The Taipei Ricci Institute (TRI), which was founded in 1966 by Fr Yves Raguin SJ 甘易逢神父 to promote dialogue between western and Chinese cultures, is now 58 years old. Over the last six decades, the Institute engaged in multiple activities, such as editing well-known Chinese-French and Chinese-Spanish dictionaries, and publishing two periodicals, the Ricci Bulletin 臺北利氏學社年刊 that ran from 1966 to 2005 and Renlai Magazine人籟論辨月刊 that ran from 2005 to 2013. TRI also regularly organised conferences and published books in various fields such as East Asian religions and spiritualities, oracle bones, history of Christianity in China, Chinese ethics and politics, Taiwan history and current social challenges, neo-Confucianism, Chinese literature and arts, and Austronesian peoples, among others.
In 2014, the TRI downsized itself, which led to the donation of part of its rich library to the Taiwan National Library, where it now constitutes the Matteo Ricci Donation. At the very end of last year, the Institute downsized once again and moved to a smaller office on the fourth floor of the Tien Educational Center, which led to the dispersal of another substantial part of its former library in favour of two different institutions: the department of religious studies at Fu Jen University and the Taiwan National Library. At the same time, the archives of sinologists, Fr Yves Raguin and Jean Lefeuvre, were sent to the archives centre of the French Jesuits in Vanves, near Paris, where they will be much more easily at the disposal of researchers.
Presently, the main activities of the TRI consist of editing, publishing, and selling books in relation to Chinese Christianity, especially those related to the mission of the Jesuit order in China and Taiwan in the Ancien-Régime (16th–18th centuries) and from the mid-19th century until today. For example, last year the Institute published in Chinese an annotated edition of Fr Michele Ruggieri’s 羅明堅神父 (1543–1607) major work 天主實錄今注 by Wang Huiyu 王慧宇 who is an Associate Professor at Guanzhou Sun Yat Sen University. This year, two works are going to be published in English by the institute: 1) a detailed China Jesuits in East Asia 1948–1968 in six volumes written by Fernando Mateos SJ and fully revised by Edmund Ryden SJ; and 2) the PhD thesis of Olivier Lardinois SJ, which was successfully defended in May 2022 at the Department of Anthropology, National Taiwan University, under the following title: Multi-faced Christianity in an Austronesian Tribe of Taiwan: A Comparative Study on the Theologies and Religious Practices of Tayal Christians in Mountain and Urban Communities of Hsinchu County.
Presently, TRI is preparing, together with the French Jesuits running the Paris Ricci Institute, an international symposium, Who is God? What is the Dao? This workshop, which will be held at the Taiwan National Library in Taipei on 8 to10 May 2025, is going to gather contemporary specialists of Judaism, Christianity, and Daoism to look anew at questions first raised by Jesuit missionaries to China in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Besides the above-mentioned two Ricci Institutes, four other academic institutions are collaborating in the preparation of the symposium: Taipei Fu Jen St Bellarmine Theologate, the Jesuit Faculty of Philosophy and Theology of Paris, as well as the Departments of Religious Studies of National Chengchi University and Fu Jen Catholic University.
Olivier Lardinois SJ
Director, Taipei Ricci Institute