Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/121

109 NESTORIANISM OF PliESTEB JOHN. 109 prelate, " a prince named John, who dwelt beyond Persia and Armenia, at the extremity of the East, professing, along with his people, Nestorianism, and uniting in himself the characters of sovereign and priest, came and waged war against Media and Persia, and having seized upon Ecbatana cut the armies of his enemies to pieces." Jacques de Vitry expresses himself thus*: — "The Nestorians have mortally infected the greater part of the East with their doctrine, and especially the empire of the very puissant Prince, vulgarly called Priest or Prester John." Finally, Matthew Paris reports the receipt, in 1237, of a letter from Brother Philip, prior of the Dominicans in Palestine, which declares Nestorianism to be pre- dominant in India, the kingdom of Prester John f, and the most distant States of the East. From all these documents it may certainly be in- ferred that Prester John was a real person, in whom European Christendom was powerfully interested. He was, it seems, a potent prince of Upper Asia, professing, with his subjects, the Nestorianism which for a long time was actively propagated in those countries ; and all these facts are placed beyond doubt by the testi- mony of history and the most authentic narrative of travellers. At the period when the West began to hear for the first time of this pontiff king, Upper Asia had undoubtedly witnessed numerous conversions to Chris- tianity. In the first year of the eleventh century, a ■J* Per regnum sacerdotis Joannis. (Mathieu Paris, Hist. p. 410.)
 * Hist. Hierosl., 1.1. c. Ixxvi.