He was a gentleman and a scholar. He was highly cultured—in both literary and scientific fields—and had exquisite manners. He was a man of God, but he was also very shrewd, a born diplomat, tactful and inventive, able to gauge situations, to judge and handle people. He was a great artist in human relations—an art that Chinese society had brought to perfection. Being Italian (from the Papal Domain) he had inherited the best of a glorious and sophisticated cultural tradition, without having to carry the burden of imperial-nationalist hangovers from which Spaniards and Portuguese were seldom free. For the Chinese (as for the French), any new idea, in order to be taken seriously, must not only be expressed in their own language, but it must also be expressed with literary elegance.

—Simon Leys, “Madness of the Wise: Ricci in China” (1985)