7   SHARING GENTEEL SPIRITUALITY

The Female Networks of the Xus of Shanghai

In late imperial Jiangnan, “talented women” (cainü)—highly educated women whose literary talent and beauty were seen as a badge of honor for their families1—not only became enthusiastic readers of novels and prolific writers of poems, but they also formed dense domestic and inter-domestic networks where letters, poems, and other pieces of writing circulated. As a consequence, the inner chambers of elite households saw the emergence of a distinctive female culture characterized by specific forms of entertainment, attitudes toward manual work, and codes of spirituality.2

Late imperial Jiangnan was also a major center of gravity of seventeenth-century Chinese Catholicism. Several eminent Catholic gentry families lived in this region, among them the Xus of Shanghai, the Lis and the Yangs of Hangzhou, and the Suns of Jiading.3 Only a few women from these families followed a literary vocation, their domestic culture being centered on the Catholic religion rather than scholarly pursuits.4 Nevertheless, Catholic gentry women’s domestic culture is comparable to the domestic culture of “talented women” in several ways. Just as literature and poetry provided “talented women” with opportunities for personal fulfillment, Catholic piety gave devout elite women’s leisurely lives a meaningful focus. Although a genuinely individual pursuit, it provided women with opportunities for homosocial conviviality and helped foster strong homosocial bonds by way of a common language of religion.

The Xus of Shanghai were a particularly well-documented Catholic gentry family. Their involvement with Catholicism started in 1603, when the famous scholar-official Xu Guangqi (1562–1633; jinshi 1604) received baptism.5 Xu Guangqi became the ancestor to an impressive Catholic genealogy. His son, Xu Ji (1582–1646), and his five grandsons, four granddaughters, and innumerable great-grandchildren were Catholics. Some branches of his family also remained Catholic into the twenty-first century, and descendants of Xu Guangqi played an eminent role in the reestablishment of the Jesuit presence in nineteenth-century Shanghai.6

The generation of women in this family from the second generation after Xu Guangqi, most of whom actively participated in and shaped Catholic religiosity from circa 1630 to 1660, are an especially apt focus for a case study on Catholic elite women’s domestic religiosity because of the rich information about them contained in the Jesuits’ annual letters. Although previous research has focused almost exclusively on Xu Guangqi’s most famous granddaughter—Candida (1607–1680), portrayed in Philippe Couplet’s The Story of a Christian Lady of China—a close examination of archival data on the Shanghai mission shows that this eminent Christian lady was in fact embedded in a tightly knit network of devout kinswomen. This network included Xu Guangqi’s descendants’ wives along with their young daughters, who were the organizers and primary participants in the rich religious life of the Xu family’s Shanghai ancestral home. It also included his four granddaughters, who, after marrying into other families, maintained contact with their natal family and continued their religious devotion even outside their Catholic family environments.7

The religious biographies of all these women must be analyzed against the background of more general biographical patterns in late imperial Chinese women’s lives, which, in turn, were intricately connected to the patriarchal family system of the period. Due to patrilocal and patrilineal marriage patterns, women only rarely remained members of the same household for their entire lives. Instead, most young ladies faced the fate of being “married out” (chujia). This was often a rather traumatic experience for a young bride, as it was usually on the wedding day that she first encountered her husband and his family—the family she was to live with for the rest of her life.8 The transition into the new family was further hampered by the fact that a young bride, especially until the birth of her first child, occupied a lowly position in her husband’s family. She had to abide by her mother-in-law’s regime, usually had little freedom, and was subjected to hard work.9 However, gentry women’s freedom of action began to increase after they bore children and even more so when they became the household’s matriarch upon the death of their mother-in-law.10 When their children grew older, they could rely on their support, thus harvesting the fruits of their efforts as their children’s teachers.11 When their sons married, they could leave the hard household work to their young daughters-in-law and could spend their newly won hours of leisure in pious devotion.12 If their husband died and left them enough property, they even enjoyed the social prestige and exceptional freedom of chaste widows (jiefu), who, as personifications of the Confucian ideal of marital fidelity, were bestowed special honors by the government and enjoyed extraordinary legal protection during the Ming-Qing period.13

The biographies of the women in the Xu family network were affected by these general patterns that shaped gentry women’s lives. What made their lives special, however, was their connection with a Catholic “women’s culture” that emerged in several households integrated into the Xu family network.14 This culture fostered homosocial bonds among the women that persisted even beyond the ruptures caused by patrilocal marriage.

A GENTRY FAMILY’S DOMESTIC CONGREGATION

The Xujiahui area, located some four kilometers southeast of Shanghai’s ancient city center, has been an important lieu de mémoire for Chinese Catholics for almost two centuries. Acquired by the Jesuits in 1849, it became the home of Jesuit-run Catholic schools, a seminary, an orphanage, and the famous Xujiahui library.15 The library is still accessible to the public today, together with the Xujiahui Catholic Church (Xujiahui Tianzhujiao Tang), dating from the early twentieth century, and the Xu Guangqi Memorial Hall (Xu Guangqi Jinian Guan), built on Xu Guangqi’s grave site in 2003.16 This current conspicuousness of Catholicism in the Xujiahui area contrasts with its much lower visibility in the seventeenth century, when its most noteworthy Catholic building was probably the Holy Mother’s Church (Shengmu Tang), a woman’s church built “in a big hall of the [Xu] palace.”17 After opening its doors in the 1640s, it served as the meeting place of the Xu women’s domestic congregation.18

In contrast to the extended domestic congregations described in the previous chapter, admission to domestic congregations of eminent Catholic scholar-official families such as the Xus of Shanghai was usually reserved for female members of the household. Headed by the household’s senior lady, these domestic congregations were frequented by female members of the family (including daughters, daughters-in-law, and sometimes nieces and granddaughters) as well as its female servants. Source evidence shows that these congregations usually gathered daily. The women of the famous Catholic scholar-official Sun Yuanhua’s household in Jiading, for instance, gathered every morning for communal morning prayers led by Sun Yuanhua’s mother, Mary, during the 1630s.19 In Songjiang, Candida Xu organized communal evening devotions, which were frequented by all her female relatives and servants during the 1670s.20 The female leaders of these pieties, many of them highly literate, relied on liturgical calendars and prayer books, such as the Daily Exercises of the Holy Teaching (Shengjiao rike), to ensure correct worship. Annual letters indicate that women consulted these texts on a regular basis and sometimes even knew large portions of the Daily Exercises by heart.21 Gentry women’s domestic congregations also organized special devotions on major religious feast days, such as Christmas, Easter, and the Assumption.22

In the 1640s and 1650s the congregation at Xujiahui was led by Flavia Yu, the wife of Xu Guangqi’s firstborn grandson, Peter Xu Erjiao. Flavia was praised by the Jesuits as an especially fervent Catholic. She was a donor to the above-mentioned Holy Mother’s Church, and she had the esteem of everyone due to her qualities as “preacher, catechist, and good example for all other Christians.”23 In the early 1640s, Flavia was, strictly speaking, not the senior lady of the Xu household. Although her mother-in-law, Lady Gu, had died in 1622, her grandmother-in-law, Lady Wu, was still alive, until 1646, when she died at age eighty-one. Since Lady Wu was only rarely mentioned in the annual letters, it is reasonable to assume that the elderly lady had already withdrawn from active leadership at an earlier stage and had delegated the responsibilities of the female family head to her successor. Under Flavia’s aegis, the congregation counted about thirty women.24 Besides the Xu clan’s wives and their daughters, this number also included female servants of the Xu household.25

Besides Flavia, the main protagonists of the Xu women’s domestic congregation were her sisters-in-law: the wives of her husband’s four brothers. With the exception of Lady Wang, the wife of Xu Guangqi’s third son, Xu Erdou, and niece of Sun Yuanhua, they were all descendants of non-Catholic families.26 Nevertheless, most of them seem to have willingly engaged in the practice of the new religion, which they were probably introduced to by their husbands or female family members. If, however, a woman marrying into the Xu household was unwilling to assimilate Catholic family practices, she would have been placed under considerable pressure, it seems. The Annual Letter of 1638 narrated, as a case in point, the story of a bride recently wed to one of the Xu brothers. This lady’s family had been “gentiles, and very devout to the idols [pagodes].” When the woman wanted to maintain the religiosity of her native family, and refused to attend the domestic congregation’s gatherings, warnings in her dreams prompted her to repent irreverence toward Catholicism in a general confession and, eventually, to join the congregation’s daily devotions.27

While this sister-in-law of Flavia’s only reluctantly integrated into the female Catholic network at Xujiahui, other women saw the congregation as an opportunity for living a religious life outside conventional female roles. That was the case of a daughter and a daughter-in-law of Flavia’s, who lived as religiously vowed virgins on the Xujiahui estate. According to Francesco Brancati, they had apartments close to the Holy Mother’s Church, where they lived a secluded life fully dedicated to the service of the Holy Mother. Despite the general suspicion that the Chinese elite harbored against religiously vowed virginity, incompatible as it was with the Confucian valuation of marriage (see chapter 8), these women enjoyed their family’s respect.28 That the virgins at Xujiahui were accepted by the Xu family was, however, also facilitated by their life histories. While Flavia’s daughter, who was sickly, was prevented from marrying because of her poor health and eventually died at a young age, the wife of Flavia’s first son was widowed before her wedding and, by keeping her virginity, embraced the Confucian ideal of the “chaste maiden” who maintained lifelong fidelity to her late fiancé even though the marriage had not been consummated.29

It is noteworthy that the women’s congregation at Xujiahui, in the period under consideration, was frequented by Xu Guangqi’s granddaughters-in-law but not by his granddaughters. Felicitas, Candida, Monica, and Martina Xu, who had been fervent participants in female pious activities at Xujiahui during the 1610s and 1620s, were probably all married by 1630, so that none of them were living with their native family at Xujiahui at that time.30 That a Catholic women’s culture existed at the Xujiahui estate during the 1640s and 1650s was, as a consequence, not the result of the Xu family’s successful matrilineal transmission of Catholicism, but the result of its successful integration of previously non-Catholic brides into a Catholic family culture. This raises the question of how Xu Guangqi’s granddaughters’ Catholic religiosity was affected by their marriages into other families. Did their integration into non-Catholic families prompt their apostasy, or did these women maintain their Catholic religiosity in spite of marrying non-Catholic husbands?

MAINTAINING MATRILINEAL TIES

Just like many other Chinese brides, Xu Guangqi’s four granddaughters seem to have experienced their wedding as a painful rupture in their lives. For these ladies, their marriage was tantamount not only to irrevocable separation from their native families but also to separation from their religious community. For, although their father, Xu Ji, had chosen descendants of Catholic converts to be their husbands, none of them were actually Catholic at the time of his daughters’ marriages.31 As a consequence, the Xu ladies faced many kinds of adversity in their efforts to maintain their Catholic practice after marriage. Some of them were handicapped in their devotions by their husbands’ opposition to what they perceived as overzealous dedication to foreign superstition.32 Furthermore, the husbands also endangered the Xu women’s salvation by taking concubines and thus plunging their wives into the sin of polygamy, as in the case of Candida Xu.33 Unlike the husbands, however, the mothers-in-law were apparently quite tolerant toward the Catholic practice of their daughters-in-law. Although some, like Felicitas Xu’s mother-in-law, were zealously devoted to lay Buddhist practice, they were not reported to have opposed the Catholic presence in their households.34

Tolerance toward the plurality of religious practice within gentry households’ inner chamber partly accounts for how none of the Xu sisters abdicated Catholicism, despite their husbands’ intermittent anti-Catholic outbursts. The strong bonds of friendship maintained among the sisters seem, however, to have been equally important for their persevering with their native family’s religion during their first years of marriage. After being physically separated from one another, the Xu sisters stayed in contact through letter writing and mutual visits.35 They encouraged steadfastness in their religious practice and provided emotional sustenance. If possible, they even actively intervened on another’s behalf. Thus, for example, one of the Xu ladies visited a sister in the late 1630s to assist her in an ongoing conflict with her non-Catholic husband over her and her children’s Catholic religiosity.36

The Xu ladies also, conversely, used the language of religion to strengthen their emotional bonds after their separation. A letter, allegedly penned by one of the Xu women’s most prolific writers, Candida Xu, during the first years of her marriage, demonstrates this bond.37 In it, she expressed feelings of painful loss and tender love toward one of her sisters: “My sister, since I have parted from you, the hours and moments were rare in which I have not thought back to you and the peace and tranquility in which we had cultivated the matters of salvation in Shanghai. Now I live here among gentiles, where no one cultivates these matters and what is worse, my husband not only incessantly fails on this account, but also prevents me from my holy exercises; therefore I appeal to you to truly recommend me to Our Lord.”38 In her letter, Candida expressed her hope that a priest would come to Songjiang, and she pressed her sister to speak with the missionaries to this end. However, although Candida’s wish was probably forwarded to the missionaries, it was fifteen years after her wedding, and only after her husband had converted to Catholicism, that the Jesuits finally agreed to establish a permanent residence in Songjiang.39

The Xu sisters also expressed their close emotional ties in their occasional reports of shared pious experiences. The 1659 Annual Letter of the Songjiang residence reported, for instance, how Candida Xu was afflicted with a severe illness that brought her near to death. She spent her time in deep meditation, envisioning herself praying at the feet of the Holy Mother. Simultaneously, her sister Monica was hearing Mass in the Holy Mother’s Church in Shanghai, when she suddenly had a vision of her elder sister praying at the feet of the Holy Mother’s image that was placed on the altar. When Candida had recovered from her illness, she visited her sister in Shanghai, where Monica shared her vision with her. The two ladies thus found out about Candida’s meditation and praised God for this special grace.40

While matrilineal ties helped the Xu ladies to maintain their Catholic identity during their first years of marriage, as the years passed their situation in their husbands’ families also started to provide them with opportunities to effect change. These opportunities usually derived from their responsibility for the religious education of their children. For, just like any other Chinese women, the Xu women personally saw to the religious instruction of their offspring, overseeing their religious practice and exhorting them if they became neglectful.41 According to the Jesuits’ writings, the Xu women made their children receive baptism even if their husbands were not Catholic or did not much care about the Catholic religion.42 Candida’s sons, for example, were reported to be well instructed in the faith even though her husband was known to be “not very devout.”43 In 1640, meanwhile, João Monteiro noted with admiration that Candida’s firstborn son, Basil Xu Zuanzeng, at thirteen years of age, not only was well instructed in the faith, but also took great interest in matters of religion, even asking the missionary tricky questions about the Eucharist.44 While non-Catholic husbands did not, apparently, interfere with their children’s Catholic education so long as it remained in private, the Xu women occasionally met with opposition if their sons’ Catholic education threatened to interfere with their designated public role. The non-Catholic husband of one Lady Xu, for example, became extremely angry when he learned that his young son had decorated his Confucian study books with Christian prayers. He turned his fury toward his wife, who struggled to prevent him from demolishing her oratory and burning the Savior’s picture.45

While this story shows that the position of Catholic women living in non-Catholic families remained fragile even after they had become mothers, the example of Candida Xu also demonstrates how power relations within the family shifted in their favor when their children were grown up. As the years went by, Candida’s husband, who had previously strongly opposed her Catholic practice, became more tolerant of his wife’s religiosity and, in keeping with a cultural pattern common in China, he even started to take interest in religious practice himself when he reached advanced age, receiving baptism in 1638.46 Candida’s social prestige was, furthermore, greatly enhanced when her eldest son, Basil, attained the jinshi degree upon successful completion of the imperial examinations in 1649, making Candida the respected mother of an imperial official serving in various provinces.47 Within the family, her power increased considerably upon Basil’s marriage, allowing her to advance her position from a mother responsible for the education of her children to a mother-in-law responsible for the education of her daughter-in-law. Candida used the power granted her by this position to further strengthen her family’s Catholic identity. She took it upon herself to evangelize her daughter-in-law, who, as a devout lay Buddhist, agreed to baptism only after a lengthy process of persuasion.48 After conversion, the young woman, who had received the Christian name Philippa, became a fervent supporter of her mother-in-law’s pious activities. She not only converted two of her brothers to Catholicism, but she also assisted Candida in organizing a domestic women’s congregation, becoming its head after Candida’s death in 1680.49

Widowhood, to an even greater extent than the upbringing of sons, provided the Xu ladies with opportunities to reshape the religious culture of their non-Catholic husbands’ families according to their own vision. As “chaste widows,” three Xu ladies—Felicitas, Candida, and Martina—succeeded in transforming their husbands’ families into Catholic households, despite having entered them as young wives committed to widely scorned and outlandish devotions.50 Felicitas, who had married into the Shanghai gentry family Ai, managed to establish Catholicism as the Ai family’s religion for the next two and a half centuries, and the Ai house oratory constructed under her aegis was still in use at the turn to the twentieth century.51 Martina, who had married into the gentry family Pan, became the leader of the Pan women’s domestic congregation and was a donor to a church established by Francesco Brancati in 1638 outside Shanghai’s West Gate.52 And Candida, most famously, who was widowed in the early 1650s, became one of the leading Catholics in the China mission.53 She not only transformed her husband’s family, but she also transformed the whole city of Songjiang—previously described by missionaries as a “city off the travel routes” (cidade desviada)—into a major center of Chinese Catholicism, equipped with a residence, twenty-five churches, and six oratories (see also chapter 9).54

Does the Xu ladies’ successful establishment of Catholicism in their non-Catholic husband’s families point to a general phenomenon, one allowing us to assume that matrilineal ties actually played an important role in the transmission of Catholicism from one generation to the next? Or, alternatively, were they rather striking exceptions to a rule, that Catholic women marrying non-Catholic husbands were usually forced to give up their religion? The sources do not provide definitive answers on this point. On the one hand, missionaries certainly saw mixed marriages as dangerous. Experience had taught them that Catholic daughters were sometimes married as concubines and, at other times, were legally married but had to accept a concubine at their side. Some Catholic wives were forced by their non-Catholic husbands to give up their religious practice, and others, most probably, simply forgot it after living for a long time in a non-Catholic environment.55 It is not surprising, then, that a rule established for a “Congregation of Angels” (Tianshen Hui), which instructed young children in the Christian faith, stated that girls who entered the congregation should be taught only basic prayers. This was out of fear that they would neglect their souls after being married to a gentile.56 The Xu ladies’ example indicates, on the other hand, that there was some basis to Philippe Couplet’s claim that marriages between Catholic women and non-Catholic husbands were “a means for gaining many people for [the] Religion.”57 It also shows how matrilineal transmission of Catholicism was actually possible in seventeenth-century Chinese Catholic communities.

Although the Xu ladies’ success in converting their husbands’ families to Catholicism was probably facilitated by the fact that their husbands came from families who had previously sympathized with Catholicism, this chapter has shown that it was also intrinsically connected with the Xu ladies’ deep commitment to Christianity, nurtured through their close contact with their natal family.58 That these matrilineal contacts were usually much stronger than the prevailing Confucian “rhetoric of patrilineality” might suggest has been highlighted by recent historical and anthropological research.59 The Xu women’s role as missionaries of their husbands’ families was also facilitated by the proselytizing character of Catholicism, which presented a stark contrast to the only weakly confessionalized Buddhist or Taoist devotions of non-Catholic gentry women, who were usually rather tolerant toward religious practices diverging from their own devotion. That probably also accounts for how the Xu family’s daughters-in-law (discussed above) all converted to Catholicism, while all of the Xu sisters maintained their Catholic identity.

In view of the role played by matrilineal and affinal relations in the intergenerational transmission of Catholicism in seventeenth-century Chinese families, we might have to expand our notion of Chinese Catholicism as a family religion. When speaking of Catholicism as a family religion, previous research has pointed, mainly, to the powerful connection between Catholicism and Chinese ancestral cults, a connection making descendants of Catholic ancestors decide to remain Catholics out of filial obligation.60 This view has turned the attention of historians to the important role played by the patriline in the intergenerational transmission of Catholicism. However, the example of the Xu ladies teaches us that, despite the overwhelmingly strong presence of Confucian values in Chinese elite families, this was not the only possible pattern of transmission. Women’s prominent role in almost all forms of domestic religiosity makes it probable that the number of women who played an active part in the shaping of the religious culture of their husbands’ families was not limited to a few rare exceptions and that religious beliefs and practices were also transmitted through relationships established by marriage.61

PRAYERS AND VISIONS

What was the nature of these women’s individual spirituality? In what sort of practices did they engage, and how did these practices shape their Catholic identities? Far from conveying a complete picture of the Xu women’s religiosity, the Jesuits’ writings only allow for some rare glimpses into these women’s spiritual lives. They show, however, that gentry women usually fostered a strongly interiorized spirituality that corresponded well with the “personal-cultivational modality of religion,” which was the modality of doing religion preferred by the Chinese elite.62 They also suggest that gentry women’s religiosity was closely interconnected with Catholic devotional books and images, which were usually strongly present in Chinese Catholic gentry households.63

Candida Xu’s veneration of the Rosary neatly illustrates this interiorized spirituality. Candida was taught to pray the Rosary by her mother, Lady Gu, when she was still a child. At the age of ten, she took a vow that obliged her to pray the Rosary daily, which she took very seriously, spending an hour every day in meditation.64 Candida was deeply convinced of the efficacy of the prayer. She asked poor Catholics who received her financial support to recite the Rosary to alleviate the suffering of souls in purgatory.65 Her own practice of the prayer, however, was probably aimed not at efficacy but at personal spiritual cultivation. This is indicated by the diligence with which she undertook these “pious exercises” (exercices de pieté), which she did not want to dispense with even when gravely ill.66 It is thus probably not a mere coincidence that the portrait of Candida Xu rendered in the Flemish version of Couplet’s biography shows her holding a rosary (figure 7.1).

The prayer’s objectives of interiorized piety and visualization corresponded well with the personal-cultivational religious practices popular in the late imperial gentry milieu.67 In particular, its combination of repetitive recitation and focused meditation would have struck a familiar chord with anyone acquainted with the Buddhist spiritual practices of Chinese gentry women.68 Simultaneously, the prayer’s focus on the female figure of Mary—who, in her role as the Virgin Mother of Jesus, symbolized positive and powerful aspects of femininity—was a major incentive for women to recite it.69 It is probable that Candida relied for her exercise on the Rules for Reciting the Rosary (Song nianzhu guicheng, 1619) written by João da Rocha, who had been a close friend of the Xu family.70 The very first pictures in this devotional book showed Mary in a Chinese gentry boudoir setting, certainly facilitating gentry women’s identification with her (see figure 5.3).71

FIG. 7.1. Ancestral portrait of Candida Xu, depicted with a rosary. Copperplate engraving printed in the Flemish version of Couplet’s The Story of a Christian Lady of China (Historie van eene groote, christene mevrouwe van China, 1694). Courtesy of Maurits Sabbe Library, Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven.

Another example of a gentry woman’s interiorized spirituality—focusing again, notably, on a female saint—was Monica Xu’s devotion to St. Catherine of Siena. The Annual Letter of 1659 reports that Monica had developed a special veneration for St. Catherine and for her mystical relation with Jesus.72 Next to her bedstead she kept a painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, probably reminding her of Catherine’s mystical exchange of hearts with the Savior.73 Monica was especially fond of this picture, to which she ascribed special powers. She once reported to the missionaries that she had observed how the painting had started to mysteriously radiate its divine light, illuminating the whole house. Although the sources do not contain information about the textual basis for Monica’s devotion, it is probable that she knew of St. Catherine’s mysticism thanks to the Biographies of the Saints of the Holy Teaching of the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu shengjiao shengren xingshi), published by Alfonso Vagnone in 1629. This devotional work contained an account of St. Catherine’s life, with a strong focus on the saint’s intimate relation with Jesus and her painful inner struggles with evil. Vagnone described how Catherine was finally accepted by Jesus after harsh penance—including abstinence from food, rest, and speech—and was then praised for her steadfastness before subsequently having her heart taken to heaven to “please it with indescribable joy and consolation.”74 It is possible that such exemplary stories are what motivated the Xu women to engage in harsh penitential practices themselves, including fasts, the use of scourges and cilices, kneeling, and nocturnal prayer.75

Gentry women’s personal spirituality was not necessarily a strictly individual practice. Some personal devotions were practiced by all female members of the household and thus contributed to the emergence of Catholic group identity within the inner chambers. As cases in point, Mary Sun made all female members of the household celebrate their patron saint’s day with special devotions, and Candida Xu made the members of her congregation participate in selecting “saints of the month,” a practice that required people to “draw slips of paper from a bowl, each bearing the name of a saint” who would serve as a personal patron during the following month.76 Even more than by these shared devotions, however, the Xu women’s group identity seems to have been strengthened by shared religious experiences—especially holy dreams and visions.

The Jesuit sources report over a dozen dream visions experienced by especially virtuosic dreamers among the women of the Xu clan. Namely, Lady Wang (the wife of Xu Guangqi’s third grandson and niece of Sun Yuanhua) as well as Felicitas, Monica, and Candida Xu experienced and discussed religious dreams with high frequency.77 Candida’s dream visions were so frequent that Philippe Couplet saw himself forced to question their visionary nature in The Story of a Christian Lady of China. Certainly writing with a critical European readership in mind, he stated that Candida was so dedicated to God that dreams in general were for her like visions and that it would therefore “be difficult to determine whether they were true visions or mere effects of her mind’s efforts.”78

Most of the Xu women’s pious dreams involved communication with the spiritual world—with saints, the Holy Mother, and dead or absent relatives. Thomas-Ignatius Dunyn-Szpot’s History of China contains an account on how Felicitas, exhausted by her daily chores, addressed a prayer to the Holy Mother before going to sleep. In her dream, she saw the Virgin Mary holding the Infant Jesus in her arms and consoling her with the words “Felicitas, I am ready to suffer for your love.” This dream was followed by two subsequent dreams in which the Virgin encouraged her to deepen her piety.79 In the Annual Letter of 1648, Felicitas’s sister Monica was reported to have had a vision during prayer that brought her into contact with the world of the dead. She saw her pagan brother-in-law’s soul suffering in hell—a frightening prospect that prompted her to renew her pious fervor.80 The Xu ladies also claimed to receive spiritual messages via their dreams. A relation dedicated to Candida’s journey to Huguang in 1662 thus reported how the Lady Xu was told in her dream to buy land from a certain family named Yuan in order to build a new church. Underlining her claims about spiritual communication, Candida even recalled the precise wording of this vision, duly recorded by the accompanying missionary, Jacques Motel, in his notes and included in a travelogue by the vice-provincial Jacques le Faure.81

Dreams and visions were not a female prerogative in Chinese Catholicism.82 Like everyone in late imperial China, Chinese Catholic men and women saw dreams as a real and common way of communicating with the spiritual world.83 Dream interpretation was practiced in every segment of seventeenth-century Chinese society, and members of the literati class relied on dream manuals to understand the meaning of their dreams.84 However, while dreams were highly valued throughout late imperial Chinese society, they played a particularly important role in women’s domestic spiritual culture, with women spending hours discussing and interpreting their dreams together.85 The many dreams reported by the Xu family women suggest that the practice of dream interpretation was also common in the female networks of Catholic gentry families. These women’s acceptance of dreams as natural encounters with the spiritual world was rooted in Chinese culture. It contrasted sharply with the Jesuits’ understanding of dreams, which held that dreams of divine origin were reserved only for a chosen few. The Jesuits warned against a naive belief in the divine origin of one’s dreams. Giulio Aleni, in his Expositions of the Sciences of the Psyche (Xingxue cushu, 1646), asked his readers: “How can we expect the average person to have [holy dreams]?”86 But that seems not to have affected the Xu women’s enthusiasm for dreams. They continued to haunt the female quarters—a place where priestly control was difficult to enforce and religious demand great.87

The sources do not inform us about the impact of the Xu women’s Catholic spirituality on their understanding of femininity. Their dreams and visions, however, alongside their other religious activities, do nonetheless provide us with a vivid demonstration of their self-consciously lived-out Catholic spirituality. These expressions of pious experience were largely independent from male Catholic hierarchies and the male world in general. Of course, women took advantage of opportunities to discuss their dreams with the Jesuit priests visiting their homes. However, it was not these encounters that provided them with their central religious experiences. These took place in the female world of the inner chambers, where gentry women shared both their daily chores and religious devotions and their dreams and visions.

✳   ✳   ✳

The Xu family of Shanghai was only one of several eminent gentry families of the Jiangnan region whose members openly practiced the Catholic religion during the seventeenth century. Their example shows that the “teachings of the Lord of Heaven” were, at least to some of them, an integral part of their lives. Albeit largely restricted to the domestic realm, these women nevertheless diligently practiced Catholic devotion within the homosocial setting of the inner quarters. The women of the Xu family network were, as a consequence, crucial in the process of establishing and maintaining Catholicism as a family religion. Although Chinese marriage patterns and the Jesuits’ toleration of mixed marriages hampered the intergenerational transmission of Catholicism, some branches of the Xu family network remained Catholic over many generations. It is clear that women contributed to this continuity and that they were, indeed, the supporting pillars of the Xu family’s Catholic identity.