. L. Morel to Villette (Lazarist superior general), Tianjin, September 23, 1916; L. Morel to A. Cotta, Laoxikai, October 27, 1916: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 26–27, 71r–72v. 16. Henry Bourgeois to A. R. Conty (French minister in Beijing), #108, Tianjin, July 2, 1914: ADNantes 444.

Notes to pages 153–156

315

17. Bourgeois to Damien de Martel (chargé at the Beijing legation), Tianjin, September 28, 1916; Bourgeois to “Mon Cher Ami” (de Martel?), Tianjin, November 8, 1916: ADNantes 443 and 443 bis. 18. Bourgeois to Conty, Tianjin, July 23, 1914; Zhili commissioner for foreign affairs, Tianjin, July 30, 1914: ADNantes 444. 19. The Chinese government, amid Japan’s aggressive actions in Tianjin and as a measure to contain them, conceded Laoxikai to the French concession in that year. Chen Tieqing, “Fankang fadi qiangzhen Laoxikai yundong jiyao” [Summary account of the movement to resist the seizure of Laoxikai by French imperialism], Tianjin wenshi congkan, no. 6 (n.d.): 123, states that Japan and France agreed on French concession boundaries in 1937. 20. Sun Baoqi to A. R. Conty, Beijing, December 2, 1914: ADNantes 443. Tianjin dang’an and Nankai daxue fenxiao dang’anxi, eds., Tianjin zujie dang’an xuanbian [Selected archival materials on the Tianjin concessions] (Tianjin: Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 1992), 109. 21. Dagongbao, September 16 and September 20, 1915 (the first a clipping, the second in French translation), enclosed in Bourgeois to Conty, #101 and #103, Tianjin, September 16 and September 21, 1915: ADNantes 443. 22. Yang Daxin, “Lao Xikai shijian,” 184. 23. Dumond to Conty, Tianjin, September 25, 1915: ADNantes 443. 24. Bourgeois to Conty, #103, Tianjin, September 21, 1915: ADNantes 443. 25. A Fleury letter to Desrumaux of August 11, 1916, rehearsing these events, is quoted in Yang Daxin, “Laoxikai shijian,” 186–187. L. Morel, a Lazarist priest in the Tianjin mission at the time, believed that Fleury had accepted the consulate’s plan for roads even before Henry Bourgeois took over, that he engaged in land deals to the benefit of the French concession, and that he was delighted when French police installed themselves in Laoxikai in the summer of 1914. Morel to Villette (superior general of the Lazarists), Tianjin, September 23, 1916, and Morel to Cotta, Sikai, October 27, 1916: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 26–27, 71r–72v. 26. Cotta to Villette, Xianshuigu, October 24, 1916: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 62–64. Cotta writes here that he was present when Dumond raised this concern with Lebbe. 27. François Selinka to Cotta, Yanshan, October 17, 1918, in Claude Soetens, ed., Pour l’église chinoise [On behalf of the Chinese church], vol. 2, Une nunciature à Pékin en 1918? [A nunciature in Beijing in 1918?] (Louvain-la-Neuve: Publications de la Faculté de Théologie, 1983) [henceforth, PEC2], 70. 28. Giuseppe Giacone to Desrumaux, Cangzhou, January 30, 1917, copied in Giacone to Propaganda prefect, September 26, 1918: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130/1921, pp. 380r–387r. 29. Yang Daxin, “Laoxikai shijian,” 186. Lebbe to Propaganda prefect, Paris, August 23, 1921, enclosing a letter from Lazarist Father Li, February 1917: PropA, vol. 762, rubr. 130, pp. 101r–110r. 30. H. Bourgeois to Conty (French minister in Beijing), #103, Tianjin, September 21, 1915: ADNantes 443. A report to Beijing by Yang Yide on June 20, 1916, is in Tianjin dang’anguan, Tianjin zujie, 114. 31. Lebbe to Desrumeaux (visitor), Zhengdingfu, July 23, 1916: AVLebbe, DGt7a, #38, 47–56. 32. Yishibao, October 1–3, 1915. Chen Tieqing, “Fankang fadi,” 96–129, narrates the Laoxikai affair mostly by long selections from the Yishibao (Tianjin and Beijing editions). 33. Lebbe to Cotta, August 27, 1916: AVLebbe, DGt7a, 56–58. In this letter, Lebbe was suggesting a line of defense for his continuing links to the Yishibao and other periodicals.

316

Notes to pages 156–160

34. Dumond to Bourgeois, Tianjin, June 16, 1916, enclosed in Bourgeois to Conty, Tianjin, June 21, 1916: ADNantes 443. 35. For my interpretation of Yuan Shikai’s monarchical effort, see Ernest P. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k’ai: Liberalism and Dictatorship in Early Republican China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977), 210–240. 36. An internal report by France’s consul in Tianjin quoted Lebbe as asking that the French minister in Beijing put in a good word with the Chinese government with respect to a Beijing edition of the Yishibao, to be opened the next month, for fear that the paper’s stand on Yuan’s monarchy might cause its suppression. Henry Bourgeois to A. R. Conty, # 131, Tianjin, December 1, 1915: ADNantes 443. 37. Yishibao, December 25–29, 1915. Zhang Xiaobo, “Merchant Associational Activism,” 624, reports that the Tianjin Chamber of Commerce supported Yuan Shikai’s monarchical restoration in 1916. Perhaps Lebbe was influenced by his close friends in that organization. Songchuan Chen, “Shame on You! Competing Narratives of the Nation in the Laoxikai Incident and the Tianjin Anti-French Campaign, 1916–1917,” Twentieth-Century China 37, no. 2 (May 2012): 128, points out in this connection: “Tianjin was the key city of Yuan’s power base.” 38. Lebbe, “La Presse Catholique en Chine,” Shaoxing, December 28, 1918: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 907–908. 39. Lebbe to Robert, Tianjin, December 22, 1915: Goffart, Lettres, 99–100. 40. Examples of Lebbe’s published writings in 1916: “Yang Liuqing gonghui zhi yanshuoci” [Speech at the Yang Liuqing public meeting], Yishibao, January 26, 1916; “Zeren-xin yu jieguo-xin” [A sense of responsibility and a sense of results], Yishibao, February 21–27, 1916; “Aiguo zhenquan” [A true explanation of patriotism], Yishibao, June 5–8, 1916; “Xingtai huanyinghui yanshuoci” [Speech at the Xingtai welcoming meeting], Yishibao, September 3–9, 1916. 41. Prudhomme, Stratégie missionnaire, 201–209. Soetens, Eglise catholique en Chine, 43. 42. Among myriad examples, there were the almost contemporary activities of Albert de Mun in France: Thomas Bokenkotter, Church and Revolution: Catholics in the Struggle for Democracy and Social Justice (New York: Image Books, 1998), 223–238. 43. In an interview in October 1919, Cotta asserted that Dumond himself only pretended to be neutral and that it was well known that he favored the administration of Laoxikai by France and helped the French consul in taking possession of it. PEC1, 202. 44. Lebbe to Desrumeaux (“Monsieur et bien cher Visiteur”), Zhengdingfu, July 23, 1916: AVLebbe, DGt7a, #38, 50–52. Lebbe to de Guébriant, Ningbo, June 28, 1917, enclosed in de Guébriant to the Propaganda prefect, Guangzhou, April 15, 1919: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 534r–544v. 45. Lebbe to Conty (“Monsieur le Ministre”), Tianjin, June 18, 1916: ADNantes 67. Lebbe did not keep a copy of this letter, and, when it became the centerpiece of the charges against him, he repeatedly asked the French legation for a copy, in vain. A version that he reconstructed from memory is printed in Goffart, Lettres, 101–103. Although there are differences between the two versions, these differences are not substantial. 46. Lebbe to de Guébriant, Ningbo, June 23, 1917: PropA, vol. 699, p. 543r. (Original emphasis.) 47. Henry Bourgeois to A. R. Conty, #57, Tianjin, June 17, 1916: ADNantes 443. 48. A. R. Conty to “Monsieur l’abbé” [Desrumaux, the Lazarist visitor], Beijing, June 20, 1916: ADNantes 67. Conty to Dumond, Beijing, June 24, 1916: ADNantes 443.

Notes to pages 160–163

317

49. Together with materials from late 1916, the ADNantes contains a copy of an undated message from the Lazarist visitor for South China, Guilloux, to the vicar general of the Lazarists in Paris, Louwyck, saying that the French minister demands the immediate recall of Lebbe and Cotta, under serious threats: ADNantes 67. 50. An early instance of his ruminations on the problem is Vincent Lebbe to dom Bède (Vincent’s Benedictine brother), Tianjin, May 26, 1908, in Goffart, Lettres, 84–85. I have corrected the date of this letter from the original in AVLebbe, DGkt4a, #6. 51. Lebbe to Dumond, n.d. (from other evidence, the AVLebbe inventory suggests June 23, 1916): AVLebbe, DGt7a, #5. 52. Cotta to Villette (Lazarist superior general), Xianshuigu, July 14, 1916: AVLebbe, DGt7a, #9, 44–49. Lebbe provided a detailed narrative of the development of the Laoxikai controversy, of the mission’s role, of his own attitudes, of his letter to the French minister, and of his departure from Tianjin in: Lebbe to Father Baroudi, Zhengdingfu, July 23, 1916: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 82r–89v. 53. Four letters from de Vienne concerning the restrictions imposed on Lebbe’s preaching by the Lazarist visitor for North China and concerning Lebbe’s transfer to a remote part of the Maritime Zhili vicariate (August 18, August 31, September 9, and August 26, 1916—this last date seems to be mistaken) were printed in “Ponente” No. 27, 1920, 14–18: PropA, vol. 698, pp. 347v–350r. 54. Yishibao, April 25, 1916. 55. Ibid. 56. Yang Baohui and Tianjin catechists to Cotta, undecypherable date; Sun Zhongying (“Soun tchoung yng”) to Lebbe, Tianjin, July 1, 1916 (in English): PropA, vol. 699, pp. 199r–200r. 57. Yishibao, July 11, 1916. Another of the chosen representatives was Li Zheng’an, the owner and manager of various textile factories, and an activist against the Twenty-One Demands. Tahara Teijirō, Shinmatsu minsho Chūgoku, 147–148. 58. Yishibao, July 14, 1916. Cotta to Villette, Xianshuigu, July 14, 1916, and July 24, 1916: AVLebbe, DGt7a, #9 and #10. An eleven-page French translation of a letter from “inhabitants of Tianjin, representing the population of this city,” addressed to Bishop Dumond and Father Desrumaux, in the Lebbe archives, inscribed with ambiguous dates, may be the letter delivered by this delegation. It emphasizes the justice of Lebbe’s opposition to the French consul over Laoxikai, about the details of which the delegation seems to be well informed. AVLebbe, DGt7a, #28, 131–142. 59. According to a statistical report of 1915, the clerical count in Maritime Zhili was one bishop, ten European Lazarist priests, two Chinese Lazarist priests, and eleven Chinese secular priests. There were also Marist brothers and female religious of various categories. “Etat de la Mission et Resultats Obtenu,” 1915: PropA, vol. 563, rubr. 130 (1915), p. 505. Judging by subsequent events, the number of Chinese priests increased by at least two during the next year. 60. Cotta to Villette, Tianjin, June 27, 1916; July 14, 1916; July 25, 1916; and Cotta to Villette, Xianshuigu, October 24, 1916: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 49–64. Cotta’s conversation about Lebbe with Bishop Dumond, on or about June 22, is recounted in the first of these letters. 61. Louis Morel also wrote four letters about Lebbe, Fleury, and Laoxikai to the Lazarist motherhouse in Paris: L. Morel to Villette, Tianjin, July 8, 1916; September 23, 1916; October 25, 1916; and October 28, 1916: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 65–67, 71r–76v. 62. Villete to Cotta, Paris, August 1, 1916: AVLebbe, DGt7a, #11.

318

Notes to pages 164–168

63. A. Cotta and J. Yang, with the signed approval of seventeen other priests of Maritime Zhili, Tianjin, October 2, 1916: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 11r–16v. 64. Desrumaux to Lebbe, Zhalan, July 2 and July 11, 1916, enclosed in Cotta to Villette, Xianshuigu, July 14, 1916: AVLebbe, DGt7a, #9, 44–49. Bishop Dumond seems to have made a similar request of Lebbe three or four months later, that he reconcile the confreres of the vicariate with their bishop. Goffart, Lettres, 114. 65. Letter to “Your Holiness,” Tianjin, uncertain date, probably late August 1916: AVLebbe, DGt7a, #48 and DGt7b, #98, 7–11. 66. Christians of Tianjin to the Propaganda prefect, Tianjin, August 28, 1916: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 3–7. 67. Laurenti (secretary of the Propaganda) to Raffaele Ricardelli (Lazarist procurator general in Rome), October 27, 1916: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 9–10. 68. Henry Bourgeois to de Martel (chargé in Beijing), Tianjin, September 9, 1916; Chinese foreign minister to de Martel, September 16, 1916: ADNantes 443. 69. “Note remise à Son Excellence le Président du Conseil,” October 2, 1916: ibid. 70. De Martel to Briand (foreign minister), #225, October 16, 1916: ibid. 71. Zhang Xiaobo, “Merchant Associational Activism,” 419. Bourgeois to de Martel, Tianjin, October 19, 1916: ADNantes 443. Bourgeois to de Martel, Tianjin, October 24, 1916, enclosing Bourgeois to “Direction Politique et Commerciale, Asie,” #49, October 23, 1916: ADNantes 443. For a circumstantial account of the occupation of Laoxikai by the French officer in charge: Colonel Merienne-Lucas to the French minister of war, Tianjin, October 23, 1916: ADNantes 443. For contemporary Chinese accounts: Yishibao, October 26, 1916; and Tianjin dang’anguan, Tianjin zujie, 117–119, which reproduces the Zhili governor’s report of November 2, 1916, stating that the occupation was accomplished by over fifty French and Vietnamese soldiers. Chen, “Shame on You,” 123, puts the extent of the Laoxikai region at 3000 mu (500 acres), which would not accord with the French maps of their claim. What was called Laoxikai might have been larger than the area to which the French aspired in 1916. 72. Chen, “Shame on You,” 124, notes that the Yishibao counted a gathering of 4,000, and the Dagongbao reported “over 1000.” 73. Yishibao, October 22 and 23, 1916. 74. This moment was reported secondhand by both Lebbe and Cotta. Lebbe to “Monsieur l’Assistant,” Paris, April 9, 1921: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 1056–1057. PEC3, 154–155. 75. Yishibao, October 26, 1916. 76. This paragraph and the previous one draw on the Yishibao between October 25 and November 13, 1916. The quote from the Catholics is in Yishibao, October 26, 1916. See also Lai Xinxia, ed., Tianjin jindaishi [Modern history of Tianjin] (Tianjin: Nankai daxue chubanshe, 1987), 251–254; Zhang Xiaobo, “Merchant Associational Activism,” 420–423; and Chen, “Shame on You,” 129–130, 135. 77. Yishibao, November 5 and 18, 1916. 78. Yishibao, October 27 and 28, 1916. 79. Yishibao, November 13 and 14, 1916. 80. Yishibao, November 24, 1916; March 25, 1917. Lai Xinxia, Tianjin jindaishi, 253–258. Chen, “Shame on You,” 127, 130–131. 81. Bourgeois to Conty, #41, Tianjin, May 8, 1917: ADNantes 443.

Notes to pages 168–172

319

82. Naggiar (acting consul-general) to de Martel, #204, Shanghai, November 27, 1916: ADNantes 443 bis. The French consul in Tianjin reported in mid-January that about eighty new policemen had been recruited, leaving a shortfall of sixty. Bourgeois to de Martel, #3, Tianjin, January 10, 1917: AD Nantes 443. 83. Bourgeois to de Martel, Tianjin, November 25, 1916: ADNantes 443 bis. 84 . Xu Guoqi, Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 14–19. Paul Bailey, “The Sino-French Connection: The Chinese Worker-Student Movement in France, 1902–1928,” in China and the West: Ideas and Activists, ed. David S. G. Goodman (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1990), 81–82. 85. “Les Incidents de Tientsin,” January 23, 1917: ADNantes 443. 86. Xu Guoqi, China and the Great War: China’s Pursuit of a New National Identity and Internationalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 125–126; Xu Guoqi, Strangers on the Western Front, 30. 87. I follow here the conclusions about the numbers of recruits in Xu Guoqi, Strangers on the Western Front, 48–49. See also Paul J. Bailey, Reform the People: Changing Attitudes Towards Popular Education in Early Twentieth-Century China (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1990), 234; and Tyler Stovall, “The Color Line behind the Lines: Racial Violence in France during the Great War,” American Historical Review 103, no. 3 ( June 1998): 737–769. 88. “Affaire de Lao Si Kai” notes that Henry Bourgeois, after thirty years of diplomatic service, had been in line for the more important position of Shanghai consul-general, but did not get it. ADNantes 443. 89. Xu Guoqi, China and the Great War, 103. 90. Acting consul-general to de Martel, #183, Shanghai, October 27, 1916: ADNantes 443. 91. “Les Incidents de Tientsin,” January 23, 1917: ADNantes 443. 92. Bourgeois to de Martel, #104, Tianjin, November 14, 1916: ADNantes 443 bis. 93. Bourgeois to de Martel, Tianjin, November 17, 1916: ADNantes 443 bis. 94. Lebbe to de Guébriant, Ningbo, June 23, 1917, copied in de Guébriant to the Propaganda prefect, Guangchou, April 15, 1919: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), p. 544v. 95. A particularly impassioned statement of this view can be found in Lebbe to Villette (Lazarist superior general), Cangzhou, October 2, 1916: AVLebbe, DGt7a, #96. Chapter 8 1. Desrumaux to Lebbe, Zhalan, June 21, 1918: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 77r–v. 2. Lebbe to Villette, Cangzhou, October 2, 1916: AVLebbe, DGt7a, #13. Lebbe to Cotta, Hejia, October 20, 1916: AVLebbe, DGt7b, #106. Acknowledging the complexities, Bishop Dumond soon compromised on censoring the proof of each issue before publishing. Dumond to Lebbe, Tianjin, October 21, 1916: AVLebbe, DGt7b, #107. 3. Les Missions de Chine et du Japon, 1917 (Beijing: Imprimérie des Lazaristes, 1917), 359– 360. The editor was J.-M. Planchet, Lebbe’s predecessor as director of the Tianjin mission district. 4. Goffart, Lettres, 127. Lebbe to Guilloux, Ningbo, May 5, 1917; Guilloux to Lebbe, Jiaxing, May 15, 1917: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 329v–346v.

320

Notes to pages 172–175

5. Conty to the French consul-general in Shanghai, Beijing, February 17, 1917: ADNantes 443. 6. Dumond to Cotta, Tianjin, December 17, 1916: PropA, vol. 699, p. 699r. The French chargé d’affaires in Beijing in mid-November 1916 had asked the Quai d’Orsay to intervene with the superior general of the Lazarists to have Cotta recalled immediately. De Martel to Diplomatie Paris, November 18, 1916: ADNantes 67. 7. “Ponente,” No. 27, 1920: PropA, vol. 698, pp. 352v–357v. Guilloux to Lazarist superior general, Shanghai, March 12, 1917: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 262r–268r. From other accounts, it seems that Guilloux may have exaggerated the number of European Lazarists on the bishop’s side and overlooked one of the Chinese secular priests who agitated against Lebbe (perhaps because Guilloux did not meet with the secular priests, and even required that they not be informed of the visit). Morel to Villette, Tianjin, October 25, 1916: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 73v–74r. 8. “Ponente,” No. 27, 1920: PropA, vol. 698, pp. 352v–357v. Guilloux to Lazarist superior general, Shanghai, March 12, 1917: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 262r–268r. 9. Goffart, Lettres, 105–108. 10. Ibid., 116. 11. Lebbe described this condition for his attendance at Guilloux’s meeting in Lebbe to “Monsieur l’Assistant” (probably Cazot, a Lazarist authority at the motherhouse), Paris, April 9, 1921: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), p. 1655. 12. Lebbe to Cotta, Nanpi, March 17, 1917, in “Ponente,” No. 27, 1920: PropA, vol. 698, pp. 357v–359v. 13. Cotta to Lebbe, July 29, 1916; Cotta to Lebbe, August 20, 1916: AVLebbe, DGt7a, #42 and #55. (Emphasis in original.) 14. “Note sur les P.P. Lebbe et Cotta,” November 1919: ADNantes 608. 15. Desrumaux to Lebbe, Zhalan, March 18, 1917; Desrumaux to Cotta, Zhalan, March 18, 1917: AVLebbe, DGt7b, #165 and #190. 16. Paul Li (Li Yaoran), Zhalan, March 30, 1917, enclosed in Cotta to Propaganda prefect, Xianshuigu, April 24, 1917: PropA, vol. 699. Li was transferred to the East Zhili vicariate, encompassing Yongping prefecture. Of the other accused Lazarists, Louis Morel was sent to the North Jiangxi vicariate and Pierre Lacroix to the North Zhili vicariate. Van den Brandt, Lazaristes en Chine, #475, #540, and #629. 17. The Lazarist visitor for North China duly reported to the French minister Lebbe’s departure for the south, without passing through Tianjin and without seeing any of his confreres. Desrumaux to A. R. Conty, Zhalan, March 29, 1917: ADNantes 67. 18. PEC1, ix. Lebbe’s brother-in-law apparently established Lebbe and Cotta’s link with Vanneufville in 1916. Lebbe to Jacques Thoreau, Qingyun, December 12, 1916: AVLebbe, DGt7b, #140. 19. Vanneufville to Cotta, Rome, December 2, 1916; Vanneufville to Lebbe, Rome, December 3, 1916: AVLebbe, DGt7b, #135 and #136. 20. PEC1, 25–70. The quotation is from pages 69 and 70. As the editor notes, this letter by Cotta to Cardinal Serafini was edited over time, with some additions to suit changed circumstances, and to reveal or conceal names of people referred to. It had two dates, December 29, 1916, at the head and February 6, 1917, at the signature. An English version is in AVLebbe, DGt8.

Notes to pages 175–184

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21. “Exhortation à l’Etude et Réponse à un Catéchiste de Changhai,” PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 654r–673r. Cotta wrote a covering letter to the Propaganda, introducing Ying Lianzhi and saying that the essay had only been circulated in small numbers. Cotta to Propaganda prefect, Xianshuigu via Tianjin, September 2, 1917: ibid., pp. 651r–652v. Fang Haoqi, “Dagongbao” bainianshi, 91, which quotes from the essay and letter, states that Ying sent the translation for wide distribution to his son studying in Belgium. 22. Ying’s title evokes a famous work of 1898 by the prominent late Qing official, Zhang Zhidong, entitled Quanxue pian [An exhortation to learn], which advocated moderate reform and was an ingredient in the imperial 1898 Reform episode. Daniel H. Bays, China Enters the Twentieth Century: Chang Chih-tung and the Issues of a New Age, 1895–1909 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1978), 42–48. 23. Seemingly referring to the same event, Cotta adds that Ying heroicly performed the koutou before Bishop Jarlin, in the presence of astonished pagans. Cotta to Propaganda prefect, Xianshuigu, September 2, 1917: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), p. 652r. 24. PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), p. 669r. 25. This summary of Ying Lianzhi’s essay and letter and the quotations from them are derived from the translation in “Exhortation à l’Etude et Réponse à un Catéchiste de Changhai”: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 654r–673r, modified by the extracts in Chinese in Fang Hanqi, “Dagongbao” bainianshi, 91. 26. The subsequent account of Lebbe’s statement to Bishop Reynaud is taken from its printing in Goffart, Lettres, 137–158. 27. Ibid., 125–130. 28. A copy of Reynaud’s note to Lebbe is enclosed in Reynaud to Van Rossum, Paris, November 16, 1919: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130/1921, pp. 588r–v. 29. Brian Porter-Szücs, Faith and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity, and Poland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 30. Yishibao, November 23–27, 1916 (5 issues). For Mercier’s wartime views, see Georges Goyau, Le Cardinal Mercier (Paris: E. Flammarion, 1930), 56–101. 31. This quotation (pp. 153–154) and others in this account of Lebbe’s statement to his bishop are from Goffart, Lettres, 137–158. 32. Reynaud to Propaganda prefect, Paris, November 16, 1919: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130/1921, pp. 587r–v. 33. Ibid., pp. 584r–587v. 34. PEC1, 82, 86, 90, 92–140. 35. Ibid., 106. 36. Ibid., 109–110. 37. Ibid., 119. 38. Ibid., 124. 39. A long critique of Lebbe’s missionary career recounts an incident suggestive of these particulars, although it references a letter of September 1911 from Jarlin to Lebbe. “A L’abbé Sohier”: AVLebbe, DGt50, vol. 9, #275, 16. 40. PEC1, 131. 41. This account of Aperçu historique is based on the printing in PEC1, 93–140. Lebbe appended a section on the Protestants in China, which I do not treat here. 42. Goffart, Lettres, 134–135.

322

Notes to pages 185–188 Chapter 9

1. For the text of Benedict XV’s appeal to the belligerent governments on August 1, 1917, see Jacques Fontana, Les catholiques français pendant la grande guerre [French Catholics during the great war] (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1990), 407–409. 2. Giorgio Rumi, “Benedetto XV e il sistema della relazioni internazionali” [Benedict XV and the system of international relations], in Roma e Pechino: La svolta extraeuropea di Benedetto XV [Rome and Beijing: Benedict XV’s turn beyond Europe], ed. Agostino Giovagnoli (Rome: Edizioni Studium, 1999), 30, 32. Francis Latour, “La France, le Saint-Siège et la question du protectorat en Chine pendant la grande guerre” [France, the Holy See and the question of the protectorate in China during the great war], Revue d’histoire diplomatique 1988, no. 4, 342–343. Charles R. Gallagher, “The Perils of Perception: British Catholics and Papal Neutrality, 1914– 1923,” in The Papacy since 1500: From Italian Prince to Universal Pastor, ed. James Corkery and Thomas Worcester (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 162–181. 3. For example, Claude Soetens, “La svolta della Maximum illud” [The turning point of Maximum illud], in Giovagnoli, Roma e Pechino, 70, 88. 4. As early as 1916, Benedict XV spoke to his secretary of state about developing missions and focusing on indigenous clergy as an answer to the shortage of missionaries. Tiziano Scalzotto, “I Papi e la Sacra Congregazione per l’Evangelizzazione dei Populi o ‘de Propaganda Fide’ da Benedetto XV a Paolo VI” [The popes and the Sacred Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples or “de Propaganda Fide” from Benedict XV to Paul VI], Metzler, Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda, 3.2:255. 5. Louwyck to Ricciardelli (Lazarist procurator in Rome), Paris, March 31, 1917: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 208r–v. 6. Camillo Laurenti (Propaganda general secretary) to Dumond, April 3, 1917; Domenico Serafini to Dumond, April 14, 1917: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 34–35, 210. 7. “Ponente” No. 27, 1920: PropA, vol. 698, pp. 360v–362r. Dumond to the Propaganda prefect, Tianjin, May 28, 1917: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 278r–280r. 8. Conty to Paris, secret telegram, #218, Beijing, June 6, 1917: ADNantes 67. 9. Alfred Louwyck to the Propaganda Prefect, Paris, July 7, 1917: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 281r–282r. 10. Jarlin to the Propaganda, Beijing, September 28, 1917: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 371r–374v. 11. Hebblethwaite, In the Vatican, 130. 12. Van Rossum and Laurenti to Dumond, confidential, Rome, July 31, 1918; Van Rossum and Laurenti to Cotta, Rome, July 31, 1918: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 358r–360v. The dates are taken from drafts; it is possible that the letters were actually sent and dated August 3, 1918, as was stated in one of the many responses from the field, viz., Henri Lécroart, coadjutor bishop of Southeast Zhili, Xianxian, November 19, 1918: ibid., pp. 429r–433r. 13. Geurts acknowledged his role and his motive in Geurts to Van Rossum, Yongpingfu, June 30, 1919: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 556r–557r. Other communications to Rome objecting to Lebbe’s return to Tianjin were de Vienne to Van Rossum, Zhengdingfu, November 2, 1918; Ferrer/Cornus to Van Rossum, telegram, Tianjin, unclear date; Geurts to Van Rossum, telegram, Beijing, October 31, 1918; Fabrègues to Van Rossum, telegram, Baodingfu, November 2, 1918; Fleury, report, Tianjin, November 3, 1918; Giovanni Menicatti (North Henan), Weihuifu, October 29, 1918; Geurts to Van Rossum, Yongpingfu, October 25, 1918; Geurts statement, no date; Propero Paris ( Jiangnan)

Notes to pages 188–190

323

to Van Rossum, Shanghai, November 13, 1918; Geurts to Van Rossum, Yongpingfu, November 8, 1918; Fabrègues to Van Rossum, Baodingfu, October 21, 1918: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 375r, 377r, 378r, 379r, 393r–399r, 400r–401v, 402r–403v, 407r–411r, 414r-v, 417r–418v, 427r–428r. 14. Henri Lécroart (coadjutor bishop of Southeast Zhili), Xianxian, November 19, 1918: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 429r–433r. (Emphasis in original.) 15. Boppe (minister in Beijing) to Paris, telegram #666, Beijing, October 28, 1918: AMAE, Asie 1918–1929 (Chine), 65. 16. Hanson (Lazarist general procurator), to the Director of “Asie Océanie” in the French foreign ministry, Paris, October 31, 1918, “Note of 6 November”: AMAE, Asie 1918–1929 (Chine), 65. 17. Lebbe was aware both of the Propaganda’s effort to recall the exiles and of the concerted action of various bishops to prevent the recall. Lebbe to Vanneufville, Shaoxing, October 27, 1918, contained in a letter from Vanneufville to the Propaganda prefect, Rome, December 27, 1918: PropA, vol. 699, p. 390r. PEC1, 141–145. 18. This and the preceding paragraph are drawn from the following several communications: Desrumaux to Cotta, Zhalan, December 14, 1916; Cotta to Desrumaux and Dumond, Xianshuigu, December 18, 1916; Desrumaux to Cotta, December 21, 1916; Cotta to Desrumaux, Xianshuigu, Christmas, 1916; Desrumaux to Cotta, January 13, 1917; Cotta to Desrumaux, January 17, 1917; Dumond to Cotta, Tianjin, March 28, 1917; Cotta to Dumond, March 31, 1917: AVLebbe, DGt7b, nos. 174, 176, 177, 180, 181, 183, 184, 191–194. Report of Guilloux to Paris motherhouse, Shanghai, March 12, 1917; A. Louwyck to Propaganda prefect, Paris, July 7, 1917; Dumond to Propaganda prefect, Tianjin, September 13, 1917; Vanneufville to Propaganda prefect, Rome, April 21, 1918; Cotta to Vanneufville, Xianshuigu, February 8, 1918; Cotta to Propaganda prefect, Xianshuigu, March 2, 1918, enclosing Cotta to Dumond, Xianshuigu, February 24, 1918: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 262r–268r, 281r–282r, 291r–292r, 327r–328r, 349r–352v, 361r–367r. See also PEC1, vii. 19. See the lucid discussion of the issue of deportation in Xu Guoqi, China and the Great War, 193–198. 20. Vittorio De Marco, “Le Missioni Tedesche in Cina Dopo la Prima Guerra Mondiale” [German missions in China after the First World War], in Giovagnoli, Roma e Pechino, 171– 200. Brandewie, The Last Shall Be First, 34–38. Before the expulsion, the South Shandong vicariate had sixty-seven missionary priests, as well as twelve foreign brothers and fifty-four foreign sisters. 21. PEC1, xii. Cotta to Vanneufville, Xianshuigu, January 10, 1919: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 474r– 480r. Letter by Cotta, North China Daily Mail, February 25, 1919. In a transcription of an interview with de Guébriant on October 16, 1919, Cotta recounted the circumstances leading to his self-labeling as Austrian in 1915, despite its feeble justification. PEC1, 207. Later, back in Paris, he discovered that he had been recognized as Egyptian by the Paris police in 1892. PEC3, 13. 22. Xiong Xiling to the pope, telegram, March 6 (?), 1919; Lebbe to Propaganda, telegrams, March 21 and 27, 1919; Van Rossum to Gasparri, March 21 and May 5, 1919: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 511r–512r, 485r–487r, 495r-v. 23. Vanneufville to Cotta, Rome, November 28, 1917: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 347r–348r. 24. Vanneufville to Propaganda prefect, Rome, April 21, 1918: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 327f–328r. Vanneufville wrote also to Lebbe regarding his disapproval of Cotta’s attitude on the matter of submission to authority. PEC1, 83–84.

324

Notes to pages 190–194

25. Interview of Desrumaux and Lebbe at Zhalan, September 24, 1916, dictated by Lebbe on September 28, 1916: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 143r–147r. 26. Lebbe to Vanneufville, January 27, 1917, transcribed in Vanneufville to Laurenti, January 21, 1918: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 300r–307r. 27. Goffart, Lettres, 118–122. 28. Ibid., 164–166. At about the same time, Lebbe was defending Cotta’s behavior to Vanneufville and argued that his only crime had been his appeal to Rome. PEC1, 80–82. 29. Goffart, 170–171. In addition to this letter of November 5, 1918, Claude Soetens refers to five letters between September 8 and October 12, 1918, in which Lebbe urged Cotta to relent. PEC2, 59, 77. 30. “Ponente” No. 27, 1920: PropA, vol. 698, p. 368v. 31. PEC1, 160–161. 32. Ibid., 171–176. Lebbe identifies the disrespectful author only as “Ying.” From the context, the reference seems to be to his friend Ying Lianzhi. 33. Cotta recorded these matters in an account of an interview with de Guébriant, October 16, 1919: PEC2, 202–205. Yang Zengyi and his brother Yang Ruwang ( Jean Yang), also a priest of the Tianjin vicariate and the most senior, had put their names to petitions to Rome about Lebbe’s exile. As secular priests, they could not be arbitrarily transferred outside the vicariate, but Dumond assigned them to parishes more distant from the city of Tianjin. Lebbe to Vanneufville, Shaoxing, January 21, 1918, in PEC1, 75–76. 34. Although we do not have Cotta’s response, Lebbe’s references to it indicate that it was accommodating. PEC1, 178. 35. Boorman, Biographical Dictionary 2: 441–444; Anne Vanseelandt, “Lu Zhengxiang (Lou Tseng Tsiang), A Benedictine Monk of the Abbey of Sint-Andries,” in Heyndrickx, Historiography of the Chinese Catholic Church, 223–230. 36. Gu Weimin, Zhongguo yu Luoma jiaoting, 124. Pietro Gasparri (Vatican secretary of state) to Cardinal Amette (archbishop of Paris), Vatican, August 22, 1918: ASVat, 1918, rubr. 224, p. 34. Boorman, Biographical Dictionary 2: 443. 37. De Martel to foreign minister, telegram #484, Beijing, December 13, 1917, and telegram #5, Beijing, January 4, 1918: AMAE, Asie 1918–1929 (Chine), 65. 38. Wang Kouang Ky (Chinese legation in Rome) to Count Maggiorino Capello (Monaco minister to the Holy See), Rome, July 6, 1918; reply from the Vatican secretary of state, July 10, 1918: ASVat, 1918, rubr. 224, fasc. 1–2. 39. PEC2, 14–16. 40. Pichon to the French minister in Beijing and the French ambassador in Rome, July 23, 1918: AMAE, Asie 1918–1929 (Chine), 65. 41. Jusserant (ambassador in Washington) to Paris, telegram #1069, Washington, August 9, 1918 and telegram #1133, August 22, 1918: AMAE, Asie 1918–1929 (Chine), 65. 42. Pichon to Cardinal Amette (Paris archbishop), Paris, September 10, 1918: AMAE, Asie 1918–1929 (Chine), 65. The German government seems not to have been involved in the origins of this Chinese démarche. Latour, “La France, le Saint-Siège,” 341. 43. Boppe (minister in Beijing) to Paris, telegram #546, Beijing, September 2, 1918: AMAE, Asie 1918–1929 (Chine), 65. 44. On China’s expectations and their betrayal, see Xu Guoqi, China and the Great War, 161–182.

Notes to pages 194–198

325

45. Examples are in PEC2, 22, 40–43. 46. Xiangbo was his zi (style), by which he was commonly known. He was also known by his ming (given name), Liang, which had been revised from Jianchang. 47. Zhu Weizheng, “Statesman and Centenarian: Ma Xiangbo as Witness of China’s Early Modernity” and Lu Yongling, “Standing between Two Worlds: Ma Xiangbo’s Educational Thought and Practice,” in Ma Xiangbo and the Mind of Modern China, 1840–1939, ed. Ruth Hayhoe and Lu Yongling (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996), 13–88, 143–203. Edward J. Malatesta, “Two Chinese Catholic Universities and a Major Chinese Catholic Thinker: Zhendan Daxue, Furen Daxue, and Ma Xiangbo,” in Heyndrickx, Historiography of the Chinese Catholic Church, 236, puts Ma’s departure from the Jesuit order in 1874. 48. Ruth Hayhoe, “Towards the Forging of a Chinese University Ethos: Zhendan and Fudan, 1903–1919,” China Quarterly 94 ( June 1983): 329–333. 49. Jarlin to Cotta, April 8, 1912, enclosed in “Extraits de Lettres sur la Press Catholique,” collected by Cotta, Xianshuigu, January 9, 1919: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 921r–942r. Paul Reynaud, bishop of East Zhejiang, also sharply criticized Lebbe and other Catholics of Tianjin for their veneration of “a fallen priest,” unnamed but transparently indicating Ma Xiangbo. Reynaud to Van Rossum, Paris, November 16, 1919: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 586v–587r. 50. Ma Xiangbo to Ying Lianzhi, September 9, 1918, in Ma Xiangbo ji [Works of Ma Xiangbo], ed. Zhu Weizheng (Shanghai: Fudan Daxue chubanshe, 1996), 344–345. By a French law of 1889, clergy were subject to military service. Fontana, Les catholiques français pendant la grande guerre, 17. 51. Zhu Weizheng, “Statesman and Centenarian,” and Li Tiangang, “Christianity and Cultural Conflict in the Life of Ma Xiangbo,” in Hayhoe, Ma Xiangbo, 47–58, 129–134. 52. PEC2, 3, 5–6. 53. For Ma’s comment: Zhu Weizheng, Ma Xiangbo ji, 344. 54. Lebbe to Reynaud, Shaoxing, August 20, 1918, and Reynaud to Lebbe, Ningbo, August 28, 1918: PEC2, 34–35, 53. 55. PEC2, 44. The coadjutor bishop of Southeast Zhili wrote at this time that the appointment of a nuncio to Beijing was understood as a prelude to replacement of European with Chinese bishops. Henri Lécroart to Propaganda prefect, Xianxian, November 19, 1918: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 429r–433r. 56. Paul Ly (Li Yaoran) to Propaganda prefect, Changli, Zhili, December 29, 1918. PropA, vol. 699, pp. 489r–491v. 57. PEC1, 56. Vanneuville asked Lebbe to keep him informed about repercussions from the opposition to the establishment of a nunciature. Ibid., 90. 58. The questions sent to all six can be seen in Propaganda to de Guébriant, July 12, 1918: PropA, vol. 933, pp. 109r–110v. The six were de Guébriant (Guangzhou, MEP, French), de Vienne (West Zhili, Lazarist, French), Geurts (East Zhili, Lazarist, Dutch), Lécroart (Southeast Zhili, Jesuit, French), Henninghaus (South Shandong, Society of the Divine Word, German), and Massi (Central Shaanxi, Franciscan, Italian). 59. PEC1, 316–317. De Guébriant, Sichuan, January 4 and May 7, 1916: PropA, vol. 699, pp. 921r–942r. 60. Response of de Vienne, October 15, 1918: PropA, vol. 633, pp. 120r–133r. 61. Response of J. de Guébriant, Guangzhou, December 25, 1918: PropA, vol. 633, pp. 173r–188v.

326

Notes to pages 198–201

62. Response of Augustinus Henninghaus, Yanzhoufu, November 10, 1918: PropA, vol. 633, pp. 189r–204v. When de Guébriant made his visitation to the South Shandong vicariate in 1919, Henninghaus replied negatively to the question of whether Chinese priests could become bishops, though the post of district director was a possibility. Brandewie, The Last Shall Be First, 51. 63. Responses of de Vienne, October 15, 1918; Geurtz, Yongpingfu, November 8, 1918; and Lécroart, Xianxian, October 18, 1918: PropA, vol. 633, pp. 120r–144v. 64. Response of Henninghaus, Yanzhoufu, November 10, 1918: PropA, vol. 633, pp. 189r–204v. 65. Ibid., 199v. 66. Response of Eugenio Massi, Xi’anfu, November 13, 1918: PropA, vol. 633, pp. 150r-v, 151v–152r. By this date, some six Italian-led vicariates had switched to Italian protection. 67. De Guébriant informed the French minister in Beijing of his appointment as “Apostolic Visitor in the name of the Pope” about a month before the public announcement. De Guébriant to French minister, Guangzhou, June 28, 1919: ADNantes 608. Claude Soetens speculates that the choice was based on an appreciation in Rome of de Guébriant’s 1915 report on his vicariate in Sichuan and the “uncommon lucidity” of his response to the Propaganda’s 1918 questionnaire. PRC1, xiv. Henninghaus’s response was quite as lucid and informative, in my view, but it would certainly have been impolitic to pick a German. 68. PEC1, 179–181. 69. A listing published in 1923 shows fifty-four vicariates (including Hongkong). Les Missions de Chine 5 (1923): 5–7. In Tianjin, de Guébriant met with Liu Junqing (Yishibao editor), as well as Sun Zhongying and Bian Yinchang (wealthy non-Catholic friends of Lebbe), probably through Lebbe’s introductions. PEC1, 183, 201. 70. Wang, Premier concile, 219–220, explains the Vatican’s urgency in issuing Maximum illud as arising from the wish to generalize the message beyond China and to address the damage done the missions everywhere by the world war. 71. Pichon to French ambassador in Rome, Paris, July 15, 1919: AMAE, Asie 1919–1929 (Chine), 65. Soetens, Eglise catholique en Chine, 82, states that the French foreign minister in June 1919 lobbied for a French visitor and preferred de Guébriant. 72. Pichon to foreign minister, #75, Beijing, June 15, 1899: AMAE, Protectorat Religieux de la France (Sichuan, 1899–1901), 323. 73. Barbier, Canonnières françaises, 65–66. 74. Foreign ministry to de Margerie (Beijing legation), Paris, January 13, 1910: AMAE, Protectorat Religieux de la France (1907–1917), 312 bis. 75. Pascal Collineau, “Les missionnaires, agents de l’influence française. Le problème politico-missionnaire au Sichuan (1898–1937)” [Missionaries, agents of French influence: the politico-missionary problem in Sichuan, 1898–1937], in Weber, La France en Chine, 60. De Guébriant was awarded the Legion of Honor for “services rendered to the French cause,” particularly his contributions to the project (unrealized) of an extension of a French railroad from Yunnan province into Sichuan. Launay, Missions Etrangères, 287. 76. “Notes sur les P.P. Lebbe et Cotta”: ADNantes 608. 77. PEC1, 154–156, 166–167, 182–183, 185–186, 190–191. 78. Ibid., 207–209. 79. Ibid., 226. 80. Ibid., 228.

Notes to pages 201–204

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81. Ibid., 200–215, 226–227. In the early months of 1920, Cotta was more emphatic in asserting that de Guébriant had repeatedly promised Cotta’s return to China, as well as a visit to Rome. PEC3, 21–22. 82. De Guébriant to the French minister, Tianjin, November 23, 1919: ADNantes 608. Cotta described the papers given him by the French minister as “a safe-conduct.” PEC I, 235. 83. De Guébriant to Propaganda prefect, Yanzhoufu, November 29, 1919: PropA, vol. 698, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 302r–307r. Gu Changsheng, Chuanjiaoshi, 311–313, recounts these Catholic patriotic movements and de Guébriant’s attacks on them during his visitation in Tianjin and Beijing in October and November 1919. See also Gu Yulu, Zhongguo tianzhujiao shuping, 118–119. 84. Chae-jin Lee, Zhou Enlai: The Early Years (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 119, 125–149, 152–157. During the Laoxikai affair, Zhou Enlai as a Nankai academy student had addressed a school assembly on the delinquency of the government in resisting French aggression. Lai Xinxia, Tianjin jindaishi, 253. 85. Propaganda to de Guébriant, March 12, 1920: PropA, vol. 698, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 313r–v. 86. De Guébriant to Propaganda prefect, Yanzhoufu, November 29, 1919: PropA, vol. 689, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 302r–307r. 87. Lebbe to Cotta, Shaoxing, January 20, 1920: PEC1, 242–245. 88. Incomplete information about the apostolic letter was sufficient for Lebbe to see the “dawn after a long, long night of nightmares,” but he was still putting his hopes more particularly on de Guébriant’s inquiries. Lebbe to Vanneufville, Shanghai, December 3, 1919: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 599r–601r. 89. Lebbe to Adrien-Bède, Shaoxing, February 5, 1920: PEC1, 247–248 (original emphasis). Lebbe sent similar expressions of delight to his sister Elisabeth (Lizzy) and to Cotta. PEC1, 249–251. 90. De Guébriant to Propaganda prefect, Hongkong, March 5, 1920: PropA, vol. 760, pp. 275– 276. Lebbe, “Une goutte de sang de révolution obéissante” [A dutiful drop of revolutionary blood] (a translation from the Chinese): PEC1, 313–326. 91. PEC1, 319, 325. 92. De Guébriant, “Réponses aux Questions posées par la S. C. au Visiteur des Missions de Chine”: PropA, vol. 760, pp. 668–669. 93. Ibid., 672–673. De Guébriant argued that even the Germans in South Shandong, who lacked a foreign protectorate, understood that Chinese official indulgence was offered only as an inducement to others to abandon their protection regimes. 94. Lebbe later said that he had arranged the Chinese translation and its publication. PEC1, 315. An undated letter to de Guébriant from “leading citizens, merchants, and literati” of Tianjin recorded their disappointment at being refused an appointment with him. It went on to praise Lebbe, rehearsed the Laoxikai affair, and criticized Bishop Dumond. PEC1, 193–194. 95. A. Cotta, “Lettre Apostolique ‘Maximum Illud’”: PEC3, 94. 96. Chinese priests of the Beijing vicariate to the Propaganda prefect, Beijing, January 20, 1920: PropA, vol. 760, pp. 256r–267v. “19 prêtres du Tcheli S.E. à Benoît XV,” dated July 1920: PEC1, 301–312. “Christians of Beijing” to the pope, Beijing, February 28, 1920: PropA, vol. 760, pp. 319r–324v. “Responsa ad virginti octo questiones Apostolicas,” J. B. Hou (Hu Mingshan), Wuqing, February 12, 1920: PropA, vol. 760, pp. 288r–317v. Zhu Weizheng, Ma Xiangbo ji, 352–354, 360–363 (Ma Xiangbo is represented here by two versions: a partial draft

328

Notes to pages 204–212

and a full response to most of the pope’s questions, purportedly on behalf of six named Beijing Catholic church members). “Pétition à sa Grandeur Monseigneur de Guébriant en réponse au questionnaire envoyé par le Saint-Siège de Rome”: PEC1, 279–300. The book’s editor records several places in this student’s text where Lebbe apparently edited it, although the deletions and additions are minor. For lack of figures on vicariate staffing for 1920, I use as approximations a midpoint between the numbers given for Chinese priests of the North Zhili and Southeast Zhili vicariates in Les Missions de Chine (1916): 44–48, 60, and the numbers in Missions, Séminaires, écoles Catholiques en Chine en 1922–1923 (Shanghai: Imprimerie de T’ou-sè-wè, January 1924), 8. Contemporary statements on the size of these cohorts varied, perhaps out of uncertainty as to inclusion or exclusion from the category. 97. The arrival in China of the text of Benedict XV’s apostolic letter, Maximum illud, in February 1920 came after most of the Chinese responses had been written. The only mention of the papal text occurs in the communication of the priests of Southeast Zhili. 98. Chinese priests of the Beijing vicariate to the Propaganda prefect, Beijing, January 20, 1920: PropA, vol. 760, pp. 261v–262r. 99. Ma Xiangbo’s responses to this questionnaire are discussed in: Zhu Weizheng, “Statesman and Centenarian,” 73–76. 100. PEC1, 303, 309. 101. Chinese priests of the Beijing vicariate to the Propaganda prefect, Beijing, January 20, 1920: PropA, vol. 760, p. 261r. 102. De Guébriant, “Réponses aux Questions posées par la S. C. au Visiteur des Missions de Chine”: PropA, vol. 760, pp. 701v–702r. 103. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1:269. 104. Chinese priests of the Beijing vicariate to the Propaganda prefect, Beijing, January 20, 1920: PropA, vol. 760, p. 259v. 105. “Responsa ad virginti octo questiones Apostolicas,” J. B. Hou, Wuqing, February 12, 1920: PropA, vol. 760, pp. 293r–v, 299v. 106. The Wuqing priest, Hu Mingshan, recommended three European missionaries of the North Zhili vicariate, including Jean de Vienne. “Responsa ad virginti octo questiones Apostolicas”: PropA, vol. 760, p. 310r. 107. Chinese priests of the Beijing vicariate to the Propaganda prefect, Beijing, January 20, 1920: PropA, vol. 760, pp. 260v. 108. “Responsa ad virginti octo questiones Apostolicas”: PropA, vol. 760, p. 299r–300r. 109. Lu Yongling, “Standing Between Two Worlds,” 197. Chapter 10 1. A memorandum comparing passages from Maximum illud with writings of Lebbe and Cotta appears in PEC3, 167–168. 2. Ibid., vi. Soetens, “La svolta della Maximum illud,” 75–76. 3. Soetens, “La svolta della Maximum illud, ” 84. 4. Giuseppe Butturini, “Il ‘Problema delle Missioni’” [The “Problem of the Missions”], in Giovagnoli, Roma e Pechino, 91–101. 5. John F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1999), 204. Soetens, “La svolta della Maximum illud,” 89–90.

Notes to pages 212–217

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Butterini, “Il ‘Problema delle Missioni,’” 127. Jeroom Heyndrickx, “A New Encounter between the Catholic Church and China,” in Malek, Light a Candle, 442–443. 6. I use the English text printed in J. S. Cummins, ed., Christianity and Missions, 1450–1800 (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 1997), 1–19. 7. Wiest, Maryknoll in China, 48–52. The first Maryknoll missionaries arrived in 1918. In the judgment of the French consul in Guangzhou, the districts turned over to the Maryknolls had “become a dead weight” for the MEP mission there, because of a recent deal with the Portuguese diocese in Macao and the resulting severance of direct communication between Guangzhou and these territories granted to the Maryknolls. Beauvais to de Martel, chargé d’affaires in Beijing, Guangzhou, January 22, 1918: AMAE, Asie 1918–1940 (Chine), 66. 8. Cummins, Christianity and Missions, 7. I have changed the translation of mancam mendosamque from “inadequate and faulty” to “defective and distorted,” to capture the moral edge in the original. The official French translation at this point was “absent ou fausse.” 9. Ibid., 8–9. Teter, used here in the superlative, has the following meanings in my Latin-English dictionary: foul, noisome, hideous, offensive, hateful, disgraceful, shameful, abominable. 10. Ibid., 11. 11. Some particularly outspoken testimony occurs in an 1894 letter by a Scheut missionary in Inner Mongolia. He writes that no European missionary can speak Chinese well enough to converse with pagans, and missionary preaching is ineffective. All evangelization is left to the Chinese priests, and the lay catechists who are hired to give religious instruction are not more informed about doctrine than are the pagans. De Broeck to Van Aertselaer, Xiwanzi, January 4–5 1894, in Taveirne, Han-Mongol Encounters, 367. 12. Emma Tedde, “Propagazione della Fede e riorganizzazione delle missioni (1919–1922)” [Propagation of the Faith and reorganization of the missions, 1919–1922], in Giovagnoli, Roma e Pechino, 155–156. 13. De Guébriant to Propaganda prefect, Hongkong, March 5, 1920: PropA, vol. 760, pp. 270r– 277r. The quoted Jesuit was Fr. Gilot. His reported remarks conflicted with the injunction of the previous summer from the Jesuit’s general in Europe, Wlodimir Ledóchowski, to the Jiangnan mission that it should increase the prominence and authority of Chinese priests. Tiedemann, Handbook of Christianity in China, 2:581. At the same meetings, the provicar of the East Zhejiang vicariate called the papal letter “unjust” and leading to “destruction and discouragement.” PEC3, xix. 14. PEC1, 321. The editor identifies this Jesuit spokesman as Fr. Joseph Verdier. 15. PEC3, vii. On the other hand, Jean de Vienne, then coadjutor bishop in Beijing, wrote de Guébriant of his joy at the encyclical. Ibid., xviii. 16. De Guébriant, “Réponse aux Questions posées par la S. C. au Visiteur des Missions de Chine,” June 1, 1920: PropA, vol. 760, pp. 669–670. 17. PEC1, 320. Lebbe was recalling these remarks after 13 years. 18. PEC3, xxi, 13–17, 25, 31–34, 42–43, 50–62, 72–74, 85, 149–152, 159–161. The only missionary journal in China that was reported to have printed the full text was Sacerdos in Sinis. Ma Xiangbo translated it into elegant classical Chinese. Li Tiangang, “Christianity and Cultural Conflict,” 139. 19. PEC3, 84–146. 20. PEC1, 238. 21. PEC3, 149–150.

330

Notes to pages 217–222

22. PEC3, 26–31, 35–37. Cotta’s interlocutor from Rome was Jules Tiberghien (1867–1923). 23. PEC3, 70–71. 24. PEC3, 159–161. 25. “Protection des Missions Catholique en Chine et la Diplomatie,” October 1927, p. 8, counted the French portion of China missionaries in 1927 at about thirty-one percent, while it had been about seventy-one percent in 1885 and fifty-five percent in 1904: ADNantes 59. A listing from about 1906 put the proportion of French missionary priests in 1904–1905, after removing Marists and Trappists from the figures, at sixty-four percent of all European missionaries in China. “Missionnaires de Chine répartis par vicariats et par nationalités”: AMAE, Protectorat Religieux de la France (Chine, 1907–1917), 312 bis. 26. Goffart, Lettres, 202. James Cantwell (Office of the Archbishop) to C. Laurenti (Propaganda secretary), San Francisco, California, January 20, 1921; Propaganda to Verdier (Lazarist superior general), Rome, May 7, 1921; Verdier to Van Rossum, Paris, May 21, 1921: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 620, 614r–v, 621r–622r. 27. Wiest, Maryknoll in China, 36. 28. Vladimir (or Wlodimir) Ledóchowski ( Jesuit superior general) to Van Rossum, Rome, March 27, 1920: PropA, vol. 698, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 318r–328r. 29. Verdier to Van Rossum, Rome, May 9, 1920: PropA, vol. 698, rubr. 130 (1921), p. 326r. 30. “Ponente,” No. 27 for 1920, Prot. 2181/20: PropA, vol. 698, pp. 371v–374v. 31. Ibid., pp. 331r–375v. 32. Propaganda to Lécroart (of Southeast Zhili), Rome, July 27, 1920; de Vienne to Lécroart, Tianjin, December 9, 1920: PropA, vol. 698, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 428r–v, 453r. Lü Zhiyi, “Lüelun Tianjin gongshang daxue jianjiao de beijing” [Brief account of the background to the founding of the Tianjin Industrial and Commercial University], in Jidujiao yu Zhongguo wenhua congkan [Collected writings on Christianity and Chinese culture], ed. Zhang Kaiyuan and Ma Bin (Wuhan: Hubei jiaowu chubanshe, 2003), 5:269–276. 33. Jean de Vienne to Propaganda prefect, Tianjin, March 27, 1922; Propaganda to Jarlin, June 19, 1922; Jarlin to Propaganda prefect, Beijing, August 16, 1922; Propaganda to Jarlin, January 20, 1923: PropA, vol. 763, pp. 8r–10r, 11r–16v, 70r–71r, 72r-v. It might be noted that the province that had included Jarlin’s jurisdiction has much the largest Catholic population at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Jason Kindopp, “Policy Dilemmas in China’s Church-State Relations: An Introduction,” in God and Caesar in China: Policy Implications of Church-State Tensions, ed. Jason Kindopp and Carol Lee Hamrin (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), 1. 34. Goffart, Lettres, 182–186. Also known as Désiré-Félicien Mercier, he had been touched by the “modernist” controversy in the late 1890s and also provoked criticism from Rome for his sponsorship of the scientific study of religion and a course on comparative religion at the Catholic University of Leuven in the early 1910s. Taveirne, Han-Mongol Encounters, 267–268, 275–279. 35. His accounts of these Roman conversations are in Goffart, Lettres, 186–207. 36. Ibid., 201–202. The italics and the parenthetical remark are all Lebbe’s. 37. De Guébriant, “Note,” no place or date [estimated to be about June 26, 1920]: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), between pages 602 and 609. 38. Van Rossum and C. Laurenti to de Guébriant, June 28, 1920: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130/1921, pp. 610r–v. When asked whether he would take Lebbe back with him to China, de Guébriant replied that it would not work because of the difference in missionary society and in the local

Notes to pages 222–227

331

language (Cantonese). De Guébriant to Propaganda prefect, Kernèvez, Finistère, July 5, 1920: PropA, vol. 762, rubr. 130, pp. 63r–64v. 39. Lebbe to Monsignor (context suggests the Propaganda prefect), Rome, January 20, 1921: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 1040r–1041v. 40. Goffart, Lettres, 188–189, 191–192. 41. Note by Van Rossum, January 27, 1921; telegrams to de Vienne (February 10, 1921) and de Guébriant (March 1, 1921); de Guébriant to Propaganda prefect, Guangzhou, April 13, 1921: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 1042, 1044–1045, 1047r–1050v. 42. De Vienne to Propaganda prefect, Tianjin, March 28, 1921: PropA, vol. 762, rubr. 130, pp. 96–99. For an example at this time of the fear that Lebbe’s return would validate the insubordination of seminarians, see Damascernus Herkenrath, “Vicartius delegatus” of North Shandong, Jinanfu, March 15, 1921: PropA, vol. 762, rubr. 130, p. 52r. 43. Lebbe to “Monsieur l’Assistant” (Cazot at the Lazarist motherhouse?), Paris, April 9, 1921: PropA, vol. 699, rubr. 130 (1921), p. 1059. 44 . Liu Junqing and Du Zhuxuan to the pope, Tianjin, August 8, 1921; Cardinal Mercier to the Propaganda, Maline, August 11, 1921: PropA, vol. 762, rubr. 130, pp. 118r–119r, 128r–130r. 45. Lebbe to his mother, Paris, September 6, 1921: Goffart, Lettres, 216–217. 46. Goffart, Lettres, 212. 47. Ibid., 233–236. 48. Ruggero Simonato, Celso Costantini: tra rinnovamento cattolico in Italia e le nuove missioni in Cina [Celso Costantini: Between Catholic renewal in Italy and the new missions in China] (Pordenone: Edizioni Concordia Sette Pordenone, 1985), 37–64. 49. Alberto Maria Ghisalberti, ed., Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Istituto della Encyclopedia Italiana, 1984), 30:284–286. 50. A. de Fleuriau to Poincaré (“Dir. Politique et Commerciale Asie-Océanie”), #221, Beijing, November 24, 1922: ADNantes 58. 51. Department to the French minister in Beijing, Paris, November 23, 1922: ADNantes 58. 52. A. de Fleuriau to French consuls in China, Beijing, November 27, 1922: ADNantes 58. 53. Beauvais (consul-general in Guangzhou) to de Fleuriau, #173, Guangzhou, December 15, 1922: ADNantes 58. In his memoirs, Costantini recounted the offer of the French consul to accompany him on calls on the civil and military governors of the province, and his declination. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1:32. 54. M. A. Wilden (consul-general in Shanghai) to de Fleuriau, #125, Shanghai, December 26, 1922: ADNantes 58. 55. A. de Fleuriau to Poincaré, #221, Beijing, November 24, 1922: ADNantes 58. 56. Lecomte (Hankou consul) to the minister in Beijing, February 27, 1924: ADNantes 58. 57. Leslie Tentler, Seasons of Grace: A History of the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), 120. 58. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1:47–49. 59. Soetens, Eglise catholique en Chine, 25, 62–66, 113–115. French consular reporting indicated a Vatican interest in a national council of bishops in China in 1910. Foreign minister to de Margerie (minister in Beijing), Paris, January 13, 1910; A Bodard (acting vice-consul in Chongqing) to foreign minister, #10, Chongqing, March 15, 1910: AMAE, Protectorat Religieux de France (Chine, 1907–1917), 312 bis.

332

Notes to pages 227–229

60. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1:84–87. Soetens, L’Eglise catholique en Chine, 125– 126. The new prefectures were centered on Puqi in Hubei and Lixian in Zhili (or Hebei). The refusal of the South Shandong bishop, Henninghaus, to offer territory for Chinese leadership may have been reinforced by the lack of any admission of Chinese priests into the Society of the Divine Word until the first novitiates in 1924. Empowering a Chinese secular priest as superior of an ecclesiastical territory would have entailed the equivalent loss of jurisdiction for the Society. Brandewie, The Last Shall Be First, 43–46, 52. 61. The departure of European missionaries is deduced from the data in Annuaire des missions catholiques de Chine, seventh year, 1926–1927 (Shanghai: Imprimerie de T’ou-sè-wè, Zi-ka-wei, 1928) and in other issues of this yearbook. The in-house history of the Lazarist order records that the European priests left the district when a Chinese was made head at Lixian/Anguo in Zhili province in 1924. Octave Ferreux, “Histoire de la Congrégation,” 377. In 1927, when the Scheut fathers were establishing a Chinese-led vicariate centered on Jining in Inner Mongolia, only one among over 40 foreign missionaries stayed in the district. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1:452—453. The first conspicuous break in the pattern of the evacuation of most if not all European priests on the accession of Chinese leadership came in 1936, when a Chinese Jesuit became bishop in Xianxian (part of what was formerly known as Southeast Zhili). The 1939 edition of Annuaire des missions catholiques de Chine confirms the exceptional character of Xianxian among Chinese-led vicariates. 62. In early February 1924, cardinals of the Propaganda and of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs in joint session denounced the French Religious Protectorate. Tiedemann, “Controversy over the Formation,” 371. But in instructions to the field on February 24, 1924, Van Rossum opted for an intermediate stance: that China missionaries avoid recourse to foreign diplomats without renouncing the Protectorate and that they avoid conflict with foreign powers. Wang, Premier concile, 248–249, 319. 63. Wang, Premier concile, 259, 275. 64. Soetens, L’Eglise catholique en Chine, 113–123. Similarly, in a detailed study of the council, Wang, Premier concile, 270, concludes that, although it marked the beginning of an “autochthonous hierarchy” (i.e., Chinese prelates), “It was, however, not the motive force adequate to opening apostolic methods to the change desired by Pope Pius XI.” In attendance at the council were forty-four apostolic vicars (Wang, Premier concile, 344–347, lists 42), eleven provicars or procurators (representing apostolic vicars who were unable to attend), five apostolic prefects, and various other administrative, clerical, and support staff to bring the total to 109 participants. 65. Jessie Gregory Lutz, Chinese Politics and Christian Missions: The Anti-Christian Movements of 1920–28 (Notre Dame, IN: Cross Cultural Publications, 1988), 9–10, 27–88. Marianne Bastid-Bruguière, “La campagne antireligieuse de 1922,” in L’anticléricalisme en Chine, ed. Vincent Goossaert, Extrême Orient, Extrême Occident, no. 24 (2002): 77–93. 66. Minister in Beijing to Briand, January 20, 1926: ADNantes 19. 67. Goffart, Lettres, 239 (emphasis in original). 68. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1:396–397; Les missions de Chine et du Japon (1929), 638–640; Lutz, Chinese Politics and Christian Missions, 216. There certainly were Chinese secular priests in Fujian. If Costantini’s claim of the absence of any Chinese Dominicans was accurate, as is confirmed by Annuaire des missions catholiques (1927–1928): 9, it would represent a retreat from earlier times. Luo Wenzao, who became a bishop in the late seventeenth century, was a Dominican

Notes to pages 229–232

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from Fujian. Eugenio Menegon reports some twenty-four Chinese Dominican priests having served in Fujian from 1744 to 1838: Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars, 127, 142, 247. 69. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1:423–425; C. Martin Wilbur, The Nationalist Revolution in China, 1923–1928 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 91–93; Lutz, Chinese Politics and Christian Missions, 232–241. Lutz reports seven foreign and six Chinese deaths in this incident of March 23, 1927, in Nanjing. 70. Lutz, Chinese Politics and Christian Missions, 239. Tiedemann, Handbook of Christianity in China, 2:674. 71. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1:414–416. When in April 1927 a French gunboat commander requested the Catholic bishop in Chongqing to effect the departure of the largest possible number of missionaries because of the imminent danger, the missionaries refused to be evacuated. Barbier, Canonnières françaises, 191. 72. Thomas A. Breslin, China, American Catholicism, and the Missionary (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980), 49, 56–57, 63–70. Weist, Maryknoll in China, 329–330. The evacuation of Maryknolls was later considered a mistake, for which they suffered some embarrassment. 73. An example occurred in a letter to Costantini from the Franciscan bishop at Changsha, Hunan, of March 3, 1927, observing that all European and American merchants and Protestant missionaries had left the area, and that the Catholic missionaries were the only foreigners remaining. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1:420–421. 74. Constantini, Con i misssionari in Cina, 1:303, 397. Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, 1:180–183. 75. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1:303, 327. While less extreme, the conclusions of French gunboat commanders in these years were similar and, in explanation, singled out the unwillingness or inability of Chinese authority to pursue those who attacked missions and Vatican policy not to seek indemnities or reprisals for the killing of missionaries. Barbier, Canonnières françaises, 190–193. 76. Lebbe to Propaganda prefect, Rome, January 10, 1921: PropA, vol. 698, rubr. 130 (1921), pp. 18r–19v. 77. Web site: www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals. 78. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1:340–349, 362–365. The event was celebrated eighty years later in each of the original jurisdictions. China Church Quarterly 68 (Fall 2006): 4. 79. One of the new bishops, Cheng Hede (Odoric Tcheng), was prevented for a few months from returning to his apostolic prefecture of Puqi in Hubei by the disruption engendered by the Northern Expedition. Les Missions de Chine et du Japon, eighth year (1929):623. 80. Goffart, Lettres, 248–249. 81. Soetens, L’Eglise catholique en Chine, 132. Leclercq, Thunder in the Distance, 251–253. In another version, Costantini resisted allowing Lebbe to return to China but was turned around by the new Chinese bishops, who unanimously threatened to oppose Costantini if he blocked Lebbe’s return. Zhao Yabo, Reai Zhongguo, 76. 82. Doulcet (ambassador to the Holy See) to the foreign minister, #122, Rome, October 28, 1926: ADNantes 19. Doulcet refers to Lebbe as “Lèbe,” presumably a French version of the Flemish surname. 83. At about this time, Lebbe reported that de Guébriant had urged on his missionaries and bishops a readiness to accommodate indigenous leadership in the best parts of their partitioned vicariates. Goffart, Lettres, 239–240.

334

Notes to pages 232–235

84. French minister in Beijing (de Martel) to Paris, #27 and #93, Beijing, January 18 and February 26, 1927: ADNantes 19. 85. Lebbe was attempting to obtain Chinese citizenship as early as April 1917. Goffart, Lettres, 126. Chapter 11 1. Wakeman, Policing Shanghai, 125, 360. 2. In contrast to Costantini, Les missions de Chine et du Japon (1929) in its account (pages 590–653) emphasizes the military occupations of church buildings and their despoliation, region by region, as well as the personal casualities and evacuations, but also notes the return to tranquility in most places by the end of 1927 (the exception was the Hailufeng area of Guangdong province, where Chinese Christian deaths were numerous—over 150). Pared to their essentials, the two versions of the vicissitudes and the recovery of the church at this time are not so discrepant. For a close analysis of both the encouragement of popular agitation, including against missions, by the Nationalist Party leadership at this time and the restraints placed on it by that same leadership, see Michael G. Murdock, Disarming the Allies of Imperialism: Agitation, Manipulation, and the State during China’s Nationalist Revolution, 1922–1929 (Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 2006), 211–272. 3. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1:395–402, 410–416, 458–462. M. E. Naggiar (Shanghai consul-general) to de Martel (minister in Beijing), #352, Shanghai, November 17, 1927; de Martel to Briand (foreign minister), #184, 7 May 1928: ADNantes 58. 4. The statement is recorded in Italian in Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 2:29–30. A Chinese translation is given in Luo Guang, Jiaoting yu Zhongguo, 229–230. The Vatican in these years was distancing itself from the French Religious Protectorate by this and other pronouncements. Tiedemann, “Controversy over the Formation,” 371. By itself and without diplomatic relations of the Vatican with the Chinese government, such positioning did not end the partnership between many foreign bishops in China and French policy. 5. By contrast, Les Missions de Chine et du Japon (1929), v–vii and 699, decried the disregarding of the treaties and the effective withdrawal of protection for the missions by the new national government and argued that the Nationalists’ ceremony of respect for pictures of Sun Yatsen were “even more religious” than the cult of Confucius in the late Qing. 6. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 2:66–67, 80–91, 100–102. Foreign Minister Wang directly informed the French minister that his government did not recognize the French Religious Protectorate. De Martel to foreign ministry, telegram #11, Nanjing, January 26, 1929: ADNantes 58. Costantini’s acceptance of honoring Sun Yat-sen and the study of his Three Principles of the People in Catholic schools attracted the notice of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian philosopher and Communist Party leader, then in prison, who saw these moves as opening the door to a Chinese national Catholicism. V. G. Kiernan, Imperialism and Its Contradictions (New York: Routledge, 1995), 183. 7. Celso Costantini, Réforme des missions au XXe siècle (Tournai: Casterman, 1960), 3, 14. Wang, Premier concile, 275, 284–286, 294–295. 8. Gu Weimin, Zhongguo yu Luoma jiaoting, 151. 9. For a sketch of Costantini’s contributions to indigenizing Catholic art and architecture in China, as well as references to further treatments, see Françoise Aubin, “Christian Art and Architecture,” in Tiedemann, Handbook of Christianity, 2:733–741, especially 734–736, 738.

Notes to pages 235–239

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10. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1:92–94, 144–148, 174–177, 434. Soetens, Eglise catholique en Chine, 116. Costantini to Prospero Paris, #368/27, Beijing, July 25, 1927: ADNantes 58. 11. Goffart, Lettres, 246. 12. Lagarde (chargé d’affaires in Beijing) to Briand, #295, Beijing, June 30, 1930; “Etat, au 12 juillet 1930, des missions catholiques qui reconnaissent le protectorat de la France”: ADNantes 59. Judged by French consular reporting, even the figure of forty-three recognizing the French Religious Protectorate may be slightly optimistic. 13. Minister in Beijing (de Martel) to Briand, #142, Beijing, April 27, 1925: ADNantes 58. 14. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1:434–444. 15. D. de Martel to Briand, #94, March 7, 1928; de Martel to Indochina governor-general, #17, April 8, 1928: ADNantes 58. 16. Paragon, “Ying Lien-chih,” 200–212. 17. Doulcet (ambassador to the Holy See) to foreign minister, #76, Rome, July 7, 1925: ADNantes 58. Owing to loss of personnel and to financial difficulties, the management of Furen University was transferred to the Society of the Divine Word in 1933. Edward J. Malatesta, “Two Chinese Catholic Universities,” 238. 18. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 2:44–49. The facilities for the failed Daoming University, after the staff departed, were reconfigured as high schools for boys and girls, run respectively by the Marists and the Daughters of Charity, under a different name. Ferreux, “Histoire de la Congrégation,” 419. 19. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 2:100. 20. Henry Cosme (Beijing chargé d’affaires) to Paris, #544, Beijing, November 30, 1928; de Martel to A. Briand, Shanghai, December 22, 1928: ADNantes 58. Cosme to A. Briand, #634, Beijing, December 2, 1928: ADNantes 19. 21. Briand (foreign minister) to Doulcet (chargé d’affaires at the Holy See), May 6, 1921: AMAE, Asie 1918–1929 (Chine), 65. Moussay, Répertoire des membres, 326. Lagarde (Beijing chargé d’affaires), #295, Beijing, June 30, 1930: ADNantes 59. 22. Weist, Maryknoll in China, 252–255. 23. Henry Cosme (chargé d’affaires) to A. Briand, Beijing, December 2 and 14, 1928: ADNantes 19. D. de Martel to A. Briand, Shanghai, December 22, 1928; Henry Cosme to A. Briand, #107, Beijing, March 11, 1929: ADNantes 58. Soetens, Eglise catholique en Chine, 142. 24. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 2:56–62. For a listing of Henri Garnier’s polemics, see Claude Soetens, ed., Inventaire des Archives Vincent Lebbe (Louvain-la-Neuve: Publications de la Faculté de Théologie, 1982), 71–74. 25. Henry Cosme to Briand, #660, Beijing, December 22, 1928; telegram #556, Beijing, December 25, 1928; and telegram #560, December 27, 1928: ADNantes 58. 26. Un péril mondial: Le fascisme catholique exotique (anonymous, but generally acknowledged to have been written by Henri Garnier) (M. Boivent, K.-Bicêtre, probably 1930): ADNantes 58. 27. H. Garnier to chargé d’affaires (Henry Cosme), “Tun-Kia-Chwang,” December 15, 1928; Cosme to Briand, #660, Beijing, December 22, 1928; Cosme to Briand, #107, Beijing, March 11, 1929: ADNantes 58. 28. Excepts are given in Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 2:191–195. 29. De Guébriant, “Réponses aux Questions posées par la S. C. au Visiteur des Missions de Chine,” June 1, 1920, p. 696: PropA, vol. 760.

336

Notes to pages 239–242

30. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1:308–309. Costantini, Réforme des missions, 54–55. 31. Breslin, China, American Catholicism, 32, 71–73. In Breslin’s account, the secretary to the apostolic delegate appeared to condone the refusal of the MEP in Shenyang from sharing with the reputedly wealthy American Maryknollers. 32. Henry Cosme (chargé d’affaires) to A. Briand, #659, December 21, 1928: ADNantes 19. 33. This scenario is adumbrated in Beauvais (consul-general) to foreign minister, Guangzhou, May 21, 1921: AMAE, Asie 1918–1929 (Chine), 65. 34. M. E. Naggiar (consul-general) to de Martel (minister in Beijing), #352, Shanghai, November 17, 1927: ADNantes 58. 35. De Martel to A. Briand, #26, Beijing, March 7, 1927: ADNantes 19. 36. Henry Cosme (chargé d’affaires) to A. Briand, #634, Beijing, December 2, 1928: ADNantes 19. Costantini sent the papal secretary of state a memorandum arguing against the proposition that France owned the North Church (December 30, 1928); a Jesuit professor of canon law in Shanghai also sent a memorandum to Rome with a similar conclusion ( January 20, 1929). These statements are included as an annex in Sohier, “Mgr Alphonse Favier,” 98–101. 37. “Règlement provisoire du Gouvernement Nationaliste concernant les Biens des missions;” P. E. Naggiar (ambassador) to foreign minister, #337/N, Nanjing, June 7, 1937: ADNantes 61. 38. De Fontenay (ambassador to the Holy See) to the foreign minister, #373, Rome, November 30, 1929: AMAE, Asie 1918–1940 (Chine), 256. 39. Goffart, Lettres, 273–274. 40. For example, the French legation’s chargé d’affaires wrote in December 1928: “Father Lebbe has become Msgr. Costantini’s principal counselor here.” He asked the foreign minister to insist that the Lazarists end Lebbe’s mission in China. Henry Cosme to A. Briand, Beijing, #648, Beijing, December 14, 1928: ADNantes 19. In hostile comment about a posthumous publication of Lebbe’s letters, Hubert Verhaeren, longtime priest in the Beijing vicariate, said: “Costantini, who listened only to Lebbe, injected dissension into the Church of China, and it is that which the missionaries would not accept”: AVLebbe, DGt50, vol. 9, #275, p. 14. Verhaeren was the priest who, as director of a mission district, was accused in 1920 of scandalous indolence by Chinese priests of the Beijing vicariate. Chinese priests of the Beijing vicariate to the Propaganda prefect, Beijing, January 20, 1920: PropA, vol. 760, pp. 256r–267v. 41. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 2:57. “S. E. le Cardinal Costantini Parle du Père Lebbe” [His Excellency Cardinal Costantini speaks of Father Lebbe]: AVLebbe, DGt50, vol. 1, #19, p. 3. Simonato, Celso Costantini, 111. For Lebbe’s low-key response in 1928 to Garnier’s Le Christ en Chine, see Goffart, Lettres, 264–265. 42. Lebbe (signing himself Vincent Lei) to dom Bède (brother), Anguo, January 26, 1931: Goffart, Lettres, 274–275. 43. Goffart, Lettres, 273–274. A Lazarist colleague later recounted a conversation he had with Lebbe in Anguo about Garnier’s and other attacks at this time. Lebbe tried to see issues from his opponents’ point of view and cited the formative effects of the Boxer affair and other similar experiences. “Vie du Père Lebbe. Souvenirs et impressions du R.P. Giacone, C.M.”: AVLebbe, DGt, 46, #155, pp. 102–103. 44. D. de Martel to A. Briand, #20, Shanghai, February 19, 1929: ADNantes 58. 45. De Fontenay (ambassador to the Holy See) to foreign minister, #373, Rome, November 30, 1929: AMAE, Asie 1918–1940 (Chine), 256. There was a cost: the new coadjutor was transferred

Notes to pages 242–244

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from the Central Zhili or Baoding vicariate, whose new bishop was a secular Chinese priest. D. de Martel (minister in Beijing) to A. Briand, #571, Beijing, December 6, 1929: ibid. 46. Goffart, Lettres, 273. 47. John F. Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy: Financing the Vatican, 1850–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 148. 48. Simonato, Celso Costantini, 113. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 2:227. 49. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 2:244–245. Pacelli and Pius XI spoke comforting words but did not directly resubscribe to the reform policies, which had been put in question by recent concessions to France. 50. Soetens, Eglise catholique en Chine, 139–140. 51. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 1:484. 52. Ibid., 2:96. 53. Ibid., 1:268. Gu Weimin, Zhongguo yu Luoma jiaoting, 150–151, cites a priestly Chinese scholar for the number of twenty-three Chinese bishops in 1935. 54. Listings in Annuaire des Missions Catholiques de Chine, 1939, show that Chinese heads of mission in 1938 were 17.3 percent of the total. 55. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 2:379. 56. Goffart, Lettres, 267–272. R. G. Tiedmann, Reference Guide to Christian Missionary Societies in China from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2009), 20–21, 93. There is testimony that the Chinese priests of the vicariate were sometimes critical of these congregations and had a tendency to treat the members as convenient servitors. Interview with Vincent Martin, Namur, January 22, 1947: AVL, DGt47 (1937–1940), #85. 57. Cao Lishan, Chunfeng shinian, 8–16, 36, 100–101. Costantini, Con i missionari in Cina, 2:397–398. 58. For Lebbe’s own description: Vincent Lebbe, En Chine il y a du nouveau: le Père Lebbe nous écrit [Father Lebbe writes us about what’s new in China] (Liège: La Pensée Catholique, 1930), 165–167. A hostile account, alleging financial irregularities, is in Garnier, Introduction à la vie réelle, 28–36. 59. Frederic J. Spar, “Human Rights and Political Engagement: Luo Longji in the 1930s,” in Roads Not Taken: The Struggle of Opposition Parties in Twentieth-Century China, ed. Roger B. Jeans (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992), 62–77. Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, 2:435–438. Edmund S. K. Fung, In Search of Chinese Democracy: Civil Opposition in Nationalist China, 1929– 1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 58–81. 60. Soetens, Eglise catholique en Chine, 143–144. 61. Luo Longji, “Tianjin Yishibao ji qi chuangbanren Lei Mingyuan” [The Tianjin Yishibao and its founder Vincent Lebbe], in Tianjin wenshi ziliao xuanji, 42 (Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 1988), 141–144, 150. An appended note to the publication of this article says that the editor did some tidying of the original. On Luo’s editorials for the Yishibao and the response of Nationalist officials, see also Wen-hsin Yeh, The Alienated Academy: Culture and Politics in Republican China, 1919–1937 (Cambridge, MA: Council of East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1990), 124; Fung, In Search of Chinese Democracy, 88, 90, 94; Edmund S. K. Fung, The Intellectual Foundations of Chinese Modernity: Cultural and Political Thought in the Republican Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 181. 62. For detailed accounts: Goffart, Lettres, 283–290; “L’activité du Père Vincent Lebbe durant la guerre contre le Japon,” AVLebbe, DGt47, vol. 3 (C#24).

338

Notes to pages 245–246

63. On Ma Xiangbo’s active engagement in the war effort through the 1930s, see Zhu Weizheng, “Statesman and Centenarian,” 80–81; and Malatesta, “Two Chinese Catholic Universities,” 243. 64. On Chiang Kai-shek’s liberality in bestowing general’s rank, including on an American Catholic missionary in Sichuan (Bishop Thomas M. Megan), not to mention on Green Gang bosses in Shanghai, see E. J. Kahn Jr., The China Hands: America’s Foreign Service Officers and What Befell Them (New York: Viking, 1975), 86; Wakeman, Policing Shanghai, 126. 65. Lebbe to “Frère bienaimé,” Chongqing, November 19, 1938: AVLbbe, DGt47a, #16. 66. The issues of Lebbe’s relations with Communist authorities, connections with Dai Li, and the reasons for Lebbe’s subsequent arrest by the Eighth Route Army are explored in several documents in the Archives Vincent Lebbe, which include Lebbe’s diary in Chinese during his detention. In a letter to Vincent Lebbe’s Benedictine brother and in an interview, Vincent Martin, who was close to Lebbe at the time, stated that Chiang Kai-shek had placed in Lebbe’s organization Blue Shirts (Nationalist Party agents), who engaged in anti-Communist, rather than anti-Japanese, propaganda. Martin said that Lebbe was at the time off elsewhere and was not properly informed about the anti-Communist activities of some of his group. Martin also said that Raymond de Jaegher, the other foreigner close to Lebbe at the time, closed his eyes to this fact. Vincent Martin to Fr. Bède, Beiping, October 18, 1946; interview with Fr. Vincent Martin, Namur, January 22, 1947: AVLebbe, DGt47 (1937–1940), #86 and #85. Charges that Lebbe was working for Chiang Kai-shek in north China from 1937 and therefore not really contributing to the war effort are made in, for example, Gu Changsheng, Chuanjiaoshi, 398; Zhang and Liu, Zhongguo jiaoanshi, 741–742. Maochun Yu, in OSS in China: Prelude to Cold War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 216–219, portrays Lebbe as consciously and fully participating in Dai Li’s intelligence network from October 1938. His sources for this picture are thin, and the several errors in the narrative (including the statement that Lebbe was “severely tortured” while detained by the Eighth Route Army) undermine confidence in the account. On Dai Li, see Frederic Wakeman Jr., Spymaster: Dai Li and the Chinese Secret Service (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 67. Lebbe to Zanin, “Hoan-tung,” February 13, 1938: AVLebbe, DGt47, #5. Zhu De was reported to have expressed “a generous appreciation for what missionaries have done and a desire to have their help.” Ronald Rees, ed., Christians in Action: A Record of Work in War-Time China (London: Longmans, Green, 1939), 11. 68. Raymond de Jaegher, “Notes—souvenirs de quelques conversations avec le Prior à Linhsien du 28 février au 9 mars 1940”: AVLebbe, DGt47 (1937–1940), #69. 69. “Enquête au sujet des circonstances exactes de la capture du P. Lebbe par les Communistes”: AVLebbe, DGt50, Vol. 3, #69, pp. 11–20. Luo Longji, “Tianjin Yishibao,” 151. Yu Zhihou, “Tianjin ‘Yishibao’ gaishu” [Brief account of Tianjin’s Yishibao], in Tianjin wenshi ziliao xuanji [Selected cultural and historical materials of Tianjin], 18 (Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 1982): 74. Rolf Suess, “Une encontre avec le R.P. Lebbe,” Temps Present, May 19, 1939: 7: AVLebbe, DGt47a, #37, p. 12. Counts of the number of days that Lebbe was held vary according to whether escorted travel times are included. 70. Raymond J. de Jaeger, The Apostle of China: Father Lebbe (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1954), 29, attributes Lebbe’s death to pancreatic cancer. Other sources more commonly cite jaundice. 71. La Nation Belge, July 17, 1939, and Pays Réel, July 18, 1939: AVLebbe, DGt 47a, #45, pp. 156– 157, & #46, pp. 158–160. 72. Garnier, Introduction à la vie réelle, 20, 36.

Notes to pages 247–249

339

73. Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, 4:66–67. 74. The summary of the survey can be found in P. E. Naggiar (ambassador) to foreign minister, #23, Beijing, November 24, 1936: ADNantes 59. Numerous consular reports during 1936 on this subject are in the same file. 75. M. L. Eynard (consul) to E. Naggiar (ambassador in Beiping), Guangzhou, September 11, 1936: ADNantes 59. 76. M. P. Simon (chargé) to Naggiar, #51, Longzhou, September 25, 1936: ADNantes 59. 77. Dr. G. Béchamp (acting consul) to P. E. Naggiar, #77, Chengdu, September 21, 1936: ADNantes 59. 78. Soetens, Eglise catholique en Chine, 144–145. Weist, Maryknoll in China, 350. In 1938, Pius XI received a representative of Manzhouguo in Rome. Gu Changsheng, Chuanjiaoshi, 394–395. For a detailed study of the Vatican’s ambivalent policies toward Japan’s claims in Manchuria: Giovanni Coco, Santa Sede e Manciukuò (1932–1945) con appendice di documenti [The Holy See and Manzhouguo (1932–1945) with documentary appendix] (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2006). 79. P. E. Naggiar to foreign minister, Beijing, November 24, 1936: ADNantes 59. Regarding non-French missionaries in their districts, the consuls of Shenyang (Mukden) and Harbin reported the Belgians, Swiss, Poles, and French Canadians sought French protection, and some Bavarian fathers had made gestures in that direction, but the Americans (Maryknoll) abstained. M. A. Beaulieux (acting consul) to P. E. Naggiar, #131, Shenyang, September 12, 1936; M. Reynaud (consul) to P. E. Naggiar, #210, Harbin, September 18, 1936: ADNantes 59. 80. Qin Heping, Jidu zongjiao zai Sichuan, 175–176, testifies to the strong support given to the Chinese war effort against Japan by the Catholic church in Sichuan. 81. Henry Cosme (ambassador), telegram #608, Beijing, October 17, 1941; Vichy to ambassadors in Beijing and Tokyo, Vichy, November 1, 1941; Cosme to Vichy, #677–679, Beijing, November 6, 1941; Cosme to Vichy and ambassador in Tokyo, #749–750, Beijing, November 25 and 27, 1941: AMAE, Guerre 1939–1945 (Vichy Asie), 103. Other instances: Agnes Smedley met an Irish Catholic priest who was aiding anti-Japanese guerrilla forces behind Japanese lines. Agnes Smedley, Battle Hymn of China (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1943), 461–463. In April 1938, in pursuit of partisans, Japanese forces shot 21 Chinese Catholics, including a priest, in a village in Shandong’s Yanggu missionary district and burned the mission: Brandewie, The Last Shall Be First, 67–68. 82. Diane Lary, “Faith and War, Eyewitness to the Japanese Invasion of China: Quebec’s Jesuit Priests,” Modern Asian Studies 39, no. 4 (2005): 824–839, explores the complexity for French Canadian Jesuits of the Japanese invasion and occupation of Xuzhou in Jiangsu province. Under French protection, they provided refuge for Chinese, witnessed Japanese atrocities, established relations with the occupiers, and in the end themselves suffered violence and internment. 83. Lebbe to Zanin, “Hoen-tung,” February 1, 7, and 13, 1938: AVLebbe, DGt47, #4, 7, and 5. An example: Agnes Smedley, China Fights Back: An American Woman with the Eighth Route Army (London: Victor Gollanz, 1938), 259–260, reported in December 1937 about an Italian Catholic priest near Taiyuan who was assisting the Japanese invaders. PRC historians often accuse foreign Catholic clergy of collaboration with the enemy during the war. An example concerns Bishop Jean de Vienne of Tianjin, who according to Chinese testimony directed his priests to assist Japan, gave Japanese aggression a Catholic blessing, gathered information on the Chinese Communist forces, and harbored spying Japanese priests. Sun Limin and Yu Zhihou, “Tianjin

340

Notes to pages 249–251

fazujie gaikuang” [Survey of the French concession at Tianjin], in Tianjin wenshi ziliao xuanji 22 (1983): 159; and Tianjinshi zhengxie, Tianjin zujie, 48–49. 84. The Latin text of Zanin’s circular of March 1939 is given in Lebbe to his Benedictine brother, Xi’an, May 20, 1939: AVLebbe, DGt47a, #21. Chiang Kai-shek’s government protested to the Vatican about Zanin’s letter: Luo Guang, Jiating yu Zhongguo, 236. Gu Weimin, Zhongguo yu Luoma jiaoting, 174 and 182, notes that the wartime policy of Zanin and the Vatican was not representative of Chinese Catholics generally. 85. Cosme to Vichy, #627–631, Beijing, April 2, 1942: AMAE, Guerre, 1939–1945 (Vichy Asie), 103. A French Jesuit organized a refuge from the war for civilians in Shanghai, beginning in November 1937: Marcia R. Ristaino, The Jacqinot Safe Zone: Wartime Refugees in Shanghai (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). 86. Henry Cosme to “Diplomatie Vichy,” telegram, #1,113, Beijing, August 21, 1942: ADNantes 59. 87. Cosme to Vichy, #878, December 17, 1941: AMAE, Guerre 1939–1945 (Vichy Asie), 103. In the same vein, see also Cosme to Chongqing consulate, telegram #29, Beijing, July 24, 1941; Diplomatie-Vichy to ambassador in China, telegram #56, Vichy, January 27, 1942: ADNantes 59. Ambassador Cosme, after not receiving the honors due him at Easter services in the North Church, commented on the feebleness of the French Religious Protectorate but argued that its outward signs should be preserved. Cosme to Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Beijing, April 22, 1941: AMAE, Guerre 1939–1945 (Vichy Asie), 103. 88. Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 61–63, discusses this Japanese conception and its application to Manchuria in the early 1930s. 89. Rochat (?) to Beijing, #51, Vichy, March 2, 1943: AMAE Guerre 1939–1945 (Vichy Asie), 103. The results of the inventory in Shanghai, where the MEP, Lazarists, and Jesuits reported possessing property with a combined market value of US$48 million, are in ADNantes 61. 90. Fabienne Mercier, Vichy face à Chiang Kai-shek: histoire diplomatique [Vichy encounters Chiang Kai-shek: the diplomatic history] (Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 1995), 188–241. François Chabot, “La fin de la présence française à Shanghai (1937–1943)” [The end of the French presence in Shanghai, 1937–1943], in Weber, La France en Chine, 233–246. Marianne Bastid-Bruguière, “Les relations entre l’Indochine de Decoux et le gouvernement de Wang Jingwei pendant la deuxième guerre mondiale” [Relations between Decoux’s Indochina and the Wang Jingwei government during the second world war], in Les relations franco-chinoises au vingtième siècle et leur antécédents [Franco-Chinese relations in the twentieth century and their antecedents], comp. Laurent Cesari and Denis Varashin (Artois: Artois Presses Université, 2003), 217–247. Marie-Claire Bergère, “The Purge in Shanghai, 1945–6: The Sarly Affair and the End of the French Concession,” in Wartime Shanghai, ed. Wen-hsin Yeh (London: Routledge, 1998), 165–169. Marie-Claire Bergère, Histoire de Shanghai [History of Shanghai] (Paris: Fayard, 2002), 314–338. Sun and Yu, “Tianjin fazujie,” 178–179. Christine Cornet, “The Bumpy End of the French Concession and French Influence in Shanghai, 1937–1946,” in In the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Shanghai under Japanese Occupation, ed. Christian Henriot and Wen-hsin Yeh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 263–264, 267. 91. Soetens, Eglise catholique en Chine, 153–154. Jean Paul-Boncour to Vichy and Beijing, Chongqing, #207–8, April 23, 1942: AMAE, Guerre 1939–1945 (Vichy Asie), 103. Anthony Lam,

Notes to pages 251–253

341

“Sino-Vatican Diplomatic Relations in World War II: A Hong Kong Perspective,” in Malek, Light a Candle, 521–531. 92. Jean Paul-Boncour to Vichy and Beijing, Chongqing, April 23, 1942: AMAE, Guerre 1939–1945 (Vichy Asie), 103. 93. “Note. A. S. Protectorat de la France sur les Missions Catholiques en Chine,” Paris, November 15, 1944: AMAE, Asie-Océanie 1944–1955 (Chine),187:8–18. 94. Martin Thomas, The French Empire at War, 1940–45 (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1998), 210–216. 95. Bergère, “The Purge in Shanghai,” 170–171. Guy de Carmoy, The Foreign Policies of France, 1944–1968 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 134–135. Cornet, “The Bumpy End of the French Concession,” 257, 273–274. Peter Worthing, Occupation and Revolution: China and the Vietnamese August Revolution of 1945 (Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2001), 140. 96. Scalzotto, “I papi e la Sacra Congregazione,” 274. Soetens, Eglise chinoise en Chine, 156–157. Gu Weimin, Zhongguo yu Luoma jiaoting, 180. 97. Jacques Maritain (ambassador to the Holy See), telegram, Vatican, July 5, 1946: AMAE, Asie-Océanie 1944–1955 (Chine), 187, p. 269. 98. Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, 4:67. 99. Brandewie, The Last Shall Be First, 89. 100. Quoted in G. Perruche (chargé of the consular bureau in Beijing of the French embassy) to Jacques Meyrier (ambassador in Nanjing), #49, Beijing, July 5, 1946: AMAE, Asie-Océanie 1944–1955 (Chine), 187, pp. 70–73. 101. Bishop Karl Weber, SVD, bishop of Yizhoufu, to Fr. Anthony May, SVD, in Techny, Illinois. Quoted in Brandewie, The Last Shall Be First, 96–97. 102. Soetens, Eglise catholique en Chine, 156. By this count, Chinese priests were forty-seven percent of all Catholic priests (who totaled 5,691) in China in 1948. Counts vary, perhaps from timing and from uncertainty about inclusion. Tiedemann, Handbook of Christianity in China, 2:571, records 5,752 Catholic priests in China in 1948, of whom forty-six percent were Chinese, which was a higher proportion than for any time since 1865. Tiedemann, “Controversy over the Formation,” 375, puts the number of Chinese bishops in 1948 at twenty-two, or 22.4 percent of the total. Jean-Pierre Charbonnier, Christians in China: A.D. to 2000 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 417, lists for July 1948 twenty archbishoprics, eighty-four bishoprics, and thirty-five apostolic prefectures, for all 139 of which there were twenty-six (18.7 percent) with Chinese in charge. He counts 2,698 Chinese priests and 3,090 foreign priests, and 5,112 Chinese sisters and 2,351 foreign sisters. 103. Wladimir d’Ormesson (ambassador to the Holy See) to Robert Schuman (foreign minister), #33/AS, Rome, January 19, 1949: AMAE, Asie-Océanie 1944–1955 (Chine), 187, pp. 142–144. D’Ormesson refers in this dispatch to trying to persuade the Vatican Secretary of State to appoint Frenchmen to the empty sees of Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenyang, and Chengdu, and states he had previously made the same request of the Propaganda in October 1948. 104. Jacques Meyrier, #1085–1087, Nanjing, June 4, 1946: AMAE, Asie-Océanie 1944–1955 (Chine), 187, pp. 66–67. 105. P. Bouffanais (consul-general in Kunming) to Meyrier (ambassador), #121, May 7, 1947: AMAE, Asie-Océanie 1944–1955 (Chine), 187, p. 78.

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Notes to pages 254–258

106. The discussion is carried through several documents by French officials and the Lazarist visitor from August 1946 to December 1948 in ADNantes 612. 107. Brandewie, The Last Shall Be First, 106–129, recounts in detail Tian’s movements after leaving Beijing and the conflicting pressures on him to return to Beijing or stay away, but the book does not raise the question of control over the North Church, so prominent in French official correspondence. 108. Michel Breal (chargé of the consular bureau of the French embassy in Beijing) to Meyrier (ambassador), #233, Beijing, October 31, 1948: ADNantes 612. 109. Gu Changsheng, Chuanjiaoshi, 422–423. Sun and Yu, “Tianjin fazujie,” 159. Wei, Saint-Siège et la Chine, 218–222. Ferreux, “Histoire de la Congrégation,” 490, 499. For testimony that Raymond de Jaegher of the Société des Auxiliaires des Missions organized a “Catholic army” to fight the Communists in Shijiazhuang shortly after Japan’s surrender and then again in Beijing in 1948, and thereby compromised other Catholics, see “A L’abbé Sohier”: AVLebbe, DGt50, 9, #275, pp. 3–4. Jean de Vienne, bishop in Tianjin, has been accused of organizing anti-Communist forces, even after Tianjin had been taken. Tianjinshi zhengxie, Tianjin zujie, 49–49. For an account of the benign origins of the Legion of Mary, see Tiedemann, Handbook of Chistianity in China, 2:568–570. 110. Soetens, Eglise catholique en Chine, 163–164. 111. The major Protestant denominations had done much more than the Catholics from the 1920s to share leadership between foreigners and Chinese. However, in reference to the years just before 1949, Daniel H. Bays writes: “The Chinese Protestant mainstream never did manage to shake off its image of being in close collaboration with the foreign presence in China.” Bays, “A Tradition of State Dominance,” in Kindopp, God and Caesar in China, 32–33. 112. Printed letter from Association des anciens missionnaires de Chine (added by hand: “written towards the beginning of August 1955”): AVLebbe, DGt50, 8, #262. 113. Ludovicus Morel, “Pourquoi la ‘Vie du P. Lebbe’ par le Chanoine Leclercq est un livre malheureux” (n.d.): AVLebbe, DGt50, 8, #264. 114. E. Lebouille, “Annexe aux Notes du ‘Vieux Missionnaire’ sur la ‘Vie du Père Lebbe’ par le Chanoine Leclercq” (n.d.): AVLebbe, DGt50, 8, #267. 115. For a detailed account of the early years of conflict between Catholics and the PRC government, see Paul P. Mariani, Church Militant: Bishop Kung and Catholic Resistance in Communist Shanghai (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). Mariani attributes to a prominent Catholic figure in the accommodations in Shanghai to the new government the notion that a closeness to the Communist government would be justifiably following the former model of foreign missionaries’ closeness to the French government. Ibid., 218–219. 116. The Vatican backed off from its initial description of this development as a schism, and in recent years the distinctions, while persisting, have softened. Richard Madsen, “Catholic Conflict and Cooperation in the People’s Republic of China,” in Kindopp, God and Caesar in China, 93–106. But the antagonism between the Vatican and the Beijing government regarding the appointment of Catholic bishops sharpened considerably in 2011. China Church Quarterly 87 (Summer 2011): 1–3, 5–7. 117. Paul Yu Pin to Jacques Leclercq, New York, September 16, 1955: AVLebbe, DGt50, 8, #260. 118. Cao Lishan, ed., Lei Mingyuan, 1877–1977 [Vincent Lebbe, 1877–1977] (Taizhong: Tianzhujiao delai yuehanhui bianyin, 1977). Cao Lishan, Chunfeng shinian. Zhao Yabo, Reai Zhongguo.

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119. The invited bishops were Matthias Duan Yinming of Wanxian in Sichuan, appointed by Pius XII in 1949, and his auxiliary bishop. Duan was not well, and in any case the PRC government denied them permission to attend. UCAN Report: CH9863.0972 (April 20, 1998), www.ucanews.com/~ucasian/ur/ch9863.htm and UCAN Report: H9934.0973 (accessed April 28, 1998), www.ucanews.com/~ucasian/ur/ch9934.htm (accessed May 31, 1998). 120. UCAN Report: TA9066/955, “Taiwan UCAN document—Taiwan bishops respond to ‘Lineamenta’ of Asian Synod,” December 24, 1997. www.ucanews.com/~ucasian/LR-ta.html (accessed April 18, 1998). The Taiwan bishops included in the list of modern exemplars Stanislaus Lokuang, archbishop of Taibei, 1966–1978. 121. National Catholic Reporter, May 29, 1998.

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Glossary

aiguo xin Anguo baihua baolan Beitang benchu tianzhutang gongchan Bian Yinchang Cen Chunxuan Chai Tianlong Changansi Changli Chen Tianhua Chen Youren Cheng Hede Chigang Chongyinsi Cixi Dagongbao Dai Li Daoming daotai daxue Delai xiaomeimei hui Ding Baozhen 345

愛國心 安國 白話 包攬 北堂 本處天主堂公產 卞蔭昌 岑春暄 柴天寵 長安寺 昌黎 陳天華 陳友仁 成和德 茌港 崇因寺 慈禧 大公報 戴笠 道明 道台 大學 德來小妹妹會 丁寶楨

346 Dong Fuxiang Ensi faguo gongdao fan-duo-sha-di fengshui Fenyang Fudan fumu guan Furen gaichu feng jiao zhi ren Gaoan Gong Dong Gongjiao Gong jiao jinxing hui Gongjiao jiuguo tuan Gong jiao xuandao suo Gongmin dahui Gongshang daxue Gongshang xueyuan Guangyilu Guangzhouwan Guibing Luomafu Chuanjiaobu Guomindang guoti Guotu guoquan weichi hui Haimen Hongdeng jiao Hu Mingshan Hua Huangchao zhengyao biandu Huangpu huawai zhi ren huo Jianchang Jiang Zhaotang jiao jiao’an Jiaoan shanhou banfa zhangcheng Jiaozhou Jining Jintang Jiuguo Kai Kang Aide Kang Cheng

Glossary 董福祥 恩思 法國公道 犯多殺的 風水 汾陽 復旦 父母官 輔仁 該處奉教之人 高安 龔棟 公教 公教近行會 公教救國團 公教宣道所 公民大會 工商大學 工商學院 廣益錄 廣州灣 跪稟羅馬府傳教部 國民黨 國體 國土國權維持會 海門 紅燈教 胡明善 華 皇朝政要便讀 黃埔 化外之人 禍 建昌 江召棠 教 教案 教案善後辦法章程 膠州 集寧 金堂 救國 開 康愛德 康成

Glossary Kang Youwei ketou koutou Laoxikai Lei Mingyuan Leping Li Dusan Li Hongzhang Li Yaoran Li Yuanhong Li Zheng’an Liang Dingfen Liang Qichao Liao Guanyin Linjiang Liu Bocheng Liu Junqing Liu Kunyi Liu Shourong Lixian Lu Bohong Lu Zhengxiang Lugu Luo Longji Lüshun Ma Jianchang Ma Liang Ma Xiangbo mieQing jiaoyang xingHan minjiao Nankai Nanning naojiao zhi an Puqi Qiangxue hui Qianjiang Qingdao qinming qiyan Qiying Quanxue pian Quanxue zuiyan raoshe Ronglu Ruizhou

康有為 磕頭 叩頭 老西開 雷鳴遠 樂平 李渡三 李鴻章 李堯然 黎元洪 李政菴 梁鼎芬 梁啟超 廖觀音 臨江 劉伯承 劉濬卿 劉坤一 劉守榮 蠡縣 陸伯鴻 陸徵祥 盧沽 羅隆基 旅順 馬建常 馬良 馬相伯 滅清剿洋興漢 民教 南開 南寧 鬧教之案 蒲圻 強學會 黔江 青島 欽命 氣燄 耆英 勸學篇 勸學罪言 饒舌 榮祿 瑞州

347

348 ruzhe Sandianhui Shanggao Shantou Shen Jinglun Shengmujun Shijiazhuang Shiwubao Sun Dezhen Sun Zhongying Taizhou Tangpu Tian Gengxin Tianzhujiao Tongwenguan tongzhennü Wang Jingwei Wang Zhengting Wanghailou wanhui guoquan Weihaiwei Weihuifu wenming dizhi wulai zhi tu Wuqing Xianxian Xinchang Xiong Xiling Xuanhua Yang Ruwang Yang Yide Yang Zengyi Yangcheng ribao Yanggu Yanzhou Yaohan xiaoxiongdi hui Yibin Yifeng Yihe quan Ying Lianzhi Ying Qianli Yishibao Yongning Yongping Yu Bin

Glossary 儒者 三點會 上高 汕頭 沈經綸 聖母軍 石家莊 時務報 孫德楨 孫仲英 台州 棠浦 田耕莘 天主教 同文館 童貞女 汪精衛 王正廷 往海樓 挽回國權 威海衛 衛輝府 文明抵制 無賴之徒 武清 獻縣 新昌 熊希齡 宣化 楊儒望 楊以德 楊增益 羊城日報 陽榖 兗州 耀漢小兄弟會 宜賓 宜豐 義和拳 英斂之 英千里 益世報 永寧 永平 于斌

Glossary Yu Dongchen Yu Manzi Yun Yuding Zhalan Zhang Zhidong Zhao Huaiyi Zhao Zhensheng Zhendan Zhengding Zhengwenshe Zhou Enlai Zhou Hao Zhu De zhuantuo Zhuozhou Zixia Zongli yamen zongzhujiao Zou Linghan

余棟臣 余蠻子 惲毓鼎 柵欄 張之洞 趙懷義 趙振聲 震旦 正定 政聞社 周恩來 周浩 朱德 專託 涿州 子夏 總理衙門 總主教 鄒凌瀚

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Index

1911 Revolution, 101, 148, 152, 193, 195 ancestral rites (“ancestor worship”), 8, 11–12, 19, 265:n.7 anticlericalism, 5, 41, 42, 79, 88–89, 131 Anzer, Johann Baptist, 61, 63–68, 285:n.44, 286:n.57 Aperçu historique (by Lebbe), 180–184 apostolic delegate, 72, 222, 224–225, 236, 246 apostolic visitor, 87, 192, 196–204, 237–238 Arrow War, 3, 18, 22, 27–28, 31 Association for Catholic Action, 140, 146, 195, 198, 209 Associations Law (1901), 88 baolan (tax farming), 279:n.63 Baptists, 300:n.50 Bashford, James, 107 Beijing Convention (1860), 28, 30–32 Beitang. See: North Church Benedict XV, 148, 185–186, 193–194, 196, 322:n.4 and Lebbe, 221 his Maximum illud and a new China policy, 195–196, 212–214, 254, 257 Benedictines, 102–103, 152, 191, 193, 236, 243 Berlin Conference (1884–1885), 55 375

Berlioz, Hector, 39 Berthemy Convention, 31–33, 240 Besi, Luigi Di, 17, 19–20 Bian Yinchang, 139, 154, 161–162, 166–169, 326:n.69 Boell, Paul, 4, 93 Bolshevism, reaction to, 223, 225, 228, 230, 238, 245 Bourgeois, Henry, 153–156, 158–159, 166–167, 169, 315:n.25 Boxer-inflicted casualties, 85, 134, 230 Taiyuan, case of, 291:n.15 tallies, 75, 80, 288–289:n.92, 289:n.97, 290:n.7, 291:n.12 Boxer Protocol, 75, 79, 86 Boxers of Sichuan, 97–98, 100 Boxer Uprising, 5, 6, 68, 73–77, 100, 352 Allied punitive expeditions in the aftermath, 89–91, 134, 295:n.66 causes, attribution of, 92–94 foreign looting in the aftermath, 89 Jiangxi, damages in, 291:n.12 Catholic-Protestant contestation. See: Protestant-Catholic contestation. Catholic Society for National Salvation, 202

376 Cen Chunxian, 297:n.5 Chai Tianlong, 310:n.71 Chamber of Commerce (Tianjin), 139, 154, 161, 164, 166, 169, 316:n.37 Chapdelaine, Auguste, 27 Cheng Hede (Odoric Tcheng), 333:n.79 Chen Tianhua, 109–110, 302:n.69 Chen Yinkun, 45–48, 52 Chen Youren (Eugene Ch’en), 230 Chiang Kai-shek, 195, 229, 233, 338:n.64 criticized in Yishibao, 244 his interest in Lebbe’s work, 245–246 relations with the Vatican, 248, 253 Chigang affair (1901), 104–106, 110, 112 China Inland Mission, 98, 291:n.13, 297–298:n.9, 304:n.91 Chinese Catholics, protests by, 17, 19–20, 22, 84, 148 criticizing a South Hunan bishop, 84–85 petitioning from North Shanxi, 83–84 responding to a papal inquiry, 204–210 Chinese clergy, treatment of, 14, 83–85, 146, 149–150, 175, 177–178 policy of their subordination to European clergy, 124, 133, 137 Chinese Communist Party, 202, 229, 233, 244, 254–255, 257 Chouvellon, Célestin, 312:n.86 Church Mission Society, 300:n.50 Citizens’ Assembly (Gongmin dahui), 166–168 Claudel, Paul, 102–103, 152 Clemenceau, Georges, 90, 147, 185 Cohen, Paul A., 7 Concordat of 1801, 5, 59, 89 Confucius, 11, 67, 167, 195, 334:n.5 Conty, A.R., 153, 159–161, 165–167, 195 Costantini, Celso, 147, 246, 259, 312:n.97, 331:n.53 as apostolic delegate in China, 224–232, 233–239, 248, 257 on assets for Chinese-led vicariates, 239–240 on ownership of the North Church, 336:n.36 his reflections on his departure from China, 242–243 on relations with Lebbe, 241–242, 333:n.81, 336:n.40 Cotta, Antoine, 143, 163, 180, 316:n.43, 321:n.21 attacked in a note of the French legation (1919), 200–201, 257

Index Chinese support for, 189–190, 208 collating responses to Maximum illud, 216–217 his critique of the missions, 175 disciplining of, and the disposition of his case, 171–174, 201–202, 218–222 Maximum illud, his influence on, 211, 213, 215, 226 on obedience, 174, 190–192 racial equality, raising the issue of, 148–150 the Vatican’s attempt to protect, and the clerical opposition, 186–190 La Croix (newspaper), 174 Curzon, Lord, 93 Da Cologna, Barnaba Nanetti, 82–83, 146–147, 186, 292:n.20 Dagongbao (newspaper), 116, 138–142, 175, 311:n.85 Dai Li, 245, 338:n.66 D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 224 d’Anty, P. Bons, 99 Daoming (school), 236–237, 335:n.18 Daughters of Charity, 4, 39, 335:n.18 de Chardin, Pierre Teilhard, 220 de Gaulle, Charles, 252 de Guébriant, Jean-Bapiste Budes, 147, 159–160, 312:n.86, 327:n.94, 330–331:n.38, 333:n.83 as apostolic visitor (1919–1920), 199–204, 210, 326:n.67, 326:n.71 careerism, allegation of, 232 dealing with Cotta and Lebbe, 217–220, 222–223 on the inviolability of missionary property, 239 and Maximum illud, 212, 215 rejecting a proposal for a China-led apostolic prefecture, 237 his relations with official France, 200, 326:n.75 the Propaganda questionnaire (1918), his response to, 197–198, 325:n.58 the Tianjin reforms, his interest in, 146 his views on a native church and protectorates, 313:n.104 de Jaegher, Raymond, 338:n.66, 342:n.109 Delbrouck, Victorin, 287:n.68 de Mun, Albert, 316:n.42

Index de Paul, Saint Vincent, 131, 136, 177 Desflèches, Eugène, 48–52, 54 Desrumaux, François, 160–161, 163–164, 171, 189, 317:n.58, 320:n.17 Detring, Gustav, 58 de Vienne, Jean, 173, 237–238, 312:n.86, 329:n.15, 339–340:n.83, 342:n.109 headed mission in Tianjin, 220 Jarlin’s regime, confirmed critical picture of, 220 and Lebbe, 161, 223 recommended by North Zhili Chinese priests, 208 the Propaganda questionnaire (1918), his response to, 197, 325:n.58 Ding Baozhen, 280:n.70 disparagement of the Chinese and Chinese priests by Europeans, 84, 182, 188, 216 by de Guébriant and Henninghaus, 197–198 by de Vienne, 197 by Favier, 124 by Guilloux, missionary bishops, and Kervyn, 133–134, 309:n.51 Dominicans, 12, 17, 236, 247, 332–333:n.68 evacuated from Fujian during the Northern Expedition, 229 refused Spanish protection, 62 sponsoring consecrated Virgins, 20 Dong Fuxiang, 126–127 Doumer, Paul, 276:n.30 Dreyfus affair, 88 Duan, Prince (Zaiyi), 75 Dumond, Paul, 179, 202, 220, 223, 307:n.23, 327:n.94 engaging with the Laoxikai aftermath, 171–173, 324:n.33 his installation in Tianjin, 140–141 and the Laoxikai affair, 152, 155–156, 158, 201, 316:n.43 and Lebbe’s exile, 160–161, 163–165, 317:n.58, 318:n.54 pressed by the Propaganda to reinstate the dissidents, 186–192, 198 Dunn, John George, 56–59, 62 L’Echo de Chine (newspaper), 236 Empress Dowager (Cixi), 56, 68, 85, 122, 140 in the Boxer year, 73–76

377 and the decree of March 15, 1899, 71–72 and Favier, 124–125, 289:n.97 extraterritoriality, 25, 31–32 Fabrègues, Joseph, 236–237, 240, 242 Fantosati, Antonio, 84–85 Favier, Alphonse, 3–4, 138, 146–147, 289:n.97, 306:n.9, 307:n.19 and the Boxer Uprising, 75–76, 79–80, 89, 289:n.92, 290:n.6 his breach with the French legation (1890–1894), 61 and the Chinese government proposals of 1902 on missions, 125–126 contrast with Jarlin, 126, 128 his failed candidacy for bishop (1890), 60–61, 283:n.28, 287:n.76 his investments for his vicariate, 87 and the March 15, 1899, imperial decree, 70–72, 119 and North Shanxi’s break with France, 82–83 his post-Boxer memoranda on missions and his practice, 122–123, 180, 212 and the removal of the North Church, 56–58 fengshui (geomancy), 32 Ferrant, Paul-Léon, 103, 117, 127, 300:n.42, 300:n.44, 300:n.47 pressing for the settlement of old cases, 109–112 resisting the jailing of Catholics, 106, 117 The Field Afar (journal), 216 First Chinese Council (Primum Concilium Sinense), 226–227, 331:n.59 Fleury, Louis, 155–156, 163, 173, 201–202 and Laoxikai, 152, 155, 161, 315:n.25 foreign intervention in Chinese official appointments, 40, 48, 51–52, 98, 116 in the Boxer aftermath, 75, 90, 92 Foreign Missions of Milan, 145, 188, 313:n.99 Foreign Missions of Paris. See: Missions Etrangères of Paris Fourquet, Antoine, 230, 237–238, 240, 241, 247 Franciscans, 17, 69, 76, 197, 247, 249 and Boxer indemnities, 82–84 contributed space to a Chinese jurisdiction, 227, 231 their investments, 87 their loss of Jiaozhou to the Society for the Divine Word, 65

378 Franciscans (Cont.) requesting exemption from religious fees, 33 shift of North Shanxi to Italian protection, 292:n.20, 292:n.23 Franco-Chinese College, Tianjin, 167, 169 Franco-Vatican diplomatic relations, 58–59, 89–91, 225 Freinademetz, Josef, 65–67, 274:n.9, 285:n.56, 286:n.58, 286:n.64 Fudan University, 195 Fund for National Salvation, 162 Furen University, 195, 236, 238, 335:n.17 Gabet, Joseph, 144 Garnier, Henri, 238–239, 246, 336:n.43 Gasparri, Pietro, 147, 196, 221–222, 224, 238, 242 General Union of Students (Beijing), 237 Gérard, Auguste, 3–4, 33 Gérard Convention, 33, 240 Gernet, Jacques, 7, 9 Geurts, Ernst, 188, 325:n.58 Giquel, Prosper, 273:n.1 Gong Dong, 108, 117 Gong jiao (Catholic church), 311:n.76 Gong, Prince (Yixin), 54 Gramsci, Antonio, 334:n.6 Gregory XVI, 17–18, 24, 38 Grey, Edward, 118 Guangyilu (periodical), 140 Guilloux, Claude, 113, 172–174, 186–187, 191, 317:n.49, 320:n.7 Guizot, François, 24, 271:n.67 gunboats, 98, 200, 229, 333:n.71, 333:n.75 attempt by Chinese authorities to exclude from Lake Poyang, 109 sent to Nanchang by Britain and France (1901), 105 Henninghaus, Augustin, 66, 312:n.86, 332:n.60, 326:n.62 the Propaganda’s questionnaire (1918), his response to, 198–199, 213, 325:n.58, 326:n.67 Ho Chi Minh, 252 Holy Childhood Society (Oeuvre de la SainteEnfance), 23, 39–40, 67, 87, 181, 214 Holy Office, 37, 68, 273–274:n.4 Huangpu Treaty (Sino-French, 1844), 25–26

Index Huc, Evariste, 144 Hu Mingshan (Wuqing priest), 204–205, 209, 328:n.106 imperial decree of March 15, 1899, 68–73, 75–76, 80, 94, 118 indemnities, Boxer, 79–86, 91, 209, 289–290:n.2, 293:n.36 the allocation of shares to the missions, 86–87, 290:n.8 as burden on China’s finances, 95, 98 criticism of the manner of their disbursement, 83–84 their distribution by nation, 289–290:n.2, 293:n.36 French role in seeking indemnities for Chinese Catholics, 79–80, 290:n.5 the irregular indemnity, 79–80, 85, 134, 290:n.3, 290:n.8, 291:n.14, 293:n.30 issue of remission, 194 used for construction, 124–125 used for conversions, 103, 105, 128, 134, 177 used for investment, 87, 120, 293:n.39, 293:n.41 indemnities, general, 3, 48, 52, 216, 235 for Chinese Christians, French justification, 76 de Guébriant as negotiator for, 200 “moral indemnities,” 85–86 for murdered foreign missionaries, 85 for Nanchang (1906), 116–117 for Sichuan, various, 44, 49–50, 98 indigenization of the Chinese Catholic church, 123, 143–144, 216–217, 242–243, 322:n.4 bishops, opposition of, 197–198, 203, 223 Chinese Catholics, advocacy by, 204–205 consecration of Chinese bishops, 231 Cotta, advocacy by, 149, 175 de Guébriant in the late 1920s urging accommodation, 333.n.83 early resistance by missionaries, 14 Fourquet, advocacy by, 247 funding and property, problems of, 239–241 Garnier, opposition by, 238 Gasparri, advocacy by, 222 Lebbe, advocacy by, 137, 178–180, 182–184, 243, 257 in Maximum illud, 213 as policy of Costantini, 225–227, 230, 232, 241, 332:n.64

Index in Rerum Ecclesiae, 230 Van Rossum, supported by, 221 indigenous church, fear of an, 179–180, 188, 209, 225 by de Guébriant, 203, 206 by the Lazarist superior general, 150 by the Propaganda secretary (1886), 84, 144 Institut Supérieur d’Industrie et Commerce, 220 internuncio, 263–255 Jacobini, Domenico, 292:n.26 Janssen, Arnold, 65, 67 Jarlin, Stanislas, 190, 197, 237, 239, 253, 308:n.37, 321:n.23 Association for Catholic Action, his opposition to, 209 called to account for his conversion regime, 220 critiques of his strategy, 177, 181–183, 208–209 developing differences with Lebbe, 132–133, 135, 137, 140–142, 147–148 on jiao’an, 118–119 on the koutou, 137 opposing Cotta and Lebbe to the Propaganda, 187 his personal syle and evangelistic program, 126–130 sending Chinese seminarians to Europe, his opposition to, 149 Jesuits, 93, 188, 235, 246–247, 249, 312:n.86 the apostolic delegate, their concerns about, 225, 227 considering the annexation of the Tianjin vicariate, 202, 219 conversion numbers, 130 their early evangelism and the return to Jiangnan, 1, 7, 11–14, 16–22, 254 establishing a higher institute in Tianjin, 176, 220 French Canadian Jesuits in wartime Xuzhou, 339:n.82 and high-quality schools, 129, 141 ignoring Maximum illud, 216 and Ma Xiangbo, 194–195 organizing a civilian safe-zone in wartime Shanghai, 340:n.85 Jiang Zhaotang, 109, 111–114, 116–119, 303:n.83 Jiangnan Arsenal school, 193 jiao’an, 44–48, 56, 70, 110, 281:n.4, 288:n.86

379 East Sichuan cases (1860s and 1870s), 47–50 as evidence of Manchu iniquity, 109–110 their increase after 1900, 94–96 Lebbe’s critique of their handling, 180–182 their subsidence, 120 tendency to reduce clerical interventions in, 126–128 Jiaozhou (German seizure), 64–65, 67, 69, 93, 151 Jiuguo (book title), 139 John Paul II, 67, 259 Joly, Léon, 147, 226 Jordan, John, 170 Josephines, 201–202 Le Journal de Pékin (periodical), 239 Kang Aide (Ida Kahn), 304:n.89 Kangxi emperor, 11–12, 25, 27, 56, 59 Kang Yuwei, 114 Kervyn, Louis, 134 Knights of Columbus, 222 koutou (kneelings and prostrations), 137, 146, 235, 309–310:n.65, 321:n.23 Kulturkampf, 63 Lacordaire, Henri, 39 Lacruche, Jean-Marie, 110–114, 116–117, 302:n.74, 303:n.79, 303:n.82 Lagrené, Théodose de, 24–27, 34 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 39 Lamiot, François-Marie, 282:n.21 Laoxikai affair, 152–171, 202, 205, 258, 327:n.94 and Cotta, 189 described by the French legation as Lebbe’s anti-French campaign, 232 as exemplary Catholic action, 178, 183 invoked by Lebbe, 173 Zhou Enlai, participation of, 327:n.84 Laurenti, Camillo, 221–222 Law of Separation (1905), 89, 91 Lazarists (Vincentians), 89, 108, 124–125, 227, 231 acquiring a leading position in China, 16–20, 22, 101–102 and Cotta, 150, 201–202 their finances in China, 87, 340:n.89 and Lebbe, 131, 231, 243–244, 246 the North Church, their ownership of, 254, 342 reacting to the turmoil in Tianjin, 160, 163, 172–174, 200–201, 219

380 Lebbe, Vincent, 149, 204, 215, 224, 235 his adoption of Chinese citizenship, 232 his analysis of missions, 177–184, 257 attacked by Garnier, 238–239, 246, 336:n.43 clerical comment on, 198–199, 217, 241–242, 257–258 detained by the Eight Route Army, 246 his discussion of obedience, 190–192 early apostolate and program in Tianjin, 130–143 his exile from Tianjin and the reaction, 161–165, 170–174, 202–203, 209, 218–220 on the French Protectorate (1926), 228–229 his letter to the French minister in Beijing, 158–161 and Maximum illud, 211, 213, 327:n.88 note of the French legation regarding (1919), 200–201 praised by Chinese Catholics, 208–209 Propaganda’s attempts to return him to Tianjin, 186–189 received in Rome (1920–1921), 221–224 his role in the Laoxikai affair, 156–158 on Sino-Vatican diplomatic relations, 196 in the War of Resistance against Japan, 243–246, 249 Leclercq, Jacques, 257 Lécroart, Henri, 325:n.58 lecture halls (Gong jiao xuandao suo), Tianjin, 139, 161–162, 183, 198 Ledóchowski, Mieczyław Halka, 67 Ledóchowski, Wlodimir, 329:n.13 Legge, James, 273:n.1 Legion of Mary, 255, 324:n.109 Leo XIII, 55–61, 70, 131, 144, 185 Liang Qichao, 114, 195 Liao Guanyin (“Goddess of Mercy” Liao), 97 Li Hongzhang, 49, 75, 194, 273:n.81, 287:n.76 and the irregular Boxer indemnities, 80, 83, 85, 290:n.6 negotiating Sino-Vatican relations and removal of the North Church, 55–63 Little Brothers of Saint John the Baptist, 243–244, 246 Little Sisters of Saint Theresa, 243–244 Liu Bocheng, 245–246 Liu Junqing, 244, 326:n.69 Liu Kunyi, 93 Li Yuanhong, 162

Index Li Zheng’an, 317:n.57 Loisy, Alfred, 131 Lokuang, Stanislaus, 343:n.120 Louis Philippe, 24, 26 Louis XIV, 254, 282:n.21 Lu Bohong, 311:n.79 Luo Longji, 244 Luo Wenzao, 14, 267:n.18, 322–333:n.68 Lu Zhengxiang, 193–196 Maclean, R. E., 106,108 Madsen, Richard, 19 Manchus, 36, 109, 138 Manzhouguo (Manchukuo), 245, 339:n.78 March 15, 1899, imperial decree. See: imperial decree of March 15, 1899 Marists, 115, 169, 317:n.59, 335:n.18 Maritain, Jacques, 241 Marquette University, 222 Martin, Vincent, 338:n.66 martyrdom, 69, 265:n.9 Maryknolls, 219, 237, 239–240, 333:n.72, 339:n.79 their difficulty in acquiring space in China, 213, 329:n.7 their response to Maximum illud, 216 Massi, Eugenio, 199, 325:n.58 Maurice, Gabriel, 312:n.86 Ma Xiangbo, 195, 236, 245, 256, 325:n.49 as a leading Catholic voice, 194–196 his memorial to the pope (1920), 204–209 translated Maximum illud, 329:n.18 Maximum illud (apostolic letter, 1919), 199–200, 202–203, 326:n.70, 327:n.88, 328:n.97 its content and early reaction, 211–218, 238, 329:n.15 recapitulated by Rerum Ecclesiae, 230 subsequent comment on, 221, 226–227, 243 May Fourth Movement (1919), 156, 192, 202, 218 May Thirtieth Movement (1925), 228, 230 Megan, Thomas M., 338:n.64 Mercier, Désiré Joseph, 178, 221, 223 Mérel, Jean-Marie, 312:n.86 Methodists, 103–108, 116, 291:n.13 minjiao (the people and the Christians), 44–45, 120 missionary presence, Chinese proposals for managing, 119–120, 234, 295:n.60, 296:n.71, 281:n.4 after the Tianjin Massacre (1870), 55

Index in the aftermath of the Boxer affair (1901), 93–94 in 1902–1903, 125–126 Missionary Union of the Clergy, 214 Missions Etrangères of Paris (MEP), 15, 17, 27, 87, 113, 237 de Guébriant as new head of, 232, 237 their disaffection from the French Protectorate in Nanning, 247–248 and L’Echo de Chine, 236 inventory of their Shanghai assets, 340:n.89 their property in Sichuan (1881), 52 resistance to their takeover in south China, 22 their unwillingness to share Boxer funds, 240 “Modernism,” 131, 157, 224, 330:n.34 Morel, Louis, 153, 188, 217, 315:n.25 Mukden incident (September 18, 1931), 244 Mussolini, Benito, 239, 242 Nanchang incident (1906), 101–103, 110–120, 138 Nankai University, 244 National Association of Florence, 82 Nationalist Party (Guomindang), 229, 233, 236, 244, 247, 334:n.2 New Culture Movement, 157 Nian Rebellion, 28 Nichols, Don W., 103–104, 107, 301:n.53 North Church (Beitang), 11, 87, 124, 253–254, 267:n.28 beseiged in 1900, 74–77, 289:n.97 negotiations for removal of (1886), 56–60, 282:n.12 official French claim to ownership of, 240, 282:n.21, 336:n.36 Northern Expedition, 229–230, 233, 333:n.79, 334:n.2 Notre Dame, University of, 222 Notre Dame des Victoires. See: Wanghailou. nuncio, 58, 222, 229, 232, 253 opium, 25, 28, 54, 101, 179, 273–274:n.4 Opium War, 20, 24–27 Osservatore Romano (newspaper), 193 Ottoman empire, 57, 59 Pacelli, Eugenio, 242–243, 337:n.49 padroado real (Portugal’s crown patronage), 15, 20, 22, 37–38 its erosion and end in China, 15–18, 24, 34, 179

381 Paris Peace Conference, 186, 192, 218 Paris, Prospero, 286:n.64 passports, 29–30, 33, 62–63, 89, 92 Peking University, 193 Pichon, Stéphen, 75, 119, 200, 299:n.32 acting against the establishment of SinoVatican relations, 193 on Boxer indemnities, 80 criticizing the post-Boxer behavior of missionaries, 90–91 his doubts about the Protectorate, 88 shaping the decree of March 15, 1899, 71–73 Pius IX, 144 Pius X, 131, 185, 224, 311:n.80 Pius XI, 224, 230–231, 243, 254, 339:n.78 his policies in the 1930s, 242, 337:n.49 his pronouncement in favor of equality for China (1928), 234 Plymouth Brethren, 107–108, 115, 304:n.91 Pottinger, Henry, 20 Presbyterians, 107 Propaganda (Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith), 17–18, 84, 174, 312:n.97, 341:n.103 addressing turbulence in the China missions, 186–189, 196–204, 219–223 adjudicating control of the North Church, late 1940s, 254 creating Chinese bishops, 230, 240 its decrees for the China mission field (1920s), 235, 332:n.62 disciplining the missions, 51, 83, 165, 172, 220, 237 dispatching an apostolic delegate, 224 its founding, 15 its movement toward a national synod for China, 226–227 its place in the church hierarchy, 37–40 its pre-existing instructions to the field, 123, 143–144, 158 receiving complaints about Anzer’s behavior, 65–68 soliciting Chinese seminarians, 149 property, concern about missionary, 239–241, 252, 254, 257, 340:n.89 as a key obstacle to reform, 175, 243 as provided for in the Beijing Convention’s Chinese text, 30–33 proscription of Christianity, 12–13, 25, 29, 31

382 Protestants, 13, 29, 203, 271:n.66, 313:n.108 adopting Catholic practices regarding Chinese society, 104, 256 before 1860, 266:n14 discouraging legal cases for Chinese Christians, 119–120 early twentieth-century challenges posed by their missions, 121, 124, 129, 141, 146, 209, 226 and indigenization, 342:n.111 and jiao’an, 46, 75, 114–115 as object of attack in the mid-1920s, 218, 228–230, 333:n.73 their numbers in Sichuan, 99 Ying Lianzhi’s relations with, 139 Protestant-Catholic contestation, 95, 98–99, 101, 108, 299:n.37 in the aftermath of the Boxer affair, 90–91, 294–295:n.59, 200:n.37 cited in Chinese government proposals regarding missions, 125–126 in Jiangxi, 103–106, 116, 299:n.33, 299:n.41, 300:n.42, 300:n.44 Prudhomme, Claude, 144 Qiying, 25–27, 34 Raimondi, Timoleone, 145, 292:n.26 Ralliement, 60 Rampolla, Mariano, 61, 284:n.44 Red Cross, 139 reforms (institutional) by the late Qing government, 36, 68, 78, 95, 119 Rerum Ecclesiae (encyclical, 1926), 230–231, 243 Reynaud, Paul, 177–180, 196, 217, 223, 325:n.49 Riberi, Antonio, 255 Ricci, Matteo, 11, 101, 208, 259 Robert, Léon, 43 Ronglu, 71, 77, 122 Sacerdos in Sinis (periodical), 329:n.18 Scarboro Mission, 247 Schall, Adam, 66 Schang, Césaire (bishop of East Shandong), 67 Scheut Mission, 87, 134, 295:n.65, 329:n.11, 332:n.61 science advisors (missionaries in the imperial court), 11, 13, 16 “scramble for concessions,” 65, 68, 102

Index secret societies, 98 Self-Strengthening, 36 sexual malfeasance by priests, charges of, 147, 155–156, 173, 286:n.56 against Anzer, 66 by Chinese priests against two European missionaries, 207 against a South Shandong seminary director, 66, 285–286:n.56 Shanghai French Concession, 43, 150, 168, 251 Shen Jinglun, 19–20 Simeone, Giovanni, 284:n.44 Sino-French war (1884–1885), 47, 48, 55, 62 Sino-Japanese war (1894–1895), 47, 64, 68 Sino-Vatican diplomatic relations, 54–62, 145, 251–253, 282–283:n.23 attempt in 1918 to establish, 192–196, 205, 211, 325:n.57 explorations in 1929 towards, 234–235 Smedley, Agnes, 339:n.81 Society for Safeguarding the Nation’s Sovereignty, 154, 166 Society for the Propagation of the Faith (SPF), 23, 39, 67, 87, 214 Society of Foreign Missions, Paris. See: Missions Etrangères of Paris. Society of the Divine Word, 60, 227, 253, 332:n.60, 335:n.17 absence of Chinese priests in the Society (1924), 332:n.60 filing of charges against Anzer by, 65–68 its founding and the early mission in China, 63 Soetens, Claude, 227 “spheres of influence,” 64–65, 77, 289:n.101 Steyl Mission. See: Society of the Divine Word St. Michael’s Church (Beijing), 124, 254 St. Peter’s Basilica (Rome), 231 St. Sulpice (Paris), 71 Sun Baoqi, 153–154 Sun Dezhen (Melchior Souen), 231 Sun Yat-sen, 229, 234, 334:n.5, 334:n.6 Sun Zhongying, 162, 326:n.69 Syllabus of Errors, 178 Taiping Rebellion, 28, 37 Tangpu affair (1904), 108–113, 117 Ter Haar, Barend, 8 terna, 38, 283:n.28 Thor, A.E., 304:n.91

Index Three Principles of the People, 234 Tian Gengxin (Thomas T’ien), 253–254 Tianjin French Concession, 151–170 Tianjin Massacre (1870), 2–3, 54, 60 Tianjin mutiny (1912), 138, 143 Tianjin treaties (1858), 28–30, 49, 51, 118 Tiberghien, Jules, 330:n.22 Tirpitz, Alfred von, 65 toleration of Christianity, official acts of, 11, 25–30, 33 Tongwenguan (interpreters’ school), 193 Toqueville, Alexis de, 39 Truptil, Lt. Col. (retired), 168 Twain, Mark, 89–90 Twenty-One Demands (1915), 139, 154, 183 unequal treaties, 8, 180, 230, 232, 255–256 abrogation of, 250–253 imposition of, 24–28 their provisions regarding missionaries, 28–33 United Front, 245–246 Urban College (Rome), 84, 149, 206 Vanneufville, Gaston, 178, 180, 190, 217, 223 Van Rossum, Willem, 187–188, 196–200, 212, 242, 332:n.62 his meetings with Lebbe, 221–223 and the new China policy, 224, 227, 230–231 Vatican Council (I), 38, 50, 56, 60, 226 Vatican Council (II), 9, 212 Verdier, Joseph, 329:n.14 Verhaeren, Hubert, 336:n.40 Verrolles, Emmanuel-Jean-François, 313:n.97 vicariate finances, 87 Vic, Casimir, 43, 118 Vigny, Alfred de, 39 Virgins (members of particular lay Catholic female associations), 20–22 Volunteri, Simeone, 313:n.99 Wanghailou (Notre Dame des Victoires), 2–6, 9, 152 Wang Jingwei, 250–251 Wang Zhengting (C.T. Wang), 234–235 Wei, Louis Tsing-sing, 24 Wijnhoven, François-Hubert, 56 World’s Student Christian Foundation, 228

383 World War I, 148, 159, 195, 224, 226, 255 World War II, 246, 250–252, 255 Xavier, Saint Francis, 208 Xiong Xiling, 162, 190 Xu Guangqi, 259 Yang Ruwang ( Jean Yang), 324:n.33 Yang Yide, 137–138, 156, 160, 169, 310:n.68 Yang Zengyi ( Joseph Yang), 192, 324:n.33 Ying Lianzhi, 209, 211, 236, 321:n.23, 324:n.32 his essay on the Chinese Catholic church, 175–177, 181, 321:n.21 founding and managing the Dagongbao, 138–139 his friendship with Lebbe, 138–141, 256 Yishibao (newspaper), 178, 195, 202, 223, 311–312:n.85 advocating strong policies versus Japan, 244 early ecclesiastical supporters of, 312:n.86 foreign protection of, 142–143, 316:n.36 founding of, 141–142 and the Laoxikai affair, 156–157, 164–165, 167 management issues regarding, 241, 244 as object of criticism, 172, 180, 186–187, 200, 202 a papal blessing for, 221 reconciled with the Tianjin vicariate’s new administration, 220 severing Lebbe’s contributions to, 163–164 YMCA, 139, 209, 222 Yuan Shikai, 157–158, 195, 316:n.36, 316:n.37 Yu Bin (Paul Yu-pin), 246–247, 253, 259 Yu Dongchen, 44–45, 98 Yun Yuding, 116, 304:n.95 Zanin, Mario, 245–246, 249–251 Zhang Zhidong, 93–94, 116, 125, 273:n.88, 321:n.22 Zhao Huaiyi (Philip Tchao), 230, 240 Zhao Zhensheng, 249 Zhendan (Aurora) University, 195, 204 Zhengwenshe, 195 Zhou Enlai, 202, 327:n.84 Zhu De, 245–246, 338 :n.67 Zixia, 167 Zongli yamen, 31, 33, 45, 70, 116 policy on passports of, 63 pursuing diplomatic relations with France, 56 and Sichuan jiao’an, 50–51 Zou Linghan, 304:n.89, 304–305:n.100