preface
During the imperial period, the emperor was the highest decision-maker of the government, and officials accepted the emperor's orders and held corresponding positions in the government to assist him in governing the country. Under this bureaucratic system, the group of officials acts as the intermediary of the monarchy and the people, and its moral standards are self-evidently important to the governance of the country.
The education of officials in official morality not only consolidated the rule of the monarch, but also extended imperial power to every part of the state apparatus; It can also strengthen government functions and improve the administrative efficiency of the government; It will also enable officials to play a role as a wind and example in society, and then indoctrinate one side.
Therefore, the Ming government adopted many ways to educate officials in official morality: from the emperor to "serve as a monarch and teacher" - personally compiling imperial official ethics education documents to persuade and teach his subordinates, and there were also institutional incentives designed to ensure that officials could be loyal and diligent, honest and self-serving.
The two are not unique to the Ming Dynasty, but in the special political and cultural background of the Ming Dynasty, both the imperial official moral education documents and the government's official moral incentives are different from the previous dynasties. In addition, due to the important position of eunuchs in the political life of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming government set up an unprecedented Neishu Hall to educate eunuchs in knowledge and official morality.
The teaching of the inner book hall was generally served by the outer court Hanlin, and their emphasis on the moral education of eunuchs was also constantly increased due to the changes in the political situation in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. In this chapter, the author discusses the methods of official moral education initiated and led by the Ming Dynasty government.
Junshi concurrently: Ming Dynasty Imperial Documents and Official Moral Education
"Imperial Official Ethics Education Literature" refers to the official moral education documents with the nature of persuasion and punishment written by the emperor himself or compiled by the imperial subordinates. Li Jinhua, a senior scholar, once said that in the imperial literature of the Ming Dynasty, "everything that belongs to the history of the Ming Dynasty and the canonical system of the Ming Dynasty has considerable value, while those who belong to the category of persuasion and punishment are boring".
Through the discussion of the imperial official moral education literature, we can understand how the rulers of the Ming Dynasty advised and warned bureaucrats at all levels to achieve their vision of "before the ban".
At present, there are many achievements in the academic circles on the Ming Dynasty imperial documents, among which although individual imperial documents have the role of persuading officials, there is no overall study of the Ming Dynasty imperial official moral education documents.
An overview of the official moral education literature of the Ming Dynasty and the background of the book
The imperial official ethics education document is a kind of text in which the emperor of the Ming Dynasty persuaded and admonished his subjects, and its content included traditional Confucian official ethics ideas such as loyalty, benevolence, diligence, honesty, and prudence. In such documents, the ruler of the Ming Dynasty "concurrently served as a monarch and teacher" and personally taught his subjects, as stated in Emperor Xuanzong's "Imperial Official Proverbs and Prefaces":
But the distant ministers are not allowed to see them, but the people tell them. Although the close ministers met day and night, they could not say anything. Because of the righteousness of the ancients, all Chinese and foreign ministers wrote one article each, so that they could expose all the affairs of the halls, view them day and night, and be vigilant.
It can be seen that the promulgation of imperial documents for official moral education was an important means for the Ming monarch to discipline his subordinates, clarify the rule of officials, and consolidate his rule.
First of all, Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty frequently promulgated imperial official moral education documents in order to "punish the shortcomings of the yuan." When the Daming regime was established, the Hu style still existed, and the social atmosphere declined, and Ming Taizu elaborated on this chaos at the end of the Yuan in the "Great Curse":
In the past, the yuan was in Huaxia, but it was not the ceremony of Huaxia. Therefore, after ninety-three years of governance, the Chinese wind fell, and the Yi road fell. Scholars are surprised by the familiarity of the scriptures, and their adherence to the way of God and man is a little unconcerned. Therefore, when things are about to happen, selfishness prevails over public affairs, so that the sea is deep and the sin is heavy. At the time of the offense, the corpse of the abandoned city has not been moved, and the new offender will arrive.
Zhu Yuanzhang attributed the cause of the political malpractice of the Yuan Dynasty to the infiltration of China by "Yidi Bloody", and believed that the ecological pollution of officialdom in the Yuan Dynasty continued after the establishment of the Ming Dynasty. The chapter "Hu Yuanzhi" in "Dazhen" reveals Zhu Yuanzhang's dissatisfaction:
The people who are in charge of the present are not talented, and they often follow the shortcomings of Hu Yuan. When he was in power, he sat on his hands and plotted for officials, and he did not know much, even if he was a man of articles, he was not a different person. For example, Zhang Yi, an attendant of the household, entered the Confucian industry, gave the command of the Qian Valley, and all the actions moved, and the officials were already in the public hall.
It can be seen that in Zhu Yuanzhang's view, not only the politicians are greedy and violate the law, the corpse is vegetarian, but the folk customs have also changed due to the century-old rule of the Mengyuan regime, and the "Ming Shi Record" contains: "The Yuan clan entered China with Rong Di, and most of them used the code of destruction. Those who are extravagant and extravagant are not guilty, those who commit adultery do not ask, and those who have braided hair will be ruined. By the time of the Yuan Heavenly Calendar, although it was called rich, the system of kings before the king was destroyed. ”
Compared with the decline of official customs and folk customs, what made Ming Taizu feel more anxious was that many people did not agree with the Ming regime, and even a considerable number of "Yuan remnants" ignored the defense of Yixia. The case of "Xiucai's Broken Finger" mentioned in the "Third Part of the Great Book" is a clear example: Xia Boqi's uncle and nephew was a Confucian student in Guixi County, Guangxi Prefecture, and he did not hesitate to amputate his left thumb in order to avoid Yu Ming.
Faced with the questioning of the legitimacy of this regime, Zhu Yuanzhang defended it with the "theory of the Mandate of Heaven" and the "theory of the people's destiny", saying that he had accepted the Mandate of Heaven and saved the people from "great disaster" in the situation of heroes and riots, and should be the "rebirth parents" of the people, and the reason why Xia Boqi's family was not abused by the chaotic soldiers, and their property and life were preserved was precisely because of the protection of the new dynasty.
But not only ordinary Confucians like Xia Boqi's uncle and nephew, even the founding ministers from Long Zuo also have a "former dynasty complex". Qian Mu pointed out that after expelling Hu Yu and reviving China, the ministers in the early Ming Dynasty were "far from the imaginary joy."
It can be seen that at that time, a considerable number of the Shi people ignored the "defense of Yixia", but paid more attention to the "righteousness of the prince" with the Yuan Jun, and even if Daming overthrew the Meng Yuan rule as a Han regime, it failed to gain the general allegiance of the Shiren.
Faced with this "Huhua" social atmosphere and the non-recognition of the emerging regime, Ming Taizu adopted the means of both virtue and punishment to govern the country. On the one hand, with harsh laws and cruel extrajudicial punishment to alert and restrain the scholars, as mentioned above, Xia Boqi, Taizu took the punishment of beheading "to imitate the wind of absolute madmen and fools";
On the other hand, Taizu promulgated official moral education documents such as "The Great Edict", "Awakening the Greedy Record", and "The Record of Zhangshan and Evil" to alert and persuade officials, so as to correct the atmosphere of officialdom and remove the "Hu Feng" of officials' government.
He hopes that officials can play the role of "teacher" in the traditional culture of the official - not only can transform the folk customs, retro governance, and become the leader of local customs; He can also be faithful to his duties and honest in performing official duties, so that the family gives the people a foothold, and each has a "Yao Shun world".
Not only that, the promulgation of these imperial documents also shaped the image of Taizu as diligent in imperial documents as he did to "train his subjects", and its content was basically based on Confucianism, which undoubtedly hoped to shape the legitimacy of the regime, gain the recognition of the scholars, and cultivate their "loyalty" to the new regime.
Secondly, the strong desire for dominance in Ming Taizu's personal character is also an important reason for the frequent promulgation of official moral education documents of the Hongwu Dynasty.
Under the dominance of this desire for dominance, personally writing literature to educate officials in official morality was one of the means by which the suspicious Taizu "forbidden potential instability", and Qiu Jun once praised Ming Taizu's imperial cause:
All the productions of the thirty years of Yuji are more sincere, if it is not the ratio of the previous emperor's fake hand words... The courtiers steal only the previous emperor, and there is one of the two made by my holy ancestor, and his descendants still write about Wanyan, spread the world, show the future, and declare his reputation.
The merits of my holy ancestors are seen by all generations, that is, they are not preached in words, and the holy sons and gods continue to praise them, so they do not tolerate themselves. This kind of "all the production is more than the heart" that the previous emperor did not achieve is undoubtedly the result of Ming Taizu's tireless government affairs and desire to further control the bureaucracy.
In addition, Ming Taizu was a famous lord of Xiongchai and murder in history, and this character trait directly led to several prisons in the early Ming Dynasty, Qing Dynasty historian Zhao Yiyan:
Henkel's murder of heroes is inherently cruel, but those who must go are also Han and Peng. As for Luan Bu, because of his contrary, Lu Yi and Han Wangxin also rebelled and then requisitioned.
The rest of Xiao, Xuan, Guan, etc., Fang and relied on their hearts, wanting to support their lives, without suspicion. Alone to the ancestors, through all the meritorious heroes to take the world, and the world is established, that is, to take all the people under the world and kill them. Its cruelty is unprecedented, Gai Xiong guesses that it is easy to kill, and it is his nature.
Zhu Yuanzhang used the "Hulan Prison" to almost slaughter all the heroes of the Gongping Dynasty, and many imperial documents with a warning nature were also promulgated.
For example, in the thirteenth year of Hongwu, after Hu Weiyong was reprimanded, he successively issued four imperial documents: "The Record of the Commandment of Ministers", "Xiangjian", "The Record of the Revealed Traitorous Party" and "The Record of Puritanism"; In the twenty-sixth year of Hongwu, after the outbreak of the Blue Jade case, three imperial documents were issued successively: "Records of Audits", "Records of Rebellious Ministers" and "General Records of Shichens".
The promulgation of official punishment and official moral education documents was carried out successively in a short period of time, which can be called quite "real-time", which shows that Taizu intends to strengthen and consolidate imperial power by warning and admonishing his subjects by using ancient and modern books and narrating the reasons for the case when the smell of blood has not yet dissipated.
Different from other official moral education texts such as official proverbs and official meritorious achievements, the Hongwu Dynasty's imperial official ethics education documents are not only educational, but also the characteristics of the "Taizu imperial system" make it maintain its sanctity in future generations, and Zhu Yuanzhang used this "sacred coat" to train his official moral thinking in future generations.
Gu Jiegang said: "All generations of entrepreneurial kings, with their hardships, the extreme tightness of desire, the extreme prevention, and the long-term cause of their descendants." This is inherently different, but it is especially obvious. What Gu said is true, and this intention of Emperor Ming Taizu can be clearly confirmed in the "Emperor Ming Ancestral Training":
Since ancient countries established the legal system, they are all kings who have been ordained at the beginning. At that time, the law had been decided, the people had been observed, and the people were given grace and power to the sea, and the people were peaceful. At the beginning of his business, he was prepared for hardship, read many people, and was familiar with history.
Compared with the lord of the deep palace, who does not understand the world, and the man of the mountains and forests in secluded places, he is very far from the elder. Now Ling Hanlin edited into a book, and the Ministry of Rites published it for eternity.
Whoever my descendants honor their destiny and do nothing wise, and mess with the law that I have accomplished, cannot change a word. Not only will it not live up to the meaning of the Dharma, but heaven and earth and ancestors will also be blessed infinitely.