Jiajing Emperor
The Jiajing Emperor was the 11th emperor of China's Ming Dynasty. He was the first to succeed as a nephew, and not a son, of the previous emperor.
Jiajing's reign saw the revival of the power of the scholar-bureaucracy, which had been somewhat pushed aside by his predecessor, the Zhengde Emperor. As the scholar-bureaucrats reasserted their power, they worked to diminish the influence of court eunuchs; some were even put to death.
Where Zhengde, in his last years, frequently skipped out on court rituals and daily audiences for lengthy periods, Jiajing is said to have tended to his duties quite diligently, and to have even worked to restore certain rituals to better adhere to older precedents. Like his predecessor, however, in the latter half of his reign, Jiajing similarly shied away from court rituals, retiring to the Inner Palace, and holding audiences only rarely in the final twenty years of his lengthy reign. During this time, he occupied himself with formulas for Daoist elixirs.
| Preceded by Zhengde Emperor |
Emperor of Ming 1522-1567 |
Succeeded by Longqing Emperor |
References
- Ray Huang, 1587: A Year of No Significance, Yale University Press (1981), 8.