L’umanesimo e la prospettiva degli «studi celesti» nel tardo periodo Ming

The object of study of 'Heavenly learning' is Heaven, understood in its broadest sense. Tian 天, Heaven, according to the vision elaborated in China by the Jesuits and their Chinese interlocutors, included the Creator and his creation, the universe. The Jesuit missionaries who arrived in the Chinese empire at the end of the 16th century were the bearers of a worldview, peculiar to Renaissance Europe, that was both humanistic and theological. For them science and faith were not opposed, as they would later be, and were not even divided: two branches of the same knowledge that complemented each other and used rational argumentation. This approach owes much to the interaction with Chinese intellectuals, who had converted to Christianity, such as Xu Guangqi 徐光啟and Li Zhizao 李之藻. The approach of the “Heavenly learning” was congenial to their search for new intellectual and spiritual orientations, to their effort to find answers that were philosophical, theological and scientific at the same time, effective in facing the political crisis and spiritual restlessness that the Chinese empire was experiencing at the end of the Ming dynasty. From this encounter and from a process of negotiation between European missionaries and Chinese literati, something new and hybrid was born, the meaning of which is encapsulated in the expression tianxue.