NESTORIAN CROSSES
21
Nestorian community in his letters, and their king George, whom he converted from Nestorianism to the Catholic faith.
The scattered references to the Nestorians in the accounts of the friars are confirmed by Marco Polo (1271-1295) who with his father and uncle can represent for us the second group of travelling merchants. Everywhere through Central Asia and China Marco found Nestorian Christians, usually in the service of the Court, and probably more often than not of Syrian, Persian or Turkish race, employed as administrative officials by the alien government on account of their high standard of literacy.
Marco Polo also confirms the existence of a Nestorian Christian tribe with their Christian king George (whom he confuses with Prester John as Odoric also does) at the Yellow River bend. It seems likely that the name 'Tenduc' which he gives to the region is the early pronunciation of T'ien-tê which was an old name of the present city of Kuei-hua{ in that region, near which is the important market town of Pao-t'ou in which Mr. P. M. Scott found the first fourteen crosses of our paper. Similarly the Tozan of Odoric may be identified with Tung-sheng, an early name for the same region. The Christian Mongol tribe situated by the Ordos bend of the Yellow River is known from various sources to have been the Onguts (Wang-ku people), to which Marco Polo refers, though confusedly, in calling their king Ung-Khan.
These facts are confirmed in a remarkable way by a Syriac document describing a pilgrimage of two Eastern Nestorian monks—one an Ongut, the other of Uigur stock—from their monastery near Peking to the seat of the Nestorian Patriarch in Mesopotamia in A.D. 1278. In the course of their journey they visited the Christian Ongut tribe by the Yellow River bend, and from them received a touching farewell.19
IV. NESTORIAN RELICS IN CHINA AND MONGOLIA
With the expulsion of the Mongols from China at the fall of the Yuan dynasty in A.D. 1368, the Christianity both Nestorian and Franciscan that had been associated with their regime disappeared.
17 Letters of Montecorvino, see Yule, op. cit., and Moule, op. cit., pp. 171 ff.
18 Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, revised by Cordier, London, Murray, 1903.
19 Budge, The Monks of Kublai Khan, London, R.T.S. 1928.
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NESTORIAN CROSSES
21
Nestorian community in his letters, and their king George, whom he converted from Nestorianism to the Catholic faith."
The scattered references to the Nestorians in the accounts of the friars are confirmed by Marco Polo (1271-1295) who with his father and uncle can represent for us the second group of travelling merchants. Everywhere through Central Asia and China Marco found Nestorian Christians, usually in the service of the Court, and probably more often than not of Syrian, Persian or Turkish race, employed as administrative officials by the alien government on account of their high standard of literacy.
Marco Polo also confirms the existence of a Nestorian Chris- tian tribe with their Christian king George (whom he confuses with Prester John as Odoric also does) at the Yellow River bend. It seems likely that the name 'Tenduc' which he gives to the region is the early pronunciation of T'ien-tê which was an old name of the present city of Kuei-hua { in that region, near which is the important market town of Pao-t'ou in which Mr. P. M. Scott found the first fourteen crosses of our paper. Similarly the Tozan of Odoric may be identified with Tung-sheng, an early name for the same region. The Christian Mongol tribe situated by the Ordos bend of the Yellow River is known from various sources to have been the Onguts (Wang-ku pup), to which Marco Polo refers, though confusedly, in calling their king Ung- Khan.JR
These facts are confirmed in a remarkable way by a Syriac document describing a pilgrimage of two Eastern Nestorian monks -one an Ongut, the other of Uigur stock-from their monastery near Peking to the seat of the Nestorian Patriarch in Mesopotamia in A.D. 1278. In the course of their journey they visited the Christian Ongut tribe by the Yellow River bend, and from them received a touching farewell.'"
IV. NESTORIAN RELICS IN CHINA AND MONGOLIA
With the expulsion of the Mongols from China at the fall of the Yuan dynasty in A.D. 1368, the Christianity both Nestorian and Franciscan that had been associated with their regime dis-
17 Letters of Montecorvino, sec Yule, op. cit., and Moule, op. cit., pp. 171 £.
18 Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, revised by Cordier, London, Murray, 1903.
Budge. The Monks of Kublai Khan, London, R.T.S. 1928.
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