ZH 
EN Michał Boym SJ and the Chinese affair: Catholic China ‒ a fantasy or a squandered chance?
Date & Time:
Friday 30th October 2026
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM (GMT +8)
Entry time: 6:15 PM
Venue:
Speaker's Hall (3F), USJ- University of Saint Joseph (NAPE Campus)
中國澳門倫敦街106號環宇豪庭三樓
Speaker:
Agnieszka Couderq 古德秀
Chair:
Dr. Jaroslaw Duraj, Director, Macau Ricci Institute
Online Registration:
https://forms.gle/7xv8Z7SxdWUrevbU9
Deadline of registration: 30 OCT 2026
For online participants, we will send you a confirmation email and ZOOM ACCESS LINK after your registration.
About the talk:
Michał Boym, S.J., was a Polish 17th-century Jesuit missionary and outstanding scholar in China. During his evangelizing mission, Yongli, the last emperor of the South Ming dynasty, charged him with an assignment in Europe to find support for this last ethnic Han and the only predominantly Catholic court in China's history. Scholars familiar with his legation tend to explain its failure in the context of the unfavorable situation on the Chinese front in the domestic war waged between the Ming regime and the new foreign dynasty, the Qing.
The lecture will present arguments supporting the hypothesis that the causes of the failure lay not with the Chinese side but with the Vatican's internal politics and the game of influence played in the Holy See and at European royal courts by other European powers with colonial ambitions.
By speculating on alternate historical outcomes around those key events, the author shall demonstrate up to which point the war between the Ming and the Qing dynasties in China could have played out to the Ming's advantage and that Catholic China's potential truly existed and was not merely a brief fantasy – the view tenaciously defended by Father Boym. If not over the entire territory, it could have been so in several southern provinces under Ming control, which would eventually have evolved into an independent country on China's soil.
Sadly, colonial politics, bad faith, envy, and opportunism, combined with the Vatican's profound misunderstanding of Jesuit missionary methods, ultimately led to Boym's failure to realize the grand dream of a Catholic China. As a result, the Catholic Church's genuinely unique prospect to impose Catholicism as China's dominant faith was squandered. However, the tribulations and human vices the Polish Jesuit met with then remain relevant today. His story and the Catholic Church's fate in China should serve us as a lesson for the future.
卜彌格（Michał Boym，耶穌會士），是17世紀波蘭的耶穌會傳教士，也是在中國的一位傑出學者。 在傳教過程中，南明末代皇帝永曆委派他前往歐洲為最後的漢族政權尋求支持、也是中國歷史上唯一一個以天主教為主的宮廷。 研究這段出使史的學者傾向於將其失敗解釋為明廷與新崛起的外族王朝清之間內戰中國戰場形勢不利的背景所致。
本次講座將提出論據，佐證以下假說：這次使命失敗的原因不在中方，而在於梵蒂岡的內部政治博弈，以及受到教廷與歐洲各國王室宮廷之間角逐的影响。作者將推演這些關鍵歷史事件的另一種可能性，以此論證：明清之間的這場戰爭，原本存在向明朝傾斜的機會； 在中國建立天主教政權並非短暫空想，而是真實存在過的可能性 —— 這也是卜彌格神父始終堅持的觀點。 即便無法統一全國，明朝也有可能保住南方數省，最終在中國疆域內形成一個獨立政權。
遺憾的是，殖民政治、背信棄義、嫉妒和投機心態，再加上梵蒂岡對耶穌會傳教方法的深刻誤解，最終導致卜彌格未能實現建立中國天主教這一巨集大夢想。 教會就此錯失了一個獨一無二的契機，再也無法將天主教確立為中國的主流信仰。 然而，這位波蘭耶穌會士當時所遭遇的磨難和人性惡習，至今仍然具有有借鑒意義。 他的故事以及以及天主教在中國的這段際遇，應當成為後世的鏡鑑。
About the speaker:
Agnieszka is a Polish-American geophysical engineer, film script and historical novel and play writer currently living alternately in Warsaw, Poland and Los Angeles, USA. Growing up initially in Poland, she came to the United States in 1980 as a teenager and graduated with a B.Sc. degree in geophysics from the Colorado School of Mines in Colorado. As a geophysicist she worked among others for the United States Geological Survey, Schlumberger (SLB), and continued studying at the French Institut Français du Pétrole (IFP) in Rueil Malmaison. In the years 1990 through 2007 she run the pioneering corporate real estate service firm, employing twenty employees and offering services in market research, brokerage and real estate investment for major market players. In this capacity she worked for a large number of Fortune 500 companies.
Shortly after receiving her degree, she contracted cancer with minimal chance of survival. This experience of immediate death at a young age had a profound impact on her. It defined her entire life, creating a lens through which she looks at all its twists, turns, ups and downs, and drew her very early on to the issues of the meaning of life and suffering. As an avid reader with a history of reading a variety of books written by authors living on many continents, she developed her writing skills over the years, creating children's stories and poetry, but it wasn't until she came into contact with the story of Michael Boym while studying Sinology that she felt the strength to write a novel with an eye toward publication. Her book about Michael Boym “The Last Envoy of Ming China” was published in Polish in 2023 and 2024 in two parts: “The Sun, the Moon and the Cross” and “Light and Darkness. Since then, she also penned, based on factual events, a historical play about Rudolf Hoess, the first commandant of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.
Having lived in many countries and cultures on different continents (Mexico, USA, Rwanda, Burundi, France, Poland), she has learned to appreciate them. She tries to get to know them in depth and does so primarily by learning their languages. For this reason, she is fluent in Polish, English, French, Spanish and Chinese, and has a good understanding of Russian.
She is currently working in collaboration with the prominent Polish documentary maker and producer, Mr. Jacek Raginis on a documentary film about Michael Boym based on her own script and conducts extensive research for her future novel.