In 1560 the Portuguese took Macao, and Valignani, Superintendent of the Jesuits' Missions to the East, settled there. His are the words so frequently but wrongly ascribed to Xavier: "Oh rock, rock, rock, when wilt thou open to my Lord!" The Fathers Rogers and Ricci were selected by Valignani as pioneers to China, but Rogers shortly returned to Rome. In 1582 Ricci succeeded in gaining a foothold on the mainland at Shaoking, the residence of the Governor, and by a system which subordinated the Gospel to expediency, he slowly worked his way to Peking, which city he reached in 1601, just twenty-one years after landing in Macao. During the intervening period he had settled Missions at Nanchang Fu, Suchow Fu, and Nanking Fu. At his death in 1610 an imperial edict ordered the erection of a monument to his memory.
Of his ability and that of his colleagues there can be no question, but of his methods it must be said they merit the criticism and censure they have received. By 1637 he with his colleagues had published no fewer than three hundred and forty treatises upon religion, philosophy, and mathematics, and among his most noted converts must be mentioned Paul Sü and his widowed daughter Candida. But for Paul Sü's defence, the Roman Catholic Missions in subsequent years would have suffered even more severely than they did.
In 1631 the Dominicans and Franciscans began to arrive in China, but were not welcomed by the Jesuits, with whom a bitter controversy arose. With the break-up of the Ming dynasty and the rise of the present Manchu power, all parties more or less suffered, though Schaal, the able and distinguished successor of Ricci, was, through Paul Sü's recommendation, placed in a position of honour. Schaal, however, eventually died of grief, Verbiest and others were imprisoned, while twenty-one Jesuits were banished from the country. This was during the minority of the famous Emperor Kang-hsi, under whom subsequently the Roman Catholics enjoyed great favour. It was under his enlightened rule that the Jesuits prepared their careful
