Confucius
During the Song dynasty, the scholar Zhu Xi (AD 1130–1200) added ideas from Daoism and Buddhism into Confucianism. In his life, Zhu Xi was largely ignored, but not long after his death, his ideas became the new orthodox view of what Confucian texts actually meant. Modern historians view Zhu Xi as having created something rather different and call his way of thinking "Neo-Confucianism". Neo-Confucianism held sway in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam until the 19th century.
The works of Confucius were first translated into European languages by Jesuit missionaries in the 16th century during the late Ming dynasty. The first known effort was by Michele Ruggieri, who returned to Italy in 1588 and carried on his translations while residing in Salerno. Matteo Ricci started to report on the thoughts of Confucius, and a team of Jesuits—Prospero Intorcetta, Philippe Couplet, and two others—published a translation of several Confucian works and an overview of Chinese history in Paris in 1687. François Noël, after failing to persuade ClementXI that Chinese veneration of ancestors and Confucius did not constitute idolatry, completed the Confucian canon at Prague in 1711, with more scholarly treatments of the other works and the first translation of the collected works of Mencius. It is thought that such works had considerable importance on European thinkers of the period, particularly among the Deists and other philosophical groups of the Enlightenment who were interested by the integration of the system of morality of Confucius into Western civilization.
Yang Xi
Few historical facts are known about Yang Xi's life, and most information comes from his own revealed texts. The "Zhen'gao", for instance, is the only early record of Yang's birth and death dates; it says that when he was betrothed to the heavenly Consort An in 365, he told her that he had been born in October of 330 and was 36 (Smith 2013: 61). The actual date of his death is unknown; Tao Hongjing accepts the revelatory prediction that Yang would ascend to the heavens "in broad daylight" in 386, thus avoiding death in the forthcoming end of the world in 392 (Smith 2013: 104, Strickmann 1977: 47). Yang had an early connection with Daoism in 350 when Wei Huacun's eldest son, Liu Pu (劉璞) gave Yang a manuscript of the Lingbao School "Wufu xu" (五符序, Prolegomena to the Five Talismans of the Numinous Treasure) (Espessett 2008a: 1147). Although Tao had copies of the Xu's "jiapu" (家譜, Family Genealogy), he preferred to rely upon the prophetic contents of the revelations themselves; the family records said Xu Mi died in 373, but Tao said 376 when it was predicted that he would enter Shangqing heaven (Strickmann 1977: 42).