The Ricci Institute

Public Lecture Series Feb. 16, 2005

“Guadalupe and Guanyin: Images of the Madonna in Mexico and China” Edited Transcript On February 16, 2005 the Ricci Institute presented “Guadalupe and Guanyin: Images of the Madonna in Mexico and China” as part of its ongoing public lecture series. At this event, two keynote speakers, Ms. Lauren Arnold and Prof. Tom Lucas, S.J. invited the audience to explore the impact of missionary Christianity on traditional cultures in pre-modern Mexico and China through a visual art history presentation. As the edited transcripts reveal, this oftenturbulent spiritual contact with European Christian culture and imagery resulted in the emergence of two very important ethnographic versions of the Virgin Mary: Guadalupe and Guanyin. In the presentations below, Arnold and Lucas trace the evolution of these compelling Marian images from medieval European prototypes overlaid upon indigenous folk goddesses to fully developed Christian devotional images of distinct and moving ethnicity. Co-sponsored by the EDS-Stewart Chair at the USF Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History, the USF Center for the Pacific Rim, and the USF Department of Visual and Performing Arts.

“The Franciscan Origin of the Image of the Child-giving Guanyin” Lauren Arnold is an independent scholar and Research Fellow at the University of San Francisco Ricci Institute. She is the author of Princely Gifts and Papal Treasures: The Franciscan Mission to China and Its Influence on the Art of the West 1250-1350 (Desiderata Press, San Francisco, 1999). An art historian trained at the University of Michigan, Arnold teaches and lectures on the subject of East/West cultural and artistic exchange.

It is not my intention this evening to explore the canonical origins of Guanyin within the Buddhist Sutras, only the artistic evolution of her Child-giving form in China. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara—“The One Who Hears the Cries of the World”—was always understood to be masculine within the Indian 1 scriptures. Even in his male form, the bodhisattva’s power to grant children was clearly stated in the 2 th Lotus Sutra, and as early as the 11 century, miraculous births of children were being reported after supplicating prayers to Guanyin. In any case, Guanyin was depicted as a tall imposing male with a mustache in the Tang Dynasty, as paintings from 3 Dunhuang evince. A later version, seen here, from an encyclopedia dated to 1607, is in the library of the Ricci Institute here at USF. [Figure 1]

Fig. 1 Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, a masculine form of Guanyin, from the Sancai tuhai (1607). USF Ricci Institute.

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Fig. 2 Fishbasket Guanyin, one of the many variant forms of White-robed Guanyin, from the Sancai tuhai (1607). USF Ricci Institute.

Yet, it took several centuries and much cultural turbulence in China before the image of the mustachioed, benevolent “Guide of Souls” evolved into the child-giving folk goddess with “distinctive indigenous characteristics” that is 4 still beloved and worshiped today. Why did “he” become “she” in China (and to a lesser degree in Korea and Japan), but not in other Buddhist countries? 5 And why did she assume so many local forms and variations? The scholar Chun-fang Yu has written extensively about these changes, and her conclusions are germane. Certainly, timing was important. The transitional th th nature of the 12 through the 15 centuries—three dynasties, in rapid, turbulent succession —the Song, Yuan, and Ming—made it more likely that local deities, seen in widely reported visions, could take on national, unifying characteristics. Each local vision of the goddess by the devout authenticated the other provincial sightings. This was also the period of the appearance of other regional female deities—the Queen of Heaven Mazu; the Goddess of the Azure Cloud; and Eternal Mother—all of which came to be linked in 6 mother-daughter relations to Guanyin. [Figure 2]

The Buddhist attributes of compassion and mercy made it more likely that local folk personifications of female goodness in China would become interlinked with the universal appeal of the all-caring Guanyin. Specifically, Yu cites the important Buddhist virtue of Perfect Wisdom—which is personified as a female in a Mahayana hymn: “she leads 7 those who have gone astray to the right path… she is the mother of bodhisattvas….” She emphasizes the deep cultural significance this manifestation had for women in China, where the bearing of sons was so important. None of this answers why the feminine form of Guanyin did not evolve in other Asian countries. But clearly, a womanly deity that embodied compassion and mercy, and who could be prayed to for sons, had important cultural resonance during this period in China.

The White-Robed Guanyin One particular form of the goddess arose during the turbulent years of the transition from the Song to the Yuan dynasty. The divinity appeared in a dream 8 to a pilgrim on her island of Putuo, in 1276. In this widely reported vision, the goddess appeared in a white robe to her supplicant, and this image of the stately Goddess of Mercy became hugely popular, especially among women worshipers on the South Sea coast of China. It is important to note that, at this stage of her artistic evolution—from male to gender-neutral images to female—images of Guanyin holding a child do not begin to appear before the year 1400 or so. This time gap is interesting in itself, and has been noted by a number of authors, although none have ventured more than a vague conclusion as to its origin. This evening I will propose a more specific answer to what brought about the origin of the image of Child-giving Guanyin—and propose a specific western source for this particular depiction of th the folk goddess, beginning with events that occurred in China in the 14 century. [Figure 3]

Fig. 3 Madonna of Humility, detail of central panel of ivory triptych, ca. 1330, Cologne. Nationalmuseet Copenhagen, inv. N. 2735

The Madonna of Humility Coincidentally, just as the womanly Guanyin was receiving widespread attention around the year 1300 on the south coast of China, the prototypical image of the Madonna of Humility was being introduced into the same area by Franciscan missionaries. The Latin Christian devotion to the Madonna and Child became, I 9 propose, the true source of later images of the Child-giving Guanyin.

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The Franciscan presence in Yuan China is an example of early East-West cultural exchange, as the Franciscans were invited from Europe into China by Khubilai Khan himself, and served a diplomatic role as couriers under all the Mongol Yuan emperors. They fulfilled this role by carrying princely gifts and letters back and forth between Beijing and Avignon. In addition, in a mission largely forgotten but welldocumented in both western and Chinese sources, the Franciscans established schools and churches in 10 Beijing and in all the major cities on the south sea coast of China. We know that they decorated their churches in China with European, late-medieval style works of art in an effort to educate their new converts in Christian lore. We know the Franciscans arrived with objects of devotion, including illustrated Bibles, altar pieces and small devotional items, similar to this ivory 11 Madonna of Humility holding the Christ Child.

Overlapping Iconography of Mary and Guanyin in the 14th Century From the beginning of the medieval Franciscan mission to China, it must have been apparent to both missionaries and converts alike that images of the Madonna of Humility had iconography that overlapped with the locally-worshiped White-robed Guanyin. At their most basic, Guanyin and Mary certainly shared the same core cultural values of filial piety and feminine chastity. Some other attributes of Guanyin were the moon, a vase of pure water, and a white parrot (a folk symbol of filial devotion). Similarities to the Madonna of the Revelation, with her crescent moon, or to the Virgin depicted with the white Dove of the Holy Spirit, were immediately apparent. These similarities in iconography are important, and many of them have been remarked upon from the 12 Jesuit period onward. Undoubtedly, these shared attributes worked to the Franciscan’s advantage in educating and swaying new converts. For all her similarities in attributes, however, we still have no instances of images of the Child-giving Guanyin before 1400. Yet, sometime between 1400 to1600, “it appears … that the cult of the White-robed Guanyin as the giver of heirs became firmly established in 13 China.” What brought about the addition of an infant male child to Guanyin’s iconography? The Franciscan link becomes compelling when we consider the perception of women worshipers, especially their cultural values when first presented with images of the seated Madonna holding the male th infant. The 14 century Franciscans would have explained that this was Mary the Mother of God, 14 embodied as the Throne of Wisdom, a form expounded upon by St. Bonaventure himself. In this Franciscan form the Madonna coincidentally but significantly reinforces the identification with White-robed Guanyin, who embodied the important cultural virtue of Perfect Wisdom, in her manifestation as “the mother of bodisattvas.”

The Yangzhou Madonna Due to a lucky accident of history, I believe that we can now clearly show the evolution of the Child-giving form of Guanyin in relation to Franciscan images of the Madonna brought to the south coast of China during the Yuan era. My proof begins with a significant archaeological find. [Figure 4] This is the tombstone of Katerina Vilionis, a young woman of Italian descent, who died in the Chinese city of Yangzhou in the year 1342. She was the daughter of an Italian merchant who lived in the city. Her tomb marker is written 15 in Latin, and the carvings on it are from the Golden Legend, depicting the life and martyrdom of St. Catherine of Alexandria, the young woman’s namesake. It is an extraordinarily important historical document, in so many ways, but it also has the distinction of depicting the first real Latin Christian image of the 16 Madonna and Child to be found in China. And how the stone came to the attention of western scholars over fifty years ago is significant as well.

Fig. 4 Tombstone of Katerina Vilionis, rubbing of Latin-inscribed marker unearthed in Yangzhou in 1951. USF Ricci Institute

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Father Francis Rouleau and the Finding of the Stone I’m immensely proud that this artifact has very special connections to the Ricci Institute here at USF, because it was introduced into the West in 1954 by this remarkable scholar—Father Francis Rouleau, [Figure 5] who co-founded the Ricci Institute along with Father Edward Malatesta over twenty years ago. Father Rouleau was a young priest in the fall of 1951, a Jesuit posted near Shanghai. At the time, he was actually packing to leave Fig. 5 Fr. Francis Rouleau S.J., co-founder the country, as all foreign missionaries were being removed by the new of the Ricci Institute, who published the Communist government. One day he received in the mail a unique Yangzhou tombstone in 1954. object, sent to him by a Chinese antiquarian in Yangzhou. The elderly gentleman explained that, as the new government was taking down the old walls of Yangzhou and building new roads with the resulting material, workers had come across this unusual slab of stone. It had curious markings on it, and the antiquarian was called in to identify them. To his surprise, he recognized that the inscription was in Latin, and that the stone contained Christian imagery. Concerned that it would be destroyed as foreign, he took a full-sized rubbing of it and quietly sent it off to Father Rouleau, who was in a nearby city getting ready to leave the country. Father Rouleau instantly recognized the importance of the tombstone as a landmark of medieval Latin Christian presence in China. [Figure 6] Before leaving China, he discretely got in touch with the antiquarian to ascertain precisely where the stone had been dug up, what its measurements were, etc., in an effort to firmly establish its context. He also took the precaution of sending several small photocopies of the rubbing out of the country in case his original was confiscated. Fig. 6 Yangzhou Madonna, 1342, detail of rubbing of Latin-inscribed tombstone unearthed in Yangzhou in 1951. USF Ricci Institute.

In the summer of 1952, he and his colleagues finally fled to the Philippines, luckily with the original rubbing in tow. There Father Rouleau wrote an article for the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies titled “The Yangchow Latin 17 Tombstone as a Landmark of Medieval Christianity in China.” It was published in 1954. The original rubbing is now framed and hanging in the main corridor of the Ricci Institute here in San Francisco.

The Evolution from Madonna to Child-giving Guanyin in the 15th Century A detail of the marker shows the Madonna as the Throne of Wisdom [Figure 6] holding the infant Christ on her lap. The stone was almost certainly carved by local artisans, and the melding of iconographic attributes—of Guanyin as Perfect Wisdom and Mary as the Throne of Wisdom—is striking. The Yangzhou Madonna of 1342 provides the link to the next stage in the popular 18 evolution of the image of White-robed Guanyin into the Child-giving Guanyin. [Figure 7] th

Circumstantial evidence places this image within the first quarter of the 15 century, when the Franciscan mission had succumbed to the xenophobic Ming dynasty, and was no longer being replenished from the west. By this time, popular images of Guanyin—who had always been prayed to for children—were being overlaid upon images of the seated Madonna tenderly holding her son, the infant Christ. These became the first syncretic th manifestations of the Child-giving Guanyin. These 15 century images no longer had overt Christian overtones, as the Christian presence on the south coast was largely diminished and underground, if not extinct by this time, due

Fig. 7 White-robed Guanyin holding a child, ca. 1420, detail of a stele with inscribed text attributed to the poet Qin Guan (1049-1100). From Lidai Guanyin baoxiang minghua, vol. 2, no. 144. 4

to governmental proscription of it as a foreign religion. But the form is clearly based on the Franciscan prototype, when compared with the carvings on the Yangzhou tombstone. [Figure 8]

Conclusion: The Franciscan Origin of the Child-giving Guanyin By the time the Jesuits landed on the south sea coast of China in the 1580s, all memory of the Franciscan mission to the very same area had been lost. Without this knowledge, the Jesuits expressed surprise that images with a distinctly Marian 19 flavor were already being worshipped in situ when they arrived. Matteo Ricci 20 went to his grave never knowing that Italian Franciscans had ever been in China. Yet what Ricci saw, in the form of the Child-giving Guanyin, was truly the fruits of the Franciscan mission before him. It was their spiritual labor that resonates in the evocative images of sacred motherhood that survive, not only in the Yangzhou Madonna (a relic of medieval Christianity that was barely saved from becoming road fill) but in the enduring form of the Child-giving Guanyin.

Fig. 8 Seated Child-giving Guanyin from the Sancai tuhai (1607). USF Ricci Institute.

ENDNOTES 1.

Or, less poetically: “The One Who Observes the Sounds of the World.” Incidentally, Tibetan Buddhists even today believe the Dalai Lama to be an incarnation of Avalokitesvara.

2.

In chapter 25 of the Lotus Sutra, it states that when a barren woman “makes worshipful offerings to the Bodhisattva Guanyin… straightaway she shall bear a son of happiness, excellence, and wisdom….” See catalogue portion of Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism 850-1850, p. 359, cited below.

3.

The British Museum has several images of the masculine, bearded Avalokitesvara from 10 century Dunhuang. For an excellent color version of Avalokitesvara leading souls to Paradise, see The World of Buddhism: Buddhist Monks and Nuns in Society and Culture, ed. by H. Bechert and R, Gombrich, Thames and Hudson, London, 1984, p. 184.

4.

See Yu 1994, p.156.

5.

The many forms of the female Guanyin include: Water Moon Guanyin; Princess Miashan; Fish-basket Guanyin (Yulan Guanyin); Guanyin of the South Sea; White Robed Guanyin (Baiyi); and Child-giving Guanyin (Songzi). For more information, see Yu 1994, Hansen 1990, and Sangren 1983.

6.

See Hansen 1990, and Sangren 1983.

7.

The Mahayana hymn is the Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita or “The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand st Lines,” dated to the 1 century B.C.E., p. 176 of Yu 1994. She cites W.T. De Bary, The Buddhist Tradition in India, China, and Japan, New York, 1969, p. 104.

8.

Miracles and pilgrimage traditions helped the foreign male image evolve into a Chinese folk goddess. Each feminine form of Guanyin was anchored to one specific place in China. Art and literature helped popularize them, while miracle tales and subsequent vision by her believers helped authenticate the varying and often overlapping forms the goddess took. See Naquin and Yu 1992.

9.

See Arnold 1999.

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10. See Arnold 1999. 11. Technically, this image should be identified as a variant form of the Madonna of Humility, the equally beloved Franciscan image of the Virgin as the Throne of Wisdom (Sedes Sapientiae). Just as Guanyin had many variant forms, so too does the Virgin Mary, often with transferable iconographic elements. The Madonna of Humility is typically seated with the child; but she sits on the ground rather than on a stool and she is often barefooted and/or nursing the infant (in which case, she is a Maria Lactans). Both seated forms – Humility and Throne of Wisdom – were undoubtedly introduced by the Franciscans into Yuan China; see note 16 below. A standing form was introduced as well. In the illustration, on either side of the full triptych are panels with the quintessential Franciscan saints -- Francis on the right and Clare on the left. 12. See Arnold 1999, p.143 for a very early (ca. 1342) Franciscan observation, in Hangzhou, of the worship of White-robed Guanyin—but not holding a child --by Fra Giovanni di Marignolli, who wrote his memoirs of China in the early 1350s. 5

13. Yu 1994, p. 173. 14. See Arnold 1999, p. 53. 15. The first complete English translation of this medieval classic, written by the Dominican Jacobus de Voragine in th the last decades of the 13 century, was published by William Granger Ryan in 1993. For the legend of St. Catherine of Alexandria, see Ryan 1993, vol. II, 334-41. 16. In the 1970s, a companion stone belonging to Katerina’s brother Antonio was excavated in Yangzhou as well. For photos and information on this stone, with its fascinating melded imagery of St. Anthony Abbot and St. Anthony of Padua, see Arnold 1999, pp. 138-40. This depiction shows a true Madonna of Humility, seated on the ground, presenting the Christ child to St. Anthony Abbot, who has a tiny demon at his feet (although the vision of the Virgin & Child appeared to St. Anthony of Padua). 17. Rouleau 1954. Father Rouleau wrote in his article that the stone was not destroyed but was preserved in “the ancestral hall of a certain General Shih, now headquarters of the North Kiangsu Cultural Objects Custody Association” in Yangzhou. I am not certain as of this writing where the stone, and its companion stone mentioned in note 16, has come to rest in the intervening 50 years since the article’s publication. 18. Figure 7, with full text, is on pp. 125-27 of Yu 2001. 19. Gaspar da Cruz, a Portuguese Dominican who visited China in 1556, wrote that he saw many Madonna-like images being worshiped in China. See Arnold 1999, p. 145. Images of Guanyin were already being imported into Goa by 1561, where they were being mistaken for images of the Virgin. In a letter from the Jesuit Luis Frois to Goncalo Vaz in Portugal (pp. 354-56 below), Frois discusses (p. 356) the popularity in Goa of religious paintings on silk from China, remarking in particular on “imagem de Nossa Senhora muito gloriosa.” Cited in Witek, John, S.J., and Sebes, Joseph, S.J., eds. Monumenta Sinica, I (1546-1562), Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, Rome, 2002 (Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, vol. 153: Monumenta Missionum, vol. 66). Many thanks to Professor Paul Rule, Distinguished Fellow, EDS-Stewart Chair, Ricci Institute, USF for this fascinating reference. 20. See Bailey 1999, p. 89, who describes Matteo Ricci’s hesitation and confusion when the images of the Madonna that he brought with him to China ca. 1590 were eagerly identified as the Child-giving Guanyin by his convertsto-be. Ricci initially substituted images of the Salvator Mundi so as not to fuel this confusion, but changed his mind and lived with the conflation of identities, since Mary/Guanyin held such positive cultural connotations with the Chinese. Ricci died never knowing of the Franciscan mission before him, and Gauvin Bailey, when writing this account, was also unaware of their introduction of Marian images into China several centuries before the Jesuits. BIBLIOGRAPHY Arnold, Lauren. Princely Gifts and Papal Treasures: The Franciscan Mission to China and Its Influence on the Art of the West 1250-1350. Desiderata Press, San Francisco, 1999. Bailey, Gauvin. Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542-1773. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1999. Hansen, Valerie. Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127-1276. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1990. Naquin, Susan and Yu, Chun-fang. Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992. Rouleau, Francis, S.J. “The Yangchow Latin Tombstone as a Landmark of Medieval Christianity in China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 17 (Dec. 1954) nos. 3-4, pp. 346-65. Ryan, William Granger, trans. Jacobus de Voragine: The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints. Vols. I and II. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993. Sangren, P. Steven. “Female Gender in Chinese Religious Symbols: Kuan Yin, Ma Tsu, and the Eternal Mother.” Signs 9/1 (1983), pp. 4-25. Yu, Chun-fang. “Guanyin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteshvara” in Weidner, Marsha, ed., Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism 850-1850. Spencer Museum of Art/The University of Kansas with University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1994, pp. 151-82. _____. Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokitesvara. Columbia University Press, New York, 2001.

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