The Interweaving of Rituals

“Nicolas Standaert’s impressive research on funerary rites in China and Europe in the seventeenth century shows again that we cannot use a universal recipe in the study of cultural exchanges. . . . This book is a compelling example of a historiographical narrative that takes into account the two-way nature of Chinese and Catholic relations.

"A fascinating tale about cultural exchange in the early history of East-West relations."

"The author deftly traces the emergence of a new Chinese Christian identity in the seventeenth century. Along the way, Nicolas Standaert proposes an important new framework for analyzing cultural exchanges in situations where an entity other than the West plays a dominant role…. The Interweaving of Rituals is a welcome corrective to a scholarship that at times has emphasized incommensurability, dominance, and the impossibility of understanding."

"In this systematic study of funeral rituals, Nicolas Standaert has assembled all relevant sources from western-language documents… and Chinese records… to weave together a panoramic tapestry of the evolution of funeral rituals among Chinese Christians from the time of Matteo Ricci to the eve of Cardinal Tournon's visit to China."

"The book will appeal broadly to researchers who are interested in intercultural relations, as well as those focusing on religion in China or late imperial culture. The numerous illustrations of tombs, mourning clothes, and funerary processions will captivate general audiences."

"Standaert's topic is an inspired choice, and the result is a readable and thought-provoking study with relevance well beyond the study of Christianity in China."

"Nicolas Standaert offers readers surprising perspectives on the often shunned topics of death, commemoration of the deceased, and interment. . . . The text contains a generous number of illustrations from a variety of printed and archival sources that depict Chinese and Sino-European funeral scenes and processions, plus schema of grave plot-design and funeral apparatus. [Standaert's] contributions to the field are extensive and tireless."

"Standaert goes to the very core of socio-religious inculturation, by means of analysing the changing nature of futerary rites in Christian, Buddhist and Confucian ritual communities."

"A valuable new study of a subject that has attracted surprisingly scant attention, that of religious ritual. . . . The arguments made in this study are solidly grounded in copious citations from printed sources in Chinese as well as a host of Western languages."

"This book is an outstanding work of original scholarship. Standaert uses a huge range of published and unpublished materials in many European languages as well as in Chinese. Several of the texts he discusses, such as the set of Chinese Christian funeral instructions from Guangdong Province, will be new to nearly all China scholars and are likely to be of great interest in themselves for the study of Chinese rituals and practices. The interpretation is original and the scholarship is so strong that one would be hard put to disagree with the conclusions."

"The Interweaving of Rituals is one of the most surprising books on Chinese history that I have ever read. The author's command of sources in Chinese, Latin, and vernacular European languages is exemplary. It is a book of immense erudition, worn lightly."