CERAMIC ART IN CHINA. 345 



officials and the consort of the hist of the line, who proclaimed himself 

 emperor in the Kwangtiing (Canton) province. But Pope Clement XI's 

 bull Ex Ulii dl(\ confirming an earlier bull on the same subject dated 

 the 4th Noveml^er. 1704, b}- deciding that these observances were 

 incompatible with Catholic belief, aroused violent anger on the part of 

 the Emperor K'anghsi and dealt a blow to the missions from which 

 they have never recovered. The Emperor died before the legate 

 specially sent to China to carry out the bull could perform his promise 

 to endeavor to persuade the Pope to modifv its terms; and decrees of 

 great severitv were issued against Christianity by his successors, 

 Yungcheng and Chienlung, to which Pope Benedict XIV replied in 

 1742, by issuing a bull deciding this unfortunate question in its nar- 

 rowest sense. The severity of the imperial decree was, however, 

 mitigated in favor of the missionaries at court — at first Jesuits, and 

 after the dissolution of that order Lazarists; and a European divine 

 continued to be a director of the board of astronomy down to 1814. 



The influential position occupied by the Jesuits was both won and 

 maintained chiefly by their high attainments in astronomy, in mathe- 

 matics, and in geometry. It, however, enabled these able and enlight- 

 ened representatives of western learning to exercise a considerable 

 degree of influence upon other matters not directly connected with the 

 studies for which the}' were chiefly famous, but in which their scientific 

 education gave them the power and right to speak with authority. 

 When, therefore, contemporaneously with the enjoyment by them of 

 this position of influence, a style of decoration was adopted for porce- 

 lain and enamels for both imperial and general use purely European in 

 its character — not only in the more intimate acquaintance, as compared 

 with previous native drawing, of the laws of perspective displayed, but 

 even in the reproduction of European dress and figures and eminently 

 European scenes and pastimes — it seemed that this could scarceh' be 

 mere coincidence. It was more natural to suppose that under the direc- 

 tion of one of these able missionaries a school had been established in 

 connection with the government porcelain factories for instruction in 

 European designs, in European ideas of grouping floral ornamentation, 

 and in the European style of painting general^. Pere d'EntrecoUes, 

 it is true, makes no alkision in his famous letters to such a school. 

 But, as the}" were written for the purpose of enlightening the west 

 regarding the composition of the materials and the system of manu- 

 facture employed b}- the Chinese, the use of European designs in the 

 decoration of porcelain might well have been passed over in silence, 

 and the absence of such reference would not necessarily prove that 

 such a school had not existed. 



The supposition that some of the Jesuits were at this time more or less 

 intimately associated with the niaiuifacture and decoration of porcelain 

 was supported b}- the belief, which is still current among Chinese 

 NAT MUS 1900 25 



