Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/299

287 THE FOPE SENDS A MISSION TO TAItTARY. 287 thing to do with the religious systems accepted by their princes. Even though it were proved that Kublai had been baptized, as the two Vassalis asserted, we could not from that infer that he was a Christian, but merely that he had consented to add one ceremony more to those of the Tao-sse, the Buddhists, and the Literary Sect, all of which he practised indifferently. Such is the effect of the agreement which the Mongol emperors, and in our own time the sovereigns of the Mantchoo dynasty, have found means to establish between the disciples of Confucius, who worship no- thing, and the common-place idolatry of the polytheists of India and China, who worship everything. " There is but one religion," it is declared ; " but the sages of each country have varied its forms according to time and place." Whatever doubts may have existed concerning the alleged conversion of Abaga and Kublai, Pope John XXII. determined to verify a fact so important to the Church, and proposed therefore to send with the two Vassalis several missionaries to Tartary ; and though this project was retarded by his death, it was put in execution by his successor Nicholas III. This pontiff chose five monks of the Franciscan order, named Gerard de Prato, Antony of Parma, John of St. Agatha, Andre of Florence, and Matthew of Arezzo, who were to be the bearers of letters to Abaga and Kublai, and also to labour in the conversion of the Mongols. The letter remitted to Abaga by the Pope's envoys was as follows * : — " Annales Minorum," vol. v. p. 36.
 * Odor Raynald. vol. iv. arm. 1278, No. 18. p. 282. Wadding,