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Confucian-Christian synthesis through an overview of the publications of Fathers Ricci, Semedo, and Magalhaes (Chapters 2 and 3). However, the flow of the presentation is marred by the author's frequent interruptions to correct, with the benefit of nearly four centuries of sinological research and hindsight (p. 72), factual and interpretive errors of these pioneers of Sinology. Consequently, the reader has to struggle to piece together and get a grasp of their views.
Beginning with the geographical and historical treatises of Martini in Chapter 4, the focus of the book shifts to the impact of the Jesuits on European scholarship, particularly through expanding geographical knowledge, stimulating revision of accepted biblical chronology to take into account the Chinese chronology, and fueling the search for a universal language. In reviewing the influential works of proto-Sinologist Fr. Athanasius Kircher (Chapter 5), the author contrasts the Hermetic orientation of Kircher with the accommodative approach of his fellow Jesuits who were missionaries in China, setting the stage for both the growing tension around the theological implications of the latter that was to culminate in the Rites Controversy and a major change in the content of Jesuit accommodation under the influence of Hermetism in the closing decades of the 17th century. The author's critiques of Fr. Kircher's views are somehow less obtrusive than is the case where the views of the early Jesuit missionaries in China are concerned.
Several of the best parts of the book follow the author's discussion of the search for a universal language (Chapter 6) and a key to the Chinese language (Clavis Sinica) (Chapter 7), focusing on the writings and correspondence of proto-Sinologists Fr. Kircher, Müller, Mentzel, and Leibniz, and China missionary Fr. Bouvet, the last great proponent of Jesuit accommodation in the century. However, the author's penchant in this section for taking pokes at others for using 20th-century attitudes to judge the shortcomings of some of his subjects (pp. 215, 227-28, 231, and 236) is rather annoying, especially in view of the fact that he indulges in the same type of thing (p. 220).
In Chapter 8, the focus shifts back to the Jesuits in China. Here the author discusses the culmination of Ricci's version of accommodation in the 1687 publication of Confucius Sinarum philosophus and the European reactions to it. This work is a Latin translation of a