Archives and Rare Books
The Ricci Institute has substantial East Asian and European rare book and archival holdings. Through acquisitions and donations, we are continually enlarging these collections.
The majority of our rare books concern traditional China with a special concentration on the Jesuits missions, East-West cultural exchange, and the history of the Ming, Qing, and Republican periods, roughly spanning the 16th to early 20th century.聽In addition to these volumes there are more than 300,00 digital documents, photos, manuscripts, microfilms, paintings, and artefacts. Two of the original components include the Library of the China Province of the Society of Jesus Bibliotheca Sinensis Societatis Iesu compiled by Fr. Albert Chan, S.J., and the China Archives of Fr. Francis A. Rouleau, S.J.
Fr. Francis A. Rouleau, S.J.聽(1900-1984), arrived in Shanghai in 1929, and lived there until 1952.聽A historian and theologian, he spent many years collecting archival materials concerning the Chinese Rites Controversy. His first collection was destroyed in Shanghai in 1949, and Fr. Rouleau was compelled to rebuild it by traveling to archives in Rome, Paris, London, Portugal, the Philippines, and elsewhere, making microfilms, copies, and transcriptions of source material. Now housed at the Ricci Institute, Fr. Rouleau鈥檚 life-long collection contains hundreds of documents (over 50,000 pages) in six different European languages. To preserve and improve ease of use, most of the Rouleau microfilm archive has been digitized. In addition, there are more than 200 rare European books in the Rouleau Archives.
Fr. Albert Chan, S.J.聽(1915-2005), curator of the Bibliotheca Sinensis Societatis Iesu (also known as the Jesuit Chinese Library) and senior research fellow at the Ricci Institute, was a historian specializing in Ming history with a passion for books. As a young Jesuit in Hong Kong in the 1930s he had already collected over 1,000 volumes, only to have them later stolen or destroyed. He began collecting anew, only to have his second collection destroyed during World War II. After the war, Fr. Chan assembled his third collection, purchasing books (and sometimes entire collections) on his small stipend. Now a major collection, the Bibliotheca Sinensis Societatis Iesu today contains over 70,000 volumes (the majority in Chinese) including many rare and important editions. Fr. Chan also inspected other China-related collections, producing a catalog of Chinese holdings of the Jesuit Archives in Rome.
By the early 1980鈥檚 the Society of Jesus felt that the Bibliotheca Sinensis Societatis Iesu could form the base for an international center for the study of the historical and cultural ties between China and the West. The Ricci Institute, founded in 1984 by Fr. Francis A. Rouleau, S.J., Fr. Edward J. Malatesta, S.J., Sr. Mary Celeste Rouleau, S.M., and Dr. Theodore N. Foss, Ph.D., was chosen as the repository, and in 1985 Fr. Chan and the collection arrived at the University of San Francisco, which until 2022 housed the Institute.聽From 1985-1997, under the Directorship of Fr. Edward J. Malatesta, S.J. (1932-1998), the Ricci Institute added many important items in both Chinese and Western languages. Fr. Malatesta sponsored and initiated many research and publishing projects with colleagues in China and Europe, resulting in such works as the Shanghai Library Catalog of Western Rare Books, Departed Yet Present on the Zhalan cemetery, and The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven. The Phillipps-Robinson collection, purchased by Fr. Malatesta for the Institute, includes manuscript material on the Chinese Rites controversy, and the archive amassed by Fr. Malatesta himself contains source books, photographs, and documents on Jesuit sites in China, as well as papers concerning Christianity in China.
The Ricci Institute holds digital copies of most of the European-language material in the Japonica-Sinica collection of the聽Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (ARSI), the Roman Archives of the Society of Jesus.
The archive of the old Archdiocese of Canton (Guangzhou) forms one of the main components of the Ricci Institute's holdings.
The Ricci Institute is the custodian of the archive of the pre-Communist Archdiocese of Canton (Guangzhou). The diocese was originally part of the diocese of Macao, but was split off as the Apostolic Vicariate of Guangdong (the province of which Guangzhou is the capital) in 1875. Over time, the archdiocese shrunk, as parts of its territory were made into independent ecclesiastical jurisdictions. Yet for a stretch of the period covered by this archive, the Archdiocese of Canton encompassed not only Guangdong, but also the neighboring province of Guangxi and the island of Hainan. The diocese was under the management of the French Foreign Missions of Paris (Missions 脡trang猫res de Paris, MEP). The archive accordingly subdivides into two parts: one French (also containing a substantial amount of documentation in Latin), and one Chinese.
While concerned with church affairs, the archive has a lot to teach on a host of other issues relative to modern Chinese history. The church was a major landlord, and a large portion of the archive鈥檚 documents consists of property deeds. The concern with property explains the existence of maps within the archive. Another major component of the archive are letters sent to priests of the diocese (in all three languages) and reports from the field.
The Passionists, a Roman Catholic religious congregation of priests and brothers, were sent to China by Propaganda Fide in Rome. They arrived in 1921 and remained until they were expelled in 1955.
The Ricci Institute is the local repository for the digital Passionist China Collection (PCC) which are the China archives of the Passionists of the Province of St. Paul of the Cross, a Catholic congregation that sent missionaries to Hunan Province between 1921 and 1950. The collection contains a聽 wide variety of materials, including letters, diaries, reports, financial accounts, baptismal records, audio materials, and perhaps most importantly, thousands of rare photographs from China.聽
The PCC documents the complex relationship between American missionaries and local Chinese communities of the early 20th century, and reveals many aspects of social and cultural life during this tumultuous period. Under the leadership of Dr. Xiaoxin Wu and Fr. Robert Carbonneau, C.P., archivist of the Passionists, the Ricci Institute completed a multi-year project to digitize and catalog the entire collection. In 2016 copies of the master digital files and the physical archives themselves were returned to the University of Scranton, which houses the complete Passionist archives.
The collection subdivides into several sections. For details, please see聽.
In addition to our major collections, the Ricci Institute holds a number of smaller archival collections. Here we highlight discreet collections as well as topics that merit research across collections.