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In the seventeenth century, missionaries in China translated a vast array of Chinese works, including classics, official histories, and legal documents. Their translations have been analysed through several perspectives, yet their use of Chinese dictionaries has been largely overlooked. In the context of the Rites Controversy, between the Jesuits on one side and the Dominican and Franciscan friars on the other, precise references to authoritative Chinese dictionaries were made to corroborate their interpretation of Chinese rituals as either religious or secular. This article first describes why and how missionaries started from the early beginning of the mission in the 1580s to write their own bilingual dictionaries based on existing Western and Chinese dictionaries. Then, it considers how the same dictionaries became an important reference when the Rites Controversy erupted in the 1630s. Based on manuscript and printed documents written until 1670, three Chinese characters which became the focus of competing interpretations are discussed: miao as temple versus hall, ji as sacrifice versus offering, and sheng as prophet versus wise man. Besides the problem of biased translations on both sides, we shall show that there was a more fundamental reason which prevented the missionaries from settling their controversy using dictionaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creationism is an important feature of Christianity but seems very foreign to Chinese philosophy. This paper examines an early attempt at introducing a metaphysical account of creationism in Huanyou quan (1628) by the Portuguese Jesuit, Francisco Furtado, and the Chinese scholar, Li Zhizao. It investigates the sources drawn from the works of Thomas Aquinas and reconstructs the choices made by the two authors in their translation. Finally, it suggests that Thomistic creationism bears similarities with Chinese philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Jesuit, Dominican and Franciscan missionaries were exiled in Canton while awaiting an order of deportation to Macao that would never be executed. It mentions particular debates on pastoral accommodation to Chinese culture that were sidelined or de-emphasized in later stages of the Chinese Rites controversy. It also mentions letters from Canton allude to the Chinese Rites Controversy and the tensions between the Jesuits and mendicants exiled in Canton.