Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/320

308 308 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. ten years in those distant regions. These indefatigable apostles had traversed the whole of the countries subject to the Mongol power ; they had seen, face to face, those Tartar Khans whose names, exploits, and atrocities filled the world ; and they had preached the Gospel to those innumerable populations whom the fury of war had collected from every point of the far East, to mingle them together and crush them in its frightful struggles. The testimony of these priests, of these " travellers for Jesus Christ," as they were then called, " peregrinantium propter Christum" was in the highest degree interesting, and their narration could not but excite, both at Rome and everywhere else, the most lively curiosity. They, in general, bore witness to the sincerity of the envoys of Argoun, confirmed their reports, and gave assurance that the chiefs of the Tartars were favourably inclined with respect to the Christians, and desirous of receiving the Gospel. They expressed, above all, their admiration and gra- titude for the signal services which had been rendered them by a noble Pisan named Jole, or Julio, who having been long settled in Tartary, had gained immense riches and great authority amongst the Mongols. His powerful protection had often come to their aid amidst the difficulties and embarrassments of their painful mis- sion. The chief of this phalanx of Franciscan missionaries was John de Monte Corvino, a priest of singular piety, great learning, and indefatigable zeal for the propaga- tion of the faith ; who had already made himself famous all through the East by his eminent qualities. Born in 1247, in a village at a short distance from Sa- lerno, called Monte Corvino, he had assumed, according