Francesco Vossilla 

ABSTRACT

　　The Syriac Chronography by Bar-Hebraeus (1226-1289)—a Jacobite bishop in Mongol-held Persia–informs us that there were many Christians among the Tartars. Here is his wisdom about remembrance:

Knowledge in the first place becomes rich through thoughts of a theoretical nature, and, in the second place, profits through actual hearings, the calling to remembrance of the things, both good and bad, which have happened to every generation. (Bar Hebraeus in Wallis Budge, 1976,1)

　　I view all forms of Christianity in China as a process of knowledge /remembrance/ integration. One who embarks upon penning on such a topic aspires to achieve a synthesis, only to find oneself castigating labyrinthine reams of parchment. Within these convolutions, it seems appropriate to review the epoch of the Blessed Giovanni da Montecorvino OFM (1247 Montecorvino, -1328 Beijing), who set foot in China in 1294. Neither Yuan nor Ming documents mentions Montercovino. Yet he built two churches in Beijing and translated the New Testament and the Psalter in the official Yuan script. These volumes were tools to educate a battalion of boys he liberated from slavery using Yuan funds. The neophytes showcased their musical talents by singing Christian chants for the emperor. (Sella, 2008, 59) The concept of universal salvation created the apostolic mechanism through which the Holy See justified diplomatic overtures toward Mongol-conquered countries. (Buffon, 2015, 74-75). Simultaneously, the khans pursued relations with Latin Europe to counterbalance both the Byzantines and the Mamelukes. The following pages are a summary of three chapters of a book I am writing for the Macau Ricci Institute regarding Giovanni Marignolli OFM.

MARCOS, SAUMA, GIOVANNI, KUBLAY, AND NICHOLAS IV

　　Kublai Khan was proclaimed Yuan emperor in 1271. He bestowed the governance of provinces to “Tartars, Saracens, and Christians, who were of his own family… and were not from Cathay”—Marco Polo says. (Polo in Mote, 2003, 450). In Yuan documents there is no distinction among Christians, the Yelikewen (也里可溫), a transliteration of the Syriac word Arkagun. (Rossabi, 1994, 463-465) The Syrian Church separated from Antioch in the 5^th century. Associated with the theology of Nestorius (c.381-451), these Christians came to be known as Nestorians.

　　Over a hundred Buddhist and Daoist temples, along with numerous mosques, adorned Beijing. Interspersed among them were Nestorian churches and an archbishopric (since 1275). The languages of Christianity in China were the Syriac for liturgy and Uighur for dissemination and hymns. (Grousset,1970, 302) The suspension of the traditional state examination system was a marker of discontent, as it prevented Han scholars from entering the civil service. There were divisions also among the Christians. When Marco Polo came to China, Kublai was battling his relative Nayan (乃颜), a Christian supported by a faction of the Nestorians. Though Kublai’s entreaty to the Papacy carries a veneer of legend, his mandate to Maffeo and Niccolò Polo included the enlistment of Catholic clerics. (Boulnois, 2004, 319-320) In Marco Polo’s rendering of the events, these scholars emerge as prospective mediators with representatives of diverse creeds.

　　Yet another saga unfolds, where the Beijing born Rabban Sauma (拉宾扫务玛, 1220–1294) —a Nestorian monk of Ongut ethnicity—travelled westward. His journey metamorphosed into a diplomatic mission to Catholic Europe, orchestrated by the Mongol sovereigns of Persia with the sanction of their kin in Beijing. Sauma desired to pray in Jerusalem with his student Marcos (拉宾马可, 1245-1317), who was an Ongut from the city of Kawshang/ Olon Süme-in Tor (敖伦苏木古城). Sauma encountered Marcos at the Fangshan mountains (房山区). Since 1919, archaeologists uncovered stones at this Beijing site adorned with cross depictions and Syriac inscriptions. (Paolillo, 2009, 77-78) According to the Syriac History of Mar Yahballah, Catholicus of the East, and of Rabban Sauma, Visitator General written around 1318, the Ongut kings Aibuqa and Kunbuqa equipped the monks with gifts destined for the centres of the Syrian Patriarchate.

　　These warriors, “who were sons-in law of the Khan”, envisioned a “fellowship with the fathers of the West” (Margiotti,1958, 45-48; Borbone, 2000, 192-194). Sauma and Marcos made a necessary halt in the Ilkhanate, where the bishops elected Marcos as their Catholicos (1281) with the name of Yahballah III. His jurisdiction extended from the Levant to the Yuan territories. The selection was not solely grounded in Marcos’ charism. As the chronicler relates, he “was most acquainted with the Mongol rule”. (Montgomery, 1927, 44). The Book of the Tower, authored in Arabic during the 14^th century, adds another layer to this connection. Kublai had entrusted Marcos with “a garment to carry with him, so that he would immerse it in the Jordan River and take it to the tomb of Christ the Lord” (Paolillo, 2009, 77-78). Before becoming the Catholicos, Marcos was ordained as the bishop to “the Cathay and the Ong”, serving both the Northern Chinese and the Ongut dwelling north of the Yellow River (Paolillo, 2013, 239-240)— an area known as the “Commandery of Tiande” (天德, Inner Mongolia, Atwood, 2014, 525-527).

　　Learning of Kublai’s intention to dispatch messengers to Rome, Marcos, who had established a favourable relationship with the Il-Khan Arghun (r. 1284-1291), recommended Sauma. Arghun and Kublai harboured ambitions for a military alliance with Latin Europe. Sauma’s understanding of the Eastern Christians made him an ideal mediator between Persia, China, and the West. Sauma left Persia in 1287, accompanied by the Genoese trader Tommaso Anfossi. They visited the main European rulers. The apex of Sauma’s journey unfolded in Rome, where he met the cardinal of Palestrina —Girolamo Masci OFM. Masci ascended to the papal throne as Nicholas IV in February 1288. The first Franciscan pope wanted to secure tolerance for Catholic communities across Asia. The author of The History of Mar Yahballah saw the dialogue between Sauma and Nicholas as a catalyst for the reunion of all Christians.

Rabban Sauma said to Mar Papa: “I wish to celebrate the Eucharist so that you may see our use”; and the Pope commanded him to do so as he had asked. And on that day a very large number gathered in order to see how the ambassador of the Mongols celebrated the Eucharist…They rejoiced and said: “The language is different, but the use is the same”. (Borbone, 2000, 247)

　　Arghun had engaged in correspondence with Honorius IV (r. 1285-1287), conveying Kublai's intent to confront the Mamelukes, who had seized Jerusalem. Acting as the first intermediary in the communication between the Ilkhanate, Kublai, and the Papacy was the Nestorian astronomer Isa Tarsah Kelemechi, (爱薛, 1227-1308). He served Kublai as the inaugural director of the Chongfu Si Bureau(崇福司, 1289). (Yin Xiaoping, 2016, 313, 316, 328) Among the duties of the bureau were the Prayers to the Heavenly God, the Blessing for the Emperor’s Long Life, and the Wishes for Good Fortune. If you were partaking in these ancient rituals, you were recognized as a member of a good-willing cult. After the death of Sorghaghtani Beki (1252), different priests chanted in her memory at the Beijing Yanchun Pavilion (延春阁)–they celebrated the Christian mother of Kublai, the Holy Virtuous Dignified Deceased (显懿莊圣皇后). (Yin Xiaoping, 2016, 320)

　　In 1289, responding to the overtures from Kublai and Arghun, Pope Nicholas appointed Friar Giovanni Montecorvino as his envoy. His voyage eastward had commenced around 1279 with the tenure of Bonagrazia di San Giovanni among the Franciscans (1279-1283), when Bonagrazia had led a mission to the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus (r.1259-1282) along with Masci himself. The Orthodox emperor was considering a religious re-union with Rome. Such a communion would have stopped Western monarchs from seeking papal blessing for military campaigns against Byzantium. (Roncaglia, 1954, 140-149) It was in the Levant that Montecorvino studied Asian languages becoming an agent of Hethum II, king of Cilicia, who joined the Franciscans in 1293. (Sella, 2008, 61-62) As a legate in Persia, Giovanni may have had interactions with Yahballah/Marcos prior to 1289. Montecorvino was to deliver 27 papal messages. There is a crucial point in the missive addressed to Yahballah III, wherein Nicholas IV notes that Marcos had crossed paths with Montecorvino. (Arnold, 1999, 44)

　　Pope Nicholas’s words to Kublai Khan emanate a genuine interest in fostering a mission to Cathay:

Shortly after the beginning of our [reign] we received in audience trustworthy messengers who had been sent by the magnificent Prince Arghun, famous king of the Tartars, who told us very plainly that your Magnificence bears a feeling of great love towards our person and the Roman Church and also towards the nation or people of the Latins. And the said messengers earnestly begged on behalf of the king that we should send some Latin monks to your court… Wishing therefore to fulfil the king’s desires in this respect…we have thought right that our beloved son, brother [Giovanni da Montecorvino], with his fellows of the order of Minors, bearer of the present letters, should be sent to you. (Langlois, 1886-1893, 391-393)

GIOVANNI AND GEORGE

　　Venturing east alongside the Dominican Nicola da Pistoia, Giovanni was joined by the merchant Pietro di Lucalongo in Tabriz, a trading nexus populated by Italians. (Grillo, 2019, 96-97) In 1291, the trio stopped in the Malabar region for a year. Nicola died at Mylapore. (Zucchi, 1929, 1, 24) Giovanni and Pietro sailed to the port of Quanzhou. Their arrival in Beijing coincided with Kublai’s death, as he passed February 18^th 1294. Though the date of the camaraderie between Giovanni and the Ongut leader George (阔里吉思, in Syriac Giwargis), remains elusive, according to the friar’s own parlance, George assisted the papal legate in Catholic services. (Arnold, 1999, 46-47,169) Contentious matters of authority persisted between Montecorvino and the Nestorians until the intervention of the Chengzong Emperor (元成宗). On January 8^th. 1305, Giovanni says:

To the Cham I presented the letter of our lord the Pope and invited him to adopt the Catholic Faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, but he had grown too old in idolatry. However, he bestows many kindnesses upon the Christians, and these two years past I am abiding with him. The Nestorians who bear the Christian name but deviate far from the Christian religion…had brought the gravest persecutions on me declaring that I was not sent by the Lord Pope but was a spy, a magician, and a deceiver of men… At last, by God’s providence, through the confessions of certain persons, the Emperor came to know of my innocence and of the malice of my adversaries. (Buffon, 2015, 72)

　　Montercorvino offered a case of diplomatic coalition to the Yuan, while the Beijing Nestorians, contradicting their patriarch in Persia, were suspicious of interlopers, who could undermine their influence over the emperors and their Christian kin (of Ongut, Naiman, or Kerait origin). But Chengzong gave Giovanni a “regular seat” at court. (Canetti, 2001, 56) I wonder if the emperor also wished to comfort the Alan warriors protecting the throne by showing his attention to a religious authority coming from the centre of Christianity. By 1272, Kublai had created an agency dedicated to the Asud (阿速) knights from the North Caucasus. Even Giovanni da Pian del Carpine OFM mentions the Christian “Alans, who call themselves Azzi”. (Alemany, 2000, 149-151) These soldiers led by aristocrats of a Greek Orthodox denomination contributed to the conquest of China. Alans were in the Bureau of Military Affairs (枢密院), and among their leaders we find Baidaer who crushed anti-Kublai rebels in Beshbalyk. Their unit grew to 30,000 men, and Odorico da Pordenone OFM refers to the Alan “great barons converted to the Faith by the Brothers of our Order”. (Arnold, 1999, 79) Chengzhong praised the Asud leader Yuwashi (d.1306) for his services against Kaidu by rewarding him with the rank of Grand Marshal Defender of the State (镇国上将军). (Alemany, 2000, 414)

　　Contacting with the Yuan Christians, who were devoted to Syrian or Byzantine traditions, Montecorvino conciliated between the universal mission of Nicholas IV and the universal monarchy of the grand khan. Chengzhong was to articulate a rule magnified by alliances forged through engagement with military and familial bonds among nomadic tribes, warrior elites, merchant communities, and religious entities (Buffon, 2015, 72).

　　In 1305, writing to the Franciscans under the tutelage of the Golden Horde, Giovanni referred to tensions with the Syrian clergy. The Nestorians had “not allowed a Christian of another ritual to have ever so small a chapel, or to publish any doctrine different from their own”. (Sella, 2008, 59-60; Paolillo, 2009, 80) This initial crisis, I assume, had prevented Montecorvino from performing the public alignment rituals in honour of the emperor, as the Syrian priests could. In a following letter of February 13^th. 1306, “to the Minors abiding in the province of the Persians”, Montecorvino asked for help because “the empire of the Lord Cham” was of strategic importance.

　　Upon receiving information regarding Montecorvino’s achievements, Clement V (r. 1305-1314) established an archdiocese headquartered in Beijing (1307), solidifying a supervision from the Danube River to the Chinese Sea. (Jong Kuk Nam, 2019, 114-115) Once granted the right to practice the twofold duties of Catholic priest and papal diplomat, Giovanni–and his future aides–could abide by their own religion in China. The privileges that he received were not granted arbitrarily. The transactional nature of the arrangement explains Giovanni’s appeal for additional missionaries to join in the nuanced negotiations between Catholic clerics and the Yuan. To corroborate this impression, I am quoting Atwood’s analysis on the negligible importance accorded to confessional baptism by the Il-khan Arghun writing to Nicholas IV:

Those who are baptized and, like you, are true and sincere-minded pure men, will certainly not nullify the religion and decrees of eternal Heaven and of the Messiah. Are not the other peoples, who forget eternal Heaven, nullify it, and commit lies and theft, more numerous? Now, since I have not been baptized, you are angry and thinking thoughts in your head. If one prays only to eternal Heaven and thinks rightly, is it not like being baptized? (Atwood, 2004, 253-254)

　　Such sentiments buttress skepticism about George’s conversion to Catholicism. (Grillo, 2019, 96-97) According to Ming historians, George was a student of the Confucian classics and of Chinese cosmology possessing a gigantic library of manuscripts (The History of Yuan Yuanshi, 118, Biography of Kuolijisi). Nevertheless, archaeology helps us to qualify the Ongut ruler as an eminent Christian. (Li Tang, 2016, 236-237) George navigated both roles—as a Christian and a Confucian scholar. Being a loyal relative of two grand khans, he probably played a role in assisting Montecorvino with the translation of the New Testament and the Psalter. According to Giovanni, George sought something specific for his people—a comprehensive translation of the Latin liturgy in Syriac or Uighur (as is common in Ongut gravestones). Or was it an attempt to envision an Ongut ritual scripture? Giovanni says:

I had been in treaty with the late King George, if he had lived, to translate the whole Latin ritual, that it might be sung throughout the whole extent of his territory; and whilst he was alive I used to celebrate mass in his church according to the Latin ritual, reading in the before mentioned language and character the words of both the preface and the Canon. (Yule, 1866, I, 202)

　　George died in 1298 fighting against Kaidu and Duwa, Kublai’s enemies. Nestorian inscriptions found in Western Mongolia, where George had his encampment 1296-1298, show that in July 1298 George used the Psalm verses in Syriac (Li Tang, 2016, 239).

CONCLUSION

　　Once Giovanni had demonstrated his moral stature at court, he converted the Alan men-at-arms—30,000 souls that moved from Greek Orthodox to Catholicism. Their minds were re-focused by staying in contact with a confessor, who opened a gate into a proper examination of conscience.

　　Pellegrino da Città di Castello OFM (1266-1322, bishop of Quanzhou since 1318) was in Cathay by order (23 July 1307) of Clement V, and chronicled the tensions between Montecorvino and the Nestorians:

I shall begin, then, with Archbishop Brother Giovanni, whose outward life was characterized by a sense of rectitude, sternness, and austerity. Concerning King George, it is a fact that Giovanni was instrumental in effecting a profound and commendable conversion in him, for previously, the king had been entangled with the Nestorians. This same monarch, in a remarkably short span of time, brought about the conversion of numerous thousands among his subjects. Had he endured, indeed, we might have ushered his entire nation and kingdom into the embrace of Christ, leading to a transformation even within the dominions of the Grand Khan.

　　According to Pellegrino, George’s insightful role within the grand khan’s court could have sparked a spiritual change throughout the Yuan dominions. However, even if George’s death had frozen the rise of Catholicism among the Yuan princes, Giovanni had preached to the Alan braves, who had found solace in this new sanctuary of belief:

There are some good Christians, called Alans, thirty thousand of who received a stipend from the Grand Khan; these people and their families turn to Friar Giovanni and he comforts them and preaches to them. (my English from Peregrino da Castello OFM, in Wyngaert, I, 366)

　　After Montecorvino’s passing, his memory was elevated to the status of a venerable soul in Yuan Beijing. Our understanding of Giovanni’s formidable sway is enriched by a Dominican missive (circa 1330) documenting his demise. The account has been attributed to the Italian Dominican, Giovanni da Cora (d. 1340), the Archbishop of Soltaniyeh:

This Brother Giovanni the Archbishop converted a multitude of people to the faith of Jesus Christ. He is a man of very honest life and pleasing to God and to the world and was highly in favor with the Emperor. The Emperor had him always and all his people supplied with all they needed, and all, Christians and pagans, loved him greatly…. That Archbishop, as it pleased God, is lately passed from this world. To his obsequies and to his burial there came a very great multitude of Christian people and pagans…These people, Christians and pagans, most devoutly took the garments of the Archbishop and kept them with great reverence and for relics. There was he buried with much honor in the fashion of faithful Christians. People still visit the place of his burial with great devotion. (Giovanni da Cora in Arnold, 1999, 80-81)

Francesco Vossilla is honorary scholar of the Academy of Arts and Design of Florence and serves as President of the Society of the Studies on Giuseppe Castiglione S.J..

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