in Sina lingua Latina extrema: A Cultural Writing of Gravestones between Latin and Chinese on the Ming Dynasty Missionary Gravestones

Abstract

Chinese traditional culture has been making gravestones since the Han Dynasty. The Jesuits had traveled to evangelise Christianity in China during the Ming Dynasty. The highlight of this is that all religious records are recorded in Latin. Jesuit Christianity has been popular until the Qing Dynasty. A number of Chinese people have continued to worship and become Jesuit priests. According to the Chinese tradition, these priests would have been buried when passed away, but the content of these gravestones differs from tradition. The purpose of this paper is to study the structure and content of the gravestones in both Chinese and Latin languages with Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory to find the differences between individualism and collectivism through the gravestone-inscribed culture of Chinese Jesuit priests. In this paper, five graves which the Chinese Jesuit priests died during the Qing Dynasty were used and divided into 10 main points. The results of the study shows that the content of gravestones was being both increased, reduced and altered from the tradition. In the part of increasing, there is often to add the praise to the passed away priest, admired strengths; in the part of reducing, there is to lack the content of the general situation at the time of death, the date which the gravestone was created; most importantly, birthdays are not visible because the census system was not up to date. The plebeian might not yet have access to the collection of various specifications from the government, and the content of five priests’ gravestones have not appeared on their backs, including the selection of translation; in the part of altering, there is to add the content of relating to Christianity, including saint’s name, the first time to become a priest, period of doing missionary work, evangelising period, period of joining the Jesuits. The order of the content in all gravestones is not fixed, but it usually starts with the dead’s name and ends with age at death. All of this is due to the cross-cultural communication through gravestones between Chinese tradition and Jesuitism.