Anthony Eugene Clark (born 12 March 1967) is an American Sinologist,historian,and writer who has authored dozens of books,articles,and other publications in the fields of Sino-Western,Sino-Missionary,and ancient Chinese history. He is the Edward B. Lindaman Endowed Chair and a professor of Chinese history at Whitworth University. He previously taught courses on Chinese history,culture,and literature at the University of Oregon and The University of Alabama. His most widely read books are China's Saints:Catholic Martyrdom during the Qing,Heaven in Conflict:Franciscans and the Boxer Uprising in Shanxi,[2] and China Gothic:The Bishop of Beijing and His Cathedral,which includes a foreword by the architectural historian,Leland M. Roth.[3] Clark's major interest is late-imperial China,especially the final decades of the Qing dynasty,and the intellectual and religious relations between China and the West.[4] Clark resides with his wife,Amanda,in Spokane,Washington.[5]
Clark received his B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Oregon,where he focused on Chinese language,literature,and history. He has also studied at the Central University for Nationalities/Minzu University of China in Beijing,China,Alliance Française in Paris,France,and the National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei,Taiwan.[4]
Life and works
Born on 12 March 1967 in Eugene,Oregon,and in addition to brief studies at Mount Angel Abbey Seminary and Byzantine Catholic Seminary of SS. Cyril and Methodius,he studied and taught Chinese martial arts such as Yang Style Tai Chi and 7-Star Northern Praying Mantis Kung Fu from 1979 until 1995.[6] He began his advanced studies of classical Sinology under Stephen W. Durrant,a scholar on the Han dynasty historian,Sima Qian,at the University of Oregon in 1995.[7] Clark's scholarly interest while studying at Oregon centered on the early Han dynasty historian,Ban Gu,[8] and also on the history of Sino-Western interactions,especially in the area of Roman Catholic missionary exchange with Chinese intellectuals during the late Qing.[9] Given his experience as a Catholic seminarian and having studied Chinese martial arts,he developed an interest in the Sino-Missionary conflicts between local Chinese martial artists and Roman Catholic missionaries during the Boxer Uprising,which led to the publication of China's Saints and Heaven in Conflict.[10] Clark's interest in the history of how women participated in important historical transitions during the late-imperial China also inspired him to dedicate much of Heaven in Conflict to the role of female Boxers,known as Red Lanterns (Boxer Uprising),in the events of the Boxer incidents at Shanxi in 1900.
In 2019,Clark published the first scholarly study of the famous Xishiku Roman Catholic cathedral in Beijing and its architect,Alphonse Favier,China Gothic:The Bishop of Beijing and His Cathedral. This is the only Christian church in Beijing to have survived in Beijing through the Boxer Uprising in 1900,and it since 1984 it is protected as one of China's national cultural relics. In 2020,a compendium of his essays was published that highlights Clark's observations while conducting research and writing in China,entitled China’s Catholic in an Era of Transformation:Observations of an “Outsider”.[11] In 2021,he published a study and translation of Wang Yinglin's Three Character Classic and Giulio Aleni's Four Character Classic in his book A Chinese Jesuit Catechism:Giulio Aleni's Four Character Classic.[12]
After receiving his first appointment at The University of Alabama in 2005,Clark published his first book on Han dynastyhistoriography,and turned to his main scholarly focus,which is the history of Christian missions in China. Clark's scholarly publications on Christianity in China have combined his Sinological training in early Chinese texts and his training in late-imperial Sino-Western exchange to analyze how traditional Chinese religious and philosophical views have intersected with those views that were imported into China by Western missionaries. This area of focus resulted in invitations to provide talks and workshops on his work at such institutions as the University of Notre Dame,Oxford University,[13] and Berkeley in 2017,[14] and Princeton University in 2009.[4] In 2020,Clark was the interviewer in a series of recorded interviews with many of the world's most prominent scholars in the field of Sino-Western and Sino-Christian studies.
His acquaintances with several high-profile Roman Catholics in Mainland China,such as Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian,[15] Bishop Anicetus Wang Chongyi,Bishop Augustine Hu Daguo,[16] Bishop Peter Xinmao Feng,Bishop Silvester Li Jiantang,[17] and Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun,provided Clark with several insights into the current situation of the Catholic Church in China.[18] The online Catholic news source,Catholic World Report,features a column,"Clark on China," that publishes frequent essays by Anthony Clark that are known for being balanced and historically grounded commentaries on Catholicism in modern China.[19]
A Chinese Jesuit Catechism:Giulio Aleni's Four Character Classic (2021).
China’s Catholic in an Era of Transformation:Observations of an “Outsider” (2020).
China Gothic:The Bishop of Beijing and His Cathedral (2019).
Catholicism and Buddhism:The Contrasting Lives and Teaching of Jesus and the Buddha (2018).
China's Christianity:From Missionary to Indigenous Church (2017).
Heaven in Conflict:Franciscans and the Boxer Uprising in Shanxi (2015).
Zhonghua Tianzhujiao xundao jianshi [A Concise History of Catholic Martyrdom in China] (2013).
A Voluntary Exile:Chinese Christianity and Cultural Confluence since 1552. (2013).
China's Saints:Catholic Martyrdom During the Qing,1644–1911 (2011).
Beating Devils and Burning Their Books:Views of China,Japan,and the West. (2010).
Ban Gu's History of Early China (2008).
Articles (selected)
"Cor ad Cor Loquitur;Cardinal Newman Speaks to China:Newman,Pusey,and the Issue of a National Church," Newman Studies Journal. Summer 2020.
"An Anomaly of Good Form:A Gothic Church in Shanghai," Sacred Architecture. 2020.
"Jinshi chuqi Zhongguo minju dui xifang xuanjiao shengxianghua de fanying [Initial Responses to Christian Cross Imagery in China]" Guoji Hanxu. September 2017.
"Finding Our Way:Thomas Merton,John Wu,and the Christian Dialogue with Early China." The Merton Annual. Spring 2018.
"Shifting Landscapes:Sino-American Catholic Identities,1900-Present." U. S. Catholic Historian. Spring 2016.
"Sanctioned Heterodoxy:Local Cults in Two Chinese Catholic Villages,1900—Present." Frontiers of History in China. Number 1,2016.
"Vincentian Footprints in China:The Lives,Deaths,and Legacies of François-Regis Clét,CM,and Jean-Gabriel Perboyre,CM." Vincentian Heritage. 2014.
"Weaving a Profound Dialogue Between West and East:On Matteo Ricci,SJ." U.S.-China Review. Summer 2011.
"Praise and Blame:Ruist Historiography in Ban Gu's Hanshu." The Chinese Historical Review. Spring 2011.
Clark,Anthony E.,and Kellie Cheney. "Bodhidharma's Daughters:A Cross-Cultural Examination of Females in Chan/Zen Buddhism." McNair Scholars Journal. 2009.
"Early Modern Chinese Reactions to Western Missionary Iconography." Southeast Review of Asian Studies. 2008.
"Reflections on the Han View of Truth and Historicity with a Translation of Ban Biao's 'Essay of Historiography'." Southeast Review of Asian Studies. 2006.
Notes
↑ (2012). , American Research in the Humanities in China 2012. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
↑ University of Oxford, , Ricci Institute "Historical Christianities in East Asia Workshop," 2017,
↑ University of California, Berkeley, , Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion - UC Berkeley "Translating Religions and Theology in Europe and Asia: East to West," 2017,
Giulio Aleni, in Chinese Ai Rulüe, was an Italian Jesuit missionary and scholar. He was born in Leno near Brescia in Italy, at the time part of the Republic of Venice, and died at Yanping in China. He became a member of the Society of Jesus in 1600 and distinguished himself in his knowledge of mathematics and theology. He is known for helping publish the Zhifang Waiji, an atlas in Chinese. Giulio Aleni also wrote a treatise criticizing the Ming dynasty, the Ming emperors and their elites, and their mistakes and errors. Near the end of his life, the Ming dynasty eventually got destroyed and replaced by the Qing dynasty founded by the House of Aisin-Gioro.
The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer Insurrection, or the Yihetuan Movement, was an anti-imperialist and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists. The rebels were known as the "Boxers" in English because many of its members had practised Chinese martial arts, which at the time were referred to as "Chinese boxing". It was defeated by the Eight-Nation Alliance of foreign powers.
The Boxer Protocol was signed on September 7, 1901, between the Qing Empire of China and the Eight-Nation Alliance that had provided military forces as well as Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands, after China's defeat in the intervention to put down the Boxer Rebellion. It is regarded as one of the unequal treaties.
Christianity in China has been present since the early medieval period and it has gained a significant amount of influence during the last 200 years.
The Catholic Church in China has a long and complicated history. John of Montecorvino was the first Catholic missionary to reach China proper and first bishop of Khanbaliq during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368).
Timothy Richard was a Welsh Baptist missionary to China, who influenced the modernisation of China and the rise of the Chinese Republic.
The Martyr Saints of China, or Augustine Zhao Rong and his Companions, are 120 saints of the Catholic Church. The 87 Chinese Catholics and 33 Western missionaries from the mid-17th century to 1930 were martyred because of their ministry and, in some cases, for their refusal to apostatize.
Gregory Mary Grassi, O.F.M., was an Italian Franciscan friar and bishop who is honored as a Catholic martyr and saint.
Father Frédéric-Vincent Lebbe was a Roman Catholic missionary to China whose advocacy led Pope Pius XI to appoint the first native Chinese bishops. Born in Belgium, he chose to become a Chinese citizen at a time when missionaries, like all Westerners, enjoyed legal privileges in China, including immunity from Chinese law. He was captured by the Chinese Communists in 1940 and died later that year.
The Taiyuan massacre took place during the Boxer Rebellion, July 9, 1900, in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, North China. Sources recall that they were killed in the presence of Yuxian, governor of Shanxi. 44 people were killed including children.
The Church of the Saviour, also known as the Xishiku Church or Beitang, is a historic Roman Catholic church in the Xicheng District, Beijing, China.
Ephrem Giesen was a missionary priest of the Dutch Franciscan order of the Roman Catholic church who served in northern Shandong province and as a member of the Dutch Fransciscan mission of south [Shanxi], in the late Qing and early republican China. He served as vicar apostolic of North Shandong from 1902 until his death in 1919 and was also made titular Bishop of Paltus in 1902.
Dong Fuxiang (1839–1908), courtesy name Xingwu (星五), was a Chinese general who lived in the late Qing dynasty. He was born in the Western Chinese province of Gansu. He commanded an army of Hui soldiers, which included the later Ma clique generals Ma Anliang and Ma Fuxiang. According to the Western calendar, his birth date is in 1839.
Yanmen Pass, also known by its Chinese name Yanmenguan and as Xixingguan, is a mountain pass which includes three fortified gatehouses along the Great Wall of China. The area was a strategic choke point in ancient and medieval China, controlling access between the valleys of central Shanxi and the Eurasian Steppe. This made it the scene of various important battles, extending into World War II, and the area around the gatehouses and this stretch of the Great Wall is now a AAAAA-rated tourist attraction. The scenic area is located just outside YanmenguanVillage in YanmenguanTownship in Dai County, Xinzhou City, Shanxi Province, China.
Yuxian (1842–1901) was a Manchu high official of the Qing dynasty who played an important role in the violent anti-foreign and anti-Christian Boxer Rebellion, which unfolded in northern China from the fall of 1899 to 1901. He was a local official who rose quickly from prefect of Caozhou to judicial commissioner and eventually governor of Shandong province. Dismissed from that post because of foreign pressure, he was soon named governor of Shanxi province. At the height of the Boxer crisis, as Allied armies invaded China in July 1900, he invited a group of 45 Christians and American missionaries to the provincial capital, Taiyuan, saying he would protect them from the Boxers. Instead, they were all killed. Foreigners, blaming Yuxian for what they called the Taiyuan Massacre, labeled him the "Butcher of Shan-hsi [Shanxi]".
The Batang uprising was an uprising by the Khampas of Kham against the assertion of authority by Qing China.
The Juye Incident refers to the killing of two German Catholic missionaries, Richard Henle and Franz Xaver Nies, of the Society of the Divine Word, in Juye County Shandong Province, China in the night of 1–2 November 1897. The target of the attack, Georg Maria Stenz, survived unharmed.
The Red Lanterns were a women's fighting group organized during the Boxer Uprising of 1900. Villagers said these women had supernatural powers which helped to protect the male Boxers and fight against foreign enemies.
The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception is the cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Taiyuan, Shanxi, China. It was founded in 1635 and rebuilt twice in 1870 and 1902, and it is the largest Catholic church building in Taiyuan.
Giovanni Antonio Hofman was a Dutch Catholic missionary prelate and bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lu'an from 1891 to 1901.
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