ABSTRACT
Images and the symbols they include were a component of the Jesuits’ evangelization method in China. The broad use of images made by the Catholic Church is but only one aspect of this structure. A tradition going back to the Greek-Latin antiquity puts images of objects or facts into real or virtual places. During the Middle Ages, the role of images, once regarded as a kind of store to keep what one wanted to remember, changed and increased its meanings. The great importance the Church ascribed to the figurative arts was but the inevitable effect of the necessity of remembering. Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Excercises claimed that the visual composition of places led to the visualization of images whose plastic “qualities” were perceivable with senses. The effect of European images on a Chinese audience must be considered on the basis of what the conception of image for them was.
