Abstract
After surveying the place of dreams in Christian theology of the West, this article examines the writings of Jesuit missionaries in China on the subject, and contrasts the reserved attitude of European priests with the enthusiasm for holy dreams in the writings of Chinese converts. A database of holy dreams, assembled from Jesuit reports of the 17th and early 18th centuries, forms the basis for qualitative and quantitative analyses, the results of which are compared with a second database of holy dreams drawn from Buddhist sources of the same period. The comparative analysis of religious images, doctrines, and the social history of dreams allows for some tentative observations on the psychology of Christian conversion and the sociology of Christian community formation in late Ming and early Qing China.
Keywords
Jesuits, dream culture, religious culture, Chinese converts, Matteo Ricci
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