Recently, I saw a strange news: a group of doctors raised questions in their real names, and the relevant experts answered these questions one by one, but strangely, the people answering the questions were all anonymous.
As we all know, my main job is to read the history of the Song Dynasty. There are exactly such small stories about “real name” and “anonymous” in the historical materials, which are quite instructive.
In the twelfth month of the second year of Shaosheng in the Northern Song Dynasty (1095 AD), after taking office, Emperor Zhezong of Song, who wanted to retrace the path of reform, ordered the establishment of an institution called “Compilation of Classified Officials’ Memorials Bureau” to collect the memorials of the ministers as archival records.
Superficially, this was a small measure to improve the management of the Great Song Dynasty’s archives, but in fact, this was a very vicious move by the insidious young man, Emperor Zhezong of Song: he required that all the memorials collected were from the period between May of the eighth year of Yuanfeng (1085 AD) and April 12th of the ninth year of Yuanyou【1】 (1094 AD).
This is a very sensitive time point. May of the eighth year of Yuanfeng was the node when Empress Dowager Gao and Sima Guang began to abolish the new laws after the death of Emperor Shenzong of Song. April of the ninth year of Yuanyou was the node when Emperor Zhezong of Song demoted Su Dongpo again and re-implemented the new laws.
As everyone knows, most of the memorials during this period were against the new laws.
And Emperor Zhezong of Song compiled these memorials into a book, obviously to fix the evidence of these people’s crimes and keep them for slow cleaning up.
From this purpose, it is not difficult for everyone to find that these memorials were not provided by the ministers themselves or their families who submitted the memorials, but either from the court’s archives or from the collection of their opponents.
To put it bluntly, everyone knows that Emperor Zhezong of Song is going to clean up these people, and everyone has grievances to report and revenge to take, so they quickly submitted the “unsuitable” memorials written by the other party back then. As for whether there was any exaggeration or whether there would be any taking out of context, it all depends on their mood.
In the first month of the third year of Yuanfu (1100 AD), Emperor Zhezong of Song died, and his younger brother, Emperor Huizong of Song, inherited the throne. At this time, the memorials he ordered to be compiled had already been compiled into 1090 volumes, and a considerable number of memorials had been received but had not yet been classified and compiled.
At the beginning of Emperor Huizong of Song’s reign, in order to reconcile the irreconcilable contradictions between the reform party and the conservative party, he picked up the old strategy of Emperor Zhenzong of Song, “different opinions interfering with each other”, that is, allowing people from both factions to participate in court affairs, allowing them to check and balance each other, in order to achieve a state of balance.
Against this background, Zeng Zhao, a Zhongshu Sheren, presented a memorial to Emperor Huizong of Song, who was in the new dynasty and had a new atmosphere, requesting to stop the compilation work.
Zeng Zhao’s memorial said this:
Since the founding of my Great Song Dynasty, there has been no precedent for compiling the memorials of the ministers into a book and publishing them publicly. Because most of the ministers wrote to the emperor to speak out, they were all for safeguarding the national economy and the people’s livelihood, and pointing out the treacherous officials and cliques. What they did was very risky, and if they were not careful, they would be retaliated against. Therefore, even if the court agreed to their suggestions, when it came to issuing the edict, it would hide their names and only write “officials’ memorials”, the purpose of which was to “cherish those who speak out and not want to expose them, so that they will not be resented”.
Now the late emperor has set up a “Compilation of Classified Officials’ Memorials Bureau” and made their names and the content of their memorials public. If their enemies’ descendants see it, they will inevitably hate them to the bone.
Moreover, the time period of these memorials collected by the late emperor is so subtle. Those before were not collected, and those after were not collected. They just collected the memorials of these ten years. Now the ministers involved in it have lost their power, and their enemies are often in high positions. If this is done, won’t it cause a bloodbath and a wail of misery?
Therefore, Zeng Zhao suggested that this work should not continue, the already compiled archives should be sealed, those collected should no longer be compiled, and this department should be disbanded, which can save expenses and bring peace to the world. Why not do it?
Fortunately, Emperor Huizong of Song, who had just ascended the throne, was still quite enlightened. On April 27th, he issued an edict to cancel the “Compilation of Classified Officials’ Memorials Bureau” and no longer engage in this kind of evidence collection work.
Now I return to the topic at the beginning of this essay and talk about why I think this news is very strange, because it has reversed this rule.
The people who made the suggestions are relatively weak. Although they made the suggestions in their real names, they were made public in their real names.
The people who answered the questions are relatively strong. As a result, when they were made public, you couldn’t see any of their names.
I don’t understand, but I feel very shocked.
【1】Emperor Zhezong of Song issued an edict to change the era name to Shaosheng on April 9th of the ninth year of Yuanyou, so some historical materials also refer to the first year of Shaosheng as the ninth year of Yuanyou, but the official history generally ends with the eighth year of Yuanyou.
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