empress wu primary sources
Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1984. A third problem is that the empress, who was well aware of both these biases, was not averse to tampering with the record herself; a fourth is that some other accounts of her reign were written by relatives who had good cause to loathe her. Wu was now raised to the position of first wife of Gaozong and empress of China. As we know, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Guisso says, that empowered informers of any social class to travel at public expense. She also maintained an efficient secret police and instituted a reign of terror among the imperial bureaucracy. She shocked the Chinese officialdom by arranging to send male grooms to the daughters and aunts of the tribal chieftains at the empire's borders, although it was customary to send female brides. . Meanwhile, the Turks invaded Gansu, and the Tibetans posed a threat to Chinese possessions in Central Asia. Her daunting task was convincing the Confucian establishment about the legitimate succession of a woman who was the widow of the deceased emperor and the mother of the currently legitimate ruler. Mark, Emily. Of all these female rulers, though, none has aroused so much controversy, or wielded such great power, as a monarch whose real achievements and characterremain obscured behind layers of obloquy. Thus Wu Zetian's experience might have caused some redefinition of gender in her time, but this direction has not translated into enduring gains in the society and political organization that she left behind. Even though many at court congratulated her on being favored by the gods, many others did not. Click for Author Information. Kannon embodies compassion, and when seen as female is venerated as a patron of motherhood and fertility. With a heart like a serpent and a nature like that of a wolf, one contemporary summed up, she favored evil sycophants and destroyed good and loyal officials. A small sampling of the empresss other crimes followed: She killed her sister, butchered her elder brothers, murdered the ruler, poisoned her mother. Mike Dash Mutsuhito Gaozongs third son succeeded to the throne in 683 after his death, but Empress Wu became the empress dowager in a few months, after forcing the young emperor to abdicate. She appears in influential plays as a feminist and champion of the lower classes while her male rivals are shown to be aristocrats, landlords, and conservatives against the tide of history. Van Gulik, Robert. Ruizong was also a disappointment to her and so she forced him to abdicate in 690 CE and proclaimed herself Emperor Zeitan, ruler of China, the first and only woman to sit on the Dragon Throne and reign in her own name and by her own authority. Princess Taiping had shielded Li Longji from her mother when he was young and supported him in his efforts to take the throne. Empress Wu, or Wu Zhao, challenged the patriarchal system by advocating womens intellectual development and sexual freedom. How to evaluate such an unprecedented figure today? Terms of Use Yet Wu has had a pretty bad press. One reason, as we have already had cause to note in this blog, is the official nature and lack of diversity among the sources that survive for early Chinese history; another is that imperial history was written to provide lessons for future rulers, and as such tended to be weighted heavily against usurpers (which Wu was) and anyone who offended the Confucian sensibilities of the scholars who labored over them (which Wu did simply by being a woman). . Pronunciation: Woo-jeh-ten. No contemporary image of the empress exists. When she saw she would not be able to control the court as her mother did, she killed herself and Xuanzong decreed that no member of Wu's family would be allowed to hold public office because of their ruthless scheming and underhanded politics. After the latter died in 684, she took on four or five lovers, including a monk whom she ordered executed when weary of his greed and abuse of power. Wu Zetian turned to the Buddhist establishment to rationalize her position. Her Buddhist supporters interpreted the Madamegha (Great Cloud) sutra to predict a maitreya Buddha (Buddha-to-come) in female form, presumably Wu Zetian herself, who would embody the concept of the cakravartin (wheel-turner, universal emperor, or the ideal man who is king). She worked against the Confucian dictum that women must restrict their activities to the home and in the wildest imagination could not become emperors. In preparing for the legitimacy of her emperorship, she claimed the Zhou Dynasty (1045256 bce) and its founders among her own ancestors. Born to a newly emerging merchant family in the Northeast, Wu Zhao had been a concubine of Li Shimin, or Taizong, founder of the Tang dynasty (618-907). . Some historians have viewed her as blazing the trail for the women who came after her, and indeed her daughter, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter aspired to emulate her success, but they failed and even died violently in the process. In 690 C.E., Zetian forced Li Dan to abdicate the throne to her, and declared herself the founding empress of the Zhou dynasty. She installed a series of copper boxes in the capital in which citizens could post anonymous denunciations of one another, and passed legislation, R.W.L. The historians always portray Wu as ruthless, conniving, scheming, and bloodthirsty, and she may have been all of these things, she may have even murdered her daughter to gain the throne, but any of these claims should only be accepted after considering their source. These began in 666 with the death by poison of a teenage niece who had attracted Gaozongs admiring gaze, and continued in 674 with the suspicious demise of Wus able eldest son, crown prince Li Hong, and the discovery of several hundred suits of armor in the stables of a second son, who was promptly demoted to the rank of commoner on suspicion of treason. Kumarajiva's influence on Chinese Buddhist thought was crucial. The Empress Wu Zetian (690-704 CE) is the only female ruler in the history of China. Empress Wu used the intelligence she gathered to pressure some high-ranking officials who were not performing well to resign; others she simply banished or had executed. According to the histories of the period, Wu smothered her own week-old daughter by Gaozong and blamed the babys death on Wang, who was the last person to have held her. Cambridge History of China. Paul, Diana Y. Empress Wu Zetian (r. 683-704 CE) of the Tang Dynasty. 1, Sui and T'ang, pp. Thank you! (February 23, 2023). The remaining Li-Tang family who survived the murders, including Wu Zetian's own son on whose behalf she was serving as empress dowager, begged to take the surname of Wu to replace their birth surnames of Li. Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century. ." Guisso, Richard W.L. 23 Feb. 2023
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