BY FOOT TO CHINA

Mission of The Church of the East, to 1400

By

John M. L. Young

Chairman

Japan Presbyterian Mission

Missionary of Mission to the

World of the Presbyterian Church in America

Assyrian International News Agency
Books Online
www.aina.org

Published 1984 A.D.

DEDICATED

to the memory of the men of God who thirteen centuries ago first took the gospel to China - "the missionaries who traveled on foot, sandals on their feet, a staff in their hands, a basket on their backs, and in the basket the Holy Scriptures and the cross. They went over deep rivers and high mountains, thousands of miles, and on the way, meeting many nations, they preached to them the gospel of Christ."

FROM AN ANCIENT TEXT.

AND DEDICATED

to one who "also serves" in a thousand ways with her faithful help - my wife.

A restoration of the original silk painting of a missionary bishop of the Church of the East, now in the British Museum, London, discovered by Sir Aurel Stein at Tun-huang, western China, in 1908. It had been found, along with many manuscripts including some Christian ones, in a cave sealed in 1036. This restoration was painted by Robert MacGregor.

CONTENT

PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
PART I
THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE FIRST CHRISTIAN MISSION TO CHINA

PART II
THE NESTORIAN CONTROVERSY

Nestorius' Christology
PART III

BIBLIOGRAPHY
FOOTNOTES

PREFACE

A gospel-preaching church with 1,300 years of missionary experience deserves our attention. It is the purpose of this book to focus on that great missionary effort. Only a part of the story, however, of the Church of the East's missionary enterprise, from the second century to the end of the fourteenth, can be told here. The main focus will be the mission to China during the last 800 years of that period.

Research materials for writing on this subject are available, although they are scattered over half the earth and are in various languages. Little, however, is written for the reader who is not pursuing advanced studies. English speaking Christians have been interested in the western expansion of Christianity--in history that involves their own origin and development - and little is accessible to them concerning the amazing missionary effort of the Church of the East. That the gospel of Christ's kingdom did confront the masses of Asia long ago, when the world's population was the densest there and civilization the most advanced, is today little appreciated by western Christians. How it fared in that confrontation is almost totally unknown.

The result is that when someone asks, "Where was the evangelical church of Christ during those long `Dark Ages' of Europe when the Church of Rome usurped the place of the Holy Spirit?" there usually follows a notable silence. The Iona colony of Scotland may be mentioned, or the later Waldenses of the Italian Alps, both involving small numbers. There is a better answer to the question, however, and the following narrative seeks to shed some light on it.

The story of the Church of the East's mission to Asia is one that needs to be told to today's church. It is the story of a dedicated missionary effort and the ever expanding witness of Christians from Antioch to Peking, nearly 6,000 miles by foot, until multitudes of Christians lived from the 30th to the 120th longitude in medieval times.

The facts and analyses that follow concerning the church's great epic of eastward advance, it is hoped, will bring encouragement, edification, and perhaps warning to our contemporary churches in their present mission to the unreached. Here is evidence that God gives strength and conversions in the direst and seemingly most impossible circumstances.

Here also is evidence that pitfalls to the church's mission always exist. Common examples are such things as an inadequate appreciation of the spiritual deadness of the natural man, failure to recognize the necessity of heart repentance and the meaning of baptism, the temptation to consider external acts of piety as necessarily representing inner holiness, the acceptance of liturgy and form in the place of justification by faith alone and identification with Christ, compromise with the world's secularism and other people's religious practices, sacramentalism, over-identification with a particular political regime, and concern with the elite that leads to failure to reach out to the common people.

As troublesome a problem as any, however, to those desiring to bring the gospel by word and deed into a foreign culture, deeply concerned to make the love and salvation of Christ understood, is the difficulty of adequately contextualizing the gospel without compromising its true meaning and uniqueness. The contextualization takes place not necessarily when the missionary succeeds in crossing the barriers of culture and language, so as to enable the listener to feel he understands the westerner's gospel, but when this new understanding is genuinely reflective of the New Testament message of Christ's redemptive love and mercy and involves a heart commitment to Him.

The lesson of the gospel in the Near and Far East during the Middle Ages is that such failures as are referred to above can cause Christian communities where churches once flourished to disappear so completely that later generations not only do not know what the gospel is but are not even aware that it was ever present in their midst. In those cases the only witness to the living may be the testimony of the dead, written on tombstones. An illustration of such a voice out of the past is that of a ninth century Christian in a central Asian cemetery, where the gentle words still whisper, "This is the grave of Pasak - The aim of life is Jesus, our Redeemer."

The lessons of history need to be studied for, as one sage noted, "Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat its failures in the future."

INTRODUCTION

In the year 635 A.D., a party of foreigners from the distant West, a vague area known to the Chinese for many centuries as Ta Chinn, reached the capital city of the Great Chinese Empire, Ch'ang-An, later called Hsian-fu. It was in the early years of the T'ang dynasty.

They indicated that theirs was a religious mission to bring to the empire knowledge of the doctrines and salvation of Jesus Messiah. The emperor gave them permission to practice their religion which he officially named the Ta Ch'in Chiao, the Ta Chinn religion. They themselves used the name Ching Chiao, Luminous Religion (or Illuminating?), and referred to their home church as The Church of the East. The Church of Rome, however, called them "Nestorians," and its thirteenth-century envoys and missionaries to the Far East always referred to the churches of these early missionaries from "The Church of the East" as "Nestorian" churches.¹

Who were these early missionaries? Where did they come from? Were they holders of the "Nestorian" doctrine condemned as heresy at the Council of Ephesus in 431? Did Nestorius himself hold it, and what was their attitude toward him? What do the nine Chinese and two Syriac manuscripts, discovered in north China this century, and the famous "Nestorian" monument inscription, discovered in 1625 by Jesuit missionaries near Ch'ang-An, reveal about their mission, theology, and particularly their christology? Was there anything unique in their theology or christology which motivated this great missionary zeal? And why did this tremendous missionary effort end in failure? These are questions which need investigation and which are pursued in the following chapters.

Part I traces the main details of the eastward expansion of the gospel from Antioch to Syria, across Persia and Mongolia, and on into north China by the ancient trade routes, noting the evidence of the Christian missions' activity.

Part II examines the christological controversy of the fifth century to ascertain what the church understood "Nestorianism" to be and what Nestorius's own presentation was, in order to come to an understanding of the theology of Nestorius and "Nestorianism." Those not desiring to follow the christological study of chapter six, with its linguistic considerations, may find the conclusion at the end of the chapter an adequate summary.

Part III examines the ten Chinese and two Syriac documents found in north China, considered to have been written by Christian missionaries between the seventh and eleventh centuries, to learn in what sense these missionaries were "Nestorians," and what relation, if any, this connection had to their missionary zeal and subsequent failure.

Much of the material of the latter two parts was prepared during studies at Calvin Theological Seminary when writing on the theme, "The Theology of the Nestorian Missionaries in China from 600-1000 A.D.," for a master of theology dissertation. The writer is much indebted to the very able assistance of Dr. Fred Klooster, professor of systematic theology at that institution, under whose direction the paper was written.

We shall begin, then, by tracing the history of the expansion of the Christian church eastward and the entrance of its missionaries into China.

CHRONOLOGICAL GUIDE

PART I

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE FIRST CHRISTIAN MISSION TO CHINA

Chapter 1

The Early Centuries

By the year 800 there were more Christians east of Damascus than there were west of that city. This statement may seem astonishing, if not incredible, to the average Western reader who knows almost nothing about Eastern church history. Students of the early growth and spread of Christianity in the Eastern lands, however, will recognize it not only as entirely factual but also as only one of many facts testifying to the remarkable missionary zeal of the eastward bound Christians.

It all began with the fulfillment at Pentecost of Christ's promise of an outpouring of His Holy Spirit for the empowering of a witness to Him throughout the world in the new international age of the gospel. "Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia"² were there, their lives set ablaze with a new dedication to return to their homelands to proclaim the good news that Messiah had truly come for man's eternal salvation. The planting of the church in Antioch was an immediate result. The New Testament presents something of the history and significance of that church's missionary effort in its westward movement. But history records also an eastward expansion of the gospel with churches planted in Damascus, Edessa and Mesopotamia, in Media, Elam and Parthia (the later Sassanian empire of Persia) and in India. The church resulting from all this Eastern missionary activity came to call itself the Church of the East.

The Church of the East, considering itself distinct from the Western (Roman) or Eastern (Byzantian) Churches, holds its origin to have been in Edessa, modern Urfa of Turkey, the capital city of the little Kingdom of Osrohene in northern Mesopotamia (between the rivers). Their tradition claims that King Abgar, son of Na'na, on hearing of Christ and His remarkable miracles, wrote to Him inviting Him to come to minister to his people. Our Lord received the message, so the story goes, shortly before His crucifixion, so Thomas undertook to send Addai (Thaddeus) one of the seventy who had been sent out to evangelize. From this disciple's ministry the gospel was planted in Edessa, considered the first Church of the East, its eastward expansion beginning from that city.³

Whether one accepts this story or not, we do know that there was a church in Edessa early in the second century and that the bishops of Edessa traced their succession to Serapion, Bishop of Antioch from 190 to 203.⁴ Also the coins of Edessa from 180-192 show a cross on the king's headgear. There is a Syrian tradition, however, that the apostle Thomas was their first patriarch. In a book called Eclesiastike, purporting to contain the preaching of the apostles, the writer, Bar Aurai, maintains that the apostle Thomas preached Christ in the East in the second year after His ascension. Thomas was on his way to India, he 'states, and "We have reason to believe it true, what the Syrian writers sand fathers say, that they regard St. Thomas to be their first patriarch, and accordingly they called themselves St. Thomas Christians."⁵ The Mar Thoma Church of south India holds to this day that Thomas came to them to preach the gospel and to found their church.

It is in the early literature of the Syrian church, however, that we see most clearly its antiquity and independent nature. Their language was the Aramaic, considered by many to be the language of our Lord, but in the eastern dialect of Edessa, while the written language was the old Syriac, Biblical Aramaic (Chaldee).⁶ Tatian, born in Edessa, in 150, composed a gospel harmony in continuous narrative form, called the Diatesseron, which for well over a century was the only gospel known by Persian Christians. About 350 a Syriac New Testament, the Peshitta (simple) appeared--but Burkitt claims that it was not a new translation, only a revision of an Old Syriac ones.⁷

The Syriac Old Testament, Burkitt holds, is even older than the name Peshitta. It is quoted both by Aphraates (337 A.D.) and in the Acts of Thomas (first century), he contends. Specifically he states, "The Peshitta is a direct translation from the Hebrew, in all essentials, from the Messoretic text."⁸ Such a translation was inevitable, he feels, both because Edessa's independent civilization would require a vernacular version and because the Jewish converts in the church would insist on a translation from the Hebrew.

Although Burkitt places the Creed of Aphraates at about 337, he holds that the Acts of Thomas was written by Judas Thomas himself, the brother of our Lord. His comment on this is most interesting. "I believe most firmly that it was originally composed in Syriac, not Greek ... a doctrinal work cast in narrative form ... it is as truly a book of religious philosophy as the Pilgrim's Progress, and it demands from us serious study."⁹ Thus he would give strong support to the early origin and independent nature of the church in Edessa.

Edessa--the capital of the small kingdom of Osrohene, lying between the outer edges of the two great empires of Rome and Parthia--sometimes a tributary of Rome (116 A.D.) and sometimes under the suzerainty of Parthia--became a Roman military colony in 216. The Sassanian dynasty of Persia, farther south, conquered Parthia in 226 and throughout that century was at intermittent war with Rome. In 258, the Sassanian king, Shopur I, captured Antioch and brought many learned scholars and doctors, among whom were Christians, back to Beth Lapat of Khuzistan, near Susa. Here they were ordered by the king to build a new city, Djondishapur, the future Eastern cultural, academic and medical center of learning. It was here that many of the east bound missionaries received their training in theology and medical lore. Later some of them were to testify that like Abraham they had left the land of Ur to bear witness for God.

The Romans recovered their losses and finally in 303 signed a treaty of peace with the Persians making the Abaros River, a tributary of the Euphrates, the boundary between the two empires. The Roman backed king, Terdat, had been restored to the throne of the Osrohene Kingdom of Lesser Armenia, a small country of northern Mesopotamia, and in 301 he declared his kingdom a Christian state, the first in history, with Gregory the Illuminator as the Church's head. After King Terdat embraced the gospel his people became Christians. With the death of Constantine in 327 and of Terdat in 342, however, the Persian king launched an attack to regain the lost western territories. The Christians of Armenia were identified with the Roman enemy, whose emperors were now Christian, and violent persecution was carried out against them, including the burning of their churches.

The Persian Zoroastrian priests were greatly concerned at the headway the Christians were making under the toleration of the treaty conditions. They finally succeeded in stirring their king to pass discriminatory laws against the Christians, which led to a renewal of persecution, on the grounds the Christians were friends of the Romans, sharing the sentiments of their enemy Caesar. Many Christians chose to flee the country at this time, some going to Nisibus (under Rome) where a theological college had been begun in 326 by a bishop just returned from the Nicene Council. In 363, however, Nisibis was recaptured by the Persians and the college fled to Edessa. In 399, a more tolerant Persian king, Yezdegerd I, came to the throne and the Romans again sought peace by sending an embassy seeking a treaty. An edict of toleration was signed in 409 giving toleration to Christians in the Persian Empire and the same to Zoroastrians in the Roman Empire.

The next year a synod was called for the whole area. It met in Selucia-Ctesiphon, on the lower Tigris, with some 40 bishops present, and was under the leadership of that city's chief bishop, who had the title of Catholicos. They adopted the Nicene Creed and defined the boundaries of some of the sees. A new and special title was given to the catholicos of "Grand Metropolitan and Head of all Bishops."

With the death of the peace-minded Yezdegerd I in 420, persecution of Christians broke out again and for many of the same reasons as before. Warfare with Rome also was renewed on the frontier but peace was concluded in 422. The immediate effect on the churches of the Armenian-Mesopotamian area was to convince them that they must by all means disassociate themselves from the Roman Church's jurisdiction (they were under the patriarch of Antioch) to escape future persecutions for political reasons.

In 424 another Council was called, this time at Markabta, with six metropolitans and 31 bishops attending. They declared their independence from the patriarch of Antioch and made their own Catholicos their new patriarch. They further agreed "that no appeal should be made from his decrees to 'western patriarchs'."¹⁰ Although no doctrinal difference was declared to exist between the Church of the East and Rome, the Council did proclaim its Church to be independent in government and, in the words of Wigram, "it did as much as a Council could do to set an Oriental papacy over itself."¹¹ It was the first major crack in the structure of the Christian Church's organizational unity.

In the next act of separation from the Western church, however, doctrine was involved. The sympathies of the Eastern churches were with the Antiochene theology as we shall see later. Many of the leaders of their churches and of their theological college in Edessa, as well as the founders of the school of theology in Djondishapur, had been trained at the Antiochene theological seminary. Thus they opposed the decision of the Ephesus Council of 431 and supported the deposed Nestorius. The christological controversy raged in the Edessa theological college itself for many years until in 488 the Roman Emperor Zeno closed the college, had it torn down and on the site erected a church dedicated to Mary with the controversial title theotokos.¹² Most of the students and faculty moved east to Nisibis to reopen a theological school there, one which eventually became very large and influential.

Chapter 2

The Church of the East Establishes Its Independence

Prior to Emperor Zeno's closing of the Edessa "Nestorian" work in 488, a very significant event in the history of the Church of the East took place in Beth Lapat, near the ancient Ur of the Chaldees. An important theological event had just occurred in the West. Zeno had addressed his famous Henotican (instrument of union) to the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch, and all three had adopted his formulation of the heretical monophysite christology. In 484 the Church of the East called a synod to meet in Beth Lapat to adopt what Rome called a "Nestorian" confession, in response to the Increasing monophysite takeover. They did not oppose the Chalcedonian formula of 451, but resented that Council's confirmation of the repudiation of Nestorius. Within the churches east of Antioch, by then, there were three distinct parties centering around each's particular christology, and each had its scholarly defenders. 1) There were the followers of Cyril of Alexandria's doctrine that Christ had two natures, one divine and one human, in one person.¹³ (Most of the monks of his see, however, held that the human nature was divinized by the logos and therefore, to all intents and purposes, did not exist after the hypostatic union.) 2) The Church of the East was most amenable to Nestorius's doctrine that Christ had two natures and two kenume (the set of personal characteristics of each nature) in one person. 3) The followers of the doctrine of Eutyches of Alexandria, however, held a view that was gaining increasing support in the east, the monophysite heresy that Christ had only a divine nature in His person after the ascension, the human nature having been divinized.

By the time of the Beth Lapat synod, the churches of Edessa and Upper Mesopotamia had been captured by the monophysite heresy. To make a sharp break with this error of the upper Mesopotamian churches, which were still considered a part of the western church, and to escape further controversy over the christological formulation, the synod decided to separate the Eastern church not only from the Western church's ecclesiastical jurisdiction (as in 424) but from its doctrinal confession as well, particularly with regard to its adoption of the Alexandrian monophysite heresy. Thereafter they considered themselves to be a different church, the Church of the East. The crack had widened into a complete break.

From then on not only in practice but in fact there were two independent Christian churches in the world, each with its own government and doctrinal position. It was not that the Roman Church and the Byzantian Church held the same christology, for Rome was duophysite and the Byzantian eastern churches had become monophysite. But they were still one church, the Western, Roman Church. The Church of the East too was duophysite, with a slightly different way of expressing it, but definitely not holding the view condemned at Ephesus as "Nestorian" (making Christ appear to be two persons), as we shall see later. But the Church of the East no longer considered itself a part of the Roman Church, and the Roman church retaliated by labeling it "Nestorian" after the deposed "heretic," Nestorius.¹⁴ In 499 another synod of the Church of the East rejected the doctrine of the celibacy of the clergy (though a later act required the highest clergy to be celibate, a rule sometimes ignored in different times and places). This rejection of the highly honored Roman rule made the Church of the East even more disdained by the Roman clergy.

These Eastern or "Nestorian" Christians were versatile and diligent propagators of their faith. With the flight of the Edessa theological school to Nisibis, outside the farthest borders of the Roman Empire, and the opening of another in Djondishpur, with a hospital also in the latter city, many Syrian Christians began to move eastward into Persia and to revive the spirits of that harassed Church. Zernov writes that "The Nestorians were renowned doctors. Some of them exercised considerable political influence, being confidants and advisers of such Califs as Harum al Rashid (785-809) and his successors. The third center of Christian scholarship was Merv, where many translations were made from Greek and Syriac into languages spoken in Samarkand and Bokhara."¹⁵

The influence these centers of learning had on the Arabs was also very great. Schaff, in a very interesting footnote, states his wonder that the "Nestorians" should have had such an important influence on the geographical extension of knowledge, even on the Arabs before they reached the learned Alexandria. They received their first knowledge of Greek literature through the Syrians, he wrote, and learned of medicine through the Greek physicians and those of the "Nestorians" at Edessa. Then he adds, "Feeble as the science of the Nestorian priests may have been, it could still, with its peculiar and pharmaceutical turn, act genially upon a race (the Arabs) which had long lived in free converse with nature, and had preserved a more fresh sensibility to every sort of study of nature, than the people of Greek and Italian studies . . . . The Arabians, we repeat, are to be regarded as the proper founders of the physical sciences, in the sense we are now accustomed to attach to the word."¹⁶

The "Nestorians" were firm believers in Christian education. Every bishop endeavored to maintain a school in connection with his church, realizing the necessity of such education in a land where all government education was pagan. "The chorepiscopos of every diocese," Wrote Wigram, "appears to have had education as his special charge." Then he went on to write:

Scribes and doctors were highly honored. The school (of Nisibis) form(b a self-governing corporation, which could own property, and was extradiocesan, its head being apparently subordinate only to the patriarch. It was quartered in a monastery, the tutors being brethen of the same.... Education was free, but students were expect-d to maintain themselves.... Begging was forbidden; but students might lend money to One another at one percent, and the steward had a number of bursaries in his gift. The Course was purely theological, the sole textbooks being the Scriptures, and more particularly the Psalms.... The Church services also formed a part of the regular course; and no doubt all the approved theological works of the Church were to be found in the library. The students lied in groups of five or six in a cell, where they ate in common.... The college in Sabr-Ishu's day contained eight hundred pupils.¹⁷

During the year preceding the Mohammedan conquest Babai was the leader of the church in Persia, though there was no patriarch at the time as the king wanted a "Jacobite," a monophysite. Babai was an aggressive spiritual leader, and under him schools in sixty places were restored or built. Many books were translated or written to supply these schools, and missionaries and traveling evangelists were sent to Many places. The statement has been made that more than 2,000 books and epistles or letters, written by prominent leaders of the time, were circulating among the Christians.¹⁸

By the year 424, as the missionaries planted churches northwards, Merv, Nishapur and Herat, south of the Oxus River, all had bishops while their monks taught the converts how to read and improve their vegetable growing.¹⁹ In a day when there was little understanding of the importance of fresh fruit or vegetables to maintain health, the "Nestorian" physicians with this knowledge brought healing to many With the medicinal use of a "sherbet" of fruit juices and with the use of rhubarb, making both famous throughout the Orient. In 503 a bishop's seat was established in Samarkand. The missionaries kept Moving northward, with perhaps their greatest success being the great Kerait conversions of the eighth century, with 400,000 families converted. The Onguts and Uigurs also were largely converted. Their historian Malech has reported:

During the patriarchate of Mar Ishu Jahb II, 636, Syrian missionaries went to China, and for 150 years this mission was active.... 109 Syrian missionaries have worked in China during 150 years of the Chinese mission.... They went out from Beth Nahrin, the birthplace of Abraham, the father of all believers. The missionaries traveled on foot; they had sandals on their feet, and a staff in their hands, and carried a basket on their backs, and in the basket was the Holy Writ and the cross. They took the road around the Persian Gulf; went over deep rivers and high mountains, thousands of miles. On their way they met many heathen nations and preached to them the gospel of Christ.²⁰

During the early years of the Mohammedan regime, the Syrian Christian churches had more freedom and peace than under the Persian kings. A concordat was signed with Mohammed whereby the Christians would pay tribute, in time of war shelter endangered Muslims and refrain from helping the enemy. In exchange they were to be given religious toleration, though they were not to proselytize, and they would not be required to fight for Mohammed.²¹ He had reason to befriend the Christians for a "Nestorian" had been Mohammed's teacher at one point and, in some early battles, certain Christian communities had actually fought on his side against pagan tribes.²² So much Christian influence, though highly distorted, is apparent in his teaching that Islam has been called a Christian heresy.

By the end of the eighth century the Church of the East had expanded to great distances with at least 25 metropolitans and one hundred and 50 bishops. Six bishops were the minimum to support a metropolitan. They were all under the patriarch of Bagdad, who had moved from Ctesiphon-Selucia in 763 to the newer city a few miles up the Tigris. So vast was this patriarchate that metropolitans in the outer regions were not required to attend regular synods and had to report in writing only every six years.²³ Zernov describes as one of the patriarch's activities that "He sent out missionaries to Tibet and to various nomadic tribes and consecrated bishops for them who moved with their flocks over the vast open spaces of central Asia."²⁴

The location of some of these 25 metropolitans is pointed out by Stewart, who cites the Synodicon Orientale, translated by J. B. Chabot. There the metropolitan of the Turks is placed tenth in the list and is followed by those of Razikaye, Herat, Armenia, China, Java, India and Samarkand. He also cites information, concerning the spread of the gospel in this period to the Turko-Tatar tribes, from a new manuscript translated by Mingana. This material is in the form of a letter from a Mar Philoxenus, of the eighth century, to the governor of Hirta, and makes frequent reference to Christian Turks throughout the area south of Lake Baikal. Mingana gives evidence to support his belief that the manuscript really has two parts, the latter written sometime between 730 and 790. It is this section that speaks of the many Christian Turks in central and eastern Asia. The writer states they were divided into strong clans, living nomadic lives with tents, though very wealthy, and that they ate meat, drank milk, had clean habits and orthodox beliefs. They used a Syriac version of the Bible but in their worship services translated into the Turkish language so that the people could understand the gospel.²⁵

The manuscript also mentions that these Turko-Tartars had four great Christian kings who lived at some distance from each other. Their names are given as Gawirk, Girk, Tasahz and Langu. Mingana believes that they were the heads, or Khakans, of the four tribal confederacies of the Keraits, Uigurs, Naimans and Merkites. The populace of each king is said to have been over 400,000 families. If there were five persons to a family, this would mean two million per king for a grand total of eight million.²⁶ If only half that many represented the actual population, it would still represent a Christian community so great it would be a tremendous witness to the zeal of those early missionaries.

Mingana declares that the credit for carrying the gospel of Christ to these tribes of central and eastern Asia belongs entirely to

the untiring zeal and the marvelous spiritual activities of the Nestorian church, the most missionary church that the world has ever seen. We cannot but marvel at the love of God, of man, and of duty which animated those unassuming disciples of Christ ... (who) literally explored all the corners of the eastern globe "to sow in them the seed of true religion as it was known to them."²⁷

A final witness to the great extent of "Nestorian" Christianity by the beginning of the ninth century can be taken from Gibbon. Of their church he said, "their numbers, with those of the Jacobites, were computed to surpass the Greek and Latin communions."²⁸

Chapter 3

The Christian Mission to T'ang China

During those early centuries of the Christian era, as the missionaries of the Church of the East were working their way eastward, the great Chinese Empire had not been inactive in making western contacts. Hirth, in his compilation of all the references to the Western nations in the Chinese historical annals begins with a quotation from 91 B.C.

When the first embassy was sent from China to An-Shi (Parthia), the king of An-Shi ordered 20,000 cavalry to meet them on the eastern frontier.... After the Chinese embassy had returned they sent forth an embassy to follow the Chinese embassy to come and see the extent and greatness of the Chinese Empire. They offered to the Chinese court large birds' eggs, and jugglers from Li-kan.²⁹

Another quotation, of 120 A.D., speaks of another embassy going to Ch'ang-An, the capital of China, and offering "musicians and jugglers .... They said of themselves: 'We are men from the west of the sea; the west of the sea is the same as Ta-ts'in',"³⁰ (the sea being the Gulf of Persia). From then on the designation Li-kan is seldom used, and Ta-ts'in, with a later spelling of Ta-Ch'in, becomes the usual designation. Since the early Christians in China, as the famous Monument inscription of 781 indicates, were called Ta-Ch'in Chiao, Ta Ch'in Religion, as we shall see shortly, it is important to determine where Ta-Ch'in was. One of the early Chinese records is worth quoting at some length:

The country of Ta-ts'in is called Li-chien (Li-kin) and, as being situated on the eastern port of the sea, its territory amounts to several thousand li.. . . Their kings always desired to send embassies to China, but the An-Shi (Parthians) wished to carry on trade with them in Chinese silks, and it is for this reason that they were cut off from communication. This lasted till ... (166 A.D.) when the king of Ta-ts'in, An-tun, sent an embassy who, from the frontier of Jih-nan (Annam) offered ivory, rhinoceros horns, and tortoise. From that time dates the direct intercourse with this country.³¹

The country of Fu-lin, also called Ta-ts'in, lies above the western sea. In the southeast it borders on Po-ssu (Persia).... The emperor Yang-ti of the Sui dynasty (A.D. 605-617) always wished to open intercourse with Fu-lin, but did not succeed. In ... (643) the king of Fu-lin, Po-to-li, sent an embassy. [Then mention of embassies in 667, 701, and 719 are followed by this statement.] A few months after, he further sent ta-to-sheng [great-virtuous-priests, a term like Reverend, doubtless for Nestorians who arrived then] to our court with tribute.³²

Saeki identifies An-tun with the Roman emperor Marcus Antonius.³³ Hirth states, "We may say, in a few words, Ta-ts'in was Syria as a Roman province; Fu-lin was Syria as an Arab province during the T'ang dynasty (618-907), and as a Seldjuk province during the Sung dynasty (960-1280)."³⁴ Saeki believes that the etymological derivation of Fu-lin is from E-fu-lin for Ephraim, between Jerusalem and Samaria.³⁵ This opinion is corroborated by the reference in the first Chinese Christian document of 638, "The Jesus Messiah Discourse," of which we will take note later, in which we read, "Just about that time, the One (Jesus Messiah) was born in the city of Jerusalem in the country of Fu-lin (Ephraim)."³⁶ Hirth also states it is his view "that all the first embassies sent from Fu-lin during the T'ang dynasty were carried out by Nestorian missionaries. The Nestorians enjoyed a great reputation in Western Asia on account of their medical skill."³⁷

The Chinese records give a graphic picture of the long trade routes across their country, around the south of the Gobi desert, to the Oxus River, into Parthia and on to Mesopotamia. An alternate route was by sea from Canton, around the Malay peninsula, past the southern tip of India and into the Persian Gulf. Yule writes, "At this time, (early fifth century) the Euphrates was navigable as high as Hira, a city lying southwest of ancient Babylon ... and the ships of India and China were constantly to be seen moored before the houses of the town."³⁸ The Chinese either turned their goods, chiefly silks, over to the Arabs here, or over to the Parthians at the Oxus River, the latter then bringing them to Hira. There they were transshipped around the Arabian peninsula, up the Red Sea to Solomon's Ezion-geber or the Aelana (modern Akabah) of the Romans; from there caravans carried them to Petra, the great market city, to sell them to the western traders. Of Petra Hirth writes:

During the first two centuries A D., Petra or Rekem, was the great emporium of Indian (and, we may add, Chinese) commodities, where merchants from all parts of the world met for the purpose of traffic.... Under the auspices of Rome, Petra rose, along with her dependencies, to an incredible opulence.... This prosperity was entirely dependent upon the caravan trade, which at this entrepot changed carriage, and passed from the hands of the southern to those of the northern merchants.³⁹

It was not until the seventh century that two events brought about the demise of this great trading center. The first was the smuggling of silkmoth eggs into Syria, concealed in a bamboo cane, the presumption being that it was done by "Nestorians,"⁴⁰ with the result that "by the end of the sixth century (Syria) appears to have been meeting the west's demand for the raw material."⁴¹ The other was the fall of Petra to the Mohammedans after 640. It was without doubt through these early oriental traders that the Syrian Christians of "Ta-Ch'in" first heard of the greatness of the Chinese Empire and determined to take the gospel there. It is even very likely that they arranged to go with returning merchants. We know that the time was early in the T'ang dynasty, when the empire had its widest extent, its soldiers governing 811 the way to the Oxus River, for the Nestorian Monument declares the year of their arrival at the capital of Ch'ang-An (or Hsi-an-fu) to be 635 A.D.

Evidence of Christian Activity in China, 635-845

Of all the evidence of the activity of the Christian missionaries in China which have come to light in the era of modem history, none has been more dramatic than the report of the discovery of the "Nestorian" stone Monument by a Jesuit priest in 1625. It had actually been dug up by Chinese workmen, under an old wall, two years earlier "at a certain place in Kuan-chung"⁴² which Saeki identifies as the site of a "Nestorian" monastery and church near Chouchih, about 30 miles from Hsi-an-fu, the modern name for the old capital, Ch'ang-An. When Trigault, the first Roman Catholic missionary to see it, took rubbings it had been moved to Hsi-an-fu, probably late in 1624. It is still there today, while an exact replica exists in the Vatican museum, with still another in Japan at the Shingon (True Word) Buddhist Temple on Koyasan.

When announcements of it were first made in Europe some doubted Its authenticity, claiming it was a "pious fraud" of the Jesuits to show the antiquity of their Church's missionary efforts.⁴³ Of this Gibbon has written:

The Christianity of China, between the seventh and the thirteenth century, is invincibly proved by the consent of Chinese, Arabian, Syriac, and Latin evidence. The inscription of Hsianfu, which describes the fortunes of the Nestorian church, from the first mission, A.D. 636, to the current year 781, is accused of forgery by La Croze, Voltaire, and others, who become the dupes of their own cunning, while they are afraid of a Jesuitical fraud.⁴⁴

One of the criticisms of it was that the style of writing "is too modern to be credited with a thousand year's age."⁴⁵ Of this Hirth says it "is utterly baseless .... A Chinese connoisseur, who had never heard of the Nestorian Tablet, and to whom I showed a tracing of it, declared it at once as 'T'ang-pi,' i.e., written in the style of, and containing the slight varieties adopted during, the T'ang dynasty."⁴⁶

The stone itself stands over nine feet high, three feet wide, and one foot thick, with two dragons carved over the top edge, a small "Nestorian" cross near the top center, and nine large Chinese characters below it reading, "A Monument Commemorating the Propagation of the Ta-Ch'in Luminous Religion in the Middle Kingdom (China)." It is stated to have been composed by a Persian presbyter named Adam and erected on "the 7th of the First Month of 781 A.D." by one "Lord Yazedbouzid" chorepiscopos of Hsi-an. Adam's Chinese name is given as Ching-ching, and in Syriac, Saeki says, it is stated on the stone, "Chorepiscopus, and Papash of Chinestan."⁴⁷ The names of some 70 missionaries are given in Chinese and Syriac at the end of the 2000-word inscription.

The inscription describes how the missionaries arrived in 635, were welcomed by the emperor, and instructed to put some of their writings into Chinese. (A later document, "The Book of Praise," indicates that there were then 530 Christian manuscripts at hand.)⁴⁸ They were given permission by proclamation in 638 to stay and teach, and a monastery was built for them outside the city in the I-ning ward. The names of the T'ang emperors are mentioned and praised as benefactors, some sending their portraits to be hung in the monastery and providing generous patronage. In return, the priests prayed for them and their ancestors daily. The arrival of 17 reinforcements from TaCh'in in 744 is mentioned which is in harmony with a Syrian church record of the departure then of these 17 missionaries⁴⁹ Comment on the doctrinal portion of the inscription will be made later.

A Japanese scholar, Dr. Takakusa, while studying "The Catalogue (of the books of) teaching of Chakya (Buddha) in the period of Chanyuan" (785-804 A.D.), discovered a passage referring to the Christian presence in Hsian, and particularly to that of Adam Ching-ching. The passage referred to Prajna, the Indian Buddhist scholar who came to China in 782. It stated: "He translated together with Ching-ching, Adam, a Persian priest of the monastery of Ta-Ch'in, the Satparamita sutra from a Hu (Uigur) text, and finished translating seven volumes."⁵⁰ The Catalogue writer went on to complain that Prajna knew neither Uigur nor Chinese and that Ching-ching knew no Sanskrit nor understood Buddhism, but both were seeking vainglory.

He further mentioned that "They presented a memorial (to the Emperor) expecting to get it propagated" but that the Emperor (Tetsung, 780-804) was wise and after examining their work determined that it was poorly done, "the principles being obscure and the wording vague. The emperor then declared that the Ta-Ch'in religion and Buddhism were entirely opposed to each other; Ching-ching handed down the teaching of Mi-shih-ho (Messiah, using the same three Chinese characters as were used on the Nestorian Stone) while (Prajna) propagated the sutras of the Buddha. It is wished that the boundaries of the doctrine may be kept distinct."⁵¹ With that the emperor forbade the two from working together further.

The nine Chinese manuscripts and two Syriac ones found in China--some of them found in a cave sealed in 1036 in Tun-huang⁵² With one claiming that it was 641 years since Jesus Messiah was born and another giving the Chinese dating corresponding to 717--are also strong evidence of the presence of the Christians in China. These manuscripts will be described and examined for their theological content later.

Striking evidence of these early Christian times is presented by the remains of the monastery built at Chou-chih where the Monument vas found. The building has long since crumbled away, but eleventh century Chinese poets have mentioned it in their poems by the name of Ta-Ch'in Ssu (temple), and in 1933 a famous tower on the property was still standing while the people of the area still called the place Ta-Ch'in Ssu.⁵³ Further, tombstones with "Nestorian" crosses on them, in areas where the local records indicate they date from the Tang era of the eighth and ninth centuries, have been found in different places in China.⁵⁴

Farther west, in the area of the salt sea in Turkestan called Lake Issyk-kul, over 600 tombstones with crosses on them were found in two ancient cemeteries. The oldest date was 858 and the latest 1342. The inscriptions on many were in the Syriac script but the names indicate that these people were native converts. One inscription reads, "This is the grave of Pasak--The aim of life is Jesus, our Redeemer." Another states, "This is the tomb of Shelicha, the famous Exegete and Preacher who enlightened all the cloisters with Light, being the son of Exegete Peter. He was famous for his wisdom, and when preaching his voice sounded like a trumpet."⁵⁵ Among the names are those of "nine archdeacons, eight doctors of ecclesiastical jurisprudence and of biblical interpretation, 22 visitors, three commentators, 46 scholastics, two preachers and an imposing number of priests."⁵⁶ A chorepiscopus is also buried there with mention that he came from a nearby city. This last resting place of the saints of 700 years ago is mute witness of a past genuine Christian presence. As Stewart says of it, "Only in the grave stones from Semiryechensk (its Russian name) do we find evidence of the rich and varied Christian life which prevailed in one tiny corner of these extensive areas, filled as they once were with Christian communities."⁵⁷

The Tun-huang cave of western China, sealed, as mentioned earlier, in 1036 and not opened until about 1900, contained over 2,000 manuscripts, including some Christian ones. Also it had a painting on its walls of a Christian bishop on horseback, carrying a bishop's rod with a "Nestorian" cross on the end. In addition there was in the cave a silk screen painting of a robed man wearing a crown with a gold cross, with two other crosses around his neck, holding a bishop's rod. This painting was acquired by the Sir Aurel Stein expedition in 1908, and is now in the British Museum in London.⁵⁸ It seems to be beyond doubt a painting of an Oriental Christian bishop of the pre-1000 A.D. era. (See back cover painting.)

One of the intriguing aspects of the painting is that the right hand is held up with the thumb touching the tip of the second finger. The "Nestorians" were well known for their fondness for symbols. Was this posture a double witness to the Trinity with its triangle of thumb and finger and the remaining three fingers pointing upwards? Buddha images and paintings of earlier centuries usually show him with hands clasped in his lap or an upraised hand with open palm. In later centuries, however, it is not uncommon to see Buddha figures with the right hand raised in the posture of this painting of a Christian bishop. The question as to who used this symbol first is not answered, but it does seem to have more significance as a Christian Witness.

A tomb excavated in Manchuria in 1927 contained crosses and coins of the early eleventh century. Historical records show that those buried there were Uigurs, a Tatar tribe converted by the early missionaries.⁵⁹ Saeki feels that the Syriac script still found in some places in Manchuria today, which this writer has seen himself over some building entrances, is "nothing but the greatest Nestorian relics of all."⁶⁰

In addition, numerous references to the Persian missionaries in the land appear in the Imperial historical annals of China. For instance, the full proclamation of permission, issued in 638 and referred to on the Monument, appears with "the Persian monk A-to-pen (Abraham) bringing scriptures and teaching from far" specifically mentioned.⁶¹ Again, "In the ninth month of the twentieth year K'ai-yuan (October 732) the king of Persia sent the chief Pan-na-mi (Barnubi) with the monk of great virtue, Chi-lieh (Cyriacus) as ambassadors with tribute."⁶² But these casual references are too numerous to mention further. The evidence of the presence of the "Nestorian" missionaries in China during the T'ang era is incontestable. On the basis of the Chinese records alone Hirth states dogmatically, "all the first embassies sent from Fu-tin during the T'ang dynasty were carried out by Nestorian missionaries."⁶³

In Japan and Korea also, evidence of a past early Christian presence survives. Two beams of an ancient temple, dating from the late seventh century, with crosses on them and having inscriptions identified by professor Sayce as being "in an alphabet akin to Syriac,"⁶⁴ are in the Tokyo National Museum. In northwest Japan is a large tomb, dating from about the same time, known to the local people as "the tomb of Jesus." In all probability it is the tomb of a "Nestorian" Christian who preached Jesus, perhaps even bore His name, who was buried there in the tomb period. The Shoku-Nihongi, published in 797, refers to the return from China in 736 of an envoy who brought with him "a Persian by the name of Limitsi and another dignitary of the church of the Luminous Religion (Kei Kyo-Chinese, Ching Chiao) called Kohfu."⁶⁵ Elsewhere in Japanese history the Persian is referred to as Rimitsu, the physician. The Empress Komyo was very much influenced by his teaching and later built a hospital, an orphanage and a leprosarium, works of mercy typical of the "Nestorian" practical Christianity, but not of the Buddhism of that day.

One of the most sacred objects of the Shingon sect of Buddhism at the Nishi-Honganji Temple in Kyoto, founded by Kobo Daishi after he returned in 806 from China's capital and contact with the "Nestorian" monastery there, is a copy of the early missionary manuscript, "The Lord of the Universe's Discourse on Almsgiving," a commentary on the Sermon on the Mount and other Matthew passages. It is said that Shiriran spent hours daily studying this Christian document.

The oldest structure in ancient Kyoto is the Lecture Hall of the Koryuji Buddhist Temple, rebuilt in 1165. According to Teshima, the original building was not Buddhist but Christian, erected in 603. This building burned down and was rebuilt about 818 as the Koryuji Buddhist Temple. When this writer visited it in 1976, he was given a pamphlet describing something of the temple's history but nothing of its possible Christian origin.

Amazingly, however, the pamphlet had on the cover page as the first two of five Chinese ideographs the characters Tai Shin, the same being the first two on the famous Nestorian Stone (in Chinese Ta Ch'in) indicating the Mediterranean-Mesopotamian area homeland of the missionaries. Immediately following the Tai Shin, in parentheses, was uzu masa in Japanese hira gana script. Saeki claims that the ethnic origin of these two, non-Japanese words (the meaning of which Japanese scholars can only speculate) is the Aramaic Yeshu Meshiach, Jesus Messiah. Remarkably the temple thus bears the names of its original identity, Tai Shin, the place of origin of the religion and the missionaries who brought it, and of Jesus Christ, the One once worshipped at that ancient church. Further identity of uzu masa is in a song of 641 recorded in the ancient history text Nihonshoki: "O Lord, our Uzu Masa, How majestic is your name in all the earth! You are truly God of gods."⁶⁶ The identification of Uzu Masa with the God of gods and Lord of the earth could not be clearer.

The most revered object in the Koryuji Temple is the pine carving of a sitting Miroko (Maitreya) Buddha, brought over from North Korea in the ninth century. The features, including a large, thin nose, are Semitic, not Far Eastern. This is the Buddha of the next coming, whose return to earth will bring marvelous deliverance to all living beings, a concept that arose in Buddhism about the beginning of the fourth century A.D. in India, at a time when Christianity had made great progress there. Maitreya is held to be the Hindi version of the Greek word Metatron, change of time, denoting the time of the coming Messianic deliverance and new age. Interesting also is the fact that the figures of the right hand of this Buddha of the future coming are in the same posture of three upright fingers, with thumb and one finger forming a triangle, similar to the posture of the bishop's hand in the painting of the "Nestorian" bishop of China.

In southwest Korea there is a cave with an entrance said to be in the pattern of the Christian cave-churches of Syria. Some 16 stone plaques are built into the walls with figures and implements carved on them which do not represent Koreans or their culture but rather seem similar to Syrian Christian scenes. The cave was built in the seventh century in honor of a "black monk" who is believed to have come to Korea the previous century.⁶⁷ Dr. J. G. Holdcroft, for many years a missionary in Korea, who describes this cave, also speaks of interviewing Dr. J. S. Gale, an American scholar of Korean antiquities, concerning the possibility of an early Christian presence in the Orient. Dr. Gale replied: "Oh, yes, all of Asia had the Gospel but lost it." Dr. Holdcroft continued, "He stated also that in the ancient Korean literature, which is all written in the Chinese character, there are even references to God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). `But,' said he, `I have never found any Korean scholar who knew where those quotations came from'."⁶⁸ The Korean alphabet, a very simple one to learn, is held to have been a gift of Christian missionaries over a millennium ago, to have been revived by a Korean king some 500 years ago and then discarded, only to have been revived again by Protestant missionaries for the gospel's propagation during the past century.⁶⁹ In the providence of God, the gospel was indeed preached throughout Asia but through compromise, ignorance of Scripture, and distortion, it became so perverted as to become almost indistinguishable from paganism and was lost to the peoples to whom it came.

Decline o f the Christians in China from 845

In the year 845, a great disaster befell the Christian cause. An act of proscription was promulgated by the emperor. The Christians were not the prime targets but were definitely included. The act was directed against the many Buddhist monasteries and temples by the emperor, "hating the monks and nuns because (like moths) they ate up the Empire. He decided to have done with them," as one report puts it.⁷⁰ The act is referred to in the Chinese historical records with specific reference to the Ta-Ch'in religion, Christianity.

When Wu Tsung was on the throne he destroyed Buddhism. Throughout the Empire he demolished 4,600 monasteries, 40,000 Refugees, settled as secular subjects 265,000 monks and nuns, and 150,000 male and female serfs, while of land (he resumed) some tens of millions of ch'ing. Of the Ta-Ch'in (Syrian Christian) and Mu-hu Hsien (Zoroastrian) monasteries there were over two thousand people.⁷¹

A further report states:

The rest of the monks and nuns, along with the monks of Ta-Ch'in ... all were compelled to return to the world. A period was fixed for the demolition of those monasteries which were not to be allowed to remain. (A few were to be designated objects of art.) Materials from the demolished monasteries were to be used for repairing yamens and post-,stages. Bronze images, mirrors, and clappers were to be melted down for coinage.⁷²

Although this act was withdrawn two years later, the damage was done. Buddhism never recovered from the blow, which may account for the fact that it never became the dominant force in China that it became in Japan.⁷³ Further, the Christian work definitely went into eclipse. The troublous times which followed the disintegration of the Tang dynasty, with the sacking of cities and slaughter of the inhabitants, as occurred in Canton where many foreigners died,⁷⁴ must have been also a contributing factor to the eclipse of Christian churches begun over 200 years earlier.

Foster gives the report of an Arabic record, written in Baghdad about 987, which tells of the writer meeting with a Christian monk who had seven years earlier been sent to China by the patriarch, with five others, "to bring the affairs of Christianity in that country to order." This young man told the Arab writing the account, "that Christianity had become quite extinct in China. The Christians had perished in various ways. Their Church had been destroyed."⁷⁵ The Christian monk had then returned to Baghdad. Whether this delegation had really made an adequate tour is problematical. Saeki has given evidence to show that the monasteries and churches in Chouchin and Hsi-an continued in existence long after this time. Also in 1093 the patriarch Sabrisha III appointed a bishop George to Cathy.⁷⁶ Nevertheless the evidence is that the progress of the Christian churches in China went through a noticeable decline during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Saeki reports that the famous Taoist scholar, Chia Shang-hsiang, who compiled the life of Lao-tze about 1100 A.D., apparently was unaware that the Christians had ever been present, for he classified "the remnants of the Chinese Nestorians among the 98 kinds of heretical cults or religions then known to the Taoists. He named it `The Messiah Heretics' and put it in the 49th of the 98 heretical cults or religions prevailing in the 81 countries around Liu-sha and its neighborhood."⁷⁷

A remarkable example of the influence of Christianity on pagan religion can be seen in various concepts and rituals of the "Nestorians" being adopted, in a distorted form, by Buddhists, thereby radically affecting their tradition,⁷⁸ as witnessed by the development of the Lama sect in Tibet. Buddhism reached Tibet in 640, sometime before Christian missionaries did, but by the end of the first millennium, as striking resemblances show, Tibetan Buddhism had incorporated the Far Eastern "Nestorian" clergy's increasing preoccupation with demons, holy water, prayers for the dead, confession and red vestments as well as their traditional monastic system and hierarchy topped with a patriarch-in Lamaism's the Delai (All Embracing) Lama.

Although indications seem to warrant the conclusion that the curtain had fallen, finally, at the end of the tenth century, on the drama of Christianity in China, a story which opened so auspiciously at the beginning of the seventh, it was not to be so. The evidence of its great revival three centuries later will be given in the next chapter.

Chapter 4

The Mission Under the Khans

We have already observed that during the seventh and eighth centuries the missionaries began to take the gospel into the northern tribes of that vast area of plains later known as Mongolia. An interesting witness to the extent of the conversion of many of the southern tribes is given in the report of Benedict the Pole who accompanied Friar John of Plano Carpini on his mission from the Pope to the Khan's court in 1245. As they journeyed north of the Black Sea and crossed the Don River, Benedict wrote, "next the Alans who are Christians and then the Khazars who are likewise Christianà.After, the Circassians, and they are Christians. And finally, the Georgians, also Christians."⁷⁹

The first of the northern tribes to be almost completely converted were the Keraits south of Lake Baikal. It was a later chief, the uncle of Genghis Khan, who became famous to the western world as the almost legendary Prester John.⁸⁰ From the Keraits the gospel reached the neighboring Naimans to the west and the Uigurs (ogres to Europe) to their west. The Manichean sect also succeeded in penetrating the latter tribe and converting a portion of it. By then, during the eighth century, the Uigurs had replaced the East Turks as the strongest power of the area. The Onguts north of the big bend of the Yellow River became Christians, but the Mongols and Tatars east of the Keraits were more resistant.

The Uigurs were open to civilizing influences and became a literate people through a script worked out for them by the Christian missionaries, the alphabet being the Syriac with additional letters for the new sounds. The later Mongols, under the Khans, adopted this Uigur script for writing their own language. The Christians, at their linguistic headquarters in Merv, sought to have the languages of all the tribes put into writing that they might have constant access to the gospel. The effectiveness of their mission is testified to by an inscription, found at Kara-Balsaghun in this Uigur writing, attesting an astonishing transformation brought about through the conversion of the Uigurs. It states, "This land of barbarous customs, smoking with blood, was transformed into a vegetarian state, and this land of slaughter became a land devoted to good works."⁸¹ Throughout the reign of the Khans, the Uigurs were used as their secretaries.

Saeki has given a translation of an interesting inscription that shows the influence of the Uigurs and their religion in China just before the Khan conquest. The inscription is on a stone monument erected on the side of the avenue leading to the tomb of the honorable Ma, the governor of Heng-Chow. It states that when the Chin emperor had conquered Liaotung (north of Peking) he had the Uigurs of western Kansu moved there. During the reign of the Emperor T'ai-tsung (1113-1134), he heard of the image (lit., portrait) worshipped by the Uigurs, and requested to see it. The inscription states that it was taken out of "the House where the Uigurs meet and sing their hymns"⁸² to be shown the emperor. He was so impressed that he emancipated all their slaves and gave them presents of money and land. Less than a century later one of their leaders, Ma Hsi-chi-ssu, (a corruption of the Syriac Mar Sargis) became the famous General Ma Ch'ing-hsiang and governor of Heng-Chou. In the genealogical table of the Ma family, an excerpt of which Saeki translates, appears the following statement: "The ancestors of the Ma family were the descendents of the Niessuto'o-li (i.e. Nestorian) noble family of the Western lands."⁸³ This seems to be one of the few times the "Nestorians" are referred to in the Chinese records by a transliteration of that name rather than by the name Ta Ch'in, a reference to their land of origin..

For four centuries Christianity spread through these primitive tribes, although in many instances it was weak through ignorance and compromised by the superstitious fear of and belief in the shaman, the soothsayers. It was not until the coming of Genghis Khan, with his conquest of all the tribes and amalgamation of them into the Mongol Empire, including his conquest of China, that the Church of the East came to its greatest influence and extent in the Far East.

Genghis, whose original name was Temuchin, was born in 1167, a son of the chieftain of the Mongol tribe, one of the smaller clans east of the ruling Keraits. His father named him Temuchin (Finest Steel) after a defeated warrior he admired. In subsequent battles with their hereditary enemies to the east, the Tatars, the father was killed. Temuchin then made a treaty with the Kerait leader, a Christian with the title Prester (Presbyter) John. Gradually together they conquered the neighboring tribes and through generous terms won them over. But leaders of the aging Prester John foolishly moved him to attack the Mongols, resulting in the defeat of the Keraits and his death. By 1205 Genghis was the sole suzerain of all the tribes, the ruler of the Mongolian plains. The next year he called for the leaders of the tribes to assemble for a general kuriltai (diet) and at this council they elected him their emperor with the new name Genghis Khan, Emperor of All Men.

In 1211 the new emperor began his great war with China. It was then a divided kingdom, with the Manchu Chin dynasty ruling north of the Yellow River, and the Sung dynasty south of the river. Genghis conquered all the way across north China, destroying cities that withstood his thousands of horsemen (each of whom led four horses in addition to the one he rode) until he laid siege to Yen Ching, the capital, near the present Peking. The city fell and the undefeatable Khan turned his armies home to his capital, Karakorum, and then on to a great southern campaign. Before reaching home he carried out what became a common practice before each winter; he had his soldiers slaughter the vast mass of conquered people he had used as slave workers during the campaign. Concerning this practice, Lamb has made the following comment:

It appears to have been the custom of the Mongols to put to death all captives, except the artisans and savants, when they turned their faces homeward after a campaign. Few, if any, slaves appear in the native lands of the Mongols at this time. A throng of ill-nourished captives on foot could not have crossed the lengths of the barrens that surrounded the home of the nomads. Instead of turning them loose, the Mongols made an end of them - as we might cast off old garments. Human life had no value in the eyes of the Mongols, who desired only to depopulate fertile lands to provide grazing for their herds. It was their boast at the end of the war against Cathay that a horse could be ridden without stumbling across the sites of many cities of Cathay (China).⁸⁴

On the southward march, Genghis Khan's armies defeated the last of the nomad tribesmen of "the Roof of the World" and then crossed the T'ien Shan range to face the great Muslim power of the Shah of Kharesm. At this time Islam was at the height of its martial power. The crusaders had been driven back to their coastal forts and the western Turks were pushing the enfeebled Greek empire out of Asia. The great army of the Shah was equipped with superior armor - steel swords that could be bent double, chain mail, light steel helmets, gleaming shields and even some guns. They also used Greek fire and understood flaming naphtha and the use of catapult machines. This was the greatest military power Genghis had yet faced. But he totally overthrew it.

As Genghis remained behind to reduce the great cities of the Kharesm empire, he sent two of his generals, with 20,000 cavalry, to pursue the fleeing emperor. They followed him to Baghdad, then north into Georgia, and, following news of his death, they crossed the Caucasus Mountains, defeated a Russian army of over 80,000 and returned to their Khan by way of circling the Caspian Sea. It has been called an amazing march, "the greatest feat of cavalry in human annals."⁸⁵ Meanwhile Genghis reduced city after city--Kashgar, Balasaghun, Samarkand, Bokhara, Herat, Merv, Balkh, Nishapur--some of the greatest cities in the world, with all their wealth, culture, industries, libraries, and ancient art were destroyed.

Some descriptions of the extent of these destructions--with many of the cities being centers of strong Christian communities - have been given. When Herat fell, 1,600,000 people were taken out of the city and killed, this once magnificent capital eventually reduced to 40 persons. Kharesm's population was divided up with each Mongol soldier being given 24 people to kill, until the population of 1,200,000 were exterminated.⁸⁶ Merv, the great educational and translation center of the Christians, had its population of 1,300,000 divided into three masses of men, women and children (excepting only 400 craftsmen whom the Mongols wanted), who were then forced to lie down while they were strangled or slashed to death.⁸⁷ Nishapur, another Christian center, had its population of 1,747,000 also put to death. Muslim and Christian alike suffered terribly in this first invasion of the Mongolian hordes. When it was over, Genghis Khan ruled from Peking to Mesopotamia, from the Knieper River to the Indus, an area covering eight longitude. In all of this "he succeeded in destroying a larger portion of the human race than any modern expert in total warfare."⁸⁸

In 1222 Genghis returned to Karakorum for a few years rest, but in 1225 he was on the march again, southeastward, to conquer the Sung dynasty of south China through Kansu, the center of the Tibet kingdom. Here he died in 1227. The escort that accompanied the funeral death cart to Karakorum had orders to strike down every individual met so no word of the Khan's death could leak out in China. Genghis had called himself "The Scourge of God," believing, as his great seal declared him to be, "The power of God on Earth; the Emperor of Mankind." In spite of his frightful behavior towards his fellow men, he constantly affirmed that he believed in one God whose will he was carrying out. His yasa or code of laws regulating Mongol life began with the statement: "It is ordered to believe that there is only one God, creator of heaven and earth, who alone gives life and death, riches and poverty as pleasures Him-and who has over everything an absolute power." The influence of the Christianity of the Keraits, Genghis' strongest tribe, is without a doubt apparent in this statement with its witness to the sovereign God of creation and providence. The next rule of the yasa shows his sense of religious toleration, a mark of all the Khans. "Leaders of a religion, preachers, monks, persons who are dedicated to religious practice, the criers of mosques, physicians and undertakers are to be freed from public taxes and charges."⁸⁹

Genghis Khan's rule introduced the pax Tatarus. It was completely safe to travel from the Pacific to the Black Sea with a Mongol safe conduct. He set up a pony express, with way stations every 25 miles for a change of horse, and lodging every 100 miles. The envoys from the pope in 1245, led by John Plano Carpini, and from King Louis of France in 1253, led by William of Rubruck, tell of traveling by this highly efficient route, month after month, the more than 6,000 miles from their homelands to Karakorum. Genghis gathered excellent Chinese and Christian administrators and scribes about him who organized his conquered domains efficiently. He required the Uigurs to give the Mongols a written language, and Carpini has written, "These people, (the Uigurs) who are Christians of the Nestorian sect, he also defeated in battle, and the Mongols took their alphabet, for formerly they had no written characters; now however they call it the Mongol alphabet."⁹⁰ This Mongol script from the Uigur alphabet (gift of the early Christians) became the usual medium of writing throughout the vast area of the Mongol empire and, as Stewart says, "the parent of alphabets made use of by other more backward tribes such as ... the Manchus." As an illustration he speaks of an ancient Uigur manuscript existing which "supplies us with a specimen of the Nestorian alphabet as adapted to the use of the Ugro-Altaic tribes. It shows the connecting link between the Nestorian writing and the various Mongolian alphabets."⁹¹

The Mongol emperors kept physicians in their courts who were available to the people. Among them the Christian physicians, with their knowledge of the use of rhubarb and sherbet, were the most respected. Rubruck mentions seeing rhubarb used at Karakorum while Saeki translates a Chinese description of a Christian physician using sherbet at the court of Kublai Khan. The writing speaks of physicians who were of the Yeh-li-k'o-wen religion (the religion of Christian priests) who made sherbet from fragrant fruits by boiling them and mixing with honey. She-li-pa-ch'ih (a man of sherbet) is the name of his office. His Excellency had the hereditary skill (to make sherbet) and it often had miraculous effect. The Emperor specially granted to him a gold tablet and made him devote himself solely to the office."⁹² The missionaries' knowledge of the value of fruit and vegetables for the sick and their physicians' effective use of that knowledge was well known in the Khan empire.

In 1236 the Mongol armies were on the move again, under their new suzerain, Ogotai, and his chosen generals Batu and Subutai. Batu divided his "golden Horde" of some 40,000 men into four army corps and moved west from the Volga into Europe. Kiev fell and the population was massacred; the German and Polish army was destroyed near Leignitz and that city too was massacred. The Hungarian army of 100.000 was wiped out as Subutai joined his forces with Batu's, and the Templers died to a man as the Teutonic Knights had at Liegnitz. Pesth (Budapest) was captured and the victorious armies of Batu and Subutai marched into Austria to Nieustadt, southwest of Vienna, with no army left to stop them. The European armies, mostly afoot, were slow and poorly led by their kings. In less than two months of 1241 the Mongols had destroyed three of their great armies and many small ones as the Mongol cavalry captured all their great cities. The Mongols were in the process of overrunning all the country south of Vienna in their ruthless manner when news suddenly arrived that Ogotai Khan had died, poisoned by a mistress, and that they were to return for a council meeting to elect a new Khan. By that providence of God, Europe was spared from further invasion. A thoroughly alarmed Christendom, however, now began to take steps to send envoys to the Khans to see what could be done to prevent such further devastating incursions. To Europeans the Mongols were usually referred to as Tatars (their neighboring tribe) or Tartars, for they liked to say they came from Tartarus (hell).

The first envoy, from Pope Innocent IV in 1245, was John of Plano Carpini. Carpini wrote a fascinating "History of the Mongols" in which he described the strange culture he was plunged into during his long trek to Karakorum. There he was present for the election to the Kha Khanship of Ogotai's son, Guyuk, whom Stewart, quoting a certain Bar Hebraeus, holds to have been a Christian. The latter stated, "He was a true Christian and in his days the prestige of the numerous Christians bodies in his dominions was very high. His camp was full of bishops, priests and monks.⁹³ Many of his advisers and ministers were Christians, including the Chinese son of Genghis' chief minister, Ye Liu Chutsai. This son had a chapel with a cross on it built before his tent. Guyuk's mother was a Christian as were many of the wives of Khans. Because the Keraits, for a number of centuries Christians, were more advanced in civilization the khans usually took their chief wives from their tribes. Dawson speaks of the fame of Baigi, wife of Tuli and mother of the Great Khans Mangu and Kubilay, and of the II Khan of Persia, Hulagu, as a Christian and adds that the chief wife of Hulagu "Dokuz Khatun, is described by the Armenian chronicles as a second St. Helena."⁹⁴ Rubruck speaks of seeing the wife of Mangu Khan come to the "Nestorian" chapel with all her children for Christian services, and of an occasion when Mangu also came. One of the hymns sung at such services is preserved to us. It begins "the Son of Mary is born to us" and is written in alternate strophes, one in Syriac and one in Mongolian.⁹⁵

Guyuk's reply to the pope through Carpini was conciliatory but contains some interesting theology.

The contents of your letters stated that we ought to be baptized and become Christians

... you wonder at so great a slaughter of men, especially of Christians and in particular Poles, Moravians and Hungarians.... Because they did not obey the word of God and the command of Genghis Khan and the Khan, but took council to slay our envoys, therefore God ordered us to destroy them and gave them into our hands. For otherwise if God had not done this, what could man do to man? But you men of the West believe that you alone are Christians and despise others. How can you know to whom God deigns to confer His grace? But we worshipping God have destroyed the whole earth from the East to the West in the power of God."⁹⁶

The Western attitude, and the charge against it, do not seem to have changed much in 700 years.

Guyuk's favoritism to the Christians can be seen in an edict he issued concerning treatment of them in Muslim lands. "We have come with authority and power to announce that all Christians are to be freed from servitude and taxes in Muhammadan lands, and to be treated with honor and reverence. No one is to molest their gods, and those of their churches which have been destroyed are to be rebuilt and they are to be allowed to sound their plates."⁹⁷ Carpini in his report wrote of Guyuk, "he maintains Christian clerics and provides them with supplies of Christian things; in addition he always has a chapel before his chief tent and they sing openly and in public and beat the board for services after the Greek fashion like other Christians, however big a crowd of Tartars or other men be there. The other chiefs do not behave like this."⁹⁸ It was doubtless this strongly pro-Christian position that led him to try to restrict the voracious campaigning of sub-Khan Batu, who then retaliated by arranging to have Guyuk poisoned in 1248. Guyuk's mother served as regent for three years when Tuli's son, Mangu, was elected the new Kha Khan.

Mangu's mother too was a Christian (a niece of Prester John), as was also his wife. Rubruck, as mentioned, reported that he saw this first wife and her children worshiping in the "Nestorian" chapel, that her daughter was a devoted Christian, and that the oldest son seemed to be also. Mangu had Christian advisers, his chief secretary being one, and provided one of their scholars to be the teacher of his oldest son. Rubruck describes how at the services the Christians "proffered their right hand to all present in the church, for this is the custom of Nestorians on entering the church."⁹⁹ He also mentions visiting "a completely Nestorian village" and states that at Mangu's headquarters during Quinquagesima, the Lent of the Easterns, great crowds of Christians streamed every day of the first week to the church, the archdeacon of which was "a well-educated man." He adds, "On Easter Eve the Nestorians baptised in the most correct manner more than 60 people, and there was great common joy among all the Christians." He also mentions that "Nestorians" were living in China: "There are Nestorians in 15 cities in Cathay and they have a bishopric there in the city called Hsi-chin (near Peking) ."¹⁰⁰

During Mangu's reign Hulagu, his brother, founded the 11 Khan dynasty in Persia and ruled in Baghdad until he died in 1265. Stewart has written of his wife:

Dokuz Khatun is described as "the believing and true Christian queen." She exercised a great influence for good on her husband. When Baghdad was taken by the Mongols, the Christians, as Bar Hebraeus tells us, were spared death and torture because of "the magnanimity, the wisdom and the marvelous high character of Hulagu." In 1265 Hulagu and his wife died. "The Christians of the whole world greatly mourned the loss of these two great luminaries and protagonists of the Christian religion," Bar Hebraeus concluded.¹⁰¹

A Muslim writer later wrote that when in 1259 Hulagu proclaimed religious freedom of worship, with no Muslim interference, "On that day there was no single Christian of the common people or of the highest who did not put on his finest apparel." Two decades later Il Khan Arghun ordered that Christian churches destroyed in the previous wars were to be rebuilt. From the time of Muhammed in the seventh century, Christians from Syria to India never had more freedom nor prestige than in the thirteenth century under the Il Khans.

Following Mangu's death in 1259, his brother Kubilay was elected Kha Khan the next year. In 1267 Kubilay moved his capital to Khanbalik (Khan capital city), a city he founded on the edge of what is now Peking, and established the Yuan dynasty of China. Marco Polo, who spent nearly 25 years serving him, has given with elaborate praise many vivid descriptions of his empire - the efficiency of his administration, the magnificence of the paved highways covering China, the humaneness with which he governed his people and the splendor of his court. A modern historian gave this appraisal of Kubilay's reign: "He ruled over a wider extent than any Mongol or indeed any other sovereign. He was the first to govern by peaceful means. The splendor of his court and the magnificence of his entourage easily surpassed that of any Western ruler."¹⁰²

Marco Polo also frequently refers to the many "Nestorian" Christians he found throughout China on his travels for the emperor. He especially singled out "the beautiful Church of Nestorian Christians in Hangchow," the capital of the southern Sung dynasty, which Kubilay Khan captured in his conquest of all China. Remnants of this church, according to Saeki, stone relics, are still there, while the street it was on, Mao Lao Hsiang, he suggests, is a survival of the Syriac Mura (meaning church) Lane.¹⁰³ Polo speaks of seeing three churches in Kanchou in the far west where Christianity was strong and the government of the province was in the hands of Christians. Saeki also tells of discovering in the imperial history of the Yuan Dynasty the record of Ai-hsieh, a high minister of Kubilay Khan's court, "a man from Fu-lin (Ephraim) in the Western Lands," whom the emperor greatly honored and valued for his integrity and forthright, uncompromising advice, even though it frequently differed from the emperor's. This man seems without question to have been a Christian, with the names of his children being given as Elijah, Daniel, Isaac, George, and Luke. His wife's name was Sarah. Chinese records frequently associate men from Fu-1in with the Ching Chiao religion, Christianity.¹⁰⁴

A fascinating testimony to the virility of the Christian witness in China during this time is the story of two young Christian leaders who, in 1278, set out from Kahnbalik to see Jerusalem. Both were Orientals, Rabban Sauma an Ongut Turk born in the capital, and Rabban Markos his fellow countryman.¹⁰⁵ While they were still in Mesopotamia the patriarch of the Church of the East died and in 1281 Markos was elected to take his place. Three years later, together with the Il Khan Argun, Markos sent his friend Sauma to the Western powers, asking for joint action against the Muslims to regain Jerusalem. He visited Philip IV of France, Edward I of England, and the new pope, Nicholas IV, conducting Christian services with them. Dawson has given us the following report:

Thus when the cardinals expressed surprise that a Christian priest, attached to the patriarchate (at Baghdad) should have come as an envoy from "the king of the Tartars," Rabban Sauma replied: "know ye that many of our fathers in times past entered the lands of the Turks, the Mongols, and the Chinese and have instructed them in the faith. Today many Mongols are Christians. There are queens and children of king:; who have been baptized and confess Christ. The khans have churches in their camps. They honour Christians highly and there are many faithful among them. And as the King is united in friendship with the Catholics (patriarch) and purposes to take possession of Syria and Palestine, he asks your aid for the conquest of Jerusalem.¹⁰⁶

Edward I, tremendously impressed with what he had heard, replied to Rabban Sauma, "We have seen a thing than which nothing is more wonderful, that is to say that in the countries of the Franks there are not two confessions of Faith, but only one confession of Faith, namely that which confesses Jesus Christ; and all Christians confess it."¹⁰⁷ Since it was clearly understood that Rabban Sauma was a "Nestorian" Christian, representing his Church as an envoy of the patriarch, Edward's words were a striking testimony to the fact that the Church of the East's christology was not now being held suspect of the heretical doctrine for which Nestorius was accused and condemned in 431. Sauma used the East Syrian liturgy but both Edward I and the Pope received communion from him. In the summer of 1274, at the Council of Lyons, an Act of Union had been subscribed to by the Eastern and Western Churches, with the envoys of Abaga Il Khan present. Apparently the new spirit of detente included the Church of the East, long called "Nestorian," and a more objective realization that it had not really been christological doctrine which had divided them in the past. The pope sent back a reply with Rabban Sauma to Markos, who ruled under the patriarchal name of Mar Yaballaha III, in which he confirmed the latter's "patriarchal authority over all the Orientals." For one brief period of history sovereigns either espousing Christianity or friendly to it reigned from the Atlantic to the Pacific across Europe and Asia.

A politically divided Europe was not able to rally around the Mongol request for united action against the Saracen hold on Jerusalem. Edward I was deeply convinced of the significance of the opportunity before them but could not raise support for united action. The powerful Mameluk sultanate of Egypt gradually pushed the Christians and Mongols out of Palestine and Syria. Argun's own son became a Muslim in 1291, in spite of his baptism, and the opportunity for continued religious toleration for Christians from the Atlantic to the Pacific under sovereigns friendly to Christianity was lost. In the century that followed, the advance of the gospel was politically and religiously resisted throughout Asia.

Kubilay Khan's benevolent reign was coming to an end at this time. He was the first Mongol ruler of a united China and twice (1274, 1281) he had tried to add Japan to his domains with great invading fleets. The second attempt was a total disaster as a great typhoon struck (called by the Japanese kamikaze, a divine wind) destroying the fleet. One of the relics of that invasion is preserved in the Nichiren Mongolian Invasion Museum of Fukuoka, an iron helmet with a "Nestorian" cross inlaid in silver within a heart design. Spears, swords, and even two hand guns used in the 1281 invasion are also there.

From then on Kubilay Khan limited himself to more peaceful enterprises. His system of roads and canals was unsurpassed anywhere. He maintained a postal service throughout the twelve provinces into which he divided China. He produced paper currency, printed by woodblock printing. When Francis Bacon described the three Chinese inventions of printing (improved to movable type in Kubilay's era), gunpowder, and the magnetic compass, all of an earlier period but all improved under the Yuan, he declared they "changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world."¹⁰⁸ In 1266 Kubilay had sent the uncles of Marco Polo home to the Pope with a request to bring back a hundred men of learning, devoted to Christianity, who would be capable of "proving to the learned of his dominions by just and fair argument that the faith professed by Christians is superior to and founded on more evident truth than any other." The Pope replied by sending John of Monte Corvino, who began an active center of Mongol Catholicism.

Kubilay Khan died in 1294. His dynasty continued until 1369 when the Ming revolution ousted it and a new dynasty began. The Mings took a strong position against all forms of Christianity and within a decade brought about the suppression or extirpation of all churches and the expulsion of Christians from Peking and all government offices. Vigorous persecution broke out against the Christians. Stewart points out that they had to flee the country, abjure Christianity or hide their identity in a secret society, of which many new ones sprang up.¹⁰⁹

The persecution of the Ming dynasty was even surpassed by that of the new ruler of the former domains of the 11 Khans. Tamerlane (Timour the lame), born near Samarkand in 1336, the son of a Turkish tribal chief, began a series of conquests that made him one of the greatest conquerors and destroyers of men and their civilizations in history. From Moscow to the Ganges, from the borders of China to the Aegean Sea, he conquered all. He was a Muslim who combined the savage bigotry of the Holy War with the ruthlessness and skill of Genghis Khan. The pax Tatarus had brought open highways and 7,000 miles of peaceful interchange of commerce; the new rule of the Muslims turned fair lands into deserts, closed the door to the distant merchant and the missionary, and erected an iron curtain between the East and the West.

Tamerlane destroyed cities without mercy. After taking Isphahan, he ordered each of his soldiers to bring in a required number of heads until he had a pile of over 70,000. On the ruins of Baghdad, 90,000 heads were piled up. Delhi fell to him in 1398 with the slaughter of immense numbers, including the execution of over 100,000 prisoners he had collected to help in the labor of the invasion. His final expedition was to conquer China, and he gathered an army of 1,800,000 to march north from Samarkand in 1405. He declared, "I mean to exterminate the idolators of China. We will proceed to this holy war. We will slay the infields, and mosques shall everywhere rise on the ruins of their vile temples."¹¹⁰ His death that year saved China from a frightful invasion.

Under Tamerlane Christianity was ruthlessly extirpated throughout the vast portions of Asia he ruled. Stewart declares: "When he invaded Georgia ... the Christians who resisted were slaughtered, their churches destroyed and all sacred vessels and furniture given to the flames." Again, concerning a later expedition, he says of Tamerlane: "He did not omit to perpetuate the recollection of his 'immitigable hatred' of Christianity by the destruction of every monastery and every church in the districts on the line of march. Seven hundred towns, hamlets and monasteries, and every church built of stone and probably those built of other material as well, were levelled to the ground in another province. The wretched inhabitants were hunted to their retreats, dislodged and finally slaughtered."¹¹¹ An explorer of the last century, describing what he found in central Asia, says of Tamerlane, "Having laid waste thousands of towns and destroyed countless numbers of men he left a great part of Asia a desert, covered with human bones and bloodstained ruins."¹¹²

In India the Christian mission of the Church of the East had been very successful in the northern and southwestern regions. A mark of its success was that by the eighth century the Brahmins apparently felt compelled to create a divine figure to compete with that of Christ. Of this Stewart has written, "The fabrication of the incarnation and birth of Krishna was no doubt meant to answer a particular purpose of the Brahmins who were sorely vexed at the progress that Christianity was still making and were afraid that if it were not checked they would lose both their influence and emoluments."¹¹³ He points out that a study of the horoscope of Krishna fixes the date 600 A.D. as the earliest possible date for the invention of the Krishna legend. He footnotes outstanding scholars who consider the eighth century the probable time for the origin of the Krishna story.¹¹⁴

It was not the tricks of the Brahmins, however, but the invasion of Tamerlane's Muslims which did the greatest damage to the Christian cause. In spite of both, one portion of the Christian church, the Mar Thoma church, has survived to the present day. Nonetheless, by 1400, through the Mings of China and the Muslims under Tamerlane, the Christian church was virtually blotted out of Asia. In the two centuries from Genghis to Tamerlane, the Khans succeeded in destroying something like 20 million people. It was not until the modern ruler of China, Mao Tzu Tung, with his estimated 45 million executions, including 200,000 Christians,¹¹⁵ appeared in history that anyone was again responsible for a comparable slaughter of his fellow men.

The ancient "Nestorian" Monastery of Rabban Hormizd, founded A.GR. 873=A.D. 562. It lies about 30 miles to the north of Mosul (Nineveh), close to the village of Al-Kosh, the traditional birthplace of Nahum the Prophet.

(No. 1) A stone cross found in the ruins of the Shih-tzu-ssu or Temple of the Cross, near Peking, which may mark the site of the cave in which Rabban Sauma, an Ongut Christian, lived for seven years (1270-1277) before becoming the Bagdad patriarch's representative to the kings of Europe. Cross No. 2 stood in the south-east corner of the temple and has a Syriac Scripture (Peshitta) quotation: "Look ye unto Him, and hope in Him" (Ps. 34:5).

Altar slab preserved in the Church of St. Thomas, on St. Thomas's Mount, near Madras.

The Cross sculptured on the famous Nestorian Monument-at Hsi-an-fu. It stands in the middle of a dense cloud which is symbolic of Muhammadanism, and upon a lotus, which symbolises Buddhism; its position indicates the triumph of the Luminous Religion of Christ over the religions of Muhammad and the Buddha. The sprays of flowers, one on each side, are said to indicate rebirth and joy.

The "Nestorian" Monument, set up in China in 781, as it appears in Hsian today. Its title reads: Chinese Monument of the History of the Luminous Religion (Christianity) of Ta Chin (Syria).

Maitreya Buddha, image of the future coming Buddha, in the posture of thumb and finger forming a triangle with three other fingers upright, 7th century. It is now in the Kyoto temple designated Tai Shin (for ancient Syria) Uzu mass. Japanese scholar Saeki believes Uzu masa to be derived from the Syrian Yeshu Meshia for Jesus Messiah.

Map showing the Distribution of the "Nestorian" Churches.

The obverse and reverse of a silver Paizah, with an inscription in the Uighur character. The Paizah was worn on the breast, being suspended from the neck by a chain which passed through the moulded iron ring near the rounded end. The Uighurs were one of the first Mongolian tribes to convert to Christianity in the 8th century. The Paizah was a symbol authenticating the bearer as an official messenger of the khan, the leader.

Portrait of Kublai Khan, the son of Hulagu Khan, Emperor of all China (died 1294).

Temujine, the son of Yessugai and Ogelou, commonly known as Chingiz Khan. Born about 1160, died 1227.

From a portrait preserved in the old Imperial Palace at Peking.

Mongolian general's helmet left on the beach after the retreat of the invading Mongols in 1281. The helmet bears a carving of a shield or heart with a Christian cross in the center. It is in the Nichiren Museum in Fukuoka, Japan.

Painting of the 1281 Mongolian invasion of Kyushu, Japan, with two preserved hand guns in the foreground. Nichiren Mongolian Invasion Museum, Fukuoka.

PART II

THE NESTORIAN CONTROVERSY

Chapter 5

Nestorius and "Nestorianism"

The Fifth-Century Church's Concept o f "Nestorianism"

Nestorius, according to Socrates,¹¹⁶ was born in Germanica, a city of eastern Cilicia, but neither the date of his birth nor the events of his early life are known. He doubtless studied at the theological school of Antioch under Theodore of Mopsuestia, its most famous teacher. It was Theodore who developed a christology in which our Lord's two natures were held so rigidly apart that he was accused of making Christ into two persons and of being the real founder of the heresy later known as Nestorianism.¹¹⁷ He was also a proponent of the doctrines of man's free will and non-inherited sin, having written a treatise "Against the Defenders of Original Sin" that favored Pelagius's view.¹¹⁸ As a monk and priest of the monastery of Euprepius, by the walls of Antioch, Nestorius became famous as an eloquent preacher. His character, however, has been summed up in these words: "He was an honest man, of great eloquence, monastic piety, and the spirit of a zealot for orthodoxy, but impetuous, vain, imprudent, and wanting in sound, practical judgment."¹¹⁹

In April, 428, the emperor had him installed as patriarch of Constantinople, and in his first sermon he declared a campaign against heretics, implementing it that week by having an Arian chapel demolished.¹²⁰ He had strict laws passed against various sects but treated favorably the Pelagian leaders who were in the city, having been banished from Rome as heretics.¹²¹ The first incident of what was soon to be the Nestorian controversy was occasioned by a sermon of his Antiochene chaplain, Anastasius, in which he proscribed the use of the popular term theotokos for Mary, doubtless emboldened to do so because Theodore had vehemently repudiated it in the school of Antioch. When a furor was raised in the city over what was considered to be an insult to Mary and a denial of the true deity of Christ, Nestorius preached a series of sermons upholding the view of Anastasius. Very quickly copies of these were sent to Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, who thereupon attacked Nestorius in sermons and letters to the Egyptian monks, as well as in lengthy and acrimonius rebuttals to Nestorius.

From that point matters moved to a climax quickly. Nestorius called a local council to condemn his local antagonists¹²² and wrote the pope of Rome to justify his position and gain that bishop's backing. Instead, his letters and sermon reports previously sent there from critics in Constantinople were turned over to a John Cassian of Marseilles who wrote violently against Nestorius as renewing Pelagianism and Ebionitism. "He (Cassian) misunderstands and exaggerates the teaching of his opponent, but his treatise is important," writes a Catholic significantly, "because it stereotyped once for all a doctrine which the Western world was to accept as Nestorianism."¹²³

It should be noted, however, that Nestorius himself has pointed out that when in Constantinople he first heard of the disputation about theotokos, before he or his chaplain ever preached on the matter, he called in the disputing leaders and, finding that neither party wanted to deny either the true deity or true humanity of the Lord, he told them that in using the term theotokos "we sin not; but ... let us make use of that which is very plainly (affirmed), that is, of the Word of the Gospel: Christ was born, [Christotokos].¹²⁴ Loofs also points out that "even in his first letter to Pope Celestine, after having expressed his strong aversion to the term theotokos, he nevertheless wrote 'The term may by tolerated'."¹²⁵ And in a sermon in the spring of 429, known to Cyril before he wrote, Nestorius stated, "If you will use the term theotokos with simple faith, it is not my custom to grudge it to you,"¹²⁶ which he repeated in a sermon a year later adding his usual stipulation, "only do not make a Goddess of the virgin."¹²⁷ Nestorius blames Cyril for the controversy's continuance. "Now the clergy of Alexandria, who were in favor of his [Cyril's] deeds, persuaded them (of Constantinople) as persons deceived that they should not accept the word `Mother of Christ,' and they were stirring up and making trouble and going around in every place...."¹²⁸ That Cyril was very jealous of the "upstart" see of Constantinople, a learned but very unscrupulous man, is the verdict of history.¹²⁹

Cyril sent his correspondence with Nestorius to Rome along with some sermons of the former and five treatises designated "Contra Nestorium." In the latter he charged Nestorius with heresy on the grounds of teaching "that the Blessed Virgin is mother of one nature, not of the person" and of saying, "No one can bring forth a son older than herself."¹³⁰ Mary did not bring forth the Word of God but the man Jesus as His temple, "the animated purple of the King."¹³¹ Nestorius, Cyril claimed, held that "the Incarnate God did not suffer and die, but raised up from the dead him in whom He was incarnate ... There are two natures, he says, and one person; but the two natures are regularly spoken of as if they were two persons, and the sayings of Scripture about Christ are to be appropriated some to the Man, some to the Word."¹³² Such were the basic charges brought against Nestorius.

The pope called a synod in Rome, and on the basis of these charges Nestorius's views were declared heresy, and he was given ten days to recant or be deposed and excommunicated. Cyril was given the authority to proceed to implement the sentence. He too called a local synod which brought in the same verdict and prepared 12 anathemas against the views of Nestorius. It prop