Great Universal Geographic Map

Detail 1

Matteo Ricci was born in Macerata, Italy, in 1552. In 1571, he entered the Society of Jesus and began his novitiate at the College of Rome, where he studied theology and philosophy as well as mathematics, cosmology, and astronomy. In 1577, Ricci asked to be sent as a missionary to Asia. He arrived in Portuguese Goa (present-day India) in September 1578, where he was ordained in July 1580. He worked in Goa and in Cochin (present-day Kochi, India) for four years, until he was summoned to join the fledgling Jesuit mission to China. He arrived in Macao in August 1582 and spent the rest of his life in China, living in Zhaoqing, Shaozhou, Nanjing, and Beijing. He spent his last years, 1601–10, in Beijing, where he and fellow Jesuit Diego Pantoja were the first Westerners permitted to enter the Forbidden City. Ricci’s method of winning Chinese converts to Catholicism was, in part, to impress on scholars and officials the scientific and cultural achievements of Christian Europe. At his house in Zhaoqing, he displayed a large Western map of the world. Chinese visitors were astonished to see the Earth depicted as a sphere and to learn that the Chinese Empire occupied a relatively small part

Date

1602

Mapmaker / publisher

Ricci, Matteo, 1552-1610

Archive

Wikimedia Commons

Type

map

Sheets

4

Original size

5,669 × 5,134 pixels

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