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Nehavend in 642, and the Persian crown prince Peroz fled with the remnants of his defeated army to China. Many of these refugees were Nestorian Christians, and it is not surprising to find a second Nestorian church built in Ch'ang-an around this time by Peroz.
Nevertheless, the survival of Christian texts in Chinese from the T'ang period demonstrates that the Nestorian church in T'ang China was conscious of its missionary duty, and its story therefore has an intrinsic interest which is lacking in the case of the later mission. It is a story of the meeting of two profoundly dissimilar cultures. In the Yuan period the Chinese and Christian cultures passed one another by in mutual incomprehension and indifference. In the T'ang there were moments of genuine engagement, which still have power to move the imagination. Although they failed to make a significant impact on Chinese ways of thought, the Nestorians in T'ang China, closer by six centuries to the evangelical zeal of the early Christian church than their more worldly descendants in the Yuan period, at least tried to communicate with the Chinese among whom they lived. And their Chinese hosts, free from foreign domination and conscious that the T'ang state was the most powerful civilisation in the world, were self-confident enough to entertain foreign ideas, even if they were rarely persuaded to adopt them.
Much has been written on the skill with which the Nestorians in T'ang China clothed their Christian thought in Chinese dress, with the aim of making their religion intelligible to their hosts. This article will focus on a comparatively neglected aspect of this process, and will consider in some detail the names which they chose for the Christian religion itself. It will seek to demonstrate that, in the 780s, the Nestorian church in China had an archbishop who was uniquely qualified to publicise the Christian religion among the Chinese. It will attempt to prove that the Nestorian church adopted a striking new official identity just before 781, and that this new look was then strenuously promoted by the recopying of old manuscripts. It will explore fully the implications of an important decree of the emperor Hsüan-tsung in 745 which has been curiously neglected by scholars of the Nestorian church in China.
A close study of the Nestorian official identity in T'ang China yields a surprising amount of information. It helps us to see these Syrian and Persian missionaries as they wished to be seen. It forces
49
Nehavend in 642, and the Persian crown prince Peroz fled with the remnants of his defeated army to China. Many of these refugees were Nestorian Christians, and it is not surprising to find a second Nestorian church built in Ch'ang-an around this time by Peroz.
Nevertheless, the survival of Christian texts in Chinese from the T'ang period demonstrates that the Nestorian church in T'ang China was conscious of its missionary duty, and its story therefore has an intrinsic interest which is lacking in the case of the later mission. It is a story of the meeting of two profoundly dissimilar cultures. In the Yuan period the Chinese and Christian cultures passed one another by. in mutual incomprehension and indifference. In the T'ang there were moments of genuine engagement, which still have power to move the imagination. Although they failed to make a significant impact on Chinese ways of thought, the Nestorians in T’ang China, closer by six centuries to the evangelical zeal of the early Christian church than their more worldly descendants in the Yuan period, at least tried to communicate with the Chinese among whom they lived. And their Chinese hosts, free from foreign domination and conscious that the T'ang state was the most powerful civilisation in the world, were self- confident enough to entertain foreign ideas, even if they were rarely persuaded to adopt them.
Much has been written on the skill with which the Nestorians in T'ang China clothed their Christian thought in Chinese dress, with the aim of making their religion intelligible to their hosts. This article will focus on a comparatively neglected aspect of this process, and will consider in some detail the names which they chose for the Christian religion itself. It will seek to demonstrate that, in the 780s, the Nestorian church in China had an archbishop who was uniquely qualified to publicise the Christian religion among the Chinese. It will attempt to prove that the Nestorian church adopted a striking new official identity just before 781, and that this new look was then strenuously promoted by the recopying of old manuscripts. It will explore fully the implications of an important decree of the emperor Hsüan-tsung in 745 which has been curiously neglected by scholars of the Nestorian church in China.
A close study of the Nestorian official identity in T'ang China yields a surprising amount of information. It helps us to see these Syrian and Persian missionaries as they wished to be seen. It forces
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