In the sixth session of the Entangled Histories seminar series, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sophie Ling-chia Wei explained how Jesuit figurists brought Christianity into dialogue with Chinese thought. The event was open to public participation.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sophie Ling-chia Wei from The Chinese University of Hong Kong spoke in the sixth session of the seminar series titled “Entangled Histories: Borders and Cultural Encounters from the Medieval to the Contemporary Era,” co-organized by Assistant Professor Dr. Maria Pia Ester Cristaldi from the Department of Journalism, Faculty of Communication, Üsküdar University, and Dr. Elisa Ramazzina from the University of Insubria (Italy).
In the seminar, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sophie Ling-chia Wei adopted an interdisciplinary perspective to examine how French Jesuit figurists operating in Early Qing period China reinterpreted Christian theology using Chinese classical texts. The seminar comprehensively discussed the figurists' efforts to reinterpret Jesus within the Chinese intellectual tradition, addressing its historical, cultural, and philological aspects.
The speaker, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sophie Ling-chia Wei, stated that Jesuit figurists such as Joachim Bouvet, Jean-François Foucquet, and Joseph Henri-Marie de Prémare, through their interpretations developed based on Chinese classics like Yijing (I Ching) and 道 (Dao), sought to portray Jesus as a sage adorned with dragons and hexagrams. Dr. Wei emphasized that these efforts were not merely translation activities but also symbolic endeavors where religious thought was re-produced through intercultural interaction. The seminar provided a unique academic platform intersecting the fields of history, theology, and translation.
The publicly accessible online seminar series will continue to host guests from various disciplines until the summer months.