tsao died and Hsü was the only one of "The Three Pillars of the Christian Religion in China" (聖教三柱石) remaining, the other two being Li and Yang T'ing-yün.
Meanwhile Hsü recommended that Longobardi and Sambiasi be commissioned by imperial decree to proceed to Macao to purchase ten cannon from Portuguese merchants and to hire a few soldiers to operate them. The cannon were purchased and the return company was led by Gonzales Texeira-Correa 公沙的西勞 (d. 1632), a citizen of Macao, with Jean Rodriguez 陸若漢 (1559–1633) as interpreter. The cannon arrived on time to defend the city of Chochou (Hopei) against the Manchus. Later four hundred more soldiers were enlisted from Macao. When they set off overland for the capital, five missionaries, Tranquille Grassetti 謝貴祿 (T. 天爵, 1588–1644), Pierre Canevari 聶伯多 (T. 石宗, 1594–1675), Benoit de Mattos 林本篤 (T. 存元, 1600–1652), Michel Trigault 金彌格 (T. 端表, 1602–1667), and Étienne Faber, or Le Fèvre, 方德望 (T. 玉清, 1598–1659), accompanied them in the hope of being able to preach in the interior of China. Late in 1630 the Manchus retired to Mukden and China enjoyed a temporary peace.
In 1632 Hsü was made Grand Secretary of the Tung-ko 東閣 and a year later, of the Wên-yüan ko 文淵閣. Taken ill on September 11, 1633, he memorialized the throne (October 31) to reward the missionaries for their assistance to the Calendrical Bureau, and recommended Li T'ien-ching [q. v.] to succeed him in the task of revising the Chinese calendar. After two months of illness he died. Owing to the unrest in his native place his remains were not interred in the cemetery at Zikawei 徐家匯 (Hsü Family Village), in the suburbs of Shanghai, until 1644. He was posthumously awarded the honorary title of Junior Guardian (changed in 1643 to Grand Guardian) of the Heir Apparent and was canonized as Wên-ting 文定.
In 1643 Hsü Kuang-ch'i's third grandson, Hsü Êr-tou 徐爾斗 (1609–1643, baptized under the name Matteo 瑪竇), presented to the throne a work on agriculture by Hsü Kuang-ch'i, entitled 農政全書 Nung-chêng ch'üan-shu, 60 chüan, compiled by Hsü during the years 1625–28, and later copied into the Ssŭ-k'u Manuscript Library. The editing of this work was entrusted in 1635 to Ch'ên Tzŭ-lung [q. v.] by Hsü's second grandson, Hsü Êr-chüeh 徐爾爵 (1605–1683, baptized under the name Ignace 依納爵), but probably was not completed until 1639. The Nung-chêng ch'üan-shu is an important compendium on agriculture, and later served as the basis of a similar work, entitled Shou-shih t'ung k'ao (see under Ch'ên Tzŭ-lung), which was compiled by an imperial order of 1737, and was completed in 1742. Ch'ên Tzŭ-lung, believing the Nung-chêng ch'üan-shu to be too long, later contracted it to 46 chüan. This edition is given notice in the Ssŭ-k'u Catalogue (see under Chi Yün).
During his four years on the Calendrical Bureau Hsü Kuang-ch'i on three occasions (twice in 1631 and once in 1632) presented to the throne translations on astronomical subjects, comprising 72 chüan, and one table of the fixed stars (恆星). These works were all later included in the Ch'ung-chên li-shu (see under Li T'ien-ching). Hsü's collected writings were first brought together in 1663 by his fourth grandson, Hsü Êr-mo 徐爾默 (容庵, 1610–1669, baptized under the name Thomas 多默), and were printed in 1896 by Father Li Ti 李杕 (問漁) under the title 徐文定公集 Hsü Wên-ting kung chi. This collection was republished in 1909 with supplementary material by Hsü Yün-hsi 徐允希 (Father Simon Hsü), a descendant of Hsü Kuang-ch'i in the eleventh generation, under the title Tsêng-ting (增訂) Hsü Wên-ting kung chi. It was again reprinted in 1933, with further additions, by Hsü Tsung-tsê 徐宗澤 (Father Joseph Hsü), a descendant of Hsü Kuang-ch'i in the twelfth generation. Owing to the literary inquisition of the Ch'ing period and the raids by Chêng Ch'êng-kung [q. v.] on the Shanghai coast, several decades after Hsü's death, many of his works were either destroyed or lost. A collection of his memorials and correspondence, mostly on national defense, under the title 徐氏庖言 Hsü-shih pao-yen, 5 chüan, which was banned in the Ch'ien-lung reign-period, was reprinted in 1933 from an edition preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. A collection of Hsü Kuang-ch'i's letters, entitled 徐文定公墨蹟 Hsü Wên-ting kung mo-chi, "Ink Remains of Hsü Kuang-ch'i," was first printed in 1903 in facsimile and was reprinted in 1933.
One of Hsü's granddaughters, Candide Hsü 徐甘弟大 (1607–1680), who married Hsü Yüan-tu 許遠度 of Hua-ting, Kiangsu, was a zealous Christian who is reported to have established 135 chapels in and about Shanghai. Her son, Hsü Tsuan-tsêng 許纘曾 (T. 孝修, 孝達, H. 鶴沙, 悟西, a chin-shih of 1649, who was baptized under the name Basil 巴西), was a poet who rose to provincial judge of Yunnan. The
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