This paper will offer a concise description of the modern European context in which the Catholic missionary undertaking of the French Vincentian Fathers, Congregatio Missionis, CM, and later on of the Belgian and Dutch Scheut Fathers, Congregatio Immaculati Cordis Mariae, CICM, developed. Both missionary institutes were active in South Mongolia and North China during the nineteenth century. Although there was no ecumenical spirit or cooperation in the missionary movement, the Protestant missionary enterprise will be described here in order to compare the main characteristics of both undertakings. The actual development of the Belgian and Dutch missionary activities (1870-1922) within a Sino-Mongol context－the Ordos region, to be precise－is the topic of my forthcoming Ph.D. dissertation and will not be discussed here.

The Growing Crisis of the "Propagation of the Faith" during the Counter Reformation and the Enlightenment

Propaganda Fide and Missio

During the sixteenth century the propaganda fide, "propagation of the faith", was linked up with the Iberian overseas expansion. The ecclesio-political symbiosis was the result of the Treaties of Alcacovas-Toledo (1479-1480) and Tordesillas (1494), and of numerous papal bulls, such as Romanus Pontifex of Nicholas V (1454), Inter Caetera Divinae, and Dudum Siquidem of Alexander VI (1493), which allowed Spain and Portugal eventually, with papal consent, to divide the world between them. According to the South African missiologist David J. Bosch, the papal bulls were based on the medieval assumption that the Pope as dominus totius orbis held supreme authority over the entire globe, including the non-Christian world. Herein lies the origin of the right of patronage (patronado in Spanish and padroado in Portuguese), a type of "royal vicariate", according to which the Holy See delegated to the rulers of the two countries the Christianization of the New World, the nomination of bishops, and the administration of religious benefices.(1)

Some historians and missiologists consider the Iberian overseas expansion and missionary enterprise as the continuation of the age-long European adaptation to and confrontation with an expansive and dynamic Islam. Thanks to the Arabs, medieval Europe assimilated several scientific, technological, and cultural innovations, which in turn shaped the European expansion. The Eastern Crusades, the Western Reconquista, the failed attempt of Pope Innocent IV to enter into an alliance with the Mongols, were all part of an increasing confrontation. The emergence of a merchant class and the search for gold, spices and silk, further stimulated the European "discoveries".(2)

From the beginning, the religious factor played a motivating role in European expansion and provided juridico-moral justification for it. According to the Spanish lawyer and Carmelite, Diego Sanchez de Avila, better known by his monastic name of Thomas a Jesu, the commonly used term Propaganda Fide meant not only the conversion of all unbelievers, but also of all schismatics, Jews, and Saracens.(3) Thus the purpose of the "propagation of the faith" was both the universal expansion and the unity of the Church. The new term missio, "mission"－used by the founder of the Jesuit Order, Ignatius of Loyola－derived its meaning from the papal right to send (mittere in Latin) and to assign ecclesiastical envoys, "missionaries", to a particular place, "mission".(4) The main object of the founding of the Society of Jesus in 1540 by Ignatius was the defence and propagation of the faith. At that time, however, the use of the term "mission" was not yet wide-spread.

The growing awareness of the disadvantages resulting from the Portuguese and Spanish alliance between Throne and Altar, the particularism of the different religious Orders, the Counter Reformation－these and similar circumstances were to a certain extent conducive to the formation, in 1622, of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, "Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith", SCPF. This new dicastery of the Roman Curia was the result, not only of the Pope's response to the colonial missionary policies of Spain and Portugal, but also of the centralizing and reforming spirit that prevailed after the closure of the Council of Trent (1545-1563).(5) The privilege of Christianizing the newly-discovered lands became the exclusive monopoly of the Holy See. While Rome would eventually play a more central and directive role in the "propagation of the faith", the Holy See now started to appoint titular bishops or vicars apostolic (Vicarii Apostlici Domini).(6) They performed ecclesiastical functions on behalf of the Pope in non-Christian as well as in non-Catholic areas, the vicariates apostolic. By creating these vicariates, rather than dioceses, in the overseas missions, the Holy See wanted to bypass the padroado and limit its pretensions. This move of sending papal representatives reflected at the same time the post-medieval ecclesiology of Cardinal Robert Bellarmine on the universal Roman jurisdiction and character of the missionary enterprise. The ecclesiastical authority of the vicars apostolic also raised the sensitive issue of collaboration with the religious missionaries. The introduction of the new ecclesiastical structure was to lead to serious jurisdictional disputes in some mission fields, especially in British India, between the padroado and apostolic missionaries.(7)

The Holy See de facto lost its monopoly of Christianizing the non-Christian world with the crucial role played by the Protestant Nadere Reformatie, "Second Reformation", in Holland, by Puritanism in the Anglo-Saxon world, and by the rise of the Protestant maritime powers, England, Holland, and Denmark. In 1649, the New England Company was founded in England to underwrite the Protestant missionary enterprise in the transatlantic colonies. Dutch overseas mission work began in Formosa－modern Taiwan－in 1627. In the beginning of the eighteenth century the Danish king sent German pietist missionaries to the Danish settlement of Tranquebar in Southeast India. In 1727, a small Russian Orthodox ecclesiastical mission was established in Peking, but apparently did not carry on any missionary activities.

France, until then absent from the Catholic missionary scene, went through a period of revival during the seventeenth century. Extraordinary and itinerant preaching or "missions" were undertaken by regular clerics and Jesuits among the Protestant reformed local population. Under the influence of the founder of the Oratory (1611), the French Cardinal Pierre de Berulle, the now widely used word "mission" received a new christological meaning : the mission of the Incarnate Word. For Vincent de Paul, a farmer's son, "mission" meant the extraordinary preaching which he undertook in 1617 among the religiously abandoned Catholic rural populace of Folleville (Chatillon-sur-Chalaronne, eastern France). From this experience there originated both the missiones paroeciales, "parochial missions", and the Congregatio Missionis, "Congregation of the Mission", CM, established in 1625 by Vincent de Paul.(8) The Compagnie du Saint-Sacrament, "Company of the Holy Sacrament", was founded a few years later by Henri de Levis, Duke of Ventadour, whose clerical and lay members devoted themselves to charitable deeds and the promotion of "parochial missions" in rural and urban areas. The Company's project of foreign missions was not realized, mainly because of the intervention of the Vincentians' procurator at the SCPF.(9)

By 1662, the first emissaries of the Societe des Missions Etrangeres de Paris, MEP, had left France, due to the efforts of a French Jesuit missionary, Alexandre de Rhodes and some members of the "Company of the Holy Sacrament". They found in Siam－modern Thailand－a more favorable reception than elsewhere, but they also sought entrance to Tongking and Cochinchina－modern Vietnam. In 1680, Jean-Dominique Cassini, the director of the astronomical observatory in Paris, approached French government authorities about the possibility of sending some Jesuits as royal mathematicians to make astronomical observations in the Orient. The plan was not realized until 1684, when Philippe Couplet, a Flemish Jesuit missionary from China, visited Louis XIV and also discussed with the Jesuits in Paris the matter of procuring personnel. Later that year, envoys from Siam arrived at the court of Versailles. This event prompted the king to send six Jesuits to the East.(10)

The French missionary effort aimed at reunifying the Protestants with Catholicism at home and at liberating the Holy Land and converting all unbelievers abroad. On the SCPF 's side, more missionary responsibility was given to the local bishops, while the missionary activities of the religious Orders were more closely supervised. Thus, whereas the Jesuits were now much more active in the French countryside, the new missionary institutes went overseas. Secular clerics, such as the Oratorians, Sulpicians, and Vincentians, as well as lay people, followed the regular French Capuchins, who participated in the French missionary enterprise.(11)

Orthodoxy, Moral Rigorism, and Ethnocentrism

After Trent, the Counter Reformation and the "propagation of the faith" were both characterized by their Europocentric emphasis on dogmatic orthodoxy. In the Gallican Church, however, one of the characteristics of the Catholic Reformation during the seventeenth century was its emphasis on moral rigorism and pastoral pragmatism rather than theological orthodoxy.(12) Yet the growing influence of the Enlightenment, the development of several doctrinal controversies and political disputes, weakened the Propaganda Fide by sowing dissension and uncertainty among the Catholic missionaries.

The missionaries at the time discussed the different missio-logical methods, without giving much room for the cultural accommodation of Catholicism in non-Christian cultures. Some sinologists explain this limitation as one of the reasons why the expeditio Christiana "failed" in contrast to the successful Chinese inculturation of Indian Buddhism." The attempt by the Italian Jesuit, Matteo Ricci, to understand Chinese civilization in its own right and to present Catholicism to the intellectual elite and to the general population stands as a contribution to that discussion.

In its Instructions of 1659 to the vicars apostolic of Indo-china, the SCPF advocated the formation of a numerous native clergy ; the adaptation to the local customs and culture ; the adequate spiritual and intellectual formation of the missionaries ; the financial independence and the purely spiritual character of the mission. The missionaries were to abstain from politics and commerce and to consult the SCPF in all important decisions such as the nomination of bishops.(14) The Instructiones ad munera apostolica rite obeunda perutiles(15), "Instructions in order to fulfil properly the apostolic duties", even stated that the true religion is characterized by the rejection of purely human means.(16) The Instructiones, inspired by the Roman Instructions of 1659 and formulated by the French vicars apostolic, Lambert de La Motte and Francois Pallu, constituted the conclusions of the Synod held at Ayuthia, the capital of Siam, in 1664. Although the Instructiones did not exclude the existence of authentic religious values in the non-Christian world,(17) still the rigid puritanical approach adopted by the French vicars apostolic made accommodation hardly possible, at least in the form in which it had been developed by the Jesuits. The Instructiones, as a matter of fact, were suspected of Jansenist inspiration by some Jesuits.(18) The less rigoristic moral and Christ-centred theology of the Neapolitan lawyer, Alfonso Maria de Liguori, founder of the Redemptorists (1732), would become influential outside Italy only during the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Instructiones or Monita ad missionaries Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide, "Instructions to the missionaries of the SCPF" were translated into French and still read by the Scheut Fathers.(19)

The doctrinal dispute between Jansenists and Jesuits about the role of divine grace and human freedom saw a pessimistic Augustinian confronted with an optimistic Molinist concept of human nature, a contrast which has traditionally been presented as the rigorist moral discipline of the Jansenists versus the laxism of the Jesuits. According to a French archivist-palaeographer, Francoise Hildesheimer, however, Jansenism was nothing else but an extreme expression of the French Catholic Reformation. The reaction against laxism in the Gallican church had manifested itself before the appearance of Jansenism. Moreover, the "disciples of Saint Augustine" also adopted other more positive and surprisingly modern attitudes in the theological and educational fields－the place of the laity and women in the Church, and the importance of having direct access to Holy Scripture, for instance.(20) Its defense of the bourgeois right of an individual Christian conscience brought Jansenism into conflict with both civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Upon the request of Louis XIV, 101 Jansenist theses were condemned by the papal Bull Unigenitus Dei Filius on 8 September 1713.

The discussion between Jansenists and Jesuits also had its repercussions on another dispute : the use of Chinese Christian terms and the question whether Chinese and South Indian (Malabar) Rites had a religious meaning or not. The Rites Controversy was peremptorily settled by the papal Bulls Ex illa die (1715), Ex quo singulari (1742), and Omnium sollicitudinum (1744), to the disadvantage of the Jesuits' strategy of cultural accommodation. The papal condemnation was fully endorsed by the SCPF, which previously had encouraged respect for local cultures by the apostolic missionaries. According to Dr. Paul A. Rule, the rejection of "human means", together with the centralizing tendencies of the Roman Congregations, had by the end of the seventeenth century betrayed the vision of a Chinese church embodied in the 1659 Instruction.(21) It was not until the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and North China that the SCPF again tolerated the performance of the Rites by native Catholics. The Instruction Plane compertum est of 8 December 1939 was the last formal instruction on the Rites Controversy.(22)

The doctrinal disputes during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often led to political conflicts and religious persecutions by the monarchical absolutist European regimes. Thus, after the death of the French Cardinal Jules Mazarin, Louis XIV personally resumed the struggle against the Jansenists, in which he saw an opposition party to be eliminated. In the second half of the seventeenth century, due to their independence, influence and success, the tide turned against the Jesuits as the spirit of the Enlightenment became influential among European intellectuals and spread in royal circles. After their defeat in the Rites Controversy, seven of their thirty-six Paraguayan reductions were ceded by Spain to Portugal in 1750 by the Treaty of Madrid and consequently abolished.

The reductions had originated with the early efforts of Dominicans and Franciscans to promoted the development of an Indian church independent of the State church. One of their Utopian aims was to unite the Indians in bigger entities (doctrinas in Spanish and aldeias in Portuguese) in order to facilitate a communitarian life, and to help the process of human and Christian maturation. The originality of the Jesuit reductions(23) consisted in their special juridical status vis-a-vis the Spanish Crown. Thus, for instance, in 1640 the Jesuits had permission to arm the Guarani Indians for self-defence, and no foreigner, apart from bishops and governors, had the right to enter. However, the Jesuits tried to impose the Spanish Christian way of life on the Guarani and ruled the reductions in a Europocentric and paternalistic way: the atmosphere was that of a monastery or a Jesuit college. The colonial powers regarded the reductions more and more as a threat and suppressed them, notwithstanding the armed resistance of the Guarani Indians. In 1759, the enlightened Portuguese Prime Minister, the Marquis de Pombal, Sebastiao Jose de Carvalho e Melo, used these events as a pretext for banning the Jesuits from Portugal and its colonies. The French and Spanish Bourbon monarchs followed his example, and Pope Clement XIV dissolved the Society on 21 July 1773 by the Bull Dominus ac Redemptor noster, staling that "it is almost impossible that the Church enjoy a lasting peace as long as the Society exists".(24)

The Shock of the French Revolution (25)

During the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment, modern theological and philosophical ideas such as Lutheranism, Calvinism, Jansenism, classical rationalism, empiricism, and Deism shaped an alternative pattern of thought among the urban bourgeoisie, replacing the medieval feudal and theocratic ideas of the ancien regime. Reason, freedom, happiness, and nature became the new key-words. They reflected a new age of optimism in humankind's own discoveries rather than faith in God's revelation. Inasmuch as religion was tolerant, progressive, and above all useful, it was to be accepted. Concrete signs of this new tolerance were, for instance, the French Edict of 1784 abolishing the peage corporel, the "corporal toll" imposed on Jews, and the Edict of 1787 granting official civil status to Protestants. The new ideas were given further concrete form in the liberal, egalitarian, nationalistic, and anticlerical goals of the French Revolution, under the three loosely associated words of the republican motto "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity".

According to the French church historian, Gerard Cholvy,(26) the Revolution did not go wrong on the Declaration of Human and Civil Rights, but on the reform of the Church. The abolition of tithes, the nationalization of Church property, the dissolution of all monastic orders in 1789 and religious congregations in 1790, and especially the obligation to swear allegiance to the Constitution Civile du Clerge, "Civil Constitution of the Clergy"－measures such as these divided the French clergy and kindled the passive and active resistance of some royalist regions in France, especially the Vendee. The religious persecution of 1893-1894 further stimulated the fervor of a minority. An estimated 30,000 refractory French priests emigrated to England, other European countries, and even America. Due to this intransigence, Napoleon Bonaparte was compelled to negotiate with the Pope in order to re-establish religious peace.(27)

With the Napoleonic Wars the ideology of the French Revolution was exported to the other briefly occupied European countries and was to have a lasting impact on the political and social development of continental Europe.(28) Upon the occupation of Rome by the troops of the Directoire, Pope Pius VI was forced to leave.(29) On 15 July 1801, his successor Barnaba Chiaramonti, the Benedictine Cardinal-bishop of Imola, Pope Pius VII, succeeded in negotiating a Concordat with Napoleon. In a letter of 28 August 1802 to the Pope, the latter suggested placing the protection of all missions in the Near and the Far East under his care. Upon the Pope's reftisal, Napoleon held him captive, annexed the Papal States in 1809, and confiscated the properties of both the Holy See and the SCPF. In 1805, Napoleon had already, by an imperial decree, re-established the seminary of the Missions Etrangeres de Paris, MEP, though this decree was to be revoked a few years later. His motives, however, had been purely political, as he feared that Britain would take over the direction of these missions.(30)

By the end of the eighteenth century the crisis of the "propagation of the faith" had reached its climax. According to different estimates(31), the total number of active Catholic missionaries, including indigenous priests, was somewhere between 300 and 526 persons. However, the same geopolitical, socio-economic, and cultural factors which had contributed to the Catholic missionary crisis contained the seeds of an unexpected recovery and expansion during the nineteenth century.

1.BOSCH, David J., Transforming Mission. Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books 1991) 226-230 ; Casiano FLORISTAN, "Evangelization of the 'New World' : An Old World Perspective", Missiology 20/2 (April 1992) 133-149.

2.RIVINIUS, Karl Josef, Weltlicher Schutz und Mission, (Bonner Beitrage zur Kirchengeschichte, Band 14), (Bohlau : Koln, Wien 1987) 9-11 ; SEBES, Joseph, "The Precursors of Ricci", in : RONAN, Charles E. & OH, Bonnie B.C., The Jesuits in China, 1582-1773 (Chicago : 1988) 19-61.

3.THOMAS A JESU, De procuranda salute omnium gentium, schismaticorum, Judaeorum, Sarracenorum caeterorumque infidelium libri duodecim. (Antverpiae : 1613). Quoted in MULDERS, A., Missiologisch bestek. Inleiding tot de katholieke missiewetenschap, (Antwerpen : Paul Brand 1962) 81-84 ; for the development of the missionary idea in modern times see 51-107 ; also SEUMOIS, Andre, Theologie Missionnaire, (Rome : Bureau de Presse O.M.I. 1973) vol. 1, 8-27.

4.BOSCH, David J., op. cit. 228.

5.CAMPS, A., "De katholieke missionaire beweging van 1492 tot 1789", in : VERSTRAELEN, F.J. et al. (eds.), Oecumenische Inleiding in de Missiologie. Teksten en konteksten van het wereldchristendom. (J.H. Kok-Kampen 1988) 222-229 ; PERBAL, Albert, "Projets, fondation et debuts de la Sacree Congregation de la Propagande (1568-1649)", in : DELACROIX, S. (ed.), Histoire Universelle des Missions Catholiques. Les Missions Modernes (XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles). (Paris : 1957) 109-131.

6.BOSCH, David J., op. cit. 228-229.

7.SOETENS, Claude, "Debuts de la hierarchie non-occidentale au temps de Pie XI. Retard voulu ou subi?", in : Des missions aux Eglises : naissance et passation des pouvoirs, XVIIe-XXe s. (10x session du CREDIC, Bale 1989) (Lyon : 1990) 143-167.

8.SEUMOIS, Andne, op. cit., vol. 1, 9-10.

9.GUENNOU, J., Missions Etrangeres de Paris, 21-26. (Paris : Fayard 1986).

10.WITEK, John D., "Philippe Couplet : a Belgian connection to the beginning of the Seventeenth-Century French Jesuit mission in China", in : HEYNDRICKX, J. (ed.), Philippe Couplet, S.J. (1623-1693). The Man Who Brought China to Europe. (Monumenta Serica. Monograph series, no 22) (Nettetal : Steyler Verlag 1991) 143-161 ; WITEK, John D., "Understanding the Chinese : A Comparison of Matteo Ricci and the French Jesuit Mathematicians Sent by Louis XIV", in : RONAN, Charles E. & OH, Bonnie B.C., op. cit., 62-102.

11.CAMPS, A., art. cit. 227-228.

12.HILDESHEIMER, Francoise, Le Jansenisme. L'histoire et l'heritage, (Paris : Desclee de Brouwer 1992) 123.

13.ZURCHER E., Bouddhisme, Christianisme et societe chinoise (Paris : Julliard 1990) 29-30.　

For the term "inculturation" see STANDAERT, Nicolas, "Inculturation and Chinese-Christian contacts in the Late Ming and Early Qing", Ching Feng 34/4 (Dee 1991) 1-16.

14.GUENNOU, J., op. cit., 73-76 ; CAMPS, A., art. cit.. 227.

15.From the fourth edition (1840) it was entitled Monita ad missionarios Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Tide.

16.GUENNOU, J., op. cit., 124-126; RULE, Paul A., K'ung-tzu or Confucius? The Jesuit Interpretation of Confucianism, 126-127. (Sydney : Alien & Unwin 1986) ; PRECLIN, E., and JARRY, E., Les luttes politiques et doctrinales aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles, in : FLICHE, A. and MARTIN, V., (eds.), Histoire de l'Eglise, vol. 19, part 1 & 2, (Paris : Bloud et Gay 1955) 552-554.

17.SEUMOIS, Andr6, op. cit., vol. 3, 183. Instructions aux missionnaires, (Bruxelles : 1920-1921) 81. "En traitant ainsi avec les paiens, il evitera de paraitre leur apporter un enseignement en tous points nouveau, mais il aura soin de les trailer comme s'ils avaient deja une teinte de ces verites".

18.PRECLIN, E., and JARRY, E., op. cit., 553 ; RULE, Paul A., op. cit., 124-129.

19.GUENNOU, J., op. cit., 126.

20.For a discussion of these attitudes see HILDESHEIMER, Francoise, op. cit., 7-10.

21.RULE, Paul A., op. cit., 127.

22.MINAMIKI, George, The Chinese Rites Controversy. From Its Beginning to Modern Times (Chicago : Loyola University Press 1985) 197-219.

23.The Indians were "inducted" (reducti) "into civil life and the Church". See CLEVENOT, Michel, "'The Kingdom of God on Earth'? The Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay", Concilium 187 (May 1986), 70-77.

24.PRECLIN, E. and JARRY, E., op. cit., 95, 110ff, 572, 689, 690.

25.See GEFFRE, Claude and JOSSUA, Jean-Pierre, (eds.), "1789 : The French Revolution and the Church", Concilium (Feb 1989) 1-140.

26.CHOLVY, Gerard, La religion en France de la fin du XVIIIe a nos jours (Paris : Hachette 1991) 7.

27.DELACROiX, S., (ed.), Histoire Universelledes Missions Catholiques. Les Missions Contemporaines (1800-1957) 27.

28.See SIGMANN, J., Les revolutions romantiques et democratiques de l'Europe. Les grandes vagues revolutionnaires. (Calmann-Levy 1970).

29.DELACROIX, S., (ed.), op. cit., 28. JEDIN, Hubert, (ed.), History of the Church, vol. 7 (London : 1981) 3-84.

30."...j 'y suis porte par ie disir d' oter aux Anglaisla direction de ces missions qu'ils commencent a s' attribuer". Quoted in Louis WEI Tsing-sing, Lapolitique missionnaire de la France en Chine (Paris : 1960) 79-80 ; 254-255.

31.DELACROIX, S., "Le declin des missions modernes", Op. cit., 363-394, 385 ; VAN LAARHOVEN, J., De Kerk van 1770-1970 (Nijmegen : 1974) 90 ; BROU, A., "Les statistiques dans les anciennes missions", Revue d' Histoire des Missions (1929) 361-384.