ABSTRACT
Undoubtedly the most serious charge in the first indictment was that the Jesuits suppressed the doctrine of the crucifixion of Christ. This is the accusation that has received such wide acceptance as to become an historical commonplace. Thus even a serious writer like Gerald Brenan, in making a point about Marxist distortions of history, can for purposes of comparison refer casually to “the feats of those Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth century who, the better to convert the Chinese, suppressed the story of the Crucifixion.” The works of Aleni are of special interest, inasmuch as they appeared in Fukien province shortly before and at the very time that the mendicants were reporting their shocking discovery to Manila. Between 1635 and 1637 there ap peared in Foochow the first edition of Aleni's eight chuan T'ien Chu chiang-sheng chi-lueh. This is how Aleni, in unadorned synoptic style, describes the crucifixion.
