The Requerimiento (“Requirement”) was a document that Spanish explorers and conquerors read to Native Americans in order to claim authority over them and their lands (see Documents).
According to the Requerimiento, composed by the Spanish jurist Juan Lopez de Palacios Rubios in 1513, God had given dominion over all people to St. Peter, and this grant of jurisdiction had descended from him to the popes. Because Pope Alexander VI had given authority over the “islands and mainland of the Ocean Sea to the Catholic kings of Spain,” the Spanish claimed that they had legitimate power over Indian lands and peoples.
The Requerimiento told Indians that they must submit to Spanish and Catholic authority and warned them that they would face severe penalties if they refused. It commanded Indians to recognize the authority of the Catholic Church and the Spanish monarch. The Indians also had to allow Spanish priests to preach among them. If they refused to submit to these new authorities, the Requerimiento continued, “I will enter forcefully against you, and I will make war everywhere and however I can, and I will subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and His Majesty, and I will take your wives and children and I will make them slaves. . . and I will take your goods, and I will do to you all the evil and damages that a lord may do to vassals who do not obey or receive him. And I solemnly declare that the deaths and damages received from such will be your fault and not that of His Majesty, nor mine, nor of the gentlemen who came with me.” The Requerimiento allowed the Spanish to claim that any war they took part in against the Indians was a just war, because the Indians were resisting their legitimate authority. However, the Requerimiento did not have to be read in Indian languages, nor were the Spanish required to make sure the Indians understood what they were hearing. As the historian Patricia Seed observed, it might even be “read at full speed from the deck of a ship at night before a daytime raid [or] read to assembled empty huts and trees.”
The Requerimiento was controversial in Spain and derided in other European countries. The Spanish Dominican friar Bartolome de Las Casas wrote that the Requerimiento was “unjust, impious, scandalous, irrational and absurd” and added that he did not know “whether to laugh or cry” at its demands. The English, French, and Dutch had nothing resembling the Requerimiento in their colonial empires and so also criticized it. Sir Walter Ralegh wrote, “No Christian prince, under the pretence of Christianity only, and of forcing of men to receive the gospel. . . may attempt the invasion of any free people not under their vassalage; for Christ gave not that power to Christians as Christians.”
Further reading: Noble David Cook, “Requerimiento,” in Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol. 4, ed. Barbara A. Tenenbaum (New York: Scribner’s, 1996); Lyle N. McAlister, Spain and Portugal in the New World, 14921700 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984); Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, c. 1500-c. 1800 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995); Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
—Martha K. Robinson
Ricci, Matteo (1552-1610) missionary
A member of the Society of Jesus (see Jesuits) who led the first successful Jesuit mission to China during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Matteo Ricci spent 28 years in China, dying in Beijing as a universally admired and respected scholar, even though the Chinese converts he inspired were later disowned by the church.
Ricci was born in Macerata, Italy, on October 6, 1552. At the age of nine he entered the Jesuit school there and, after seven years of study, became a novice in the Society of Jesus in Rome. Ignatius Loyola founded the Jesuits in 1540 as part of the Counterreeormation against the
An illustration from a Chinese manuscript of the Jesuit missionary to China, Matteo Ricci, and his first convert (Hulton/Archive)
Protestants. Education and scholarship became an important part of their missionary enterprise. Ricci’s studies were not completed until May 1577, when he went to Portugal to learn the language, after which the church sent him to the Portuguese trading colony at Goa in India.
The Portuguese led the way in the European rediscovery of China in the early 16th century. Their efforts to establish an overseas empire in South and Southeast Asia centered on the dual pillars of trade and Christianity. Missionary work was frequently the most important part of their enterprise. With the establishment of a small colony at Macao (1555), in southeastern China, the Portuguese attempted to continue this pattern but met with serious difficulties.
China at the time was under the rule of the Ming (1368-1644), who had thrown off the yoke of the foreign Mongols to establish a native Chinese dynasty. As a result, China’s leaders were generally violently antiforeign, convinced of Chinese cultural superiority and determined to keep out unwanted foreign influences. The Chinese allowed the Portuguese to establish themselves at Macao because it was a small, unimportant place far removed from China’s commercial, cultural, and governmental centers. Local government officials rebuffed any efforts on the part of the Portuguese to send Catholic missionaries into the interior.
Arriving at Macao in 1582, Matteo Ricci was assigned to join a fellow Jesuit, Michele Ruggieri, in studying to speak, write, and read Chinese. Ricci was by this time a respected scholar possessed of an extremely acute memory. This ability helped him learn the 3,000 to 4,000 Chinese characters he needed to communicate with potential converts. Whereas missionary efforts of the Portuguese in India and the Spanish in America often were accompanied by fire and sword, the Jesuits chose a quieter, more patient path in China. Whether by accident or design, their choices of conscientious scholars capable of communicating in the native language were just the sort of people to impress Chinese officials and gentry, who greatly revered scholarship and learning.
In 1583 Ricci and Ruggieri were invited to reside with the governor of Gwangdong and Gwangxi Provinces in Zhaoqing. Chinese officials remained suspicious of the missionaries, suspecting that invading Portuguese troops might follow behind them, a reasonable fear at the time. As a result, they imposed serious restrictions on Ricci and Ruggieri. In order to reside in the interior, they were forced to adopt Chinese dress and subject themselves to imperial law. At first Ricci chose to wear the robes of a Chinese priest, but after 1594 he exchanged them for scholar’s robes, a move that brought him a greater degree of respect and deference, as scholars in China had a much higher reputation than priests.
During his time at Zhaoqing Ricci impressed the Chinese by his diligent study of their language and literature and drew for them a map showing China in relation to the rest of the world that was widely (and illegally) reprinted throughout the nation. He did not attempt to make converts, and after seven years’ residence the newly incoming governor forced him to return to Canton. He lived in several other provincial cities and towns, quietly making Chinese converts among the scholar gentry and translating major Chinese scholarly works into Latin and Western works into Chinese.
In 1598 Ricci was allowed to travel to Beijing, but he was unable to gain an audience with the emperor. After spending some time in Nanjing, he finally returned to Beijing in January 1601 and remained there the rest of his life. During his time there he impressed the emperor and his advisers with his knowledge of Western science and philosophy and his interest in Chinese literature and scholarship. He made a number of converts among the Chinese upper classes, but peasants and townsmen did not particularly interest him.
Ricci wrote frequently to Rome asking that an effort be made to send only the most learned and intelligent priests.
By the time of his death on May 11, 1610, Ricci was so admired by the imperial court that his burial plot was a personal gift of the emperor. Following the example set by Ricci, a series of highly gifted Jesuit missionaries took up residence in Beijing and managed to maintain a place close to the throne even after the Ming Dynasty had been overthrown by the Manchu Qing (1644-1911).
Ricci’s influence was apparent before his death and continued well after. In the age when the PRINTING PRESS made it possible to disseminate information widely, Ricci’s writing appeared in Chinese, Latin, Italian, French, and English, the latter in the work of Samuel PuRCHAS. Printers in Rome, Paris, Lyon, London, and elsewhere recognized the value of Ricci’s text. So do modern printers, who continue to reprint his work. His continuing appeal stems from Ricci’s ability to describe Chinese society, paying attention to the rituals of its royals and commoners, its scholars and cities, and the games that people played there. At a time when Europeans were learning much about the inhabitants and resources of the Western Hemisphere, Ricci’s writing served as a reminder of what could be found without crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
Further reading: Vincent Cronin, The Wise Man from the West (London: R. Hart-Davis, 1955); Jonathan D. Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (New York: Penguin Books, 1985); Denis Twitchey and John King Fairbank, eds., The Cambridge History of China, 8 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).
—Paul Dunscomb
World History
