In the sixteenth year of Zhengde, that is, in 1521, Emperor Mingwuzong Zhu Houzhao died, because Zhu Houzhao was childless, and Yang Tinghe, the head of the cabinet, searched for an heir to the throne according to the "Imperial Ming Ancestral Training".
However, Emperor Mingwuzong's only brother, Zhu Houwei, died prematurely at an early age, so he was pushed up to the generation of Emperor Mingwuzong's father, Emperor Mingxiaozong, and both of Emperor Ming's brothers died childless. Although he was already dead, he had a second son, Zhu Houxi, the eldest son of King Xing, who was dead, and with the principle of "brother to brother and brother", he established the second son Zhu Houxi as his heir, that is, Ming Shizong.
Zhu Houxi, grandson of Emperor Mingxianzong Zhu Jianshen, and son of Zhu Youzhu, the Prince of Xingxian. Emperor Mingwu zhengde succeeded to the throne in the sixteenth year, and the following year changed his era name to Jiajing. At the beginning of his succession, the Jiajing Emperor eliminated the government of the previous dynasty and made the government a new one.
However, soon there was a dispute with Yang Tinghe and other courtiers over the issue of the honorific title of king, which was the second incident in the history of the Ming Dynasty in which Xiaozong entered the emperor. After four years of Jiajing, the dispute over the "great ceremonial discussion" of the imperial court finally came to an end. The young Jiajing Emperor won this bloodless court battle and established the political pattern in the early years of Jiajing.
The so-called Xiaozong and Dazong, the throne of the Son of Heaven is hereditary by the eldest son of the concubine, called the Great Sect; the remaining son is xiaozong to the Son of Heaven. The throne of the princes was also inherited by the eldest son of the concubine, who was the emperor in the country; the remaining son was the small emperor of the princes. The Book of Rites: "The other son is the ancestor, the successor is the sect, and the successor is the small sect." Kong Yingda Shuo: "Don't call the princes of the shuzi also ... The successor to You is Xiao zong, the father's concubine is the successor to you, and the brothers are called Xiao Zong. ”
Of course, if something is good on the top, it will be effective on the bottom. Soon, the local society also blew up a trend of ancestor worship and tracing ancestors, especially in Guangdong. In the stone village of Foshan, Guangdong Province, there is still a large clan ancestral hall complex intact, which is the Huo Clan Ancestral Hall. At the beginning of its establishment, it was shortly after the official Huo Tao won the battle of "great gifts".
As for the connection between local social changes and national ritual changes, perhaps we can get an answer from the Huo Family Temple.
The Hongzhi Emperor had no children to inherit the throne, so in the end, the Jiajing Emperor, who was originally only the son of the king of the domain, had the whole world under the circumstances of fate. The young Jiajing Emperor believed that he was only a successor and not a successor, so his imperial examination should be that of his biological father Xingxian Wang. Most people in the dynasty believed that since the Jiajing Emperor had succeeded to the throne as the king of the domain, of course, emperor Xiaozong Should be recognized as the emperor, and the king of Xingxian could only be his uncle.
To a certain extent, generally speaking, the succession to the throne should be the successor and the succession, otherwise, wouldn't Emperor Ming Xiaozong have broken off the throne? Therefore, from the perspective of the ministers, they were pursuing "loyalty" to the former emperor. However, from the standpoint of the young Jiajing Emperor, he had a biological father, and the Holy Will did not have a successor, so it was also in line with human filial piety to obey his biological father as emperor.
Huo Tao supported Jiajing's "succession to reunification" from the beginning, and he wrote directly to Jiajing, mentioning in the recital: "According to the court, His Majesty should take Emperor Xiaozong as his father and Xingxian Wang as his uncle." However, this kind of action is incompatible with ancient rituals, incompatible with the way of the sages, and incompatible with today's events. Later, the talented Huo Tao quoted the scriptures and elaborated in detail and comprehensively on his reasons for supporting the "succession".
He believed that only by succeeding the reunification and not succeeding the heirs could the Jiajing Emperor be able to achieve "respect and respect for relatives and relatives without contradiction." The Jiajing Emperor was happy to say this, but the Qunchen still objected, and the young emperor who had just stepped into the center of the imperial power could not dictate his own power, so he had to give up, and Huo Tao also "returned from illness". Later, the Jiajing Emperor repeatedly summoned Huo Tao back to the dynasty, and although Huo Tao resigned from the emperor.
However, he still wrote to Jiajing and put himself in the position of this emperor, which made the Jiajing Emperor feel very sorry and called him a loyal subject. Judging from Huo Tao's behavior, the father-son humanity in his heart is the most core moral standard and order norm, and the emperor, as an example of all the people, should abide by these ethical norms. In his hometown of Guangdong, he also carried out a series of clan building and promotion of indoctrination activities.
In the Great Ceremony, the victory of the Jiajing Emperor had the most obvious impact on the local society, and began to worship the ancestors. Prior to this, the people were only allowed to worship three generations of ancestors. After the people obtained the right to worship the ancestors, the situation of "joint ancestor worship" began to slowly appear, and clan organizations also came into being. The Huo Tao family's move to build a large ancestral hall is one of the more representative ones.
The direct reason for Huo Tao's "joint ancestor worship" is the human morality of "father and father, mother and mother", and in addition to the consideration of filial piety, the management of clan property is obviously also an important reason. The important element of Huo Tao's clan design is "hecuo communism". As an official, Huo Tao skillfully took advantage of the destruction of the temple, annexed land, accumulated primitive wealth, and rapidly expanded his wealth as a family unit.
To this day, the inscriptions that still exist in the Huo Ancestral Hall record in detail the property of the Huo family at that time. It is not difficult for us to find that the Huo Tao period was the pioneering period of the family property. Moreover, the scale of this family property is very large, the distribution range is wide, and the scale of capital flow has reached thousands of taels. Therefore, Huo Tao used legitimate or improper means to lay an economic foundation for the construction of the Huo Ancestral Hall.
In the fifth year of Jiajing, Huo Tao announced that the family would henceforth carry out "joint meetings", and the people of the clan would eat together in the ancestral hall, so as to strengthen the common sense of identity of the clan members. In addition to building the ancestral hall, Huo Tao also carried out the compilation of genealogy, traced the hardships of the ancestors' entrepreneurship, and asked future generations to remember that it was not easy for their ancestors to start a business, doubly cherished, and hoped that they would keep and expand the family business.
At the same time, Huo Tao actively built local sociology to achieve the effect of educating the local people.
When we look back at Huo Tao's blunt words in the "Great Ceremony" and the series of activities of building clans and schools in the local areas, it is obvious that there is a main line running through it. That is: the Chinese scholars, represented by Huo Tao, adhere to the Confucian gang and ritual teachings. At that time, in the Lingnan region, Confucian ethics did not prevail, and the folk theory of ghosts and gods was rampant, and it was the Confucian scholars and masters who worked hard to change this situation.
Self-cultivation and unity are the most fundamental moral norms of Confucian scholars, so from this point of view, it is not difficult to understand the relationship between the changes in etiquette in the Ming Dynasty and the social changes in Guangdong: local societies borrowed the etiquette norms and indoctrination discourse established by the state to maintain their own geo-organization as "cultural resources and production control institutions"; in turn, this borrowing promoted the country's great unification of culture in South China.
Resources:
["Ming Shilu , Records of Emperor Sejongsu " : " Perspective on the 'Great Ritual Discussion' Incident , " Ming Shi Liechuan 85 " ]