易生错觉的现存明代起居注

The Misleading Existing Court Diaries of the Ming Dynasty

现存明代起居注共有万历、泰昌、天启三朝,它们是研究明神宗、明光宗和明熹宗在位期间历史的珍贵资料。但只看其《万历起居注》、《泰昌起居注》和《天启起居注》之书名,易误认其是分别记载明神宗、明光宗和明熹宗在位期间全部言行之书。实际上它们只分别记三个皇帝处理朝政的活动,而不记他们在宫内的生活起居。记宫内生活起居者是另外一种今已失传的内起居注。另外,由于明代内阁大学士在体制上不同于他朝之宰相,他们的身份类似皇帝的秘书,因而上述起居注将大学士帮助皇帝处理政务而撰写的本章等,也纳入其记载对象之中,这又是一个极易被误解的方面。由于明光宗只在万历四十八年七至八月执政一月余即死去,打乱了明朝新老皇帝交替时从第二年更改年号之惯例,从而造成起居注书名中的年号与使用此一年号的皇帝互有错位,这是明代起居注易于被误解的第三种情形。

The existing Court Diaries of the Ming Dynasty recording the history of the Wanli Era,Taichang Era and Tianqi Era are precious materials for studying the history of the three emperors.However,the titles of“Wanli Court Diaries”,“Taichang Court Diaries”and“Tianqi Court Diaries”will give people a false impression that they related to all the words and deeds of three emperors.In fact,they only recorded the activities of three emperors in ruling the country.Their daily lives were recorded in the inner Court Diaries which lost.Besides that,the documents which were written by Grand Secretaries who worked as the secretaries of Emperors were recorded into it,so this seems to be misleading.In addition,The Guang Emperor ruled for only about one month which destroyed the rule of reign titles and made contradiction between the historical records and the reign titles,this is another point seems to be misleading.