Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/257

245 THE SOCIETY OF BROTHER TRAVELLERS. 245 no less ardour for the conversion of the nations, and the propagation of the faith through the world. This pope had the extension of the religion of Jesus Christ so much at heart, that he was continually stimulating the zeal of the friars minor, and the preachers, by the concession of fresh privileges. The monks to whom this career had been opened, threw themselves into it with a generous fervour ; and full of joy that they should have to endure fatigues and tribulations for the glory of God; and it appears, by the diploma of 1248, that the Franciscans were placed fully on a level with the Dominicans. The diploma is addressed by the Pope " to our dear brothers of the Minorite orders, in the lands of the Saracens, Pagans, Greeks, Bulgarians, Coumanians, Ethiopians, Syrians, Iberians, Alans, Ga- zares, Goths, Ziques, Rothenes, Georgians, Nubians, Nestorians, Jacobites, Armenians, Indians, Mostelites, Tartars, Hungarians of Great Hungary, Turks, and other infidel nations of the East!"* A long enumera- tion, which serves to show that the maternal solicitude of the Church extended to all known nations, and endeavoured to shed Gospel light upon the whole world. Of all the nations thus indicated the Tartars were the most powerful, for the emperor Mangou ruled from the most Eastern parts of Asia to Constantinople ; and Poland, the banks of the Danube, Bulgaria, Turkey, the principality of Antioch, in a word, the whole East, even to India, was become tributary to the Mongols. Whilst Rubruk was returning from Kara-Koroum, a certain king of Armenia, named Hayton, feeling little " Annales Mi nor urn ad Anno."
 * Fontana, " Monumenta Dominica, Ann. 12.58." Wadding,