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Abstract
Based on archival research in France and China, this article examines Chinese Catholic virgins and the early history of Roman Catholic communities of women in northeast China. When foreign Catholic orders of women came into China in the second half of the nineteenth century, they introduced to China a new kind of organized religious life to women. However, not all Chinese Catholic women were willing to join the orders. There was apparently a tension between the Catholic Church's effort in institutionalization and the “traditional” Catholic lifestyle chosen by Chinese Catholic women, especially Chinese Christian virgins.
The Hang Seng Bank Golden Jubilee Education Fund for Research 2011–12 and the Small Project Funding offered by the University of Hong Kong provide financial aid to this study. I thank my colleagues at HKU and Lee-Campbell Research Group as well as anonymous referees for their comments on the earlier drafts.
Notes
1 Pourquié’s full Chinese name is Lin Maoli. AMEP 0563:34.
2 Archives des Missions Etrangères de Paris (hereafter AMEP), 0564: 565a–572a.
3 AMEP, Pourquié, bio-biliographiques, C.-R., 1871, 20.
4 The other three missionaries are Pierre Negrerie, Pierre Alexandre Mesnard, and Charles Emile Colin. Negrerie and Mesnard left France together on February 27, 1846, about eight months earlier than Pourquié and Colin. Adrien Launay, Monseigneur Verrolles et de la Mission de Mandchourie (Paris: Libraire-Editeur, 1895), 206.
5 Simon was born in 1842 in Messé. He joined the Manchuria Mission in 1868 and moved to Shenyang to help establish a seminary in 1870. Next year, flooding of the Liao River damaged the village of Santaizi, so he went to the village to assist with disaster relief.
6 Philibert-Louis-André Simon Letter, June 2, 1871. AMEP 0564, 557–560.
7 The Virgins of the Sacred Heart of Mary is the precursor of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary. The later was established in 1913 in Shenyang by an MEP missionary Felice Choulet.
8 Xiaobajiazi literally means eight households. According to the local gazetteer, eight households immigrated to Xiaobajiazi from Zhili, now Hebei province, around 1796 and five of them were Catholic.
9 R. G. Tiedemann, Reference Guide Reference Guide to Christian Missionary Societies in China: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2008), 96.
10 Ibid. For the discussion of Institute of Christian Virgins in Sichuan, see Robert Entenmann, “Christian Virgins in Eighteenth-Century Sichuan”, in Christianity in China: From Eighteenth Century to the Present, ed. by Daniel Bays (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 180–93.
11 The convent was one of several important institutions Boyer had established in Manchuria. Others included a convent of Chinese Virgins to train school teachers, a novitiate for young women called to religious life, an orphanage, and a preparatory school for Latin Studies. AMEP, Fiche biographique, Numéro 661.
12 The Institute of Holy Family was founded by the MEP in Jilin in the early twentieth century. Members of the Holy Family were forced to disperse during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and started coming back in 1978.
13 Letter by Guo Yaozhen, AMEP photo collection, no archival number.
14 AMEP 225, 153.
15 Liaozhong xianzhi (Gazetteer of Liaozhong County) (Shenyang: Liaoning Renmin Press, 1993), 770.
16 AMEP 0563, 2094.
17 AMEP 0563, 2096.
18 Emile Briand, Philibert Simon, Missionnaire en Mandchourie, Sa Vie-Sa Correspondance-Ses Oevures (Paris: Oudin Frères, 1878), 208.
19 Dushi jiapu (Genealogy of Family Du), ed. by Du Huaizhong. Unpublished material provided to the author.
20 During the Boxer Rebellion, for example, Santaizi, like other Christian communities, was threatened by a massive anti-Christian movement. In 1901, several months after the Boxer Protocol was signed, Du Yintang, a member of the Du family in Santaizi, assembled more than two hundred Catholic villagers and kidnapped the local magistrate Shan Ying, who had not met his promise to protect Santaizi Catholics during the Boxer rebellion. See Dongbei yihetuan dang’an shiliao (Archival Documents of Boxer Rebellion in Northeast China) (Shenyang: Liaoning Renmin Chubanshe, 1981), 184.
21 According to Wu Peijun, Santaizi is one of the top five Catholic villages in northeast China. The other four are Haibei county of Heilongjiang, Xiaobajiazi village of Jilin, Sujiawopeng village of Fuyu county of Jilin, and Songshuzuizi of Jinzhou, Liaoning. Wu Peijun, “Investigation of the History of Catholicism in Northeast China in the First Half of the Twentieth Century”, in Waiguo wenti yanjiu (Journal of Foreign Studies), 197.3 (2010), 33.
22 Father Xi refers to Louis Marie Madelain Gillié (1838–67). AMEP 0564, 565a, Colette Du Letter, lines 25–28.
23 For the discussion of Christian virginity and Chinese chastity in Fujian, see Eugenio Menegon, “Child Bodies, Blessed Bodies: The Contest Between Christianity, Virginity, and Confucian Chastity,” in Nan Nü: Men, Women, and Gender in Early and Late Imperial China, 6.2 (2004), 177–240.
24 The Chinese Catholic Virgins were organized after the Yongzheng emperor’s prohibition of Catholic mission in 1724. In the difficult years of the Catholic mission in China, individual Catholic woman were organized to teach girls, train catechumens for baptism, and baptize dying infants. See Entenmann, “Christian Virgins”, 180–93. For a brief history of Chinese Christian Virgins before the nineteenth century, see Nicolas Standaert, Handbook of Christianity in China (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 394. For Chinese Virgins and Catholic religious orders in China to modern times, see Beatrice Leung and Patricia Wittberg, “Catholic Religious Orders of Women in China: Adaptation and Power,” in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 43 (2004), 67–82.
25 The Chinese version of the rules, or Tongzhen xiugui, quoted in this article was published by Chongqing shengjia shuju in 1921. It includes Martiliat’s original Twenty-Five Rules on Chinese Christian Virgins and supplementary rules added later. Qin Heping, “Guanyu qingdai chuan qian dengdi tianzhujiao tongzhennü de renshi” [Study on the Catholic Virgins of the Qing in Sichuan and Guizhou], in Journal of Sichuan University (Social Sciences Edition), 135 (2004), 110–19.
26 Martiliat’s twenty-five rules were later expanded to thirty-two at the end of the eighteenth century for more and more activities, particularly proselytizing and teaching, involved Christian Virgins at that time. The new seven rules focus on the social behavior between the Virgins and strangers (Qin, 2004). In the meantime, as more Virgins began to teach in the schools, an additional seven rules were added to regulate their teaching strategy at school.
27 Leung and Wittberg, “Catholic Religious Orders of Women”, 69.
28 Entenmann, “Christian Virgins”, 184–89.
29 De Rhodes’s seven rules are: 1) No catechetical method is universally applicable. 2) Two approaches were counterproductive in Vietnam. One begins with an attack of the Vietnamese religious beliefs and practices. But it should not be undertaken as the preliminary step before one teaches the truth of Christianity. It should be done after one has spoken of the existence of God, creation, the fall, the flood, and the tower of Babel. 3) Ordering of Christian doctrines. Exposition of the Trinitarian mystery is done at the beginning of catechesis. 4) Start with truths knowable by the light of natural reason. 5) The most difficult to teach is that of the incarnation, passion, and death of the Son of God. A triple strategy: highlighting the cosmic wonders associated with Christ’s passion and with his resurrection. 6) Religious language. First, pay attention to the different philosophical and religious contexts of the language that seem equivalent to Christian concepts. 7) Necessary to link doctrine with praxis instruction and with worship. Peter Phan, Mission and Catechesis: Alexandre de Rhodes and Inculturation in Seventeenth-Century Vietnam (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1998), 129–30.
30 Qin Heping, “Study on the Catholic Virgins,” 110–19.
31 Catechisme des Missions de Mandchourie: Texte Chinois—Romanisation et Traduction Francaise. This version of catechism was published in Mukden (Shenyang) in 1937. The Chinese text was composed by order of the First China Council (Shanghai 1924), reviewed and slightly modified by the Manchuria Mission.
32 Entenmann, “Christian Virgins,” 191.
33 Ji Li, “Becoming Faithful: Christianity, Literacy, and Female Consciousness in Northeast China, 1830–1900” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2009), 184–90.
34 Règlement de la Mission de Manchourie, adopté à la réunion générale des missionnaires. Année 1881 (Paris: Imprimerie de l’œuvre de Saint-Paul. L. Philipona, 1882), 3.2.5.
35 The Manchuria Mission was first founded in 1838 as part of the Manchuria-Mongolia Mission. In 1840, the Mission was separated and the independent Manchuria Mission and Mongolia Mission were founded respectively in the same year. For the study of the MEP’s Manchuria Mission, see Launay, Monseigneur Verrolles et de la Mission de Mandchourie, and Ji Li, “Becoming Faithful.”
36 Ji Li, “Becoming Faithful,” 145.
37 According to Launay, by 1892 there were 1060 Christians Virgins in Sichuan and 434 in other areas under the supervision of MEP in Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangdong, Tibet, and Manchuria. See Launay, Histoire génerale de la Société des missions-étrangères (Paris: Téqui,1894), 557, 576, and 588.
38 Règlement de la Mission de Manchourie, 3.2.1.
39 Schools for boys, for example, increased from 17 in 1873 to 131 in 1919, and schools for girls increased from 17 to 119. In fact, one imperative action for the missionaries was to establish Catholic schools. The importance of Catholic catechism school is exemplified in both the MEP parish reports and local Chinese gazetteers. In local gazetteers of various administrative levels—of province, city, or county—whenever Catholicism and foreign missionaries are mentioned, catechism schools are mentioned as well. According to a local gazetteer, in 1874 there were two churches built in Bayansusu, the center of Catholic mission in northern Manchuria. Immediately after the churches were built, two catechism schools were founded inside the churches. At that time, there were about 800 Christians and twelve missionaries. See Heilongjiang shengzhi (Gazetteers of Heilongjiang Province) (Harbin: Heilongjiang renmin chubanshe, 1999), 197.
40 Règlement de la Mission de Manchourie, ch. 2, “Persons”, section 4 “Christian Virgins.”
41 Règlement de la Mission de Manchourie, 2.4.1.
42 Martiliat’s fifth rule on “Persuasion of work” says, “In the West, despite heavy religious practice, all Virgins work in their spare time. For us, besides all the required religious lessons, everyone should do women’s ordinary work such as spinning, cooking and the kind. You cannot stay idle.”
43 300 diao equaled about 100 liang silver in 1881 when the Regulation of the Manchuria Mission was approved. According to Peng Xinwei, in the 1870s to 1900s, 1 shi rice (60 kilograms) equaled 1 liang silver; and 300 diao equaled 100 liang silver, or 6000 kilograms rice. See Peng Xinwei, Zhongguo huobi shi (A Monetary History of China) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1958), 588. According to a legal case recorded in the local archives of Shuangcheng, a county in northern Manchuria (today’s Heilongjiang province), one thatched cottage in Shuangcheng was worth 15 diao in 1873. (In Shuangchengpu zongguan yamen dang (The Archive of Local Government in Shuangcheng), 179 (1873), 4, document no. 20.) As the cost of housing was largely determined by specific location, acreage, and housing condition, and Shuangcheng was remote from urban area then, 300 diao may vary in other places of Manchuria. I thank Ren Yuxue and Chen Shuang for bringing this piece of evidence to my attention.
44 Règlement de la Mission de Manchourie, 2.4.6.
45 Based on the estimates for Liaoning, very few women remained unmarried at the age of twenty-five. Women from well-off families may have married slightly later or in lower numbers. Chen Shuang, Cameron Campell, and James Lee, “Institutional, Household, and Individual Influences on Male and Female Marriage and Remarriage in Northeast China, 1749–1912”, CCPR Working Paper 061-08, 2008.
46 Entenmann, “Christian Virgins,” 191.
47 Brief introduction of these orders can be found in Tiedemann, Reference Guide.
48 Verrolles’s interest in the Congregation developed three decades before the departure of the first group of sisters for Manchuria in 1875. In fact the connection between MEP and the Congregation began as early as the eighteenth century. The founder of the Congregation, Jean-Martin Moyë, went to China in 1771 and worked in Sichuan for about eleven years. Verrolles was one of Moyë’s followers to China. In February 1846, only a few years after Verrolles began his work in Manchuria, he went back to France and delivered a speech at the Catholic Church of Metz. In the speech, Verrolles talked about the difficulties of working in Manchuria, especially poverty, and requested help. At that time, Verrolles had already appreciated the Congregation’s simplicity and commitment, and expressed his willingness to have these nuns working with him in Manchuria. He first mentioned this to Mgr Caverot, Bishop of Saint-Dié and Superieur of the Congregation. Being reluctant to send his nuns so far away and working in such a difficult situation, Caverot initially refused Verrolles’ request. Verrolles, however, insisted and finally gained Caverot’s approval.
49 Les Soeurs de la Providence en Mandcourie, Cinquante ans d’Apostolat 1875–1925 (Hong Kong: Imprimerie de Nazareth, 1925).
50 AMEP, Fiche Biographique 3410.
51 Unpublished documents of the Holy Family Convent.
52 Ibid.
53 Tiedemann, Reference Guide, 54.
54 Nicolas Standaert, “New Trends in the Historiography of Christianity in China,” in The Catholic Historical Review, lxxxiii.4 (1997), 594.
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Ji Li
Ji Li 李 纪 is Research Assistant Professor in the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests center on the social, cultural, and religious history of late imperial China, with a particular emphasis on the transnational and cross-cultural communications between France and China. Her current research explores the relationships between Christianity and local society in northeast China, and the interplay of religious education, literacy, and women in rural society.