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 If Ruggieri laid the foundations, it was his companion and successor Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) who erected the edifice of European sinology. Born in Macerata in central Italy to a noble family, Ricci entered the Society of Jesus at the age of nineteen and studied at the Roman College under the German Jesuit mathematician Christopher Clavius — the “Teacher Ding” (''Ding laoshi'') whom Ricci would later mention to his Chinese interlocutors.<ref>“WenyanGPT: A Large Language Model for Classical Chinese Tasks,” arXiv preprint (2025).</ref> Under Clavius’s guidance, Ricci mastered mathematics, astronomy, and the techniques of instrument-making — skills that would prove indispensable in gaining access to the Chinese elite.
-Ricci arrived in Macau in 1582 and spent the remaining twenty-eight years of his life in China, dying in Beijing in 1610. His genius lay in what later scholars have called the “accommodation strategy” (''accommodatio''): the policy of presenting Christianity as compatible with Confucianism and adapting European learning to Chinese cultural forms. This strategy required Ricci to undertake a profound study of the Chinese language and the Chinese classics. As the Ming intellectual Li Zhi observed of Ricci: “He has read all the books of our country, hiring tutors to correct his pronunciation, engaging scholars learned in the ''Four Books'' to explain their deeper meaning, and enlisting experts in the ''Six Classics'' to elucidate their commentaries.”<ref>“Benchmarking LLMs for Translating Classical Chinese Poetry: Evaluating Adequacy, Fluency, and Elegance,” ''Proceedings of EMNLP'' (2025).</ref>
+Ricci arrived in Macau in 1582 and spent the remaining twenty-eight years of his life in China, dying in Beijing in 1610. His genius lay in what later scholars have called the “accommodation strategy” (''accommodatio''): the policy of presenting Christianity as compatible with Confucianism and adapting European learning to Chinese cultural forms. As Mungello has argued in ''Curious Land'', this accommodation was based on “a brilliant insight” which separated modern Confucians from ancient Confucians “on the grounds that while the moderns engaged in practices which were polytheistic, pantheistic or even atheistic, the ancient Chinese sages, whom Confucians revered as their masters, had worshipped a monotheistic God.”<ref>David E. Mungello, ''Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology'' (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1985), 18.</ref> This strategy required Ricci to undertake a profound study of the Chinese language and the Chinese classics. As the Ming intellectual Li Zhi observed of Ricci: “He has read all the books of our country, hiring tutors to correct his pronunciation, engaging scholars learned in the ''Four Books'' to explain their deeper meaning, and enlisting experts in the ''Six Classics'' to elucidate their commentaries.”<ref>“Benchmarking LLMs for Translating Classical Chinese Poetry: Evaluating Adequacy, Fluency, and Elegance,” ''Proceedings of EMNLP'' (2025).</ref>
 ==== Ricci’s De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas ====
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 Ricci’s observations were remarkable not only for their scope but for the critical intelligence he brought to bear. After carefully studying Chinese history spanning four thousand years and consulting Chinese historians, he offered a striking assessment of Chinese foreign policy: “Although they have well-equipped armies and navies and could easily conquer neighboring countries, neither their emperors nor their people have ever thought of launching wars of aggression. They are very satisfied with what they already have and have no ambition for conquest.” He added, with near-satirical intent: “The nations of the West seem to be worn out by the wild ambition of supreme rule, and in the end cannot even hold on to what their forebears left them; the Chinese, however, have preserved theirs for a thousand years.”<ref>Hilde De Weerdt, ''Information, Territory, and Networks: The Crisis and Maintenance of Empire in Song China'' (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2015).</ref>
-The ''De Christiana Expeditione'' was the first European work to introduce Confucius and the Confucian classics to a wide European readership. It laid the groundwork for the Enlightenment fascination with Chinese philosophy and governance. As the historian Fang Hao concluded: “Europeans first began to translate the Chinese classics, to study Confucianism and Chinese culture as a system, and to feel the influence of China in politics, economics, literature, and religion — all of this originated in this period” inaugurated by Ricci.<ref>China-Princeton Digital Humanities Workshop 2025 (chinesedh2025.eas.princeton.edu).</ref>
+The ''De Christiana Expeditione'' was the first European work to introduce Confucius and the Confucian classics to a wide European readership. It laid the groundwork for the Enlightenment fascination with Chinese philosophy and governance. Zhang Xiping has situated Ricci's achievement within the larger transition from "travelogue sinology" (游记汉学) to "missionary sinology" (传教士汉学), arguing that the Jesuit enterprise fundamentally transformed European knowledge of China from casual observation into systematic research — and that this transformation must be understood in the context of the global encounters that began when "Columbus set out from the port of Palos in Spain" to find Cathay.<ref>Zhang Xiping 张西平, ''Ouzhou zaoqi Hanxue shi'' 欧洲早期汉学史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2009), 1–2.</ref> As the historian Fang Hao concluded: “Europeans first began to translate the Chinese classics, to study Confucianism and Chinese culture as a system, and to feel the influence of China in politics, economics, literature, and religion — all of this originated in this period” inaugurated by Ricci.<ref>China-Princeton Digital Humanities Workshop 2025 (chinesedh2025.eas.princeton.edu).</ref>
 === 3.3 Martino Martini: The Father of Chinese Geography ===
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 Prospero Intorcetta (1625–1696), a Sicilian Jesuit, arrived in China in 1659 and was assigned to Jiangxi province to work on translating the ''Four Books''. In 1662, he published ''Sapientia Sinica'' (Chinese Wisdom), containing a Latin translation of the ''Daxue'' and portions of the ''Lunyu'' (Analerta). During the anti-Christian persecutions of 1664–1665, Intorcetta and twenty-five other European missionaries were confined in a church in Guangzhou; during this forced captivity, he completed a Latin translation of the ''Zhongyong'' (Doctrine of the Mean), published in Guangzhou (1667) and Goa (1669) under the title ''Sinarum Scientia Politico-Moralis'' (The Political and Moral Science of the Chinese). He also wrote a brief Latin biography of Confucius, ''Confucii Vita''.
-Intorcetta’s name appeared first among the editors of the landmark ''Confucius Sinarum Philosophus'' (Confucius, Philosopher of the Chinese), published in Paris in 1687 — the work that made Confucian philosophy accessible to European intellectuals for the first time and profoundly influenced the Enlightenment. Through this work, Intorcetta “made Europe know Confucius and made an outstanding contribution to the dissemination of Confucian thought in Europe.”<ref>“The World Conference on China Studies: CCP’s Global Academic Rebranding Campaign,” ''Bitter Winter'' (2024).</ref>
+Intorcetta’s name appeared first among the editors of the landmark ''Confucius Sinarum Philosophus'' (Confucius, Philosopher of the Chinese), published in Paris in 1687 — the work that made Confucian philosophy accessible to European intellectuals for the first time and profoundly influenced the Enlightenment. Through this work, Intorcetta “made Europe know Confucius and made an outstanding contribution to the dissemination of Confucian thought in Europe.” As Mungello has demonstrated, the cumulative Jesuit translation project that culminated in this work underwent a significant intellectual evolution: the translations produced by the earlier collaborators tended to be “overspiritualized,” while the final published version was “overrationalized, perhaps in order to allow it to meld more fully with the Jesuits' interpretation of the Chinese Classics in terms of natural religion.”<ref>Mungello, ''Curious Land'', 282.</ref><ref>“The World Conference on China Studies: CCP’s Global Academic Rebranding Campaign,” ''Bitter Winter'' (2024).</ref>
 === 3.5 Matteo Ripa and the Foundation of the Naples China College ===
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 Zhang Guogang 张国刚 et al. ''Mingqing Chuanjiaoshi yu Ouzhou Hanxue'' 明清传教士与欧洲汉学. Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe, 2001.
 Zhang Xiping 张西平. ''Ou-Mei Hanxue de Lishi yu Xianzhuang'' 欧美汉学的历史与现状. Zhengzhou: Daxiang Chubanshe, 2005. Lecture 5: “Development of Italian Sinology.”

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