The Institute's copy of Qinding shujing tushuo 欽定書經圖說, an illustrated edition of the Documents Classic, published at the Qing imperial palace in 1905. The book is lithographically printed in two colors, black and red. We're planning to post more pictures from this book later.

@ricciinstitutelib.bsky.social Sanhe shengyu 三合聖諭, the Qing-dynasty Sacred edict in the three languages Manchu, Mongolian, and Chinese. Our book dates from the mid-19th century.

This is the Gospel of Matthew in Romanized Hakka Chinese, translated by the German missionary Rudolf Lechler and published in 1860. Hakka is one of the seven major Chinese dialect groups, primarily in the southeastern Chinese provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, and Jiangxi.

This Gospel of John, published in 1853, contains the text in the Shanghai dialect of Chinese, written using the Latin alphabet. This little book has an explanatory introduction and vocabulary by the British scholar James Summers (Sang Moshi 桑莫士 1828-1891). Acquired in 2025.

@ricciinstitutelib.bsky.social This scroll contains a Qing-period, hand-colored woodblock print titled "Shizi chongxun" 十字寵勳. It offers a fascinating glimpse into cultural exchanges in late 19th-century China and shows Christ on the cross revered by a unified audience of various ethnicities.

The inscription above the Ricci Institute entrance: "Blessed are those who walk in the law of the Lord." The phrase is a truncation of a Latin translation of Psalm 119:1. Shot on film by a staff member.

Contact prints from photos by Frederick J. Foley 傅良圃. These photos were taken in Taiwan; we're guessing in the 1960s. The Ricci Institute has around 85,000 of Foley's photographic negatives that await digitization. They were given to us in 1985.

Happy Halloween from us here at the Ricci Institute! 🦇

Details from a painting by Hua Xiaoxian 華效先 (Luke Hua Hsiao-hsien), retrospectively titled "Our Lady Playing with a Parrot" 聖母逗鸚鵡. It was painted Peiping (Beijing), probably in 1948.

Details from a silk painting by Lu Hongnian 陸鴻年 (1914-1989) from 1947, retroactively titled "Our Lady Carrying the Child Amidst the Clouds" 聖母抱嬰在雲中. The painting has been mounted on a scroll.

@ricciinstitutelib.bsky.social A painting textbook by the Qing-dynasty painter Zhang Xiong 張熊. The book was published in 1933. It covers floral techniques of the four seasons and fish, birds, and insects.

A few days ago, we shared images of our scroll titled Tiantang yaoli 天堂要理. We've since done more research and revised the date to 1937. Our scroll is related to a painting currently held in Belgium and reproduced by Jeroom Heyndrickx in his study of it. Full citation in the alt-text.

Students in a class on East Asian art history made a visit to the Institute to learn about the history of Chinese printing.

A polychrome paper scroll titled Tiantang yaoli 天堂要理 (Essential principles of Heaven). It presents a Catholic narrative of human history, with a "good path" (shandao 善道) leading to Heaven (via Purgatory) and an "evil path" (edao 惡道) leading to Hell. The scroll probably dates from 1929.

Details from a copy of William (Wilhelm) Lobscheid's 羅存德 (1822-1893) A Chinese and English Dictionary (Han-Ying zidian 英漢字典) from 1869. A studious reader has left copious notes.

Congratulations to Zhang Jie (Arizona State) on the publication of her article "Dying the Chinese Catholic Way: An Interreligious Study of Catholic and Buddhist Woodblock Printed Illustrations in Nineteenth-Century China" doi.org/10.1163/2542..., which discusses sources held at the Institute.

A case containing 8mm movie film reels containing footage recorded by John A. Houle, S.J. (He Yongzhi 何雍之, 1914-1997) in Asia. Fr. Houle returned to the US in 1957. Dr. Joseph W. Ho (University of Michigan) has arranged for this material to be digitized. Details to follow.

Rearranging the Taichung Polyglot, a dictionary draft held at the Ricci Institute Library. An essay on our library website has more details on this unique corpus.

How do postcards capture historical moments & places? How can we “read” even the structure of their printing? 📮 Revisit our #NCCSpotlight by Tokiko Bazzell (Formerly University of Hawai’i’ at Manoa Library) on Hawai’i’s historical postcard collection to find out! guides.nccjapan.org/homepage/new...

Our librarian Mårten Söderblom Saarela reviewed Jiani He's Ruling the Mongols of Manchuria: Language, Literacy, and Power in Late Qing Borderlands (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2025) in the Journal of Chinese History 中國歷史學刊. Sadly, the review is behind a paywall. doi.org/10.1017/jch....

Our librarian Mårten Söderblom Saarela will give three online talks for the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia, on November 8, 2025, 9:00am-1:30pm Eastern time. The theme of the talks is "The Jesuit Mission to China." For details and registration, see ncta.princeton.edu.

Since today is mid-autumn festival (zhongqiu jie 中秋節), or ch'usŏk 秋夕, we're sharing these images of Luke Hua Hsiao-hsien's 華效先 painting Our Lady on the Crescent Moon 新月上的聖母. Yes, we are aware that the moon today is full, not new, but this is the best we could do.

Today we celebrate the birthday of our namesake, Fr. Matteo Ricci 利瑪竇, S.J. (Oct. 6, 1552-May 11, 1610). Happy Birthday, Fr. Ricci!

Details from two illustrations in Shengjiao xiangshuo 聖教像說 [Images and explanations of the holy teaching] (web.bc.edu/ricci/indexT...), a Catholic publication with Qing-period origins. Clothing in the book appears to reflect Republican fashion. We thus conjecture that it was published after 1911.

Our librarian wrote an essay on what he calls the Taichung polyglot, a draft for a multilingual Chinese dictionary produced in Taiwan in the 1950s and now held in part at the Library. This draft is part of the paper trail of the Chinese-French Grand dictionnaire Ricci. web.bc.edu/ricci/

Our staff is in the process of cataloguing a recently donated collection of archival material. A cursory survey suggests that the collection primarily contains French-language letters and newspaper clippings relating to the Catholic church in China in the first half of the twentieth century.

A truckload (over 1,700 lbs.) of books—a donation from Ms. Tsutsui Suna (Kirishitan Bunko, Sophia University)—arrive from Japan. We will catalog these books in the coming months and update you on our progress.

Chen Cui 崔晨 (Ca' Foscari University of Venice) just published an article on medievalism in Giulio Aleni’s 艾儒略 (1582-1649) translation of Catholic liturgy. The article is based in part on research carried out at the Library. The article is open access: www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/16... Congratulations!

One of the Institute's jijin 祭巾, headgear worn by Catholic priests in late imperial China. The jijin was first described by Giuilo Aleni 艾儒畧 (1582-1649) in his Misa jiyi 彌撒祭義 (Meaning of the rite of the mass, preface dated 1629). The pictured jijin is small and probably belonged to an altar boy.

New arrival: He Bian and Mårten Söderblom Saarela, The Manchu Mirrors and the Knowledge of Plants and Animals in High Qing China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Asia Center, 2025). The book includes some discussion of Jesuit influences on Manchu writings and their reception in Europe.

Here we see a conservator at the BnF in Paris repairing a copy of Sinarum scientia, a Latin-language work published using Chinese woodblock printing technology in Guangzhou (Canton) in the 17th century. www.instagram.com/reel/DL2yazH...

We recently bought a late 19th-c. Catholic work published in Shanghai. Cataloguing it, we found a note in pencil with the date 1941. We also found two tram tickets, one with penciled notes in the same hand. We will post about the book itself on a different occasion. For now, please enjoy these.

Congratulations to former RI-HYI Fellow Prof. Son Eunsil on the publication of her article on Thomas Aquinas's views on homosexuality, which presents a reassessment in light of his concept of natural law and human nature. The article can be accessed here: kiss.kstudy.com/Detail/Ar?ke....

Lin Dieken 林迭肯 (Handa 漢達, 1900-1972) et al.'s Guoyu pinyin cihui 國語拼音詞彙 [National-language vocabulary with phonetic transcriptions] from 1944. This dictionary was published in a period when intellectuals of various political stripes were advocating for Chinese language reform.

A number of paintings depicting Jesuit missionaries to Ming and Qing China, as well as Xu Guangqi 徐光啟, were returned to the Institute from the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore, where they had been on loan. The paintings were made at the T'ou-sè-wè 土山灣 orphanage in Shanghai before 1915.

Today we celebrated Fr. Robert Carbonneau's birthday at the Institute. Dr. Carbonneau, C.P., in an Archival Specialist at the Ricci Institute. He also teaches in the Theology department at Boston College. Happy birthday, Fr. Rob!

Today the Library received donations adding to a collection related to American missions in Korea and China. We will return with more information once we've processed the material.

Chen Chen 陳辰, a PhD candidate in the School of Philosophy at Zhejiang University and a visiting student at Georgetown, is at the Library doing research on Matteo Ricci's 利瑪竇 (1552-1610) Ershiwu yan 二十五言 [Twenty-five passages], a text largely based on a Latin version of Epictetus' Encheiridion.

Japanese woodblock update: Today we visited the Boston College Digital Scholarship team (ds.bc.edu) in the O'Neill Library to begin the 3D printing of a prototype from the scan made a few weeks ago. This model will not be quite life size. We will return to check on the printing tomorrow morning.

Two illustrations from an undated Japanese manuscript copy of Adam Schall von Bell's 湯若望 (1591-1666) Yuanjing shuo 遠鏡說 [Explanation of the telescope, 1626]. The wormed manuscript has been expertly mended.

Details from a map of Edo (present-day Tokyo) that we have yet to catalog. The library will be closed on Monday, May 26. We wish everyone in the US a nice Memorial Day weekend.

Using photogrammetry, the Boston College Digital Scholarship team (ds.bc.edu) is helping us create 3D models of some of our Japanese printing woodblocks. We have great plans for these scans. Stay tuned.

A Japanese world map from the Tokugawa period that we have yet to catalog. The images show Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica (connected to Australia); North America; western Japan, Korea, and the Chinese coast; and Brazil.

Jie Zhang (Arizona State University) is helping us identify the source of images in a recently acquired early 20th-century Chinese book on the passion of the Christ.

Jie Zhang (Arizona State University) is visiting the library to do research on interreligious exchanges in printed illustrations between the 17th and 19th century. For more information on Ms. Zhang and her work, see search.asu.edu/profile/4784....

Recent addition: Xu Zhenglin 許正林, Ming-Qing chuanjiaoshi dui Zhongguo wenhua de chuanbo 明清傳教士對中國文化的傳播 [The transmission of Chinese culture by missionaries in the Ming and Qing period] (Beijing: Zhongjiao wenhua chubanshe, 2023).

We arrived early today and saw the morning sun shine diagonally on one of our Japanese printing blocks that were out on display. It was time for some macro photography. Note the Japanese reading marks on the side of the Chinese characters, which are, as the technology demands, carved in reverse.

New arrival: Liu Geng 劉耿, Xinfeng wanli: Shiqi shiji Yesuhui Zhongguo nianxin yanjiu 信風萬里：17世紀耶穌會中國年信研究 [Ten thousand li of prevailing winds: studies on the Jesuit annual letters from China in the seventeenth century] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2024), in two vols.

Louis le Comte 李明 (1655-1728) writing that the Chinese language only has "three hundred and thirty words." Should be easy to learn, right? Sadly, he means syllables, excluding tones. This is the 3rd French ed. from 1698 (1st ed. 1696) and the English trans. from 1697. Full citations in the alt text.