论晚明神父“以僧自居”的背后动因

On the Motivation of the Priests Who Posed Themselves as Monks in the Late Ming Dynasty

晚明时期,作为神父的传教士们在中国传教初期曾"以僧自居"。究其原因,就当时的情境来说,神父们面临着一大棘手的难题,即到中国传教的强烈愿望与中国政府严禁外国人进入的特令之间构成了巨大冲突。为了解决此矛盾,神父们想通过假借僧人之方式,来破除官方与民众的怀疑,以期达到顺利进入中国之目的。广东官员对此方式予以认可,并积极推动与渲染,在此因缘和合下",以僧自居"之策略得到了具体实施。

In the late Ming Dynasty,the priests posed themselves as monks during their early stage of missionary work in China.The reason of this is that the priests,in terms of the situation at that time,faced a thorny problem,which was the great conflict between the priests’strong desire of missionary work in China and the orders strictly forbidding the foreigner entering,released by the Chinese Government.In order to solve the contradiction,the priests tried to make use of the guise of the monk to get rid of the skepticism both in the official and the public,so as to achieve the aim of entering China and residing.But to everyone’s surprise,the official of Guangdong was not only approving this mode,but also actively promoting and rendering this mode,and with the agreement between the two,the strategy of posing themselves as monks had been put into effect as well.