明代海上丝绸之路与妈祖信仰的海外传播

The Maritime Silk Road in Ming Dynasty and the Mazu Belief's Oversea Diffusion

十五、十六世纪在西方的历史话语中常被表述为西方人的"大航海时代",然而从海上丝绸之路的角度出发,中国的航海力量不可忽视。东西方文化在此时于海上丝绸之路发生碰撞,代表中国民间信仰文化的海洋女神妈祖,自宋元以来长期作为海上丝绸之路上重要的海神信仰,在这一过程中起了不可或缺的作用。十六世纪欧洲的官方使节、传教士、商人和水手都记载了各自目睹的明代中国妈祖信仰,体现出妈祖对于基督教文明影响下的欧洲东来者的文化震撼。

The 15th century and the 16th century were always expressed as the European’s Age of Great Navigation in history discourse,but if we look through the angle of Maritime Silk Road,Chinese maritime power was hard to be ignored.The east culture and the west culture clashed in Maritime Silk Road during this time.Mazu,Chinese goddess of the sea as the representative of Chinese folk beliefs and the most important sea god since Song and Yuan dynasty in Maritime Silk Road,has indispensable influence in this progress.The diplomatic envoys,the missionaries,the merchants and the sailors coming from Europe in the 16th century wrote down their witnesses of Chinese Mazu belief in Ming dynasty,which reflect the shock of culture Mazu brought to the Europeans coming to the east and also influenced by Christian civilization.