China Humanitites Seminar
Covering the whole span of Chinese experience predating the modern era, the China Humanities Seminar addresses all aspects of Chinese civilization—literature, history, philosophy, religion, art history, and the performing arts

Monday, October 19, 2009 4:00 pm
Memento Mori: Preparing for Death in China and Europe during the Early Modern Era
Eugenio Menegon, assistant professor of history, Boston University

The search for salvation was a common urge in China and Europe during early modern times. Chinese intellectuals and common people shared with their Western counterpart a preoccupation with the meaning of life and death and one’s destiny in the afterlife, framed by the limited life expectancy of pre-modern societies and nurtured by centuries of philosophical reflection and religious practice within Buddhism, Daoism, and Neo-Confucianism. When the Jesuits reached China in the late sixteenth century, they found an intellectual and spiritual environment that was not only open to Western natural philosophy, but also to European moral and religious teachings to prepare for death and attain salvation.

Eugenio Menegon teaches courses in Chinese history (pre-modern and modern periods) and in world history at Boston University. His interests include Chinese-Western relations in late Imperial times, Chinese religions and Christianity in China, Chinese science, the intellectual history of Republican China, and the history of maritime Asia. He has published a number of articles on these topics in various languages, and he is the author of an Italian-language biography of the Jesuit Giulio Aleni, a pioneer in cross-cultural and religious exchanges in China in the seventeenth century. His forthcoming book, entitled Ancestors, Virgins and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China (2009), centers on the life of Catholic communities in Fujian.

Location: Common Room, 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA
Contact: vleung@fas.harvard.edu