RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 16 F. S. DRAKE In A.D. 489 the Theological School at Edessa was closed by the Roman Emperor Zeno. In A.D. 496 the Nestorian Catholicos (or Archbishop) of Nisibis was made Patriarch of the East with his seat at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the capital of Persia on the Tigris, and the Persian Churches with their own Patriarch were henceforth independent of the Patriarch of Antioch. 4 It is doubtful how far the split was due to theological differences, and how far to patriotic motives. Although the name 'Nestorian' is commonly applied by others to this ancient independent Syro-Persian Church, it is not the name by which they describe themselves. And in fact they were probably little conscious of the theological differences indicated by the name. They were conscious rather of being a Church outside the bounds of the Roman Empire; their Patriarch was the Patriarch of the Christians of the East, and they called themselves the Church of the Chaldees. Some still call them the Chaldaean Church. But this name has now become attached to a section of them that has become incorporated in the Church of Rome. Some call them the Assyrian Church, and this perhaps is the name least liable to cause confusion. Their centre was in fact, and is, the mountainous country of Kurdistan, east of Mosul (the ancient Nineveh) and of Arbela, where Alexander defeated Darius and commenced the conquest of Persia (331 B.C.). The sturdy peasants, who under the Persian Empire after an initial acceptance, endured a period of bitter persecution, and who maintained their primitive faith and life derived from the early days, are in all probability the descendants of the ancient Assyrians. After the conquest of Persia by the Moslem Arabs, the seat of the Patriarch was moved in A.D. 762 to Bagdad, the new capital, at that time a centre of learning and science, where at first they lived on good terms with the Mussulman despot. During the next five hundred years the Nestorian Church was allowed to go on its own way, sometimes with kindly recognition from liberal caliphs, sometimes harassed by harsh tyrants, but still all the time a recognized institution within the territory of Islam. With the Mongol invasion Hulugu, grandson of Genghis, took Bagdad in A.D. 1258 and put an end to the Eastern Caliphate. 7 Adeney, op. cit., p. 494. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f NESTORIAN CROSSES 17 He himself was the son of a Christian mother and he had a Christian wife, both from the Kerait tribe in north-eastern Mongolia, whose king had been converted by Nestorian missionaries in A.D. 1007. The era of communication between the Mongol Khans and the Popes and Princes of Europe commenced. At the end of the 14th century Bagdad was sacked by Tamerlane, as also were Aleppo and Damascus. He savagely attacked the Syrian Christians many of whom fled to the inaccessible mountains of Kurdistan, where they have lingered to the present day. It was the break-up of the ancient Syrian Church. About which Harnack writes: The Syro-Persian Church deserves our unqualified sympathy. It was the only large Church which never enjoyed the official protection of the state. It maintained the traditions of Antiochene exegesis, it translated the works of Christian antiquity into Syriac with great assiduity... It also assimilated Greek philosophy and science which it transmitted to the Arabians. At the present day it is crushed, impoverished, and down-trodden, but it can face its downfall with the consciousness that it has not lived in vain, but upon the contrary that it has filled a real place in the history of civilization. Claudius Rich visited the remnants of this Church in the mountains north-east of Mosul in 1820, including the 4th century Convent of Rabban Hormuz in its rocky gorge, and left a graphic description of the austere life and primitive worship of the dusky monks pursuing their manual labour in the remote solitude.10 Henry Layard made a more extended visit to the same region a few years after the great massacre of the Assyrian Christians in 1842 by a fanatical Turkish Bey, when the threat of a second attack was already impending. He saw the ruined homes and churches, and the bleached bones still lying at one of the worst scenes of massacre; and he attended the simple worship and sacrament of the people a few days before a second indiscriminate massacre took place. He described with approbation the 'unadorned and imageless walls', the 'simple and primitive rites', 'the hospitality and simple manners of the priests' * Adency, op. cit., p. 495. Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Vol. 2, p. 150. 10 C. R. Rich, Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan, London, 1836. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 201 Forsyth, Sidney A, An American Missionary Community in China 1895-1905, Cambridge (Mass), Harvard University Press, 1971 Fortune, Robert, Five Year's Wanderings in the Northern Provinces of China, London John Murray, 1844 (Shanghai Reprint University Press) Two Visits to the Tea Countries of China and the British Tea Plantations in the Himalaya, London John Murray, 1853 Fox, Helen, ed and trans, Abbe David's Diary, Cambridge (Mass) Harvard University Press, 1949 Franck, Harry Alverson, Wandering in Northern China. New York and London The Century Company, 1923 — Roving Through Southern China, New York and London The Century Company, 1925 Franek, Rachel (Harta), I Married a Vagabond the Story of Family of the Wandering Vagabond, New York Appleton-Century 1939. Fritz, Chester, China Journey, Seattle Washington University Press, 1981 Gallagher, Louis J ST, trans, The Journals of Matthew Ricci 1583-1610, New York Random House, 1953 Gamewell, M N, The Gateway to China Pictures of Shanghai New York Fleming H Revell Company, 1916 (Taipei: Reprint Cheng-wen Publishing) Garman, Schuyler New Fight on Hua and Gabet. Their Expulsion From Lhasa in 1846. Pacific Eastern Quarterly | 148-63 (1942) Gardner, James. In and Out of Chungking Changteh - Wenchow - Chanchow. Missionary Life, Experience and Adventure During the First of Three Periods of Residence in China, Sydney 1947 Garon, Shirley S. The Chamber of Commerce and the YMCA in Mark Elvin and G William Skinner, eds. The Chinese City Between Two Worlds, Stanford Stanford University Press. 1974 213-238 Gaunt Mary Elizabeth Bakewell (b. 1872). A Woman in China, London, Lane, 1914 Geil, William Edgar. A Yankee on the Yangtze, New York Eaton and Mains, 1904 (Copy at Yale published by Methuen in London 1926) General Description of Shanghae and Its Environs Shanghai The Mission Press, 1850 Goes, Bento de, The Travels of Benedict Goez, a Portuguese Jesuit from Lahore in the Mogul's Empire to China, in 1602. in Pinkerton, John, ed, A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels London 1808-14:577-587) ================================================================================