Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/387

375 APOSTASY OF KHARBENDE. 375 tian of remarkable piety, and publicly performed her religious duties in a chapel which she had had built in her palace. As long as his mother lived, Kharbende showed himself a faithful and fervent Christian ; but, after her death, he contracted a friendship with several Mussulmans, participated in their religious observances, and ended by declaring himself a follower of Mahomet. The apostasy of Kharbende was a terrible blow to the Christians ; and the courtiers, a class of people who at all times and in all countries are rather inspired by the sentiments of their master than by their own con- science and duty, immediately declared themselves the enemies of the Christians also. Three sincerely pious men, who wished to remain faithful to their religion, were loaded with abuse, and cruelly persecuted, and this event proved disastrous to the Christians of Western Tartary. Reckoning from the fourteenth century and the apostasy of Kharbende, we shall see the Tartar princes showing themselves less and less favourable to Christianity, and the faith continuing to decline in the kingdom of Persia. The Lord in his goodness, however, always gives some consolation with every sorrow ; and, as if to soften the grief occasioned to Christians by the apostasy of the Khan of the Western Tartars, He made use of a Tartar, namely, Jaballaha, patriarch of the Nestorians, to bring back these wandering children into the pale of the church. Jaballaha, having been converted by mis- sionaries of the order of St. Dominic, joined the Ro- man church, and sent in 1304 to Pope Benedict XL a letter of submission, in which he makes profession of the Catholic faith, and acknowledges the sovereign pon- B B 4