XLVII. CHAP. ble of pity or esteem for the heretics who denied the au thority of the holy synods: but he flattered himself that. they would gradually perceive the temporal benefits of union with the empire and the church of Rome; and if he failed in exciting their gratitude, he might hope to provoke the jealousy of their sovereign. In a later age, the Lutherans have been burnt at Paris and protected in Germany, by the superstition and policy of the most Christian king. Their mis sions in Tartary, India, The desire of gaining souls for God, and subjects for the church, has excited in every age the diligence of the Christian priests. From the conquest of Persia they China, &c. carried their spiritual arms to the north, the east, and 500-1200 the south; and the simplicity of the gospel was fash A. D. ioned and painted with the colours of the Syriac theology. In the sixth century, according to the report of a Nestorian traveller 16, Christianity was successfully preached to the Bactrians, the Huns, the Persians, the Indians, the Persarmenians, the Medes, and the Elamites the Barbaric churches, from the gulf of Persia to the Caspian sea, were almost infinite; and their recent faith was conspicuous in the number and sanctity of their monks and martyrs. The pepper coast of Malabar, and the isles of the ocean, Socotora and Ceylon, were peopled with an increasing multitude of Christians, and the bishops and clergy of those sequestered regions derived their ordination from the catholic of Babylon. In a subsequent age, the zeal of the Nestorians overleaped the limits which had confined the ambition and curiosity both of the Greeks and Persians. The missionaries of Balch and Samarcand pursued without fear the footsteps of the roving Tartar, and insinuated themselves into the camps of the vallies of 116 See the Topographia Christiana of Cosmas, surnamed Indicopleustes, or the Indian Navigator, 1. iii. p. 178, 179. l. xi. p. 337. The entire work, of which some curious extracts may be found in Photius (cod. xxxvi. p. 9, 10. edit. Hoeschel), Thevenot (in the 1st Part of his Relations des Voyages, &c.) and Fabricius (Bibliot. Græc. 1. iii. c. 25. tom. ii. p. 603–617.) has been published by father Montfaucon at Paris, 1707, in the Nova Collectio Patrum (tom. ii. p. 113–346). It was the design of the author to confute the impious heresy of those who maintain that the earth is a globe, and not flat oblong table, as it is represented in the Scriptures (1. ii. p. 138). But the nonsense of the monk is mingled with the practical knowledge of the traveller, who performed his voyage A. D. 522, and published his book at Alexandria A. D. 547 (l. ii. p. 140, 141. Montfaucon, Præfat. c. 2). The Nestorianism of Cosmas, unknown to his learned editor, was detected by La Croze (Ciristianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 40-55), and is confirmed by Assemanni. Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 605, 606. Imaus and the banks of the Selinga. They exposed a CHAP. metaphysical creed to those illiterate shepherds: to those XLVII. sanguinary warriors, they recommended humanity and repose. Yet a khan, whose power they vainly magnified, is said to have received at their bands the rites of baptism, and even of ordination; and the fame of Prester or Presbyter John" has long amused the credulity of Europe. The royal convert was indulged in the use of a portable altar; but he despatched an embassy to the patriarch, to inquire how, in the season of Lent, he should abstain from animal food, and how he might celebrate the Eucharist in a desert that produced neither corn nor wine. In their progress by sea and land, the Nestorians entered China by the port of Canton and the northern residence of Sigan. Unlike the senators of Rome, who assumed with a smile the characters of priests and augurs, the mandarins, who affect in public the reason of philosophers, are devoted in private to every mode of popular superstition. They cherished and they confounded the gods of Palestine and of India; but the propagation of Christianity awakened the jealousy of the state, and after a short vicissitude of favour and persecution, the foreign sect expired in ignorance and oblivion11. Under the reign of the caliphs, the Nestorian church was diffused from China to Jerusalem and Cyprus; and their numbers, with those of the Jacobites, were computed to surpass the Greek and Latin communions119. Twenty-five metropolitans or archbishops composed their hierarchy, but several of these 119 117 In its long progress to Mosul, Jerusalem, Rome, &c. the story of Prester John evaporated in a monstrous fable, of which some features have been borrowed from the Lama of Thibet (Hist. Genealogique des Tartares, P. ii. p. 42. Hist. de Gengiscan, p. 31, &c.) and were ignorantly transferred by the Portuguese to the emperor of Abyssinia (Ludolph, Hist. Ethiop. Comment. 1. ii. c. 1.) Yet it is probable that in the xith and xiith centuries, Nestorian Christianity was professed in the hord of Keraites (d'Herbelot, p. 256.915. 959. Assemanni, tom. iv. p. 468-504.) 118 The Christianity of China, between the seventh and the thirteenth century, is invincibly proved by the consent of Chinese, Arabian. Syriac, and Latin evidence (Assemanni, Biblioth. Orient tom. iv. p. 502-552. Mem. de l'Academie des Inscript. tom. xxx. p. 802—819.) The inscription of Siganfu, which describes the fortunes of the Nestorian church from the first mission, A. D 636, to the current year 781, is accused of forgery by La Croze, Voltaire, &c. who become the dupes of their own cunning, while they are afraid of a Jesuitical fraud. 119 Jacobite et Nestorianæ plures quam Græci et Latini. Jacob a Vitriaco, Hist. Hierosol. 1. ii. c. 76. p. 1093. in the Gesta Dei per Francos. The numbers are given by Thomassin, Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 172. CHAP. were dispensed, by the distance and danger of the way, XLVII. from the duty of personal attendance, on the easy con tians of St. dition that every six years they should testify their faith and obedience to the catholic or patriarch of Babylon, a vague appellation, which has been successively applied to the royal seats of Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and Bagdad. These remote branches are long since withered, and the old patriarchal trunk120 is now divided by the Elijahs of Mosul, the representatives, almost in lineal descent, of the genuine and primitive succession, the Josephs of Amida, who are reconciled to the church of Rome, and the Simeons of Van or Ormia, whose revolt, at the head of forty thousand families, was promoted in the sixteenth century by the Sophists of Persia. The number of three hundred thousand is allowed for the whole body of the Nestorians, who, under the name of Chaldæans or Assyrians, are confounded with the most learned or the most powerful nation of Eastern antiquity. According to the legend of antiquity, the gospel was Thomas in preached in India by St. Thomas 22. At the end of the ninth century, his shrine, perhaps in the neighbourhood A. D. 883. of Madras, was devoutly visited by the ambassadors of India, Alfred, and their return with a cargo of pearls and spices rewarded the zeal of the English monarch, who entertained the largest projects of trade and discovery123. 120 The division of the patriarchate may be traced in the Bibliotheca Orient. of Assemanni, tom. i. p. 523-549. tom. ii. p. 457, &c. tom. iii. p. 603. p. 621–623. tom. iv. p. 164–169. p. 423. p. 622—629, &c. 121 The pompous language of Rome on the submission of a Nestorian patriarch, is elegantly represented in the viith book of Fra-Paolo, Babylon, Nineveh, Arbela, and the trophies of Alexander, Tauris, and Ecbatana, the Tigris and Indus. 122 The Indian missionary St. Thomas, an apostle, a Manichæan, or an Armenian merchant (La Croze, Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 57—70), was famous, however, as early as the time of Jerom (ad Marcellam, epist. 148.) Marco Polo was informed on the spot that he suffered martyrdom in the city of Maabar, or Meliapour, a league only from Madras (d'Anville, Ecclaircissemens sur l'Inde, p. 125), where the Portuguese founded an episcopal church under the name of St. Thomé, and where the saint performed an annual miracle, till he was silenced by the profane neighbourhood of the English (La Croze, tom. ii. p. 7—16.) 123 Neither the author of the Saxon Chronicle (A. D. 883) nor William of Malmsbury (de Gestis Regum Angliæ, 1. ii. c. 4. p. 44) were capable in the twelfth century, of inventing this extraordinary fact; they are incapable of explaining the motives and measures of Alfred; and their hasty notice serves only to provoke our curiosity. William of Malmsbury feels the difficulty of the enterprise, quod quivis in hoc sæculo miretur; and I almost suspect that the English ambassadors collected their cargo and legend in Egypt. The XLVII. When the Portuguese first opened the navigation of In- CHAP. dia, the Christians of St. Thomas had been seated for ages on the coast of Malabar, and the difference of their character and colour attested the mixture of a foreign race. In arms, in arts, and possibly in virtue, they excelled the natives of Hindostan: the husbandmen cultivated the palm-tree, the merchants were enriched by the pepper trade, the soldiers preceded the nairs or nobles of Malabar, and their hereditary privileges were respected by the gratitude or the fear of the king of Cochin and the Zamorin himself. They acknowledged a Gentoo sovereign, but they were governed, even in temporal concerns, by the bishop of Angamala. He still asserted his ancient title of metropolitan of India, but his real jurisdiction was exercised in fourteen hundred churches, and he was entrusted with the care of two hundred thousand souls. Their religion would have A. D. rendered them the firmest and most cordial allies of the 1500, &c. Portuguese, but the inquisitors soon discerned in the Christians of St. Thomas the unpardonable guilt of heresy and schism. Instead of owning themselves the subjects of the Roman pontiff, the spiritual and temporal monarch of the globe, they adhered, like their ancestors, to the communion of the Nestorian patriarch; and the bishops whom he ordained at Mosul, traversed the dangers of the sea and land to reach their diocese on the coast of Malabar. In their Syriac liturgy, the names of Theodore and Nestorius were piously commemorated; they united their adoration of the two persons of Christ; the title of Mother of God was offensive to their ear, and they measured with scrupulous avarice the honours of the Virgin Mary, whom the superstition of the Latins had almost exalted to the rank of a Goddess. When her image was first presented to the disciples of St. Thomas, they indignantly exclaimed, "We are "Christians, not idolaters!" and their simple devotion was content with the veneration of the cross. Their separation from the western world had left them in ignorance of the improvements or corruptions of a thousand years; and their conformity with the faith and practice of the fifth century, would equally disappoint the prejudices of a papist or a protestant. It was the first care royal author has not enriched his Orosius (see Barrington's Miscellanics) with an Indian, as well as a Scandinavian voyage. : CHAP. of the ministers of Rome to intercept all correspondence XLVII. -1663. with the Nestorian patriarch, and several of his bishops expired in the prisons of the holy office. The flock, without a shepherd, was assaulted by the power of the Portuguese, the arts of the Jesuits, and the zeal of Alexes de Menezes, archbishop of Goa, in his personal visitation of the coast of Malabar. The synod of Diamper, at which he presided, consummated the pious work of the reunion, and rigorously imposed the doctrine and discipline of the Roman church, without forgetting auricular confession, the strongest engine of ecclesiastical torture. The memory of Theodore and Nestorius was condemned, and Malabar was reduced under the dominion of the pope, of the primate, and of the Jesuits who inA. D. 1599 vaded the see of Angamala or Cranganor. Sixty years of servitude and bypocrisy were patiently endured; but as soon as the Portuguese empire was shaken by the courage and industry of the Dutch, the Nestorians asserted, with vigour and effect, the religion of their fathers. The Jesuits were incapable of defending the power which they had abused: the arms of forty thousand Christians were pointed against their falling tyrants; and the Indian archdeacon assumed the character of bishop, till a fresh supply of episcopal gifts and Syriac missionaries could be obtained from the patriarch of Babylon. Since the expulsion of the Portuguese, the Nestorian creed is freely professed on the coast of Malabar. The trading companies of Holland and England are the friends of toleration; but if oppression be less mortifying than contempt, the Christians of St. Thomas have reason to complain of the cold and silent indifference of their brethren of Europe1. II. THE BITES. II. The history of the Monophysites is less copious and interesting than that of the Nestorians. Under the reigns of Zeno and Anastasius, their artful leaders surprised the ear of the prince, usurped the thrones of the East, and crushed on its native soil the school of the Syrians. The rule of the Monophysite faith was defined with exquisite discretion by Severus patriarch of Antioch; he 124 Concerning the Christians of St. Thomas, see Assemannus Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 391-407.435-451. Geddes's Church History of Malabar; and above all, La Croze, Histoire du Christianisme des Indes, in two vols. 12mo, La Haye, 1758, a learned nd agreeable work. They have drawn from the same source, the Portuguese and Italian narratives; and the preju dices of the Jesuits are sufficiently corrected by those of the protestants. |