Jiao Hong’s Yi-ology From the Perspective of the Convergence of Three Religions in the Late Ming Dynasty

Jiao Hong, as a prominent intellectual and scholar leader in the late Ming Dynasty, was deeply influenced by the culture of Yi-ology, which had a significant impact on his thoughts and actions. Given that the current academic research on Jiao Hong’s Yi-ology is relatively weak, this article reveals the opportunity for Jiao Hong to study the Yi by tracing his academic thought process. It also extracts, reorganizes, and analyzes the Yi texts and viewpoints in works such as Jiao Shi Bi Cheng, Dan Yuan Ji, and Yi Quan, in order to demonstrate Jiao Hong’s method of integrating various schools of thought and seeking truth through textual research at the level of Yi theory. At the same time, it emphasizes the Yi image theory path of using images to represent reality and using images to see reason. Faced with the many contradictions that arose during the process of the integration and integration of the three religions in the late Ming society, Jiao Hong adhered to the spirit of The Book of Changes, which stated that “the world returns to the same destination via different routes”, and advocated the use of the temperament theory of Yi to reconcile the differences among the three religions. Jiao Hong’s academic thoughts and deeds, as well as Matteo Ricci’s admiration for the Jiao Hong, played an important role in promoting the convergence of the three religions and mutual learning between the East and the West in late Ming society.