Whereupon the Ching emperor decided this less compromising Roman Catholicism should be banned from the empire, resulting in centuries of barriers to Christian missionary work in China. Ricci also translated the Four Books, the Confucian canon, into Latin, thus contributing to a two-way East-West exchange of ideas.
教宗若望保祿二世曾盛讚利瑪竇：「以堅忍不拔和謙恭好學的態度，深入鑽研中國古典文化，因而真正成為中國與歐洲兩大文明的橋樑。」