Great monuments were Ming, not Tartar
Editorial contextEllis repeats a remark that China's great national monuments and best works of art all date from the Ming dynasty, and adds his own jibe that the Tartar conquerors brought barbarism without their ancestors' energy. It is an opinion about who built China's monuments, not a survey.
It has been remarked that all the great national monuments were executed in the reign of the Ming dynasty; the best works of art of all kinds belong to the same period, so that the last Tartar conquerors of China would seem to have communicated the barbarism without the energy of their ancestors.
About Manchus (Qing dynasty)
Keep in mind
A prejudiced generalisation; the Qing built a great deal, including the palaces and temples at Chengde described by Barrow (W058).
'A Tartarean law' and the image of 'some Tartar'
Editorial contextAt Nanchang, local graduates petitioned to have the Jesuits expelled. In Trigault's Latin their complaint says the foreigners had moved from cramped lodgings to grand houses, preached a 'tartarea' law, and handed out pictures of 'some Tartar or Saracen' they called God come down from heaven. The word play is Latin: tartareus means hellish, from Tartarus, while 'tartarus' here also means a barbarian foreigner. It is Trigault's rendering, not the petition's own Chinese wording.
that these same men at first lived in cramped lodgings, but have now bought others, roomy and magnificent; that they preach a Tartarean law and lead the ignorant crowd into deception … that they hand out certain images of some Tartar or Saracen, whom they said was God, who had come down from heaven to teach and set free mankind
Working translation
Original wording
Eos ipsos primum in angustis sedibus habitasse, nunc vero alias capaces atque magnificas coemisse, legem ab iisdem tartaream praedicari, rude vulgus in fraudem induci … eos certas imagines distribuere, nescio cuius tartari aut Saraceni, quem dicebant esse Deum, qui ad mortales instruendos liberandosque e caelo venerat
About Chinese scholars accusing the Jesuits; 'Tartar' as an insult
Keep in mind
A hostile petition summarised in Latin by the Jesuits' own historian.
