Part II. The Accounts of Matteo Ricci and Nicolas Trigault

In mid 17th century the process by which information on Korea was introduced and incorporated into the basic reservoir of knowledge in Europe during the early modern era underwent a significant shift. Up to the mid 17th century, Spain and Portugal, which had emerged as major powers in Europe in the wake of the Great Sea Age, concentrated their economic might in lending support to Catholic nations against the Protestants and in expanding the Catholic sphere of influence into Asia and the American continent. In particular, Jesuit missionaries, backed by the Vatican and the Portugal court, conducted extensive missionary work in Japan and China. To their credit, the Jesuit missionaries were quick to pick up the local vernacular and endeavored to acquire working knowledge of the indigenous culture. It was only a matter of time before these missionaries, voluntarily or involuntarily, found themselves in the middle of momentous regional events, such as the Imjin Japanese Invasion of Korea and the social turmoil of the transitionary period between the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty. Consequently, they in due course became Europe's primary source of information on the Far East at the time.

Their missionary venture into the Far East started with Japan, and the Jesuit missionaries in Japan were the first to provide Europe with information on Korea. Since the mid 16th century, Luis Frois, and other Jesuit missionaries stationed in Japan, regularly included information on Korea in their correspondences back home. These letters were subsequently collected and included in Richard Hakluyt's The Principall Navigations between 1598 and 1600 and in Luis de Guzman's Historia de las Missiones in 1601. At a time when materials on Korea were few and far between, these collection of letters served as an encyclopedia of sort on Korea for interested European intellectuals of the time. However, in 1614, the Jesuit missionaries in Japan were expelled from the island nation, and Catholic missionary work was outlawed. This effectively closed that window on Korea for the Europeans. With the advent of the 17th century, the Jesuit's missionary efforts in the Far East shifted from Japan to mainland China.

Arguably the one person most instrumental in introducing China to Europe in the first half of the 17th century was the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci. Ricci was blessed with a brilliant mind, being one of very few Europeans of the time to able not only to converse in Chinese but also to read and grasp the wisdom of the Chinese classics. Armed with advanced scientific knowledge of the West (exemplified in Kunyu Wanguo Quantu and his translation of books of Geometry by Euclide), Ricci vigorously championed the so called "policy of accommodation" in furthering the missionary agenda. In addition, Ricci personally authored De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas specifically to introduce Chinese history and culture to Europeans. This work went a long way to bridging the gap between the East and the West. Ricci's work effectively superceded Juan Gonzales de Mendoza's Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China (the English version published in 1588 under the title The History of the Most Notable Rites and Customs of the Great Monarchy of China) as the authoritative book on China during the First half of the 17th century. Albeit to a lesser degree, Ricci's work also served as an introduction to Korea as well.

From 1608, Superior General of the Society of Jesus Claudio Aquaviva commissioned Ricci to author De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu (About Christian expeditions to China undertaken by the Society of Jesus), ostensively to muster financial as well as human resource support in Europe for the mission in China. By the time of his death in Beijing in May 11, 1610, Ricci had all but completed the draft of the work. Immediately following Ricci's death, his successor Nicholas Longobardi (1565-1655) succeeded in detaching the Chinese mission from the auspices of the Japanese mission and in getting Ricci's manuscripts published in Europe to rally support for the Chinese mission. To this end, he dispatched to Europe Nicolas Trigault (1577-1628), particularly astute in Latin. In Feb. 9, 1613, Trigualt left Macao, arriving in Rome in October of the following year. Apparently Trigualt made good use of the lengthy transit time, for by the time he arrived in Rome, he had transformed Ricci's crude script in Italian to a more refined Latin translation. The Latin version of Ricci's manuscript was finally published in Amsterdam in 1615.

Since then, numerous translations of the 645 page De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu appeared throughout Europe, solidifying its status as the authoritative book on China during the first half of the 17th century. The original Latin edition underwent reprinting in 1616, 1617, 1623, and 1648. The French edition was reprinted in Lyon in 1616, 1617, and 1618; the German edition came out in Augsbourg in 1615 and 1617; the Spanish edition was published in Seville and Rima in 1631; and the Italian edition was published in Naples in 1622. Most notably, British writer Samuel Purchas, one of the harshest critics of the Jesuits at the time, translated into English portions of Ricco's book and included it in his own sea voyage books published in London in 1625. The fact that De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu was translated into no fewer than 6 languages within a decade of its initial publication, speaks to its enormous popularity among Europeans at the time.

Portions of the book relating to Korea can be categorized into those written by Ricci and those later augmented by Trigualt. Ricci's contribution is mainly limited to accounts of the difficulties confronted by the Jesuit mission in China in the wake of the Japanese invasion of the Korean peninsula. In realistic terms, Ricci describes the brewing animosity of the Chinese against all foreigners, kindled by the recent Japanese treat. In truth, Ricco's account portrays Korea as a tributary state of China, haplessly inept in defending itself from the Japanese aggressors, and having to rely completely on the intervention of the powerful Chinese. The dread of war voiced by Ricci was shared by other Jesuit missionaries well into the next century. Ricci recalls that with the Japanese invasion of Korea, rumors became rampant among the Chinese populace that the Jesuit missionaries, allied with the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the Japanese, were planning to use Macao as a staging area to spread out into mainland China to ultimately exterminate the Chinese altogether. This was the direct cause for the murder of Francesco Martinez in 1606. Naturally, Ricci sees Japan's recent flaunting of its imperialistic ambitions as being antithetical to the Jesuit cause in China.

In sharp contrast to Ricci's views, the Jesuit missionaries working in Japan did not necessarily see Japan's invasion of Korea in a negative light. A case in point is the personal accounts by Jesuit priest Gregorio de Céspedes, who accompanied the Japanese forces into Korea, thus becoming the first Jesuit to tread on Korean soil. It is clear that the Jesuit missionaries in Japan were anxious to use the military crisis to spread Catholicism throughout the Korean peninsula. In contrast, their brethren in China mainly saw the war as a potential hindrance to their missionary efforts among the Chinese.

In the opening chapter, which is for all means and purposes Trigualt's introduction to the book, there are ample hints as to how the Jesuits viewed the delicate relationship between Korea, China, and Japan. According to Trigualt, all state nations in the Far East were within the Chinese cultural sphere of influence, evidenced by Korea and Japan's use of Chinese characters. Despite the differences in their respective spoken languages, Chinese characters provided the three states with the means to communicate with one another. In terms of the degree of reliance on Chinese culture, however, Trigualt identifies a significant difference between Korea and Japan. He reports that whereas the Japanese had independently developed their own alphabet system comparable to those of the European languages allowing the people to communicate in their own written language irrespective of the Chinese characters, whether the Korean could boast the same was yet to be determined. Trigualt did state that Korean had adopted the Chinese legal system, was a close trading partner with China, and was clearly more dependent on Chinese culture than were the Japanese.

Trigualt's reportage of the Imjin Japanese Invasion of Korea was in line with Ricci's own observations, relating the Chinese people's general enthusiastic reception of the news of China's victory over Japan and the subsequent demise of Hideyoshi. Interestingly Trigualt also reports that due to the war, the Chinese relations with Korea had disintegrated, resulting in the complete breakdown of exchange between the two. As an example, Trigualt explains that the only foreigner that he was able to encounter during that time was a Korean female slave brought home by a Chinese general from the Imjin War. Foreigners were strictly prohibited from trading with the Chinese and entered the country without prior permission at their own peril. Those who did manage to get in were not allowed to leave the country. Any Chinese subject coming into contact with foreigners without the emperor's stated permission was liable for harsh punishment. Trigualt is openly critical of Chinese exclusionist policy which was overtly hostile not only to its enemy states but also to neighboring allies like Korea.

The Jesuit's acceptance of the middle nation mentality of the Chinese is also evident in Ricci's World Map of 1602. Ricci places China at the center of the map and distortedly assigns Korea and other nations to its peripheral. In the eyes of Ricci and Trigualt, Korea in the early half of the 17th century was a hapless tributary state of China, which did not possess an independent culture nor the strength to effectively foil foreign aggression on its own. The Imjin Japanese Invasion of Korea was not actually a war between Korea and Japan, but a war between the two powerful states of China and Japan. In this vein, it was ultimately China, not Korea, who was victorious over the Japanese aggressors.