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Gui E

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Gui E
桂萼
Grand Secretary
In office
1529, 1529–1531
MonarchJiajing
Minister of Personnel
In office
1527–1529
MonarchJiajing
Preceded byLi Chengxun
Succeeded byFang Xianfu
Minister of Rites
In office
1527
MonarchJiajing
Preceded byWu Yipeng
Succeeded byFang Xianfu
Acting Minister of Rites
In office
1527
MonarchJiajing
Preceded byLuo Qinshun
Succeeded byLi Chengxun
Personal details
Born1478
Died3 October 1531(1531-10-03) (aged 52–53)
Educationjinshi degree (1511)
Chinese name
Chinese桂萼
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinGuì È

Gui E[a] (1478 – 3 October 1531) was a Chinese scholar-official during the Ming dynasty. In the 1520s, he gained favor with the Jiajing Emperor by supporting him in the Great Rites Controversy. This led to Gui being appointed as chancellor of the Hanlin Academy, followed by successive appointments as minister of justice, rites, personnel, and grand secretary.

Early life and career

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Gui E was born in 1478[3][1] during China's Ming dynasty in An'ren County (present-day Yujiang County) in northern Jiangxi Province. He received a Confucian education and applied for the civil service examinations. He passed the provincial examinations in 1507 and the metropolitan and palace examinations in 1511, earning the rank of jinshi.[3][1] He then began his career as a county magistrate, serving in Dantu, Nanzhili. However, due to his hot temper, he frequently got into disputes with his superiors[3][4] and was punished with caning and dismissal from service. In 1517, he was reinstated as magistrate of Wukang (武康), Zhejiang, but was dismissed again three years later after refusing to comply with the orders of a superior.[1][4]

Great Rites Controversy

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After the accession of the Jiajing Emperor, Gui returned to civil service in 1521 as the magistrate of Cheng'an County. He was later promoted to secretary of the Nanjing Ministry of Justice. In late 1523, he submitted a memorandum to the Emperor in which he supported the Emperor's position in the Great Rites Controversy.[4][5] To demonstrate his support, he included the older memoranda of Xi Shu and Fang Xianfu with his submission.[4] At the time, only a handful of relatively obscure officials openly supported the Emperor. Besides Gui E, these included his colleague Zhang Cong from the Nanjing Ministry of Justice, as well as Huo Tao and Xiong Jia.[6] The Emperor received Gui E's memorandum in February 1524 and circulated it among the bureaucracy for comment. He received 82 memorials bearing the signatures of 250 Beijing officials, all of which unanimously condemned Gui's memorandum.[5] The Emperor nevertheless summoned Gui E to Beijing, where he arrived in June 1524 together with Zhang Cong.[7] Fearing for their safety, Guo Xun, Marquis of Wuding and commander of the military forces in the Beijing region, initially accommodated them at his residence. A loyal supporter of the Emperor, Guo also arranged an unofficial meeting between them and the Emperor.[8][9]

In July, the Emperor appointed Gui E as a chancellor of the Hanlin Academy, alongside Zhang Cong. The appointments sparked widespread opposition, with the academy's leadership and dozens of censors protesting that careerists seeking to curry favor with the emperor should not be appointed to high office. The Emperor, however, declared that the two men were loyal, honest, and qualified. More than 70 supervisory secretaries and censors responded by demanding their execution for misleading the emperor. In protest, 36 junior members of the academy submitted their resignations.[7] After further debates and protests, the dispute culminated in August 1524 with a public demonstration by hundreds of officials outside the Zuoshun Gate in the imperial palace. They were beaten, arrested, and punished. The Emperor subsequently secured approval for the titles and status of his parents, as he had desired.[10]

Minister

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Gui E subsequently led the Hanlin Academy. Seeking further advancement in their careers, he and Zhang Cong attacked Senior Grand Secretary Fei Hong.[11] As a counterbalance to Fei Hong, the two men secured the return of Yang Yiqing to the Grand Secretariat after a decade away from office. In March 1527, they succeeded in having Fei Hong dismissed. As the senior figure, Yang Yiqing replaced Fei Hong as the senior grand secretary.[12] Shortly afterward, Gui E was appointed right vice minister of rites in April 1527 and, five months later, left vice minister of personnel, while continuing to lead the Hanlin Academy.[8]

In 1525–1526, Gui E, along with the grand secretaries Fei Hong and later Yang Yiqing, opposed proposals by Minister of Rites Xi Shu to appoint the successful and respected statesman Wang Yangming to a high office, either as grand secretary or minister. The proposals were supported by other imperial supporters who had been elevated to high office after the Great Rites Controversy of 1524, including Fang Xianfu, Huo Tao, and Huang Wan, but Gui E and the grand secretaries feared that Wang's appointment would reduce their influence in Beijing.[13][14] Later, when Gui E was tasked with drafting proposals to address unrest among indigenous chieftaincies in Guangxi, he proposed in June 1527, among other measures, appointing Wang as supreme commander (zongdu) of Guangxi and Guangdong, with the task of suppressing the unrest and establishing proper administration in the affected regions. This was likely because Wang, being assigned to the distant southwest of the empire, did not pose a threat to Gui's influence in Beijing.[15] Zhang Cong also supported the appointment.[13] In 1528, Gui E, with the behind-the-scenes support of Yang Yiqing, criticized Wang, accusing him of planning to attack Đại Việt (present-day northern Vietnam) with the assistance of former rebels. The accusation was rejected by Wang's supporters, Fang Xianfu, Huo Tao, and Huang Wan.[16] Following Wang's success in Guangxi, they instead proposed, with Zhang Cong's support, that he be appointed grand secretary. This prompted accusations, orchestrated by Gui E and Yang Yiqing, that they had accepted bribes from Wang Yangming.[13] Wang Yangming died in early 1529 while returning home.[16] Due to Gui E's influence, he did not receive the posthumous recognition normally granted to high-ranking and successful officials.[17][18]

Gui E submitted a memorandum for review by the Emperor and the government in 1527, accusing the nuns of Baoming Temple ("Protecting the Ming [dynasty]") near Beijing of various forms of misconduct. A subsequent investigation led by Huo Tao confirmed the accusations against the nuns. The Emperor ordered the closure of Baoming Temple and all other Buddhist convents for women. Fearing for their survival, the temple's leadership contacted the empress dowagers—Lady Jiang, the mother of the Jiajing Emperor and Lady Zhang, the mother of the Zhengde Emperor (r. 1505–1521)—through their allied imperial eunuchs, and with their assistance secured the preservation of the temple.[19]

In August 1527, Gui E was appointed acting minister of justice,[20] at the same time as Zhang Cong was appointed left censor-in-chief and Fang Xianfu president of the Court of Judicial Review. The three men were tasked with resolving the Li Fuda case, a complicated affair in which Zhang Yin, a Beijing alchemist and maker of medicines, was accused of actually being Li Fuda, a former leader of a sectarian rebellion in western China, or alternatively the sorcerer Li Wu. The case also implicated Marquis Guo Xun. The three men concluded that Zhang Yin was innocent. Several dozen officials who had supported Zhang Yin's execution, including the former Minister of Justice Yan Yishou, were punished by dismissal from office and reassignment to military service on the frontier; some died from the effects of beatings.[20][11]

After resolving the Li Fuda case, Gui E was promoted to minister of rites in October 1527, while retaining his position as chancellor of the Hanlin Academy. A month later, he took charge of the Ministry of Personnel.[1] In January 1528, he received the title of grand guardian of the heir apparent, and in June of the same year, following the completion and publication of the Minglun dadian (Great Canon for Clarifying Human Relations), a collection of documents explaining and defending the imperial position in the Great Rites Controversy, he was promoted to junior guardian and grand preceptor.[19]

Grand Secretary

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In March 1529, Gui E was appointed grand secretary and formally also minister of personnel. When Marquis Guo Xun was accused of various offenses in early 1529, Zhang Cong assisted him as much as he could, but Gui E joined Guo's critics. Guo was subsequently removed from command of the military forces around Beijing.[19] In September 1529, after several waves of accusations from censors, Zhang and Gui were dismissed from their offices. Huo Tao, however, persuaded the Emperor that the accusations were false and the result of intrigues by Grand Secretary Yang Yiqing.[21][22] After lengthy deliberation, the Emperor honorably dismissed the elderly and ill Yang from office in October 1529 on account of his advanced age, while simultaneously reinstating Zhang Cong to the Grand Secretariat.[22] The Emperor also recalled Gui E in December 1529. Gui arrived in Beijing only in May 1530 and resumed his positions as grand secretary and formally minister of personnel.[2] After his dismissal, he lost much of his previous assertiveness and returned as a more inconspicuous and cautious politician.[2][22]

At the end of 1530, Gui E fell ill and repeatedly requested permission to retire from office around the turn of 1530–1531.[2][23] The Emperor approved his request in early February 1531.[2] Gui E then returned to his home in Jiangxi and died several months later, on 3 October 1531. He was granted the posthumous name Wenxiang.[2][23]

Gui E was a prolific author, particularly known for his geographical works. He compiled a map of China and a treatise on Chinese geography. Collections of his essays, poetry, and political writings have not survived.[2]

Notes

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  1. ↑ Gui E used the courtesy name Zishi (子實) and the art name Jianshan (見山).[1] He was given the posthumous name Wenxiang (文襄).[2]

References

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Citations

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  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Goodrich & Fang (1976), p. 756.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Goodrich & Fang (1976), p. 758.
  3. 1 2 3 Dardess (2016), p. 16.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Throness (2024), p. 192.
  5. 1 2 Dardess (2016), p. 15.
  6. ↑ Dardess (2016), pp. 15–17.
  7. 1 2 Dardess (2016), pp. 20–22.
  8. 1 2 Goodrich & Fang (1976), p. 771.
  9. ↑ Dardess (2016), p. 21.
  10. ↑ Dardess (2016), pp. 25–28.
  11. 1 2 Goodrich & Fang (1976), p. 68.
  12. ↑ Geiss (1988), p. 455.
  13. 1 2 3 Israel (2014), pp. 323–324.
  14. ↑ Brook (2007), pp. 78–79.
  15. ↑ Brook (2007), p. 81.
  16. 1 2 Brook (2007), pp. 77–78.
  17. ↑ Israel (2014), pp. 325–326.
  18. ↑ Goodrich & Fang (1976), p. 1415.
  19. 1 2 3 Goodrich & Fang (1976), p. 757.
  20. 1 2 Dardess (2016), p. 32.
  21. ↑ Goodrich & Fang (1976), pp. 757–758.
  22. 1 2 3 Dardess (2016), pp. 73–76.
  23. 1 2 Dardess (2016), p. 76.

Works cited

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  • Brook, Timothy (2007). "What happens When Wang Yangming Crosses the Border?". In Lary, Diana (ed.). The Chinese State at the Borders. Vancouver: UBC Press. pp. 74–90. ISBN 978-0-7748-1333-4.
  • Dardess, John W (2016). Four Seasons: A Ming Emperor and His Grand Secretaries in Sixteenth-Century China. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781442265608.
  • Goodrich, L. Carington; Fang, Chaoying (1976). Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1368-1644. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-03801-1.
  • Geiss, James (1988). "The Chia-ching reign, 1522-1566". In Mote, Frederick W.; Twitchett, Denis C (eds.). The Cambridge History of China. Volume 7, The Ming Dynasty 1368-1644, Part 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 440–510. ISBN 0521243327.
  • Israel, George Lawrence (2014). Doing Good and Ridding Evil in Ming China: The Political Career of Wang Yangming. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 9789004280106.
  • Throness, Aaron (2024). Yang Tinghe: A Political Life in the Mid-Ming Court. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-68237-5.
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