Yáng Mǎnuò 陽瑪諾 / Manuel Dias the Younger, S.J.
Portuguese Jesuit. Born Castelo Branco (Beira province, Portugal), 1574; died Hángzhōu, 4 March 1659. The Chinese name Yáng Mǎnuò renders the personal name “Emanuel” (Mǎnuò = Emmanuel) with the Yáng surname (a free choice, occasionally rendered Diāz or other transcriptions of “Dias”). Distinguished from his older Jesuit colleague Manuel Dias the Elder (1559–1639), the Lǐ Mǎnuò 李瑪諾 of late-Wànlì-period sources who served as Vice-Provincial of the China mission — the two are not to be confused.
Joined the Society of Jesus 1592 in Coimbra; sent to Asia 1601, arriving Macao the same year and Beijing 1611 — the year of Sabatino de Ursis’s Jiǎnpíng yí shuō (KR3f0011) and Xú Guāngqǐ’s foundational preface, the moment when the Jesuit-Chinese mathematical-astronomical synthesis was being consolidated. Successive China stations: Beijing, Nánjīng (until the 1616 anti-Christian persecution), then various south-China residences after his return from temporary deportation; Hángzhōu in his last decades.
Trained in mathematics and theology at the Roman College; brought to the China mission strong competence in scholastic philosophy and astronomy. His chief contributions to the Chinese-language Jesuit corpus:
(1) The Tiānwèn lüè 天問略 (KR3f0012) of Wànlì yǐmǎo (1615): a question-and-answer cosmographic-and-astronomical treatise expounding the twelve-celestial-spheres model (extending the nine-spheres of Ricci’s KR3f0009 Qiánkūn tǐyì with three additional spheres above, the twelfth being the immobile Empyrean — immobile heaven of the saints), the seven planetary positions, the seasonal-mechanism, the eclipse theory, and tabular data on day-length and twilight at different latitudes for fifteen Míng provinces. The work was the most popular and accessible of the Wànlì-period Jesuit cosmographic books, and one of the few to reach a wider audience beyond the inner Jesuit-affiliated literati circle.
(2) The Shèngjīng zhíjiě 聖經直解 (Hángzhōu, 1636/1640): the first Chinese-language Catholic commentary on the four Gospels — selections-with-commentary structured around the Sunday and feast-day Mass readings — which would remain the standard Chinese-Catholic Gospel commentary into the 19th century.
(3) The Qīngshì jīnshū 輕世金書 (1640): a Chinese rendering of Thomas à Kempis’s De imitatione Christi (Books I–III), one of the most important Catholic ascetical-spiritual texts ever produced in Chinese.
(4) Catechetical-and-doctrinal works: Tiānzhǔ shèngjiào shíjiè zhíquán 天主聖教十誡直詮; Dàiyí piān 代疑篇; Tàixī jǐngcǎo 太西景教碑頌正詮 (commentary on the recently rediscovered Xī’ān Nestorian stele of 781).
After the 1616 persecution Yáng Mǎnuò was one of the principal Jesuits who maintained the China mission’s academic-and-spiritual life through the difficult Tiānqǐ and early-Chóngzhēn years; he survived into the early Qīng period and saw the consolidation of the post-Schall court astronomy. His Tiānwèn lüè 提要 in the Sìkù records one of the more candid Qián-lóng-period editorial interventions: the editors openly state that they removed Yáng’s original preface (which insisted that the unmoving twelfth heaven was where God and the saints reside) on the grounds that “its purport is extremely deceitful” but preserved the underlying astronomical exposition as “reliable and based on evidence” — a vivid illustration of the late-Qīng editorial separation of Jesuit science (preserved) from Jesuit theology (excised).