[ { "id": 204392, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 24, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n15\n\nevangelized the West. To this day there are Churches of St. Thomas on the Malabar coast of India, claiming the Apostle Thomas as their founder. Whether or not the evidence is sufficient for this claim, it certainly indicates a very ancient date for the origin of these Churches of the East.\n\nAs the branch of the Church that moved westwards into Europe wrote its Scriptures in colloquial Greek—the lingua franca of the Roman Empire, so the branch of the Church that moved eastwards first with Antioch then Edessa as its centre, used Syriac as its common language; it was at Edessa that its Scriptures were translated into Syriac, and it was at Edessa that its scholarship developed and a School of Theology was founded. To this day Syriac is the liturgical language of the ancient Churches of South India,\n\nDuring the fourth century a Theological controversy arose in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire concerning the manner in which the Divine and the Human natures were related in Jesus Christ. The leadership of the thought of the Church at the time was with the Church of Alexandria in Egypt, where great emphasis was laid upon the Divine nature of Christ. In the province of Syria the Christian leaders feared lest in the current trend of thought the Humanity of Jesus should not be sufficiently recognized. A presbyter in the Church at Antioch, Nestorius, who was soon afterwards made Patriarch of Constantinople—the highest position in the Eastern Church—began to preach the doctrine of two complete natures—the Human and the Divine—existing side by side in the person of Jesus Christ. This doctrine which became known as 'Nestorianism' was rejected by an irregular Council of the Church held at Ephesus in A.D. 431, and Nestorius was deposed and driven into exile. His followers were persecuted and fled eastwards, first to Edessa the headquarters of Syrian Christianity, beyond the Euphrates, then across the frontier to Nisibis in Persia, where the scholars gathered and where a Theological School essentially Nestorian in character was established. The Nestorian doctrine, partly perhaps because Persia was at enmity with Rome, found favour with the Persian Churches.\n\n+\n\n嗡\n\n+ Adency, The Greek and Eastern Churches, T. & T. Clark, 1908, p. 461. \"Ibid., p. 480.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204395, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 27, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "18\n\nF. S. DRAKE\n\nworking with their hands in the well-kept vineyards, the cherished penmanship and the care of ancient manuscripts reminiscent of 'the knowledge and zeal, which once so eminently distinguished the Chaldaean priesthood'.\n\n4\n\nThis is the Church which evangelized the greater part of Asia during the ancient and mediaeval periods, truly it has been called a Church on Fire, and the Great Missionary Church of Asia. But that the fruit of its labours are no longer manifest is because no Church has suffered martyrdom as this Church has; it has become the great martyred Church of the world.\n\nIII. THE NESTORIAN CHRISTIANS OF THE ORDOS REGION\n\nThe story of the Nestorian missionary movement before the Mongols conquered Central Asia and established the Yüan Dynasty in China (A.D. 1260 to 1368) can be pieced together with difficulty from scattered references in the Syriac records; but during the Mongol domination vivid descriptions of their activities have been left to us in the pages of the Mediaeval travellers from Europe to the courts of the Mongol Khans. These can be divided into two groups: Franciscan Friars and travelling merchants.\n\nIt was the time of the Crusades, and the great widening of men's horizons that these brought about. The enlightened policy of the Arabs had been followed by the restrictive measures of the Turks, now converted to Islam. Europe was stirred by the danger. The astonishing success of the First Crusade (1096-1104) was followed by the failures of the Second (1146-1187), and Third (1189-1192). The Fourth Crusade was diverted against Constantinople (1200-1205); shortly after, the Mongols appearing from the ends of the earth ravaged Armenia, and crossing the Caucasus, penetrated into Southern Russia in 1232. The great invasion followed in 1238—Russia, Poland, Hungary. At the\n\n11 A. H. Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, London, Murray, 1849.\n\n12 Stewart, The Nestorian Missionary Enterprise, 1928.\n\n13 These have been collected by Assemanni, Bibliotheca Orientalis, Rome, 1728 (4 vols.). See also Mingana, The Early Spread of Christianity in Central Asia and the Far East, Manchester Univ. Press 1925, and Bull. of John Rylands Library, July 1925.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204396, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 28, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n19\n\nbattle of Lignitz (1241) the knights of Europe were mown down, Europe lay helpless before the invaders, when the Great Khan Ogotai suddenly died, and the Mongol princes hastened back to be present at the grand assembly in Mongolia for the election of a successor. Europe was saved. But meantime through travelling merchants and friars contacts with the Mongols had been established in the Near East and, no doubt as a result of the Nestorian missions, and the conversion of the king of the Keraits in 1007, rumours grew of the rise of a great Christian Potentate in Central Asia called Prester John\". Availing himself of the respite afforded by the withdrawal of the Mongols, the Pope conceived the idea of sending emissaries to the Mongol rulers, on the one hand to avert the threatened Mongol invasion by appealing to the reports of their common faith, and on the other to enlist their aid against the Moslem Turks in the Holy Land.\n\nThe emissary chosen by the Pope was Friar John of Pian de Carpine (Plano Carpini) who was despatched with a letter to the Mongol rulers in A.D. 1245. Proceeding with his companion Friar Benedict the Pole through South Russia and Central Asia, he arrived at the camp of Kuyuk Khan in northern Mongolia at the time of his election by the great assembly, and was received in audience by him. Friar John returned to Europe in 1247, and met King Louis IX of France in Paris preparing for the Fifth Crusade (1248-1254). He has left a short but valuable account of his journey and a history of the Mongol tribes.11\n\nDuring the disastrous Fifth Crusade King Louis was accompanied by Friar William of Rubruck, and he received several travellers returning from the nearer Mongols and despatched several emissaries, the most important of whom was Friar William of Rubruck himself whom he sent in 1253 on a personal mission to the Great Khan. Friar William travelled from Constantinople via South Russia and Central Asia to Karakoram near the present Urga, as Friar John had done, and returned through Asia Minor. He has left a long and detailed account of his journey, which for accurate observation, and balanced judgment is a document\n\n14 Rockhill, The Journey of William Rubruck with two accounts of ... John of Pian de Carpini, Hakluyt Society, Second Series, No. IV, 1900, D'Avezac: Relation des Mongols ou Tartares par le frère Jean du Plan de Carpin, Paris, 1938.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205106, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 62, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n57\n\nwith Chinese technique and art forms. This stone is so far the \"sole material monument\" of the Franciscan mission in medieval China. It has been suggested that there might exist another one. Christian tombstones from Ch'üan-chou were published some years ago, and it has been thought that the language on one of them is Latin. It must be Christian because the inscription begins with the sign of the Cross, but the attempt to read it as Latin and to regard it as the tomb inscription for Andrew of Perugia, the third suffragan bishop of Zayton — modern Ch'üan-chou — does not seem convincing. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that the inscription is not in Syriac script.5\n\nThere is, however, another mission from the West that reached China and where even the dynastic history of the Yuan has recorded their arrival. It is that of the papal envoy Giovanni da Marignolli, Bishop of Bisignano. A medieval manuscript in Prague has recorded the Western part of the story. This embassy, if we may call it that, was occasioned by a letter from some Alan Christians in China dated 11th July 1336. Some of the senders can be identified with persons mentioned in Chinese sources of the period. The Pope, Benedict XII, answered with a letter dated 13th June 1338, and Giovanni da Marignolli left Avignon — the papal see in those years — in December 1338. He travelled first to Constantinople and proceeded from there to the Crimea and the court of Uzbeg, Khan of the Golden Horde. Another station was Almaliq in Central Asia. Finally the papal envoy reached Khanbaliq (Peking) and was presented to the Emperor, Shun-ti. Giovanni presented the emperor with gifts, among them a Western horse. After a few years in China the envoy went back to Europe via India and reached Avignon in 1353. The Chinese annals have recorded the exact date of the audience when Giovanni met Shun-ti, or, to call him by his Mongol name, Togon Temur; it was August 19, 1342. The Chinese dynastic history calls the country Fu-lang, another way of transcribing the name of the Franks, that is, the Europeans. However, Giovanni's name and that of the Pope, are not mentioned by the Yuan-shih. In any case, this embassy seemed so important to the compilers of the dynastic history that they recorded it, and this means something because the basic documents for Togon Temur's reign were already lost at the time of the compilation of the Yuan-shih so that the annals for his reign are notoriously incomplete. But even so it does not seem", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212125, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 67, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "THE 'SYRIAN BRILLIANT TEACHING’\n\nDAVID WILMSHURST\n\nIntroduction\n\nFew Christians nowadays outside the Middle East are familiar with the name, let alone the history, of the Nestorian church of Persia, yet between the ninth and fourteenth centuries it was in some respects perhaps the largest Christian church in the world, with bishoprics stretching from the Mediterranean right across Asia to China. The church took its name from Nestorius, who became archbishop of Constantinople in 428 and was deposed not long afterwards for holding heretical views on the nature of Christ. Nestorius placed great stress on the human nature of Jesus, and tried to discourage the use in the churches under his jurisdiction of the title Theotokos, 'mother of God', a term which had long been applied to the Virgin Mary. To his enemies, he appeared to be denying the divinity of Christ, and regarding him as a mere man who had been adopted by God as his son, though it is now clear that his views were considerably closer to the orthodox position than he was given credit for at the time. A heated controversy ensued, and both sides in the dispute supported their arguments with bribery and intimidation. The opposition to Nestorius was led by Cyril, archbishop of Alexandria, who was motivated partly by a genuine distaste for his opponent's theology and partly by jealousy of his ecclesiastical status. Cyril finally procured the deposition and banishment of Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus in 431.\n\nIn the next century and a half the Nestorian heresy was stamped out within the territories of the Roman empire, and its adherents fled to neighbouring Persia. Although the state religion of Sassanian Persia was Zoroastrianism, Christianity had firmly established itself in the western provinces of the Persian empire, particularly among the mainly Syrian population of northern Mesopotamia and in Khuzistan and Fars, and Persia's Christian minority by and large sympathised with the theological position which Nestorius had taken. The influx of Christian refugees from the Roman empire strengthened the native Persian church, and after the Persian empire was conquered by the Moslem Arabs in the seventh century the Nestorian church enjoyed a period of rapid expansion. Syrian and Persian Christians were tolerated by their Moslem rulers and organised into a melet, or official minority", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216510, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 269, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "221\n\nTucker establishes a framework, too, for the rise of Islam. An Arab attempt on Constantinople in 718 seems to have failed only because of outbreaks of the plague, and famine, in the Arab forces. Chillingly, Tucker argues that it was only these chance events (though famine, surely, could have been attributed to mismanagement) that gave Christianity time to strengthen its precarious hold in Europe. And, on the eastern frontier of Islam, a Chinese army was defeated by an Arab force at the River Talas in modern Kazakhstan in 751, and this meant the end to Tang hopes to control Central Asia beyond Xinjiang. Tucker argues that it was Chinese captured at the Talas River who introduced the technology of paper and silk manufacture to Damascus and Samarkand.\n\nOther books on popular reading lists about the Silk Road tend to be books of travel. Some are almost gazetteers, while others concentrate on archaeologists' researches. This book is different, focusing as it does on telling the Silk Road's history and demonstrating the links between the art forms that emerged from each era and culture. To give an idea of the scope of the book, here are the Section headings:\n\nBeginnings (three chapters: on the Silk Road's precursors; on Nomads; and on the Kushans)\n\nChina (three chapters: on the introduction of Buddhism to China; on Luoyang, and on Xi'an)\n\nThe Silk Road between Xi'an and Dunhuang (one chapter) The Silk Road through China beyond Dunhuang (two chapters, one each on the northern and the southern routes)\n\nThe Silk Road through Central Asia (ten chapters including one on The Coming of Islam to Central Asia; one on The Mongols; one on Tamerlane and the Timurids; and the rest focusing on different routes.\n\nPersia and Beyond (nine chapters, including one on The Parthians and The Sasanians, seven on different routes, and a concluding chapter on The End of the Road: The Silk Road in Decline).\n\nThe pattern, then, is to use some chapters to describe chains of events, and others to present the artistic achievements of specific periods. In addition, there are useful chronological tables on China; on the pre-Islamic States of Western and Central Asia; on the Islamic States; and on the Emperors of Byzantium. Tucker also provides a Summary of Traded Goods.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]