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During the many centuries of interaction and exchange between China and Europe, one of the most complex and ambiguous relationships was that of the Catholic Church and its missionaries in China. On one hand, they contributed to and can be seen as a part of the European imperial project of world colonisation, but on the other hand, they were instrumental in sharing and exchanging knowledge, as well as creating schools and other institutions in the places they created missions. At the same time, attempts were being made within the Catholic Church to promote the development of a Chinese clergy, although this issue remained divisive. This article examines these complex relationships through the eyes of a French Jesuit, André Yverneau, who was in China between 1948 and 1951 and who left a collection of letters back to his family describing these years. His experiences, observations, reactions and attitudes towards China and the mission are presented and analysed in order to re-evaluate some of the main debates surrounding the mission in China in the mid-twentieth century: education, language, indigenisation, and politics, both internal to the Catholic Church and with its relations in China.
1. Introduction
The centuries-long relationship between Christian missionaries and China has engendered widespread scholarly interest, and several areas of contestation remain. Between lengthy periods of disfavour, exclusion, and exile, missionary priests held important positions at the Chinese court and exerted significant influence on Chinese society and its institutions, sharing knowledge and building infrastructure. This long, convoluted historical relationship has provoked numerous direct and indirect conflicts and debates over the nature of their impact on China. Across the centuries, Jesuit missionaries were probably the most influential, as well as the most controversial. They were often at the very centre of the key developments and debates, from the Chinese Rites Controversy in the early seventeenth century, through the relationship between the Church and the Chinese State, the role of the Church and its missionaries in colonialism, to the debates surrounding the conflicting authorities between the Holy See in Rome and various national governments over who was in control of the mission.
This article is a micro-history, which will re-examine some of these questions through the eyes of a French Jesuit, André Yverneau, who was in China between 1948 and 1951. The surviving letters back to his family describe his time in China, his impressions of the people and the country, and his views on some of the controversies that were active at that time, both within the Catholic Church and in China. This article will begin with an overview of the history of the Jesuit order and several of the key debates surrounding their attitudes towards missionary activity, their relationship to the central policies of the Catholic Church, particularly with respect to China, and a presentation of the specific contextual situation into which André Yverneau arrived in 1948. Following a summary of his upbringing and life before arriving in China, the article will then turn to an analysis of his letters, exploring his experiences, observations, reactions, and attitudes towards China and the mission. His thoughts will be used to re-evaluate some of the main debates surrounding the mission in China in the mid-twentieth century: education, language, indigenisation and politics, both internal to the Catholic Church and in its relations in China.
2. The Jesuit Order and the China Mission
The topic of the China mission of the Jesuit order is a vast area of scholarly activity, and extensive writing can be found describing and analysing multiple dimensions of the field (Heyndrickx 1994). Much has been written on the history of the Jesuit order and about Catholic missionary activities more widely throughout the world (Lacouture 1991; Prudhomme 2004b), as well as on the specific history of Jesuit activity in China (Vermander 2012; Strong 2018a, 2018b; Standaert 2003, 2017). The history of Christianity and Catholicism in China includes general studies across many centuries (Yen 2020; Hayward 1974; Goossaert and Palmer 2011; Gernet 1991; Chiron 2019; Charbonnier 2002; Bays 2012), reference works (Tiedemann 2009), and multiple specific case studies of regions and individual missionaries (Harrison 2013; Li 2012, 2023; Bright 2017). The topic has also led to several scholarly debates and collaboratively edited collections drawing together the work of numerous scholars (Clark 2017a; White and Daughton 2012; Standaert 2015; Menegon 2020). What follows in this section is but a brief overview to contextualise the writings that will be examined in the third section.
Founded in the mid-sixteenth century at the height of the counter-reformation and the post-reformation restructuring of the Catholic Church, the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits, was a missionary order with the overt goal of taking the Christian message throughout the entire world. They were well known for their endeavours to gain proximity to power through educating elites and advising rulers in Europe and aimed to do the same throughout the world (Lacouture 1991, p. 361). Given its size and development in both cultural and scientific terms, China was one of their earliest identified destinations, and Jesuits were on their way to the Far East within a few decades of the foundation of the order. There had been earlier Catholic missions to China, none of which had resulted in any lasting impact, either of converts or influence and the results of which had disappeared by the fifteenth century (Charbonnier 2002; Chiron 2019; Mungello 2012). Therefore, it was really the arrival of the Italian Jesuits Matteo Ricci and Michele Ruggieri in Macao in 1582 that marked the start of what would be the main missionary activity in China, one which would have permanent effects on China (Vermander 2012; Gernet 1991).
The original missionary strategy of the Jesuits was to integrate Chinese society as scholars, become respected, and attempt to convert the country from the top down by working primarily to convert the Chinese Emperor; this strategy had been successful in Japan, although this was not the strategy advocated by the Holy See at the time (Wiest 1997, p. 675; Hsia 2009, pp. 1–11). Their advanced scientific knowledge and technological expertise proved to be of great interest to the Chinese, while at the same time, they themselves became experts in the Chinese language and culture, attempting to find common ground and negotiate between the two cultures and faiths. In the Early Modern period, the situation of Chinese converts in the provinces varied from place to place and included elements which showed the diversity of the Jesuit approach, that is to say, in addition to the top-down efforts to convert the Emperor (Standaert 2003; Wiest 1997). The region with the greatest number was the Jiangnan macro-region, which contained over 65% of the total Christians in China. However, with the arrival of the first papal legate card. Maillard de Tournon and the consequent prohibition of Chinese rites by the Holy See, the next few centuries would see the Jesuits fall in and out of favour, with restrictions put upon them by the Holy See for making too many compromises with Chinese culture (Zhang 2022). These early controversies had repercussions and continued in other guises right up to the twentieth century (Bays 2012, pp. 28–32; Li 2019).
Following not only exile from China but also several decades of dissolution by the Catholic Church, the Society of Jesus was reinstated in 1814 and soon returned to China, where they would re-invigorate their mission, although this time in competition with other missionary groups, both Catholic and Protestant, who were also at work in China. They also had to contend with the changes in the Chinese Catholic community which had taken place during their absence (Standaert 2017). Missionary groups tended to concentrate on a particular area, leading to a regional division of China according to the religious order and/or nationality, with the central authorities of the Catholic Church attempting to coordinate and systematise the entire system. Among Catholic missionaries, by the nineteenth century, the dominant nationality was French, with the largest group being the French Lazarists (Charbonnier 2002, pp. 204–12; Tiedemann 2009). By the mid-twentieth century, the Jesuits were still not the largest group, although they had reached 800 in China in 1948, located in 11 different provinces (Strong 2018a, p. 348). Their members were drawn from 26 different nationalities, the most numerous of which were the French, followed by the Chinese, but with reasonable numbers of Spanish, Italian, French-Canadian, Irish, American, Portuguese, and Hungarian members as well (Vermander 2012, p. 82). The main base of the Jesuits was in Shanghai, where they built an entire complex of institutions, including a scientific weather observatory, university, hospital, library, seminary, schools, and orphanages. They also had centres in Beijing and in several provinces across China. Among their primary objectives, they still aimed to promote science and education while also engaging in cultural dialogue, including learning Chinese. They were no longer focussed on converting just the Emperor (or the head of the Chinese Republic from 1912); they nevertheless still sought more influence through the education of the elites through their university (Wiest 1997, p. 674). Other Catholic groups focussed more on individual conversions of Chinese from all areas of life spread throughout the country (Hayward 1974, p. 25).
Although there was some regional variation, by the early twentieth century, the French were also the dominant national group in terms of economic, political, and military significance in China, and the Catholic missionaries (of all nationalities) were often dependent upon the protection of the French civil and military authorities when disputes arose with the Chinese. This situation naturally gave rise to an interpretation that missionaries were very much at the service of the European colonial project, which had not only military and economic dimensions but also cultural ones (Prudhomme 2004b). This did not mean that tensions did not exist between colonialist objectives and religious ones, and quite a number of studies have examined these tensions both theoretically and through case studies (Prudhomme 2001, 2004a; Inouye 2019).
In this way, when it came to missionary objectives, many of the individual missionaries considered that their objective was not only to spread Christianity but also European culture. Ironically, this was particularly true of the French, for although the French Republic, heavily influenced by anticlericalism, mistrusted and limited the educational influence of the Catholic Church and its clergy as much as it could within France itself, it was happy to use the French-speaking clergy in French colonies and around the world (Charbonnier 2002, pp. 251–59). So, for example, in the Jesuit-run educational institutions in Shanghai, not only was the medium of instruction French and the curriculum essentially one of European (French-defined) subjects but also, at several points, they actually excluded all subjects covering Chinese language, history and culture (literature, etc.). The content of the subject matter in schools and universities remained a subject of contention within the church and Jesuit order and between the missionaries and the Chinese (Mo 2022; Clark 2017, p. 26). Some of the Jesuit schools did include elements of Chinese history and culture in their curriculum, but in other circumstances, there was so much conflict that institutions became split. This potential coincidence of interest did not mean that the missionaries themselves wanted to promote the nation-centred colonial project, although many states clearly did use them and sought ‘to use culture as an instrument to increase their foreign influence’ (Haize 2012, p. 13). The missionaries found themselves simultaneously members of long-established international religious orders and a global church, as well as coming from individual countries, and their individual objectives often varied substantially.
Finally, between the central authorities of the Catholic Church in Rome and the mission societies and the nations that supported them, one of the most significant controversies throughout the entirety of the period was the question of the ‘indigenisation’ of the clergy. This is the term referring to the policy whereby the Catholic Church sought to ordain priests and bishops drawn from the local ‘indigenous’ populations in all mission territories throughout the world. The aim of the policy was to transform the church from a mission church into a regularly organised set of dioceses and parishes run by ordained clergy from each country itself. In this way, they hoped that the Chinese Church would, as quickly as possible, be run by Chinese priests and bishops—assisted by missionaries as much as possible, but with the same kind of normal, locally based structure that was known in Europe (Zhang 2023).
Within the Catholic Church itself, the indigenisation policy was quite controversial, however, and was often a key focal point for internal power struggles within the Church (Zhang 2023). It was developed and promoted by the central authorities of the Church in Rome and was not always supported by the missionaries themselves, by some of the religious orders, or by the states who helped to fund, coordinate, and sponsor overseas missions: indeed, they often outright opposed it. The policy dates back to 1622 with the founding of Propaganda Fide, the Holy See’s institution for the coordination of the worldwide mission, and it was resisted in its application to China in the early centuries primarily by the Portuguese, who wanted to control and coordinate the Church directly and exclusively through the patronage of the Portuguese Crown (Zhang 2024a, 2024b). Such resistance dramatically restricted the application and potential success of the policy, and even after several hundred years, indigenisation still remained an objective, rather than a reality, for China.
By the mid-nineteenth century, Pope Gregory XVI re-asserted the indigenisation policy through his encyclical letter of 23 November 1845, usually called De clero indigena (about indigenous clergy). It gave instructions for missionaries, with eight points defining all of the principles, reminding all of the members of the Catholic Church that missions are a transitory state for the Church, for all missionary territories have, as a vocation, to become autonomous dioceses (Chiron 2019, p. 152).
At the time, he wrote that there were just over 30 Chinese priests, and in spite of resistance in numerous quarters, by the mid-twentieth century, some progress had been made in the direction both of the indigenisation of the clergy and the re-organisation of the administrative structure of the Church in China. In 1900, there were approximately 1375 Catholic priests in China, of whom 471 were Chinese; by 1948, this had become 3015 Chinese priests out of a total of 5691 (Carbonneau 2010, pp. 516, 522; Prudhomme 1994). In terms of the second objective, significant progress had also been made in the normalisation of the organisational structure of the administrative hierarchy. In April 1946, the Pope set up a formal hierarchy for China, with 20 ecclesiastical provinces, which were then subdivided into 79 dioceses and 35 apostolic prefectures. Of these 114 territories, 26 were being run by Chinese clergy in 1948 (Charbonnier 2002, p. 271). The significant tensions that had existed in the Early Modern period between the Holy See and the individual religious orders and the country that sponsored them had by no means disappeared in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for the French continued to support the position that French missionaries were also agents of the French State (Tiedemann 2010). Meanwhile, what progress that had been made came in part because the Papacy re-asserted its long-standing policy of indigenisation directly. Pope Benedict XV wrote the apostolic letter Maximum illud on 30 November 1919, ‘which proclaimed the urgency of letting native priests and bishops have real control over territorial jurisdictions’ (Bays 2012, p. 113). His successor Pius XI followed it with another encyclical letter, Rerum Ecclesiae, on 28 February 1926, which also ‘not only pointed to flaws in the attitudes of many western missionaries but […] affirmed the rights of “natives” [sic] to govern their own local church’ (Wiest 1997, p. 656). He had also sent Celso Constantini as an Apostolic Delegate to China in 1922 to encourage further control by the central Church and indigenisation (Chiron 2019, pp. 179–81; Strong 2018a, pp. 207–13), and he personally ordained six Chinese bishops in Rome on 18 October 1926 (Charbonnier 2002, p. 255).
Meanwhile, China was also undergoing significant changes as it sought to imitate Western models of modernisation and experienced internal struggle and regime change as well as invasion and war. The Qing dynasty fell and was replaced by a Republic in 1912, and during the republican period, not only were the state and its institutions transformed but so was the entire religious landscape of China (Paulès 2019). Older religions sought to acquire some ‘Western’ characteristics (such as the role of the clergy), and the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries witnessed a ‘huge shakeup’ of the five ‘authorised’ religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism (Goossaert and Palmer 2011; Katz and Goossaert 2021). At the same time, nationalism spread throughout the country, enhanced further by the Japanese invasion and the Second World War (Harrison 2001), and tensions between Christianity and Chinese nationalism were high (Xu 1997; Lutz 1976).
So, when the French Jesuit André Yverneau arrived in China in 1948, he arrived in a society undergoing significant transformations. He also found himself in the middle of several tensions within the Catholic Church over policy towards China, as well as between the French and other missionaries, at a time when missionary activity had been closely associated with colonialism. Individual missionaries went overseas therefore with a range of potential objectives amid institutional conflicts. Through the examination of his letters, the remainder of the article will serve as an example of how one Jesuit navigated his way through these debates.
3. The Letters of André Yverneau
Of the letters that André Yverneau wrote to his family during his years in China, a collection of 45 of them remains together, which was intended for circulation. Several had been typed (by him), although he wrote to his mother suggesting that she should have those which were manuscript typed up so that they could be passed along among the wider family but that she could then conserve the originals for herself (André Yverneau to Amélie (Lhotte) Yverneau, henceforth (AY to ALY 29.08.1948)). Occasionally, he also included specific requests to have letters also shown to priests and Jesuits of his acquaintance who he thought would be interested in their contents. By the end of his stay, the family had preserved and organised the typed version for circulation, which remained together, along with a few other letters and documents, up to the present day. Before turning to the content, the next section will present a brief overview of his life up to the point that he left for China in 1948.
3.1. Early Life
André Yverneau was born in a small hamlet in rural Picardie called Clermont-les-Fermes on 19 December 1921, the second child in a large-scale farming family with seven children. Although at the time France had been a Republic for fifty years, this region had remained strongly Catholic (Baycroft 2008)1, and he grew up surrounded by a very involved and practising extended network of family. He was educated at Saint Joseph College, a Jesuit-run boarding school in Reims, France, from which he graduated in 1939. During his final year, following discussions with priests at his school, he made the decision that he wanted to become a priest, and, in particular, that he wanted to become a Jesuit and enter the mission to China through the Champagne regional Jesuit centre. Although the war had already begun, he formally entered the novitiate on 14 November 1939 and took his first vows in August 1942 (Jubilé 1989, pp. 7–14).
It was at this point that the war intervened more directly in his life, and in late July 1943, he was asked by his Jesuit superiors to volunteer as a worker to go to Germany under the national STO scheme, whereby for every three French workers going to Germany to work in the factories there, the Germans would release one French prisoner of war. After the scheme had not attracted enough volunteers, they began conscripting Frenchmen to go. His father objected at first, not wanting him to contribute, even if indirectly, to the German war effort, but when André explained the goals of the Church, his father relented and consented to his going (as is usual with brothers and priests in the Catholic Church, when abbreviating his name, his given name will be used). The French Jesuit authorities decided to send a number of priests and novices like André to act as unofficial (in fact, underground) chaplains in order to ensure that there was a Christian presence surrounding the regular French workers. It was not without risk, for the Nazis declared such activities illegal, whether saying a mass for the workers or supporting them spiritually in other ways, and in fact, quite a number of these French Catholic envoys were arrested and sent to concentration camps, where some were executed (Beschet 1989). André was not arrested, although some of his friends were, and he also wrote to his sister of the beating to death of a fellow French seminarian worker in his factory, requesting that she not tell their parents of the extent to which he was risking his life (AY to Marie-Thérèse (Yverneau) Gérard and Jacques Gérard, henceforth (AY to MTYG and JG 7.12.1943; Jégo 1966)). In the factory, he worked 11 h days while also finding time to take communion clandestinely to French prisoners. In the end, he spent almost two years in Sonderhausen in the Thuringia region of Germany, returning to France only at the end of the war in May 1945.
Following the war, he resumed the normal track for a Jesuit in training for the priesthood and the mission. He studied philosophy for three years in the town of Vals-près-le-Puy in the Loire Valley until 1948, when he was given permission to leave for China, where he would continue his studies and work in the field for the next phase of his training. He travelled south to Marseille, where he spent a couple of days with his brother Michel, before boarding the ship Champollion, which left for China on 27 July 1948, taking the route through the Suez Canal and arriving in Hong Kong just over a month later on 29 August. He would then spend just under three years in China, divided between Shanghai and Beijing (Jubilé 1989).
3.2. General Impressions of China
We will begin our examination of André Yverneau’s letters by looking at his more general impressions of China, from the anecdotal through to the analytical. He had a great laugh the first time that he and a fellow missionary, Father Lesteven, used chopsticks to eat. He described the procedure to his family, how everyone had to take an individual piece, dip it in sauce, and then eat it. He managed to eat some meat and take from a dish of mushrooms, but by the third dish, he said that he had to ‘admit defeat’, for they had been served noodles with pieces of onion, which he ‘could never manage to take with my chopsticks and hold on without them sliding away’ (AY to ALY 6.09.1948). At the same time, he found that watching his colleague’s attempts, he could not remain serious and refrain from laughing. At the same meal, he observed that the rice wine they served was extremely strong: ‘at least 30 or 40 percent alcohol’.
In terms of clothing and general style, shortly after his arrival in Shanghai, he began to wear a long form of Chinese ‘coat’ or overgarment that was made of very light material (at least some percentage silk), cream-coloured, not weighing more than 150 g, and which fastened on the right-hand side, unlike the European equivalent which would have fastened at the top (AY to ALY 11.09.1948). He observed that while some of the men dressed in this manner, a good many dressed in European styles, as did most of the children. Meanwhile, almost none of the women dressed in European styles but wore Chinese-style dresses, all of the same cut but in different colours, and which were ‘elegant, with a closed collar at the top, like the men, and going down to the knees. In general, they are short-sleeved, without a belt, and of one single piece.’ He felt that in France, such dresses would ‘be considered too simple’ (AY to ALY 11.09.1948). He also observed that very few men had facial hair: ‘only a few hairs on their chin, and barely more on their upper lip’.
Another of his more general observations was the extreme heat of China, which he discovered from day to day was ‘not only a physical phenomenon that can be recorded on a barometer’ but was also a living reality that not only made one sweat profusely but was also in fact extremely difficult to bear and quite frustrating (AY to ALY 24.06.1949). It took him a lot of attempts and questioning of others, but in the end, he found that the solution, to his great surprise, was to drink a lot of hot water, which ‘has the double advantage of not having a headache, and being “fresh” for the whole day’ (AY to ALY 24.06.1949). He further said that many of the priests were becoming ill because, at the times of great heat, they would then take a quick chill, so he also had a strategy of continuing to wear a sleeveless sweater during the hot months, which prevented the ‘sudden chills’ following periods of sweating (AY to ALY 10.08.1949). During the colder months, he found that they had ample heating but also that the Chinese winter clothing, doubled in cotton, was ample and light in terms of weight but excellent as well in terms of warmth, for he ‘would have never believed they could be so warm’ (AY to ALY 13.01.1949).
Very shortly after his arrival in China, he confided that his general impression was that it was a disorienting country, and although this was mildly less true when he was in the familiar setting of a Catholic mass, he found the streets quite difficult to navigate, particularly given the size and compactness of the crowds. He compared Shanghai to Paris: the French capital was all speed and noise, whereas in Shanghai, ‘we are squeezed’ and ‘everyone moves slowly’ (AY to ALY 11.09.1948). Upon arriving in Beijing, he made a further comparison with Shanghai: ‘It has now been several days that I am in Beijing; delicious days in a charming country. Beijing is all beauty; the people here are extremely polite. What a change from Shanghai where everyone is jostling one another and where no-one thinks of anyone but themselves.’ (AY to ALY 2.10.1948).
His observations also extended to the deeper cultural traits and differences with the French. Following the first meal that he was given in a Chinese home, he wrote that the Chinese ‘really have a great love of art, especially of painting, and a great sense of family. Then [his host] showed some family photos. What care and what order! Ten times better organized and cared for than by Jacques Yverneau! [his older brother]’ (AY to ALY 27.08.1948). On further differences, he observed that ‘the children exhibit even more exuberance in their breaks than in France; they shout without quarrelling. Yesterday, a child fell in the street in front of me and began to cry (he was filthy and in rags); friends who were playing with him began by bursting out laughing and then quickly came to console him’ (AY to ALY 11.09.1948). When writing to his brother and sister-in-law, he further observed that ‘It is surprising to see how much the Chinese seek to find a meaning to their lives; as soon as they begin speaking with you, it is to discuss religion; sometimes they are for, sometimes against; the most often they are seeking’ (AY to Jacques Yverneau and Bernadette (L’Hotte) Yverneau, henceforth (AY to JY and BLY 20.09.1948)). Following a reading of the novel Rickshaw Boy by Lao She 老舍, André’s assessment was that not only was it an excellent book, but also that ‘it reflects the Chinese mentality extremely well, with all the desperation of pagan thought, but above all a tremendous vitality and good reactions to life; it is the opposite of France, where even the pagans do not have such lack of hope, but where such vitality is also absent, even among Catholics.’ (AY to ALY 6.08.1948).
3.3. Education
Education had always been central to the Jesuit philosophy, in terms of educating themselves in the languages and cultures in which they were working, through building schools and universities in those communities, as well as through inter-cultural dialogue, mutual exchange and cooperative learning. This may explain their particular interest in China, where there was also a long tradition of education and scholarship. Historically and in the twentieth century, the Jesuits engaged in the translation of works in both directions and established a series of educational institutions, including Chabanel, an ensemble of ancient Chinese buildings which the Jesuits used as their base in Beijing for the teaching of Chinese, and the Xujiahui complex in Shanghai (originally called ZiKaWei, and sometimes written Tou-Se-We), which included multiple different educational institutions for the training of mostly Chinese students. Although, as discussed in part 2, they were criticised for having a curriculum which was too ‘Western’, particularly because of the French influence (Mo 2022), they were nevertheless seen by many as having a positive impact on Chinese society (Katz and Goossaert 2021; Hayward 1974). Too many of the French conveyed a sense of their cultural superiority along with the education they were providing, although this did not imply that they did not care about China or their students; on the contrary: ‘there is no doubt that the French Jesuits imparted to their students, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, a legacy of deep commitment to their compatriots and their country’ (Wiest 1997, p. 671). Meanwhile, among the Chinese, there was a recognition that significant elements of Western education—science in particular—were absolutely needed to help modernise China and were therefore accepted and even welcomed and encouraged in many circumstances.
In terms of his thoughts regarding education in China, André Yverneau’s views corresponded more to the historic position of the Jesuits than to those of the majority of the French (including Jesuits) in the first half of the twentieth century. He devoted his first two years in China to learning the Chinese language. His first years were spent at the Chabanel site, where he began among a cohort of 80 students from a range of countries, although the number would diminish significantly by the end of his time there due to others fleeing from fear of the civil war (AY to MTYG and JG 10.10.1948). He felt that they followed a ’good method’, with 6 h of classes each day, and his group hoped to finish the first book in less than a single year, which was the standard time (AY to ALY 13.01.1949). In mid-1949, he estimated that he would have learned around 2000 characters by the end of his first year, and although he had been told that one needed to know around 3000 to be able to read, he aimed to begin reading before that (AY to ALY 27.06.1949). In fact, it took him less time than he anticipated, and by the autumn of 1949, he felt that he had learned approximately 3500 and was going to re-orient his studies towards conversation, reading newspapers and books, as well as writing (AY to ALY 17.10.1949). By the time he returned to Shanghai, he expressed how much it was a true pleasure to be able to ‘listen to people chatting and to speak with them’, though he lamented that learning the national Mandarin in Beijing had not equipped him to understand the Shanghai dialect often spoken in the streets, a frustration which led him to begin studying Shanghainese on top of the rest of his studies (AY to ALY 17.06.1950).
He was also given a Chinese name quite early during his stay in China, which was 范牧民 pronounced Fan Mu Min. In this format, Fan is the surname, which is a common Chinese surname, and which means mould or pattern. Mu Min is his given name, and it means shepherd, herdsman, or, as he interpreted the phrase, ‘pastor of the people’. It was a name which he said did not displease him. He was grateful to have received it and only hoped that it would prove true, writing that if only he could live up to it, he would be content (AY to ALY 1.11.1948).
As seen above, he was also interested in reading Chinese works and in other forms of Chinese culture. In June of 1949, his superiors organised a week of lectures on ‘Chinese culture’, which he found particularly fascinating. They discussed Chinese philosophy, read some poetry from the Han dynasty, and learned about Chinese literature, which, he explained to his mother, was ‘more than anything else social literature, with the goal of moralising’ (AY to ALY 24.06.1949). He was also very interested to learn about Chinese popular theatre, which was one of the primary forms of education for an illiterate population that knew well the stories of the heroes and had learned entire plays by heart. He himself attended theatre on several occasions, relating one particular instance where he attended a performance of Cao Yu’s 曹禺 play ‘Thunder and Rain’ at the Grand Theatre in Beijing,2 which he felt was a masterpiece that could be compared to Racine’s ‘Phèdre’, both of which were also not particularly ‘moral’ (AY to ALY 11.11.1949). He also recounted the first time that he sang a song in Chinese by heart in front of Chinese people, which, to his delight, he found that they had understood. One of his interlocutors even commented afterwards that being able to sing that song showed that he had become truly integrated (AY to ALY 27.06.1949).
On several occasions, both together and via the radio, they exchanged and shared music with the Chinese, including one time when their French choir performed at the Franco-Chinese University in Beijing (AY to ALY 13.01.1949). When evaluating these kinds of cultural interactions, he felt that ‘In general, the Chinese view our collaboration in artistic programmes positively, … especially now that the organization is always left to the Chinese. The reactions of the people are mostly favourable, and they are open with the missionaries’ (AY to ALY 1.11.1948).
Similarly, during his time in Shanghai, he had been most impressed with the educational facilities that had been developed by the Jesuits:
‘We visited the university with its 800 students … magnificent buildings with rooms for practical work for future engineers; the school is next door, with its 1300 students, run solely by the Chinese (the rector of the university is also Chinese). Everything is extremely modern … much more modern then in France […] Beautiful good work has already been done by the missionaries.’
(AY to JY and BLY 20.09.1948)
Upon visiting the two orphanages at the site, one for boys being run by the Jesuits in which they were taught a vast range of artisanal skills, and another for girls, run by Catholic sisters, where the girls were also being taught multiple skills, he was also extremely impressed, praising the beauty and magnificence of the work the pupils were producing (AY to ALY 11.09.1948).
Overall, André was extremely interested in learning Chinese and about Chinese culture, and at the same time felt that education was one of the most positive dimensions of Jesuit activity in China. He did not specifically reflect upon the content of the curriculum for the Chinese students, though he was, as it has been shown, extremely favourable to the idea of Chinese leadership among missionary-sponsored educational institutions, which leads us to the next area: his views on the indigenisation of the clergy.
3.4. Indigenisation
Although it had begun several hundred years before, the central policy aim of the Catholic leadership in the Holy See to indigenise the clergy throughout the world and normalise the administrative structures of the Church under local leadership had not only still not been achieved in China in the twentieth century but also was in fact still being resisted by individual missionaries and missionary orders (especially among the French). Some simply felt the Chinese were not ready to run their own churches and dioceses, while others were interested in maintaining national power structures and preserving the European leadership in the Church (Zhang 2023). As we have seen for education, André Yverneau was impressed and pleased when he saw educational institutions being run by the Chinese, and this is also true of his thinking for the whole of the church. His views were most poignantly revealed when he recounted to his family a visit to Saigon during his voyage to China, in which he attended a small, private luncheon with General Blaizot, the commander in chief of all the French forces in the Far East, who had previously been posted in Beijing, among other places, and who therefore knew China well. He dined with the General and his wife because of a family connection, the General being the brother of one of André’s cousins by marriage. He preceded his discussion of this lunch with a comment that he had already met and engaged in conversation with quite a few officers, missionaries, and colonial settlers, all of whom were ‘defeatist, seeing the situation as black’ (AY to ALY 27.08.1948). He was pleased to find his relation to be of a different mindset, writing of him:
‘What is striking about him is that he knows the Far East very well; […] he is an intelligent man, and I had the pleasure of meeting a military man who thinks about other things than fighting and who seeks to understand the Indochinese [sic]. His opinion is that we cannot hold Indochina as a colony as we did before the war, and even if we could, we should not, because the Indochinese are ready to govern themselves. […] if other colonists, missionaries and soldiers are pessimistic, it is because they want Indochina to return to its colonial status from before the war, without taking into account that the Indochinese have evolved significantly. The great mistake that, for example, missionaries make, is not to have trained an indigenous clergy that can lead, and with whom they could work in collaboration; one would think they were afraid of indigenous clergy… or of losing their place. […] I very much liked [this] way of putting things, and it is the attitude I will have in China and which is the only possible one today.[…]’
(AY to ALY 27.08.1948)
André confirmed his views on his stay there upon meeting one of the indigenous priests of the region who was running a huge parish on the outskirts of Saigon, and who André found to be ‘profoundly spiritual’, and who made tremendous sacrifices for his parish and parishioners. He concluded that ‘it is one of the greatest consolations for a missionary to see at his side those who he or his predecessors have trained and who are every bit as worthy if not more so’ (AY to ALY 27.08.1948).
A short time later, however, he was spending time with another group of experienced French missionaries, and he found them to be very much of a different point of view with respect to the readiness of the Chinese and Indochinese to begin to run their own churches, and related it as follows to his family:
‘But it is really too bad; I could not tell the missionary fathers what cousin René’s brother [the General] had said, […] and similarly I did not try to tell them the spirit in which I was going to China: to put myself at the service of the Chinese clergy; I tried a little, but I quickly understood that it would be better not to insist upon the point and not to create a tense atmosphere for the few days that we are staying here’.
(AY to ALY 27.08.1948)
The above-mentioned letter clearly shows that André’s own viewpoint did not correspond to the general view that historians have described for the French missionaries to China in this period, and he himself was fully aware that his view was sufficiently unusual and contradictory to prefer to keep it to himself. He was not completely alone, however, for he went on to say that: ‘I might have thought my thinking novel, … but a Franciscan missionary in Indochina with whom I spoke was every bit as much on the side of [the general]’ as André was (AY to ALY 27.08.1948). Furthermore, a fellow missionary, replying to a letter in which André had expressed these sentiments, agreed with André regarding the ‘different possible futures for China’, and that he also hopes to live in a ‘solid union’ with the Chinese, ‘to forge the kind of unity which is indispensable’ (FG to AY 16.11.1947).
André was not the only observer of exceptions to the general tendency of the French resistance to indigenisation. Historians have documented the cases of other French priests in the early twentieth century who were outspokenly vocal in their criticism of their fellow French missionaries and their support for the central policy of the Church (Clark 2017b, p. 124). The two most well-known examples are Vincent-Frédéric Marie Lebbe 雷鳴遠 and Antoine Cotta 湯作霖 (Carbonneau 2010, p. 517; Strong 2018a, pp. 156–60). For several years, they sought to end the dominance of the French protectorate and to encourage the indigenisation of the Catholic Church in China. In the end, the protectorate remained in force until 1947, just before the arrival of André (Li 2023, p. 10).
A final illustration of André’s views regarding indigenisation came towards the end of his stay in China when he wrote to his mother requesting aid to help bring a Chinese woman who had joined the church to a relatively new abbey in Belgium, which had already accepted women from around the world but not yet from China. One of the local priests considered that she had a great future contribution to make to the Chinese Catholic Church but that it would be greater yet if she were able to complete her studies in Europe. Insufficient funds were available in China, however, so André requested his mother to do the rounds of the family and see if she could find the sum necessary to pay for the young woman’s travel ticket to Belgium (the rest had already been covered), explaining in detail the qualities of the young woman, her family, and how much she would be able to contribute positively to the Chinese Catholic church (AY to ALY 3.12.1950).
3.5. Political Observations
Although subject to censorship, André’s letters did contain a number of observations regarding the significant political and military changes in China that he was living through, even if he occasionally regretted openly that he could not communicate the most interesting things on the topic. He arrived during the civil war between the Republican government led by Chiang Kai-Shek and the Communists led by Mao Zedong, and was there during the liberation of Beijing by the Communist Red Army, as well as at the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. He made a number of simple factual remarks about the state of the war, and as the fighting approached Beijing, he warned his family that letters might not reach them for some time (perhaps as long as two years) and also reassured his family that the worst that could happen to him was to be sent back to France, which in any case was more likely for the senior figures than for the younger missionaries like himself. He went on to say that Beijing itself remained calm, that life was continuing perfectly normally, and that food was still available at reasonable prices (AY to ALY 14.11.1948).
As the fighting grew closer to Beijing, he wrote about how many of his fellow missionaries chose to flee—the Americans first then the Canadians, the Spanish, and then several others. The Father Superior had allowed everyone to leave, not wanting to retain anyone in a situation that ‘while not really perilous, was nevertheless uncertain’ (AY to ALY 28.11.1948). His view was that they had quite a number of fellow seminarians who were Chinese and who he felt were at greater risk than himself, and he thought that it would be better if he stayed with them. In early January 1949, as the fighting grew even closer, he wrote that he could occasionally hear the sound of gunfire or cannons; he also reported that though they had no electricity, they did have enough gasoline to make up for it, and they had been 3 weeks without water, but that it was working again (AY to ALY 2.01.1949).
André was quite guarded in his direct statements regarding his own political opinions about the political changes he would witness. Mostly, he had an open mind and was relatively open to see how the new government would behave. On two occasions, he stated that he thought it was a positive sign that the Chinese Communist Party looked like it was ‘increasingly separating itself from Moscow’ (AY to ALY 14.11.1948), and he certainly hoped that after their victory and once they were ‘the masters of China’, that they would ‘turn their backs on Moscow’ (AY to ALY 28.11.1948).
In the end, it only took two months after the liberation of Beijing by the Communists for correspondence to resume, and André was able to send news to his mother on 19 March 1949, their complex having escaped damage during the fighting. He was also able to reassure her regarding the next phase, writing that they had not been worried at all and that:
‘Right from the first days, a police officer in civilian clothing came to see us and to declare that he was in charge of defending our interests, and that if even the smallest thing happened to any of us, the offender would be punished to death [sic] by the “liberation army”. This was confirmed in the last few days by the slogans that have been announced and which tell the people that they must think about the “protection of immigrants”. So you see, dear mother, we have nothing to fear, and are calmly continuing to study our Chinese’.
(AY to ALY 19.03.1949)
In another letter, he also said that ‘since the liberation the police network has been organized and is so well done that there is nothing at all to fear from the point of view of thieves or bandits’ (AY to ALY 17.06.1950). With the liberation, not only was order and calm re-established but also various other matters were organised and regulated as the new government quite quickly took control. Some André considered positive, as with the question of policing, or in another case where faced with an outbreak of plague, the government responded with ‘diligence’, contained the situation and was able to distribute vaccinations (AY to ALY 11.11.1949). At other times, he recognised the efficiency but was less pleased, as when they were all required to pay a bicycle tax, which nevertheless came with a registration number for the bicycle which helped with security (AY to ALY 17.03.1950). Overall, he felt that, certainly in terms of security, they were fine and that ‘the “liberation army” wants to protect us’ (AY to ALY 17.06.1950).
On the theme of personal danger, he compared the situation directly with his time as a chaplain/worker in Nazi Germany, pointing out that in any case, the risk for himself was ‘considerably less than when I was in Sonderhausen’ (AY to ALY 29.07.1949). A few of his fellow priests were either sent home or imprisoned; in one case, it was some senior professors sent to prison for just a few days for having forbidden the student’s entry into the professors’ garden (AY to ALY 11.11.1949). He did spend much time dwelling on or giving examples of direct persecution, though at one point he did write that he felt that the ‘persecution was slowing down’ which does suggest that although he had not dwelled on it, persecution had clearly been happening (AY to ALY 19.01.1950). A short time later, although writing that a series of troubles had been resolved and everything was calm, that nevertheless ‘you do not need to be a prophet to see that clouds are approaching’ (AY to ALY 17.03.1950).
When he analysed the overall effect on Chinese society, he felt that the change had been rapid and that they were ‘heading towards a new society, in which the first characteristic is to reject the customs and traditions which it had held up until now,’ and which had really caught up the enthusiasm of the youth with whom he was in regular discussions, and who are ‘really caught up’ in the new movement (AY to ALY 17.10.1949). Plans were announced to transform Beijing into a new capital worthy of such a huge country (AY to ALY 17.10.1949), and the new government had opened up four ‘popular universities’, which were extremely successful and attracting multiple students, including away from the more traditional universities (AY to ALY 19.03.1949). One of the most intriguing changes he observed was the new vocabulary, such as the police being called ‘public security’ and the routine use of the term ‘bourgeois spirit’ (negatively), the regular use of which he said was simply a question of habit (AY to ALY 27.06.1949). Meanwhile, ‘democratic values were taking root everywhere’; the schools were now run by committees with teachers, students and domestic staff all represented (AY to ALY 19.03.1949). There was also a ‘delegate of the people’ sent by the government to oversee each committee, but they rarely intervened. He felt that the change in involving the students was positive since it was their education, ‘as long as they are not too lazy, which never happens here’ (AY to ALY 27.06.1949). In the end, they did have the odd conflict between the teaching staff and the students, as well as between the teaching and domestic staff, which had a tendency to drag on, though most of the incidents were quite minor and were ultimately resolved by Chabanel having to pay a fine (AY to ALY 17.03.1950).
Following his return to Shanghai and his hospitalisation for tuberculosis, he sent fewer letters and had less to say about the political situation. He was pleased with the medical care that he received when in China, not only towards the end but also earlier in his stay when he had been treated for eye troubles (AY to ALY 16.10.1948), and at other times when he observed the quality of the care for others (AY to ALY 2.01.1949). During his final stay, he was quite comfortable in the hospital, though frustrated that he would have to put off the start of his studies in philosophy (AY to Michel Yverneau 18.11.1950). And although he was discharged from the hospital and able to resume his place in the Xujiahui monastery, in the end, he returned to France for health reasons rather than because he was expelled for political ones (AY to ALY 18.12.1950).
He left China on a flight from Guangzhou3 on 6 March 1951, resumed his studies in Belgium, and was ordained a priest on 26 July 1953. He then had further treatment in order to recover fully from his tuberculosis and spent another year in France before he departed for a second mission to Madagascar on 26 September 1957, where he would remain for just over 60 years until his death on 24 October 2017 at the age of 95 (Jubilé 1989).
Shortly after his departure in 1951, the 888 remaining foreign Jesuit priests were expelled from China (Leung 2010, p. 793; China Missionary 1952), and within a few years, the last of the foreign missionaries had left or been forced out of China, the final one departing in 1957 (Bays 2012, pp. 171–75; Vermander 2012, pp. 107–29; Clark 2017). Many went to neighbouring Asian countries, hoping at some point to return to China (Strong 2018b, pp. 339–48). The Chinese Catholic Church then had to function on its own for several decades, often underground, which demonstrates that the efforts made to ordain Chinese clergy were successful in their objectives and that the faith the Holy See had in them was well founded (Clark 2017b).
4. Conclusions
The 45 letters of André Yverneau, written in a tumultuous transitionary period amid a significantly changing China, reveal an interesting personal story, contain a wealth of interesting observations about the Chinese people and missionary society, and reflect the complexity of any individual situation amid large-scale critical events. Although the years he spent in China were years of crisis, and for much of his time he was ill, he repeated to his family on numerous occasions how happy he was to be there and how he did not regret his decision to come to China, nor his decision to remain throughout the civil war and its aftermath, even if it was nothing like he had imagined it would be when he signed up in November 1939 (AY to ALY 16.10.1948; AY to ALY 28.11.1948; AY to ALY 19.06.1949). As his letters have shown, he was dedicated to learning Chinese and serving the Church in China in the name of his faith. Towards the end of his life, though he felt that he had done good work in Madagascar, it was not the fulfilment of his youthful ambition, which was to have spent his life in China.
An analytical reading of his letters also illustrates the nature and scale of the underlying debates surrounding the Catholic Church and its global missionary activities. Centuries had not been enough to resolve the specific question of the indigenisation of the clergy, which was not only a source of tension at the global, institutional level between the Church and individual states but also within the Catholic Church itself, between missionaries of different nationalities and even among those from the same nation and region (Chiron 2019; Carbonneau 2010; Strong 2018a, 2018b; Charbonnier 2002; Zhang 2023). As his letters show, between 1948 and 1951, André Yverneau found himself in the minority among the French Jesuits in his support of the central position in favour of encouraging the indigenisation of the Chinese Catholic Church. This debate in which he participated transcends period and locality and confirms that the internal controversies surrounding the control of the missions were still very much alive in the mid-twentieth century and that they were not restricted to a handful of elites in Rome. It further suggests the importance of the topic and the need for it to be studied more thoroughly at an international level, beyond individual case studies, or in popular culture, as with the film The Mission (Joffé 1986). The lived reality of missionaries on the ground thus included an awareness of and active participation in these debates. Of course, as with André Yverneau, these debates did not prevent individuals from engaging in constructive work in education or other kinds of pastoral support while they were active. Although not achieved in the natural course of things, by necessity following the expulsion of the foreign priests, the Chinese Catholic Church was ultimately successfully indigenised in the twentieth century, thanks in part to the groundwork that had been laid in the previous decades, and also to the determination and efforts of the Chinese priesthood (Standaert 2017; Prudhomme 2001).
Not applicable.
Not applicable.
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.
I would like to thank the family of André Yverneau, and in particular Jean-François Gérard, for granting me access to the family collection. I would also like to thank the numerous readers of earlier versions, whose comments have been helpful: Christine, 张锐, Emily, Charlie, Thomas, Gerrie, the three anonymous reviewers from Religions and the special issue editor, 李天纲.
The author declares no conflict of interest.
Footnotes
1. The regional division was so significant that scholars refer to ‘2 France’s’ from the Revolution onwards: republican anticlerical France and Catholic France.
2. He used the old form of writing the name, which was Tsaoin.
3. He used the old form of writing the name, which was Canton.
Footnotes
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