The contribution of monks to the evangelization of lands not yet reached by the preaching of the Gospel has certainly been remarkable. The specific witness that the monastic community gives is of a radical Christian life naturally radiating outward, and thus it is implicitly missionary. The process of inculturation of Christian monasticism in China required a bold spiritual attitude of openness to the future and a willingness to accept the transformation of monastic forms that had been received. In Christian Monks on Chinese Soil, Matteo Nicolini-Zani highlights the willingness of foreign monks to encounter the cultural and spiritual realities of China and the degree of acceptance by the Chinese of the form of monastic life that was presented to them by the missionaries.

The contribution of monks to the evangelization of lands not yet reached by the preaching of the Gospel has certainly been remarkable. The specific witness that the monastic community gives is of a radical Christian life naturally radiating outward, and thus it is implicitly missionary. The process of inculturation of Christian monasticism in China required a bold spiritual attitude of openness to the future and a willingness to accept the transformation of monastic forms that had been received. In Christian Monks on Chinese Soil, Matteo Nicolini-Zani highlights the willingness of foreign monks to encounter the cultural and spiritual realities of China and the degree of acceptance by the Chinese of the form of monastic life that was presented to them by the missionaries.

The Oxford Handbook of Christian Monasticism addresses, for the first time in one volume, multiple strands of Christian monastic practice. Forty-four essays consider historical and thematic aspects of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, and Anglican traditions, as well as contemporary 'new monasticism'.

This volume completes the previous volumes 1, 2, 3a, 3b, and 4a of an interdisciplinary book project on the reception of Jesus Christ in China, as seen from the perspectives of Sinology, mission history, theology, and art history, among others. It consists of the following parts: A "Supplementary Anthology" that presents excerpts and longer quotations from selected works – such as translations, prayers, poems, and scholarly articles – listed in the bibliography of vol. 4a; two sections of "Notes on Contributors, Vols. 1–3b" and "Notes on Authors of the Anthologies, Vols. 1–3b, 4b" that provide short biographical information on the contributors of articles and authors of all texts in the anthologies; a "List of Reviews of Vols. 1–4a" published on the whole collection as well as on individual volumes; the Tables of Contents of vols. 1, 2, 3a, 3b and 4a; a "General Index and Glossary" that gives readers access to all articles and anthologies included in vols. 1, 2, 3a, 3b, and 4b, a corpus of almost two thousand pages of text; and finally a list of "Errata and Corrigenda."

The book contains the first annotated English translation of the Correct Explanation of the Tang “Stele Eulogy on the Luminous Teaching” (1644) by the Jesuit Manuel Dias Jr. and other late Ming Chinese Christian sources interpreting the “venerable ancestor” of the Jesuit mission, namely, the mission of the Church of the East in Tang China. Based on this documentation, the book reconstructs the process of “appropriation” by Jesuit missionaries and their Chinese converts of ancient traces of Christianity that were discovered in China in the first half of the seventeenth century, such as the Xi’an stele (781) and other Christian relics

The ‘spatial turn’ of missionary places Situated at the crossroads of missionary history, imperial history and colonial architecture, this volume examines the architectural staging and spatial implications of the worldwide expansion of Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By focusing on specific architectural fragments, analysing the intersection of Christian edifices in colonial and traditional urban settings or unravelling the social understanding of missionary places, each chapter strives to understand the agency of missionary spaces. Bringing together scholars from different disciplines and fields, this book aims to centre those missionary spaces by approaching them not merely as décor around and within which the missionary encounter was acted, but by making them part and parcel of it. Through its approach, Missionary Spaces provides a new paradigm for scrutinising the ‘spatial turn’ for missionary histories and contributes to the increased attention across the humanities to space, place, and location since the late 1990s. Space does not occur as an historical given, but as a social construction to be analysed, while at the same time having explanatory value of its own. This book focuses on Africa and the Chinese Region with contributions on Burundi, China, Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, and Taiwan.

This book features a collection of essays on China’s modern Catholic Church by a scholar of China-West intellectual and religious exchange. The essays and reflections were mostly written in China while the author was traveling by train, or staying in villages or large cities near to Roman Catholic cathedrals or other important historical sites during research trips to the country. It is clear that Clark’s understanding of Catholicism in China evolved from the first entry to the final ones in 2019. The essays included in this compendium were written in disparate contexts and in response to different events. As such, there is no obvious theme or order to the content. However, despite this, the book provides valuable insights for readers wishing to gain a better understanding of the complex topography of Catholic history in China, the contours of which have undergone stark transformations with each dynastic, political, and ecclesial transition. The information presented serves to highlight and explain the lives of Catholic people and the events that have punctuated one of the most significant dimensions of China’s long history of friendship, conflict and exchange with the West.

As China struggled to redefine itself at the turn of the twentieth century, nationalism, religion, and material culture intertwined in revealing ways. This phenomenon is evident in the twin biographies of North China’s leading Catholic bishop of the time, Alphonse Favier (1837–1905), and the Beitang cathedral, epicenter of the Roman Catholic mission in China through incarnations that began in 1701. After its relocation and reconstruction under Favier’s supervision, the cathedral—and Favier—miraculously survived a two-month siege in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion. Featuring a French Gothic Revival design augmented by Chinese dragon–shaped gargoyles, marble balustrades in the style of Daoist and Buddhist temples, and other Chinese aesthetic flourishes, Beitang remains an icon of Sino-Western interaction. Anthony Clark draws on archival materials from the Vatican and collections in France, Italy, China, Poland, and the United States to trace the prominent role of French architecture in introducing Western culture and Catholicism to China. A principal device was the aesthetic imagined by the Gothic Revival movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the premier example of this in China being the Beitang cathedral. Bishop Favier’s biography is a lens through which to examine Western missionaries’ role in colonial endeavors and their complex relationship with the Chinese communities in which they lived and worked.

An inspiring narrative history of the oldest congregation of Benedictine monasteries in the United States. Commissioned by the American-Cassinese Benedictine Congregation, Schools for the Lord’s Service is a comprehensive narrative history of the oldest congregation of Benedictine monasteries in the United States. In vivid detail, it describes how monasteries of the American-Cassinese Congregation initiated monastic life in North America according to the Rule of St. Benedict and how, in doing so, they have engaged for nearly 170 years with the American Catholic Church, the global Benedictine Order, the Holy See, and American society. Following a Benedictine tradition that stretches back to the early Middle Ages, American-Cassinese monks spread out from Pennsylvania to establish monasteries throughout the United States. Led by Boniface Wimmer, a visionary monk from the Bavarian abbey of Metten, the Benedictines introduced monastic observance according to the Rule of St. Benedict in these monasteries, and from them they founded missions, parishes, and schools where they continue to carry on pastoral, educational, and missionary apostolates in the service of the people of God. Comprised of twenty-five monasteries located in the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, Brazil, Columbia, Mexico, and Taiwan, the legacy and spirit of the American-Cassinese Benedictines continues to reinforce and complement the words of Abbot Boniface Wimmer who constantly exhorted his Benedictine brothers and sisters, “Forward, always forward.”

"The Missionary Dynamism of the Church of the East It would be an attractive undertaking for the historian to be able to follow in the footsteps of those heralds of the Gospel, who went forth from Antioch with firmness and tenacity in those early days making their way to the East . . . building new centers of Christian irradiation, creating communities and spreading the doctrine of Jesus everywhere. The interest would certainly grow if we were familiar with the challenges faced by these first evangelizers on their way to the Far East. Gaining that knowledge, however, is no easy task. Christ's teaching had to cover immense distances on its road from Antioch towards the East. . . . The details of this diffusion, however, remain obscure. There are no Acts of the Apostles, no Letters of Saint Paul, no contemporary or near-contemporary documents that might tell us how and when Christianity from the region of the Euphrates and the Tigris crossed over the mountainous regions of the Orient, how through Media and Parthia it went south to Herat and Segestan, and how it penetrated eastward, crossing the Margiana (Merv), into the region of the Oxus and the Jaxartes, and finally how it entered today's Russian province of Semireč'e, then Turfan, and then further south into the heart of China"--