Praying to the Blessed Mother: The Rise of Marian Sodalities in 17th-centurty China

Abstract

This paper explores the remarkable development of organized forms of Chinese Marian devotions during the 17th-century, a period when the Roman Catholic missionary enterprise reached its peak in imperial China. By focusing on a set of key sources that have not been tended in previous research, I will examine the major prayers, liturgies, and congregational codes employed by missionaries and lay members of the church in their newly founded Marian sodalities. Instead of the parish-based model that prevailed in post-Reformation Europe, there emerged a distinct assembly-based model from the early Chinese Marian cults in Beijing, Shanghai, and other places. Moreover, though the core Catholic doctrines have been embedded in Chinese communal worship to Mary, these sodalities were organized and operated in some patterns similar to Confucian benevolent societies as well as Buddhist lay fraternities of the time. The entanglement of religiosity and secularity in these emerging Marian sodalities, often paired with a Chinese-Christian identity complex, visibly contributed to the shaping of a composite Chinese Marian culture toward the end of the 17th century.