Kindersegen und effektive Rituale: Die Jesuiten in China zwischen lokalen Heilspraktiken, tridentinischer Norm und konfuzianischer Obrigkeit

In christlichen Gemeinden, die im 17. Jahrhundert in zahlreichen chinesischen Provinzen entstanden, versuchten die Jesuiten deshalb vor allem, die Heilsbedürfnisse der Gläubigen vor Ort zu befriedigen. Da in der chinesischen Gesellschaft die Fortsetzung der männlichen Linie von grosser Wichtigkeit war, war Kindersegen ein Anliegen erster Ordnung, dem die Jesuiten mit ihren Ritualen zu begegnen hatten. Sie setzten christliche Heilsobjekte oft gegen Kinderlosigkeit ein und standen Frauen bei schwierigen Niederkünften bei. Mit solchen Heilspraktiken, die in China traditionellerweise von lokalen religiösen Spezialisten ausgeführt wurden, traten die Missionare in Konkurrenz mit anderen Anbietern auf dem chinesischen Heilsmarkt. Der Vortrag beleuchtet die Rolle der Jesuiten als religiöse Spezialisten in lokalen christlichen Gemeinden und fragt nach den Spannungen, die sich zwischen dieser Rolle einerseits und den Rollen als katholische Missionare und konfuzianische Literati andererseits ergaben.

The Gender of Chinese Christianity: Evaluating a New Research Perspective

This paper will discuss how the gender perspective can be applied to the study of the Early Modern Jesuit China mission. I will show that the category of gender provides a promising research perspective on Sino-Western cultural exchange, for it brings to the forefront important aspects of social life in the “contact zone” of Chinese Christian communities. I will argue that through the intercultural contact initiated by the Jesuit China mission, gender roles started to shift slightly on both sides. On the one hand, the Jesuits adopted the Confucian ideal of the separation of the sexes (nannü zhi bie), building for example separate Churches for women, something unknown in Europe. On the other hand, Chinese Christians were urged to reconsider aspects of their traditional gender norms, when for instance some men left their concubines in order to become Christian. The paper will be divided in three parts. First, it will focus on the history of concepts and discuss what gender relations meant in the context of the Early Modern China mission. Then it will turn to the representation of female religiosity in Jesuit Annual Letters and show how the gender perspective can lead to a re-evaluation this source genre. Finally, it will reflect on how the gender perspective can give us fresh insights into well-known paradigms on Sino-Western relations, taking the accommodation paradigm as an example.

Die Sakralisierung des Alpenraums: Kulturelle Interpretationsmuster der rätischen Kapuzinermission (17. und 18. Jh.)

The Capuchins of the Rhaetic Missions had to deal with local forms of catholic piety, which for them were almost as exotic as the religious practices of non-Christian communities in Asia or America. Therefore they regarded it as their task to propagate the true faith among the “schismatic” Catholics from the Grisons. For this purpose, the Capuchins developed a particular pattern of interpretation: They created a sacred territory in which the divine grace can be experienced by the faithful. Hence the missionaries built new churches and chapels, decorated the old ones in baroque style and brought numerous of holy relics from Italy. Thus, they enforced the sacralisation of the alpine space. Recent developments in cultural studies and social sciences make it possible to capture such processes of spacing more precisely. In the course of the “spatial turn”, space is no longer conceived as a physical entity but now is regarded as a human construct. The paper discusses possibilities and limitations of “space” as an analytical category for the study of mission within Catholicism. The sociological concept of space developed by Martina Löw (2001) is used as starting point. This allows the simultaneous consideration of social interactions and cultural contexts in construction of “sacred space”.

Wider die Juden : ein Wort der Warnung an alle unsere christliche Mitbürger

[Verf.: Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Grattenauer]

Wider die Juden : ein Wort der Warnung an alle unsere christliche Mitbürger

[Verf.: r, d.i. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Grattenauer]