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The Wise Man from the West: Matteo Ricci and His Mission to China By Vincent Cronin, Ignatius, 2016, 277 pp., ISBN 978-1-62164-004-2, $17.95 (paper).
Matteo Ricci, SJ, (1552-1610) was an Italian Jesuit priest and missionary who played a central role in the foundation of the Jesuit mission to China in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Belonging to the second generation of Jesuits sent to the mission fields of the Far East opened up by Saint Francis Xavier, he entered China at the age of thirty in 1582 and spent the final twenty-eight years of his life patiently establishing a Catholic missionary presence in a society that was deeply suspicious of foreigners. An accomplished man who was well acquainted with such technical subjects as cartography, astronomy, and horology, Ricci deployed his knowledge of these arts and sciences to gain entrée among the highly educated classes of Chinese government officials and...