Christianity and Chinese Rites Controversy: Spirit Tablets in 17th Century

Abstract

The funeral practices promoted by the European Catholic missionaries in China provide an interesting example of the adaptation of the Asian world in the 17th and 18th century. In this scope one must highlight the speciic problem of the worship of the ancestors and more speciically the design of the spirit tablets for this purpose. The movement of the Chinese population and of the missionaries between the continent and other Christian settlements in Asia facilitated the arrival of these models to territories such as the Philippines. Yet in this archipelago, the prolonged establishment of other religious orders in a radically distinct context came to prohibit the use of said models.