day of the first month, being Sunday." That is our year 781. In Syriac are names of missionaries and founders of the monument. For instance: "Adam, deacon, Vicar episcopal and Pope of China. In the time of the Father of Fathers, the Lord John Joshua, the Universal Patriarch."[1] This monument also gives wonderful matter for the imagination. Discovered by accident nearly a thousand years later, it brought across that silent chasm its witness of a forgotten Church, lost centuries before in the storms that swept over Asia. Now, looking back through the mist, we have a glimpse of Olopun observing the azure clouds and bringing the true sacred books to the accomplished Emperor Taitsung, bringing the Illustrious Religion to China, thirteen centuries ago.
This outline of their missions will shew that the Nestorians before Timur Leng were a vast and mighty Church. In the 13th century twenty-five Metropolitans obeyed the Nestorian Patriarch.[2] Allowing an average of eight to ten sees for each province, this represents a hierarchy of two hundred to two hundred and fifty bishops. There is, perhaps, some excuse for what is, of course, really a gross exaggeration of Neale, that "it may be doubted whether Innocent III possessed more spiritual power than the Patriarch in the city of the Caliphs."[3]
All these missions have been swept away long ago. In Cyprus the Nestorians became Uniates. In Socotra they were Uniates for a time under the Portuguese;[4] then the Arabs wiped out Christianity from the island. But it was chiefly the tempest aroused by Timur Leng which overturned the Nestorian mission churches. After his time no Christians were left in Central Asia, the churches were destroyed, the lines of bishops came to an end. The whole Nestorian body was reduced to a frightened remnant hiding in the wilds of Kurdistan (p. 100). Only one mission at
- ↑ Assemani: Bibl. Orient. iii. (part 2), pp. 538–552, gives a long description of the monument and a translation of the inscription. Cf. P. Carus: The Nestorian Monument (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co., 1909), with illustrations of the stone. H Thurston, S.J.: "Christianity in the Far East," II., The Month, Oct. 1912, pp. 382–394.
- ↑ Assemani: Bibl. Orient. iii. (part 2), p. 630.
- ↑ A History of the Holy Eastern Church, i. p. 143.
- ↑ St. Francis Xavier preached here in 1542.
