Böcker av Anthony E. Clark

This book features a collection of essays on China's modern Catholic Church by a scholar of China-West intellectual and religious exchange.

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 Chinäs 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.

One of the most violent episodes of China's Boxer Uprising was the Taiyuan Massacre of 1900, in which rebels killed foreign missionaries and thousands of Chinese Christians. This book focuses on Shanxi Province that illuminates the religious and cultural beliefs on both sides of the conflict and shows how they came to clash.

While previous works on the history of Christianity in China have largely centered on the scientific and philosophical areas of Catholic missions in the Middle Kingdom, Chinas Saints recounts the history of Christian martyrdom, precipitated as it was by cultural antagonisms and misunderstanding. Anthony Clark shows that Christianity in China began and grew under similar circumstances to those during the Roman Empire, with the notable exception that Catholic missionaries were not successful at producing a Chinese Constantine. One of the principal results of Catholic martyrdom in China was the increased indigenization of Christianity. During the reconstruction of mission churches, hospitals, and orphanages after the hostilities of the Boxer Uprising (18981900), the Roman Catholic tradition of venerating martyrs was attached to the reinvigoration of Christian communities. Not only did Catholic architecture accommodate to Chinese sensibilities, but causes for sainthood were also begun at the Vatican to add Chinese names to the Churchs list of saints. The implications of Clarks work extend beyond the subject of Christianity in China to the broader fields of cultural, social, economic, political, and religious history. This pioneering study follows the trails of Western missionaries and Chinese converts as they negotiate the religious and cultural chasms that existed between the West and China, and it demonstrates that these differences resulted in two very different outcomes. Whereas converts appear to have bridged the cultural divide, often to the point of self-sacrifice, political and cultural tensions on the macro level sometimes ended with forceful conflicts. This book contributes to a deeper understanding of cultural and religious interaction, and provides an account of an heretofore unstudied chapter in the history of Christianity on the global landscape.