ZH 
EN Chinese Rites Controversy Reconsidered: Modern Historiography Between Beijing, Canton and Rome
Date
04-November-2026 to 05-November-2026
Organized by
The Macau Ricci Institute, Macau, S.A.R, China at the University of St. Joseph, Macau
Co-organized by
The Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at Boston College, U.S.A.
Jesuit University Ignatianum in Kraków, Poland
Partner Institutions:
Taipei Ricci Institute, Taiwan
L’Institut Ricci, Centre d’études chinoises des Facultés Loyola Paris, France
Host:
The University of St. Joseph, Macau, S.A.R., China
Abstract
This international symposium jointly organized by The Macau Ricci Institute at The University of St. Joseph, Macau, The Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at Boston College and Jesuit University Ignatianum in Kraków, will take place in Macau, S.A.R. China, from November 4–5, 2026. This academic event titled: Chinese Rites Controversy Reconsidered: Jesuit Historiography Between Beijing, Canton and Rome” will try to offer the most recent scholarship on the Chinese Rites Controversy with special focus on monumental historical documents authored by Kilian Stumpf, S.J. (1655–1720) and Tomasz Ignacy Dunin Szpot, S.J. (1644–1713).
The Chinese Rites Controversy (c. 1582–1742) represents one of the most defining and consequential intercultural standoffs in the history of global Christianity. At its center was a fierce disagreement over whether Chinese cultural practices, such as ancestral veneration and Confucian rituals, could be accommodated within Catholic orthodoxy. This symposium will explore this crisis through the lens of the Acta Pekinensia (“Historical Records of the Maillard de Tournon Legation”), a monumental 1,400-page eyewitness account. The text was compiled in Beijing between 1705 and 1712 by the German Jesuit missionary, scientist, and apostolic notary, Kilian Stumpf, S.J. (1655–1720).
Drawing upon Stumpf’s heavily detailed Latin manuscript, recently translated and published through the collaborative efforts of the Ricci Institute and Brill, this symposium analyzes the underlying mechanics of court diplomacy and historiographical conflict. While the Rites Controversy is often characterized purely as a theological clash, Stumpf’s records reveal that the core dispute largely centered on conflicting interpretations of ancient Chinese history and textual hermeneutics. Our symposium wants to highlight how the Acta Pekinensia serves as an invaluable, day-by-day archival window into a catastrophic clash of values that ultimately shattered early modern Sino-Western relations and precipitated the eventual suppression of the Jesuit mission.
The Chinese Rites Controversy is traditionally examined through the eyewitness accounts of missionaries working directly on the ground in East Asia. However, a critical dimension of the conflict unfolded within the bureaucratic and intellectual hubs of Europe, where incoming data was curated, synthesized, and deployed for ecclesiastical defense. The second part of this symposium explores the controversy through the lens of the Polish Jesuit scholar Tomasz Ignacy Dunin Szpot, S.J. (1644–1713). Serving for over two decades as a penitentiary in Rome, Dunin Szpot used his unprecedented access to the central Jesuit archives to construct a massive, ten-volume defense of the Society’s missionary methods. Dunin Szpot authored the monumental Historiae Sinarum Imperii, Collectanea pro Historia Sinica, and Collectanea pro Historia Sinica. Various scholars will show how Dunin Szpot navigated the polarizing theological and political landscape of the Rites Controversy across his three monumental, multi-thousand-page Latin manuscripts: Historiae Sinarum Imperii (his narrative history of the mission and the Ming-Qing transition), Collectanea pro Historia Sinica (his compilation of raw primary source documents), and Collectanea Historiae Sinensis (his analytical, critical commentary on those sources).
Though Dunin Szpot never travelled to China himself, his intellectual formation in the multiethnic and multi-confessional Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth profoundly shaped his interpretation of cultural accommodation. His writings offer highly specialized, alternative insights into critical flashpoints of the controversy. The symposium will highlight his deep accounts of the Canton Exile (1666–1671)—where trapped missionaries unsuccessfully attempted to reach a consensus on Confucian rituals—and his exhaustive documentation of clashes over sacred versus secular authority (auctoritas sacra vs. auctoritas profana) at the courts of the Shunzhi and Kangxi Emperors.
Even though this symposium shall address the recent scholarship on Chinese Rites Controversy in the light of Kilian Stumpf and Dunin Szpot by examining hitherto unpublished sinological heritage, several other scholars will offer papers on the Chinese Rites Controversy in much broader perspective considering other Jesuit and non-Jesuit historiographical sources in order to deepen our current knowledge and understanding of this fascinating period in the history of relations between the West and China.