The influence of Zhu Xi on Alfonso Vagnone's treatise Tongyou Jiaoyu 童幼教育 (On the Education of Children, c. 1632)

Alfonso Vagnone S.J.’s (1568 – 1640) contribution to the diffusion of Western moral philosophy into late Ming China is often neglected, but it is undeniable. His pedagogic treatise, Tongyou Jiaoyu 童幼教育 (On the education of children, c.1632), the oldest proof of a Sino-Western exchange in the field of pedagogy, introduced various aspects of the European Classical and Renaissance education, integrating these with Confucian (and neo-Confucian) precepts on moral cultivation. An epistemological similarity between Vagnone’s teachings and the eminent Neo-Confucian philosopher and pedagogue Zhu Xi 朱熹’s precepts was first identified by Han Lin韩霖, the author of the foreword to the treatise. The potential influence of Zhu Xi’s approach to the education on Vagnone’s pedagogic treatise is the purpose of the present paper, which will be based on a preliminary intertextual analysis between Tongyou Jiaoyu and the Neo-Confucian primer Xiaoxue 小学 by Zhu Xi. This study also intends to shed new light on the Chinese sources of Tongyou Jiaoyu, a topic which is also crucial to understanding the Jesuit’s adaptation of terms and concepts of foreign origin.