OS EXAMES IMPERIAIS CHINESES NA PERSPECTIVA DO PADRE ÁLVARO SEMEDO曾德昭神父眼中的中國朝廷科舉制度
The article analyzes how the Portuguese Jesuit Álvaro Semedo (1585–1657), who lived in Ming China for over thirty years, represented the imperial examination system in his work *Relação da Grande Monarquia da China*. It argues that this description, although grounded in observation and linguistic pr...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
January 2010
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40033/3555 |
| Summary: | The article analyzes how the Portuguese Jesuit Álvaro Semedo (1585–1657), who lived in Ming China for over thirty years, represented the imperial examination system in his work *Relação da Grande Monarquia da China*. It argues that this description, although grounded in observation and linguistic proficiency, produces a portrait that is simultaneously meticulous and idealizing: the examinations are presented as a meritocratic and morally disciplining mechanism for shaping the literati, supposedly indifferent to social origin and decisive for advancement and governance. Methodologically, the study undertakes a historiographical reading of Semedo’s text, highlighting its central elements—the centrality of the Four Books and the Five Classics, the discipline of study (including silent reading and writing), education by private tutors, surveillance and procedural rigor—as well as the translation and European terminological equivalence of the degrees (xiucai, juren, jinshi). In the conclusions, the author emphasizes that Semedo describes the three-level process, underscoring anti-fraud mechanisms such as anonymity (mifeng tenglu zhidu) and the repression of dishonesty, but frames these practices within a Christian and moralizing interpretive matrix that contributes to constructing an exemplary image of the imperial examinations. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |