Throughout history, poetry has held a profoundly important place in Chinese cultural history and in the lives of the Chinese literati. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, Jesuit missionaries who came to China hoped to integrate into and adapt to Chinese culture. They created a large number of literary works in Chinese, including poems. Michele Ruggieri (A.D. 1543-1607), the first Jesuit missionary officially permitted to enter China, wrote over fifty regulated poems in Chinese. These poems, rich in Catholic elements and known as the Chinese Catholic poems, not only recorded the interactions between the missionaries and late Ming literati but also showcased the inculturated Catholicism.