"Nicolas Trigault (1577–1628), born in Douai, became a Jesuit in 1594 and reached Nanjing in 1611. Sent back to Europe in 1613 as procurator of the China mission, he began on board ship to translate Matteo Ricci's China journals from Italian into Latin; the work was published at Augsburg in 1615 as De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas. In April 1618 he sailed from Lisbon with more than twenty newly recruited Jesuits, reached Macau in April 1619, and worked on in China until his death in Hangzhou in 1628."
— Wikipedia
Source: Wikipedia, "Nicolas Trigault" (citing D. E. Mungello, Curious Land, 1989)
Homeland, loved ones, heaven, eternity, hometown, earth, rest
Views: 271
"Niccolò Longobardo came to China in 1597. While preaching in Shaozhou, Guangdong, he was repeatedly slandered by opponents of the faith: in 1603 there was a plot to kill him, and in 1606 he was falsely accused of adultery before the magistrate — on hearing of it he went at once to the court to demand a hearing, and was publicly declared innocent. He went on to serve in China for fifty-eight years, through the Nanjing persecution and, in old age, an arrest in Jinan. On his deathbed in 1654 he asked to have the account of Jesus' Passion read to him, and afterwards cried out in tears: "To leave this world having heard of Jesus' suffering and death — this is my great good fortune!""
— Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity
Source: "Longobardo, Niccolò" (by Chen Qingwei, drawing on Louis Pfister's Notices biographiques et bibliographiques)
Persecution, hardship, God, heart, faith, truth
Views: 268
"The German Jesuit Johann Schreck (Terrentius, 1576–1630), a physician, naturalist and mathematician, was elected to the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome in 1611, shortly after Galileo, and entered the Society of Jesus the same year. He reached Macau in 1619 and later, while staying in the home of Li Zhizao in Hangzhou, prepared the two-volume Taixi renshen shuogai (An Outline of the Western Theory of the Human Body), describing the skeletal, muscular, circulatory, nervous and sensory systems: the first book in China to introduce Western physiology and anatomy. It was edited and prefaced by Bi Gongchen and printed only in 1634. In his last years he worked on the reform of the calendar, and he died in Beijing in 1630."
— Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity (BDCC)
Source: BDCC, "Schreck, Johann" (bdcconline.net); Wikipedia, "Johann Schreck"
Soul, good deeds, truth, Creator
Views: 242
"God desires that they might perhaps awaken, earnestly forsake their wickedness, and turn their hearts to trust in the merit of the Saviour; then He will forgive their sins and spare them eternal suffering. Therefore it is said: God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should repent. To repent is to repent of and forsake all one's evil; then, through the merit of the Saviour, one obtains the forgiveness of sins."
— Liang Fa
Source: Good Words to Admonish the Age (Quanshi liangyan, 1832), vol. 7
Gambling, smoking addiction, fighting, vanity, soul, Heavenly Father, love, grace
Views: 238
"Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it."
— Thomas Aquinas
Source: Summa Theologiae I, q.1, a.8, ad 2 (translated into Chinese by Lodovico Buglio as Chaoxing xueyao)
Faith, reason, light, truth, the human heart
Views: 242
"In consequence of my unusual exertions of mind and body during the three months that I was detained in Rome, my health had suffered so much that, on my return to Naples, I was in a constant state of uneasiness and dejection. I now despaired of being able to find the assistance I wanted for the execution of my project, and began to regret that I had not accepted the accommodation that had been offered me by the Propaganda for my pupils and myself. … The three powers at length came to an understanding, and in April, 1732, after seven long years of anxiety and vexation, my efforts were crowned with the happiest success."
— Matteo Ripa
Source: Memoirs of Father Ripa, tr. Fortunato Prandi (1846), ch. XXVII
clergy, despair, truth, soul
Views: 249