404 BOOK REVIEWS

become recibir, vi, and lecciones.They correct many meaningful transcription

errors made by Darío Achury Valenzuela in his edition (Bogotá, 1968)—for
example, replacing Achury’s “me aterro” in the Vida’s opening passage to the
correct “me alegro,” as Castillo characterizes her attitude toward writing her
life story. Unfortunately other errors remain, such as the transcription of the
opening abbreviation P.M. as “Por ser” rather than the correct “Padre mío.”

Ferrús and Girona’s most valuable contributions are the footnotes to the
text. They translate Latin phrases; note verses quoted from the Breviarium;
and identify cultural, historical, and intertextual references.They provide key
information including the identity of religious figures and spiritual directors,
biographical data, common vida and hagiographical tropes, and historical
customs; and they define the colonial vocabulary of illness that Castillo
employs.This critical apparatus is essential for novice readers of early-modern
nuns’ spiritual writings. One detail that may confuse such readers, however, is
the choice of art for the book cover: the “crowned nun” portrait of Sor María
Antonia de la Purísima Concepción, born 1755 and professed in Mexico City.
The portrait conveys an image of religious culture and agency at odds with
those central to Castillo’s Vida.

Robledo’s edition, which displays an 1813 portrait of Castillo on the cover,

caters to scholars’ desire for a more conservative treatment of the original lan-
guage and includes several letters to Castillo from her confessors, as well as
the editorial documentation from the first edition (1817). Ferrús and Girona
provide a highly readable text, in which cultural and historical references are
more easily deciphered through their critical apparatus.Together, the Ferrús
and Girona edition and the Robledo edition of this key colonial author are a
welcome and long-awaited contribution to the study of early-modern
women’s writings.

University of New Mexico KATHRYN J. MCKNIGHT

Asian

Christianity and Cultures: Japan & China in Comparison 1543–1644. By

M. Antoni J. Üçerler, S.J. [Bibliotheca Instituti Historici Societatis Jesu, Vol.
68.] (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu; published in collabora-
tion with the University of San Francisco, the Ricci Institute, and the
Macau Ricci Institute. 2009. Pp. xlvi, 410. €60,00. ISBN 978-8-870-41368-7.)

The study of Christianity in China and Japan for institutional and other rea-
sons has generally taken place in mutual isolation; hence the great value of
the comparative survey provided by this volume. It is appropriately based on
a conference held at the end of 2006 in Macau, the place where the two Jesuit
missions (in this period they were mostly Jesuit enterprises) interacted and
from which they were controlled.
 BOOK REVIEWS 405

However, one conclusion that a China specialist would most likely reach
from a study of this rich and rewarding collection of papers is that the two
fields have more divergences than commonalities. Some of this no doubt
derives from language differences and translation difficulties. Worship may
mean in English extreme respect—as in the “with my body I thee worship” of
the old marriage rite—but when used to translate Chinese bai or to describe
ancestor rituals in a theological context, it begs the question.

Chinese rituals—especially Confucian rituals, when seen through Japanese

eyes, at least as presented here—are necessarily idolatrous, and the issue is
seen as whether idolatry may be tolerated.This was never the case in China,
where the issue was precisely whether they were idolatrous, and, as Matteo
Ricci concluded, the people were certainly not idolatrous and perhaps not
even superstitious, a position not reversed until in 1704 the Holy See deter-
mined otherwise. A valid question is whether the Buddho-Confucian syn-
cretism so common in Japan is the source of this apparent confusion.

There are so many original and stimulating contributions in the collection

that it is impossible to do them justice individually. However, a few may be sin-
gled out for comment.

William Farge’s study of “translating religious experience” through

Japanese translations of Christian works in Latin points to an extremely fruit-
ful area for further investigation, of Chinese Christian literature as well as
Japanese. However, in China at least, the aim was always adaptation rather
than translation (as shown in Li Sher-shiueh’s contribution to this volume),
and the Latin is not as intellectualist as Farge argues.

Asami Masakazu’s study of Antonio Rubino’s defense of the Jesuit position

on Chinese Rites is long overdue. However, it suffers from some misconcep-
tions about Rubino and the theological issues.

Amongst the cultural issues covered in this collection are artistic

exchanges. Painting and sculpture are discussed but not, unfortunately, archi-
tecture and music, which are little explored. Macau is again and appropriately
the focus. Thomas Lucas, in his commentary on this section of the book,
points to the irony of a probable fourteenth-century European influence on
the Guanyin/Kannon imagery of mother and child in China and then Japan.
He might have added the further irony of a considerable export trade in
porcelain figurines of madonna and child from China to Europe, the
Philippines, and the New World.

The last substantial chapter, by Timothy Brook, is perhaps the most

thought-provoking. Brook asks whether what was called Xixue in China or
“Western learning” should rather have been labeled Europaeology, by anal-
ogy with Sinology.At stake is the basic question of universality of values and
406 BOOK REVIEWS

knowledge. Joseph Needham states that the fundamental clash was not
between East and West, but between a universalizing science, which the
Jesuits, as good Renaissance scholars, upheld, and an equally universalizing
Chinese science. This is not to deny the problem of restricted cultural hori-
zons, but teaching Western philosophical and scientific paradigms was not
necessarily cultural imperialism. Rather, it was, in intention at least, a “fusion
of horizons” in Hans Georg Gadamer’s terms. Christianity and Cultures
advances such a fusion.

Ricci Institute, University of San Francisco PAUL A. RULE

La Trobe University, Australia

BRIEF NOTICES
Berthelon, Pierre. Antoine Chevrier: Prêtre selon l’Évangile 1826–1879.
(Paris: Editions du Cerf. 2010. Pp. 143. €10,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-204-
09179-4.)

This is a fascinating, well-written, concise, and accessible biography of

Blessed Antoine Chevrier (beatified 1986). The Christo-centric conversion
experience of this newly ordained priest on Christmas Eve 1856 led to his
decision to become a un prêtre selon l’évangile. For Chevrier and the com-
munity he founded at Le Prado in Lyon, this meant living a priesthood mod-
eled on the person and ministry of Jesus Christ as revealed in New Testament
texts: a servant-priest living with the greatest personal simplicity and in apos-
tolic poverty so as to be free to preach the gospel in word and deed to the
masses of the urban poor created by the Industrial Revolution.

Berthelon knows his subject, the influences directing Chevrier’s spiritual

journey, and the mature spirituality of Chevrier intimately, but he also suc-
ceeds in placing Chevrier within his mid-nineteenth-century contexts—
socioeconomic, political, and religious. In doing so, the author illuminates
the underappreciated role that Lyonnais Catholicism played in the revival of
French Catholicism. In Chevrier’s case this includes the example of a fruit-
ful engagement with modernity that, through its preferential option of iden-
tification with and service to people who were poor, linked the Church’s
traditional charitable efforts with the first glimmerings of the nontraditional
insights and pastoral experiences that would lead to the development of
the Church’s social justice teachings. It is not a coincidence that Blessed
Frederic Ozanam, cofounder of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, also had
Lyonnais roots.

The author’s critical use of Chevrier’s great spiritual work Le Véritable

Disciple is key to his presentation of the down-to-earth and approachable
priest not only as an innovative and charismatic figure in the history of
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