matteo riccis USE OF WESTERN CLASSICs

Westerns looking at China: is that a challenge for our times?

Not at all, if four centuries ago a Jesuit missionary called Matteo Ricci (1552-1610, in the picture on the left side) took upon himself the burden of this intercultural dialogue and achieved extraordinary results. His methods for managing diversity are original and still high-valuable.The book of Margherita Redaelli (in the picture on the right hand side) analyses Ricci's technique and explains why it worked. An overview of the Western ideas he presented in China is offered at the beginning of the book, while the remainder reveals that major Ricci's moral writings are quotations from Latin and Greek classics, although deeply complicated and reinterpreted. Thanks to her researches in the Roman archives, the author gives new insights into the wide personal culture of Ricci, and finally concludes that his activity in China was never dissociated from a unique intellectual awareness.