A Study on M.E.P. and Catholic Vernacular Literature in Mid-Qing China

Abstract

Most Catholic missionaries in late Ming and early Qing China had to learn the Chinese language before they could preach essential doctrines of the Christian faith to Chinese people. Their knowledge of and skills in using spoken and written Chinese became a critical factor that not only affected the missions in various regions across the empire but also connoted different or even conflicting missionary strategies. By examining a group of early Catholic catechetical works in vernacular Chinese, especially the ones by the M.E.P. missionaries in the 18th century, this study aims to uncover a remarkable convergence of Christian literature and vernacular Chinese literature during the mid-Qing period. I will explore how the missionaries responded to the increasingly restrictive political context by shifting away from the dominant Jesuit model of a classical form and adopting the vernacular form in their catechetical writings. This vernacular turn of Christian literature gave birth to a sub-tradition in parallel with the mainstream works in classical Chinese, which was in one way or another tied with the rise of vernacular Chinese literature through the late Qing and early Republican periods.