“调和孔夫子的鬼神－耶稣会翻译者是如何对待《中庸》的无形力量(ACCOMMODATING CONFUCIUS’ SPIRITS: how the Jesuit translators dealt with the invisible powers of the Zhongyong)”

One of the hinges of the Jesuit missionary strategy in China was the accommodation of the Christian message to the local Confucian philosophical tradition. With such an aim, having a deep knowledge and understanding of the Confucian thought, with a direct access to its texts, was fundamental. Reading the Confucian classics had persuaded the missionaries that the moral philosophy of early Confucianism (unlike Neo-Confucianism) had many similarities and was therefore compatible with the Christian doctrine, and this could be used to make the latter more acceptable to the Chinese. The Jesuits, therefore, launched a translation project of the Four Books at a very early stage of the mission. The Classics were also used as a means to learn the written language. When approaching these texts, however, the Jesuits found the presence of some metaphysical concepts and elements (like上帝, 天命, 明德 or 鬼神) and had to find a way to interpret and translate them. The problem of the translation became more crucial and even dangerous at the time of the Rites Controversy, when the missionaries of the Society of Jesus were accused of allowing idolatry by the Dominicans and the Franciscans. On several aspects of this accommodation process a vast literature has been produced. The present paper is a preliminary study that focuses on how the words 神 and 鬼神 were understood and rendered in the two translations of the Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong 中庸) made before and after the escalation of the Rites Controversy, namely: Prospero Intorcetta’s Sinarum Scientia Politico Moralis (Macao-Goa, 1667-1669 - hereafter SSPM) and Intorcetta-Herdtrich-Rougemont-Couplet’s Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (Paris, 1687 - hereafter CSP).