 The advent of the Ming was initially devastating to Christianity : in his first year , the Hongwu Emperor declared the eighty @-@ year @-@ old Franciscan missions among the Yuan heterodox and illegal . The centuries @-@ old Nestorian church also disappeared . During the later Ming a new wave of Christian missionaries arrived – particularly Jesuits – who employed new western science and technology in their arguments for conversion . They were educated in Chinese language and culture at St. Paul 's College on Macau after its founding in 1579 . The most influential was Matteo Ricci , whose " Map of the Myriad Countries of the World " upended traditional geography throughout East Asia , and whose work with the convert Xu Guangqi led to the first Chinese translation of Euclid 's Elements in 1607 . The discovery of a Nestorian stele at Xi 'an in 1625 also permitted Christianity to be treated as an old and established faith , rather than as a new and dangerous cult . However , there were strong disagreements about the extent to which converts could continue to perform rituals to the emperor , Confucius , or their ancestors : Ricci had been very accommodating and an attempt by his successors to backtrack from this policy led to the Nanjing Incident of 1616 , which exiled four Jesuits to Macau and forced the others out of public life for six years . A series of spectacular failures by the Chinese astronomers – including missing an eclipse easily computed by Xu Guangqi and Sabatino de <unk> – and a return by the Jesuits to presenting themselves as educated scholars in the Confucian mold restored their fortunes . However , by the end of the Ming the Dominicans had begun the Chinese Rites controversy in Rome that would eventually lead to a full ban of Christianity under the Qing dynasty . 
