Teodorico Pedrini
And since I'm telling Your Eminence what happened, it's necessary to say one thing, as it really is. Nobody was ever more liked by the Emperor than me, who was the last among all, so that he started to praise me, and went on for many years with several presents, calling me to his presence several times, and taking me to high esteem...— Teodorico Pedrini's letter of 1727[1]
Teodorico Pedrini (June 30, 1671 – December 10, 1746) was an Italian priest, missionary, musician and composer.
Pedrini was born in Fermo, Italy. He was the founder of the Xizhimen Church (西堂) in Beijing. He was teacher of music of some Emperor Kangxi’s sons and co-author of the first treatise on Western Music theory ever written in Chinese: the LülüZhengyi-Xubian, later included in the Siku Quanshu.
His Chinese name was 德理格 - De Lige (Te Li-ko).
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[edit] Biography
Teodorico Pedrini was baptized on July 6, 1671, in the church of St. Michael Archangel, in Fermo, under the name Paulus Philippus Theodoricus.
His father, Giovanni Francesco Pedrini, who was born in Servigliano on February 5, 1630, had been working as notary in his native town for two years since 1656, before going to Rome for ten years, as Chancellor for the Auditor Camerae. He then became the most important notary in Fermo, from 1669 to his death in 1707. Teodorico’s mother was Nicolosa Piccioni, born in Fermo on March 14, 1650, daughter of another notary, Giovanni Francesco Piccioni, from Altidona.
Teodorico got his clerical Tonsure in 1687, and the minor orders in Fermo in 1690. He attended the University in Fermo, graduating in Utroque Iure on June 26, 1692. From November 16, 1692 to August 7, 1697 he lived in the Collegio Piceno in Rome. In this period he joined the Academy of Arcadia in 1696, where he got the name of Dioro Taumasio.
On December 21, 1697 he got the Sub-diaconate; on February 23, 1698 he joined the Congregation of the Mission of Saint Vincent de Paul (Vincentian or Lazarists), in March 1698 he became Diacono and two weeks later – on the Easter night of 1698 - presbyter, in the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. In June 1698 he entered the Lazarist house of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Rome, where he remained until January 1702, when he was sent to China, as missionary of Propaganda Fide, after meeting the Pope Clement XI, Giovanni Francesco Albani from Urbino.
[edit] His journey to China
His journey was very long, first along the Via Francigena to Livorno, then by ship to Toulon, and Paris, where the Nuncio was Filippo Antonio Gualterio, also born in Fermo.
Although selected as a member of the first papal Legation of Patriarch Carlo Tommaso Maillard de Tournon, who had already left from Spain to Canary Islands, Pedrini never managed to join him, and after one and a half year he left from Saint Malo with other missionaries, on December 26, 1703, on a French ship towards South America; the ship landed in Peru in July 1704, and stayed there for more than one year. In 1705 he arrived in Mexico and not earlier than 1707 he managed to leave from Acapulco, on a Manila galleon. After reaching the Mariana Islands, he arrived in the Philippines, where he stayed for almost two years. There he met in Mariveles five western missionaries of Propaganda Fide, among whom Matteo Ripa (who later founded the Chinese College in Neaples, now Università degli studi di Napoli L'Orientale), and they reached Macau on January 10. Here they met Cardinal Tournon, who recommended Pedrini as a musician at court, in answer to a request from Kangxi himself. After assisting him on his death-bed on June 8, 1710, they set off for Beijing, where they finally arrived on February 6, 1711.
[edit] His life in Beijing
Being, with Matteo Ripa, the first non-jesuit missionary to settle at the Chinese court, one hundred years after Matteo Ricci's death, Teodorico Pedrini was the first missionary to speak with Kangxi about the Pope's decision over the Chinese Rites, sending back to Rome the Emperor's peaceful reactions on the matter. His relations to Rome found the negative reaction of the Jesuits, who were contraries to the Decrees. This difference of attitude was the long lasting characteristic of his missionary life, which brought him to the dramatic events of 1721 when, at the end of the second Legation of the Patriarch Carlo Ambrogio Mezzabarba, he refused to sign the final document called Mandarin’s Diary, and was imprisoned in the residence of the French Jesuits in Beijing until 1723. The Emperor Yongzheng got him free in February 1723 but the whole fact caused hard polemics in Rome in the following years until 1730, which anticipated the final condemnation of the Chinese Rites, with the papal Bull Ex Quo Singulari in 1742.
[edit] His last years
In 1723 Pedrini bought the residence of Xitang, where he established the first Church of Propaganda Fide in Beijing. To the end of his life Pedrini reconciled himself with the Jesuit missionaries, without denying his faithfulness to the Holy See, which had brought him so many problems in the years tenties and twenties.
Teodorico Pedrini died in the night of December 10, 1746, in his house of Xitang at Beijing, China, without ever coming back to Italy, and was buried in the cemetery of Propaganda Fide, with the money of Emperor Qianlong.
His gravestone, visible till the first part of last century in the wall of the All Saints Church, does not exist anymore.[2]
[edit] The mission and the music
Teodorico Pedrini was a missionary in China from 1710 to 1746, the year of his death. His importance in the first half of 18th century is connected with two main fields:
[edit] The history of the Church
The doctrinal issues involving the Mission in China in the period between the end of XVII and the beginning of the 18th century saw Teodorico Pedrini as one of its main characters.
The so-called Chinese rites Controversy concerned the way in which the Christian religious practice was to be considered, especially in connection to the Chinese practice of Confucian origin, which the Jesuits, following Matteo Ricci’s teaching, were willing to permit to the converted Christians.
Pedrini was one of the few missionaries who kept to the directives of the Holy See in that regard, which had repeatedly forbidden (first with the Decree Cum Deus Optimus in 1704, then with the Bullas Ex Illa Die in 1715, and Ex Quo Singulari in 1742) the mixture of Christian and Confucian practices. His fidelity to the decisions of Rome brought to Pedrini beatings and imprisonment. In the most delicate period of the controversy, Pedrini was the main representative of Propaganda Fide in Beijing; in such a position he held regular epistolary contacts with the Vatican.
As missionary to the Chinese court, Pedrini carried out also another important project: in 1723 he bought a large residence where he opened to the cult the first non-Jesuit Church in Beijing: the Church of Xitang, the Western Church. The church was destroyed twice after his death and it was twice re-built. It is still standing nowadays and, after a recent restoration, it has been opened again exactly in the same place where Pedrini built it: at n° 130 of Xizhimennei Dajie, one of the largest avenue of the Chinese capital city, on the way between the Forbidden City and the Old Summer Palace, in those times the Emperor’s residence. Still readable on one of the sidewalls in the Church, an inscription reminds the visitors of the name of its founder.
[edit] The history of music and the cultural relations between East and West
Besides being a priest, Pedrini was also a musician. This competence helped him first to be admitted to the Court of the Chinese emperors then to gain the favour of three successive Emperors, ruling during his lifetime Kangxi (1662–1722), Yongzheng (1722–1735) and Qianlong (1735–1796). As musician, Pedrini was the teacher of three sons of the emperor Kangxi, constructed musical instruments and mended those present at court.
...he [emperor Kangxi] also used to write music notes, and let me review, giving me his own pen, he made me write on his desk, and we often played together the same harpsichord, each with one hand— Teodorico Pedrini's letter of 1727[3]
In addition, carrying on with the work of his predecessor the Portuguese Jesuit Tomas Pereira, he completed the text of the first treatise on Western Music Theory ever published in China, the LülüZhengyi-Xubian, which was later included in the huge encyclopedical work called Siku Quanshu (1781).
With this work Pedrini asserted himself as one of the main figures in the introduction of the western music in China.
Furthermore, Teodorico Pedrini is the author of the only Western Baroque music compositions known in China in the 18th century: the Dodici Sonate a Violino Solo col Basso del Nepridi – Opera Terza whose original manuscript is still preserved in the National Library of Beijing.
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[edit] Works
Dodici Sonate a Violino Solo col Basso del Nepridi – Opera Terza, in National Library of China; these scores were recorded in 1996 by the French group XVIII-21 Musique des Lumières [4] directed by Jean-Christophe Frisch, with the title Concert Baroque à la Cité Interdite [5].
[edit] Essential bibliography
- ALLSOP P.C. - LINDORFF J., Teodorico Pedrini: The Music and Letters of an 18th-century Missionary in China, in Vincentian Heritage, 27:2 (2008)
- BAUDOUIN J., Le Mandarin blanc, Paris, 1999 - "Prix du Roman Historique 1999, Rendez-vous de l'histoire de Blois (France)"
- BRIZZI G. P. (edited by), L’Antica Università di Fermo, Fermo, 2001
- DI FIORE G., La Legazione Mezzabarba in Cina (1720-1721), Napoli, 1989
- DUVIGNEAU A.-B. CM, Teodorico Pedrini, Prete della missione, Musico alla corte imperiale di Pechino, Roma, 1946
- GALEFFI F. G. - TARSETTI G., Teodorico Pedrini e la Missione di Cina in La Voce delle Marche, supplement n. 1 January 13, 2006
- GALEFFI F. G. - TARSETTI G., Teodorico Pedrini nei Documenti degli archivi del’Archidiocesi di Fermo, in Quaderni dell’Archivio Storico Arcivescovile di Fermo, XXII, n. 44 (December 2007)
- GILD G., The Introduction of European Musical Theory during the Early Qing Dynasty. The achievements of Thomas Pereira and Theodorico Pedrini, in Monumenta Serica Monograph Series XXXV/2, Sankt Augustin, 1998
- GIMM M., Teodorico Pedrini, in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 13, Kassel, 2005
- LINDORFF J., Teodorico Pedrini, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, London, 2001
- RIPA MATTEO, Giornale (1705–1724), edited by Michele Fatica, Napoli, 1991–1996
- SISTO ROSSO A. OFM, Apostolic Legations to China of the eighteenth century, P. D. and Ione Perkins, South Pasadena, 1948
- TASSI E., Teodorico Pedrini Missionario fermano alla corte imperiale cinese, in Quaderni dell’Archivio Storico Arcivescovile di Fermo, XX, n. 39 (June 2005)
- VIANI S., Istoria delle cose operate nella China da Monsignor Gio. Ambrogio Mezzabarba Patriarca d’Alessandria, Legato Appostolico in quell’Impero, e di presente Vescovo di Lodi, Parigi, 1739
- VON PASTOR L., History of the Popes, voll. XXXIII-XXXIV, St. Louis, 1941
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ referring his entrance at court in 1711, published by COMBALUZIER FERNAND, Theodoric Pedrini, lazariste, missionaire apostolique..., in Neue Zeitschirft für Missionswissenschaft (Nouvelle Revue de science missionaire), XIII, 1957, p. 139-147
- ^ even if a reproduction is conserved in the National Library of China.
- ^ referring his entrance at court in 1711, published by COMBALUZIER FERNAND, Theodoric Pedrini, lazariste, missionaire apostolique..., in Neue Zeitschirft für Missionswissenschaft (Nouvelle Revue de science missionaire), XIII, 1957, p. 139-147
- ^ now XVIII-21 Le Baroque Nomade
- ^ CD ed. Audivis Astrée (France) E 8609
[edit] External links
- http://www.teodoricopedrini.it (Centro Studi Teodorico Pedrini – Fermo)
- http://ricci.rt.usfca.edu/biography/view.aspx?biographyID=926 (University of San Francisco – Ricci Roundtable on the History of Christianity in China)
- http://www.cmroma.it/p_pedrini.html (Congregation of the Mission – Provincia Romana)
- http://www.cmroma.it/p_pedrini3.html (Il Messaggero – Cultura e Spettacoli, December 1, 2004: Fabio Isman, Un maestro per i figli del cielo)
- http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xitang-kirken_i_Beijing
