Abstract
Autore:
Pissavino Paolo C.
Titolo:
"Foggia sì esquisita di governo”. Tra idealizzazione e dispotismo: le immagini della Cina nell’Italia della prima età moderna"
The present study aims at
analyzing the relationship between the image
of the Chinese Empire in the writings of
travellers and Jesuits and the main themes
(Reason of State, Utopianism, Mixed Constitution)
of the Italian political thought
during the XVIth and XVIIth centuries. The
writings of travellers and Jesuits presented
a complex view of the Empire, which
impacts in various ways the spread of the
Chinese myth in the political treatises of the
Counter-Reformation era. This complexity
is evident in the description the relations
provide of the characteristics of sovereignty
and the behavior of the emperor. From the
very beginning of Della entrata della Compagnia
di Giesù e Christianità nella Cina is
presented a complex image of the Chinese
government: along with the absolutist delineation
of the imperial power proposed
by Ricci, there are are conflicting images
that, regarding either a distant past or current
government practice, recognized other
forms: a feudal style of monarchy, a sort of
mixed constitution, or a form of dispotic
government. Ricci and other Jesuits, as Martino
Martini and Athanasius Kircher, presented
the Mandarins as a sort of Kings-Philosophers
of Plato’s Republic. Following the
works composed by Jesuits, some authors of
Reason of State and utopists (Giovanni Botero
and Lodovico Zuccolo) pointed out that
the perfection of the Chinese political and
social institutions could really preserve the
Empire from the corruption, an Empire that
had to be considered a paradigm of a well
ordered state, as another Jesuit, Daniello
Bartoli, wrote in his book on China.
