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Keywords = early Korean Catholicism

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17 pages, 358 KB  
Article
Jesuit Accommodation and Early Chosŏn Catholicism: Text-Mediated Reception Without Resident Missionaries
by Jae Won Chang
Religions 2026, 17(6), 688; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17060688 (registering DOI) - 8 Jun 2026
Abstract
Late eighteenth-century Chosŏn Korea presents a distinctive case in the history of Christian missions: a Catholic community emerged without the sustained presence of foreign missionaries. This article examines that distinctiveness through the lens of text-mediated local reception. Since the seventeenth century, the writings [...] Read more.
Late eighteenth-century Chosŏn Korea presents a distinctive case in the history of Christian missions: a Catholic community emerged without the sustained presence of foreign missionaries. This article examines that distinctiveness through the lens of text-mediated local reception. Since the seventeenth century, the writings of Matteo Ricci had rendered Christian doctrine intelligible within a Confucian framework through Jesuit accommodation. In late Chosŏn, these texts moved beyond scholarly curiosity and became a medium of criticism, moral reflection, and, for some readers, communal religious practice, particularly among politically marginalized Namin (Southern) circles and Silhak (Practical Learning)-oriented thinkers. The reception of Catholicism unfolded in stages. Sinographic texts composed by Jesuit missionaries were first understood within an existing Confucian horizon and then selectively appropriated by local readers. In some cases, this process led to baptism, early lay organization, and communal religious life. Through comparison with China, Japan, and Vietnam, this study argues that Chosŏn represents a distinctive case in which translated Christian texts, local appropriation, and community formation converged without a sustained missionary presence. It further shows that this process was shaped not by one-way transmission alone, but by the active agency of local readers and a bidirectional process of cultural translation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue History of Evangelization: Encounters and Disencounters During the Modern Age (16th–19th Centuries))
11 pages, 247 KB  
Article
Confucian Exemplars and Catholic Saints as Models for Women in Nineteenth-Century Korea
by Deberniere Torrey
Religions 2020, 11(3), 151; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11030151 - 24 Mar 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 4362
Abstract
Women in Joseon Korea (1392–1910) were held to high standards of virtue, which were propagated through didactic texts such as the “Chaste and Obedient Biographies” volume of Lienü Zhuan, the Chinese classic featuring biographies of exemplary women. Joseon women who converted to [...] Read more.
Women in Joseon Korea (1392–1910) were held to high standards of virtue, which were propagated through didactic texts such as the “Chaste and Obedient Biographies” volume of Lienü Zhuan, the Chinese classic featuring biographies of exemplary women. Joseon women who converted to Catholicism were also educated in standards of Catholic virtue, often through the biographies of saints, which shared with the Confucian exemplar stories an emphasis on faithfulness and self-sacrifice. Yet, the differences between Confucian and Catholic standards of virtue were great enough to elicit persecution of Catholics throughout the nineteenth century. Therefore conversion would have involved evaluating one set of standards against the other and determining that Catholicism was worth the price of social marginalization and persecution. Through a comparison of the Confucian exemplar stories and Catholic saints’ stories, this paper explores how Catholic standards of virtue might have motivated conversion of Joseon women to Catholicism. This comparison highlights aspects of the saints’ stories that offered lifestyle choices unavailable to women in traditional Joseon society and suggests that portrayals of the saints’ confidence in the face of human and natural oppressors could also have provided inspiration to ease the price of conversion. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Conflict and Coexistence: The Korean Context and Beyond)
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