Mid-Míng 明 censor and Shàngshū commentator, native of Pútián 莆田 in Fújiàn 福建. Zì Zǐcuì 子萃. Lifedates not securely recorded. Jìnshì of Zhèngdé 12 / 1517 (丁丑). Held office to Jiānchá yùshǐ 監察御史 (Censor). Biographical material attached to the Míngshǐ 明史 liè zhuàn of his political ally Zhū Zhì 朱淛.
Distinguished as the first Wáng Yángmíng 王守仁 (Yángmíng 陽明, 1472–1529) disciple in Fújiàn. The Sìkù tíyào on his Shàngshū yí yì 尚書疑義 (KR1b0039) explicitly states: “Mǐnzhōng [Fújiàn] scholars all venerated Cài Qīng 蔡清 (1453–1508); only Mínghéng received instruction from Wáng Shǒurén — Wáng-school learning in Mǐnzhōng begins precisely from Mínghéng.” His political career was ended by the 嘉靖 Dà lǐ yì 大禮議 (“Great Rites Controversy”) of Jiājìng 3 / 1524: when the Jiājìng emperor (Shìzōng 世宗) demanded that his birth-father (the Prince of Xīngxiàn 興獻王) be elevated over his Hóngzhì-emperor adoptive-father, and decreed that the senior consort-mother (i.e. the Hóngzhì empress, here styled Císhòu Huángtàihòu 慈夀皇太后) was to be slighted relative to the emperor’s birth-mother on her dànchén 誕辰 (“birthday”), Mǎ Mínghéng and Zhū Zhì refused to assent and memorialized firmly in defense of the senior consort. Both were demoted and permanently barred from further office; Mǎ Mínghéng spent the rest of his life in private scholarship, completing the Shàngshū yí yì in Jiājìng 21 / 1542. The Sìkù compilers — themselves Qiánlóng-era Confucians broadly sympathetic to Wáng Yángmíng — explicitly endorse Mǎ Mínghéng’s classical-political integrity (“kě wèi bù kuì yú jīng shù” 可謂不愧於經術 — “one may say he did not disgrace classical learning”) and treat his work without doctrinal hostility despite its Wáng-school background.