Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/328

316 316 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. contempt of the infidels. In the city of Bagdad every Christian who dared to appear in public was sure to be loaded with insults and outrages. The bodies of the Nestorian patriarchs, Machika and Denha, which were buried in the temple called Duidari, were exhumed, and their limbs cast out on the public road to the profanation of the multitude. Contemporary authors cannot relate, without horror, the atrocities which were committed at that time against the Christians, in the cities of Arbela, Tauris, Mosoul, and Bagdad. The persecution lasted till 1298, when the Christians were on a sudden re- stored to tranquillity. Gazan had married a daughter of the King of Ar- menia, a Christian princess, distinguished, it is said, by great piety and extraordinary beauty. She gave birth, however, to a child repulsively ugly and deformed, " more like a little monster than a human being." Gazan tenderly loved his wife, but was ashamed and shocked at having a son so hideous ; and his courtiers (most of them Mussulmans) thought they had now found a favourable opportunity of ruining the princess, who, as a devout Christian, and full of zeal for the propagation of her faith, was highly objectionable to them. They held a council, therefore, and declared that the child just born must necessarily be the offspring of adultery, and both mother and child were consequently condemned to be burned alive. The pile was prepared, and the victims led to torture, in the midst of an immense con- course of people, amongst whom very contradictory feelings were manifested ; for this tragic event, which was the triumph of the Mussulmans, had plunged the Christians into sorrow and dejection. The pile being on fire, crackled and blazed in all directions, awaiting its