In this study of the transformation of funerary rituals among Chinese Christians in the seventeenth century, the metaphor of interweaving looms large. Nicolas Standaert examines the early century of encounters between European Christian (mostly Jesuit) missionaries and native Chinese converts, in which strands from both cultural traditions were woven together to form a new type of funerary ritual fabric, dominated neither by the warp of Christian theological intentions, nor by the weft of Chinese practice alone. The great strength of this study is its careful and methodical assessment of a wide range of Chinese and European sources, emphasizing the gradual processes through which the parameters of new, hybrid customs were negotiated in texts and in practice. Beyond focusing on cultural interweaving, Standaert also undertakes to marry two distinct methodological approaches in this book, embedding a deep hermeneutic tradition of close textual analysis within a more broadly applicable sociological framework.
Early...
