Abstract
This paper investigates how different parties read The Nan-t’ang Imperial Commissioned Stele bestowed by the Shunzhi emperor in 1657. In the inscription of the stele, Shunzhi expressed his appreciation to Adam Schall for his contributions in setting up the calendar for the Qing Empire. At the same time, however, he demonstrated an apathetic attitude toward Christianity. Receiving the stele as a gift to the Nan-t’ang church, Schall and Christians believed that Shunzhi was a patron of their religion. Otherwise, they reasoned, the emperor would not have conferred the gift. To anti-Christian literati like Yang Guangxian, the emperor had declared himself an inheritor of the Confucian sage tradition and showed no sympathy to Christianity whatsoever in the inscription. While Yang focused on the content of the inscription, Schall emphasized the materiality and the symbolic meaning of the stele as an imperial gift. These different readings of the stele revealed the dilemma the Christian priests faced: they could not be imperial bureaucrats serving the Chinese emperor while performing the role of a priest under the jurisdiction of the Pope. By separating calendar and Christianity, the Manchu emperor, however, received the legitimacy that both the Confucian literati and Christian astronomers had provided.
Keywords
monument, monumental history, Nan-t’ang (South Church), Yang Guangxian, Adam Schall, material culture
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