Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/398

386 386 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. ginning of the fourteenth century, after having given proof, in Italy, of his apostolic zeal, he was appointed, according to his own desire, to foreign missions. He went to the East, where the Armenians, Persians, and Tartars immediately profited by his preaching, and as- sisted by several missionaries of the same order, he suc- cessfully encountered the superstitious pagans, cast down the idols of the nations, raised altars to the true God, and purified, in the waters of baptism, many thousands of new disciples of Jesus Christ. The greater number of these conversions were wrought in Persia, and par- ticularly at Soultaniye, where the Catholic religion speedily began to nourish, and the Christians there mul- tiplied so rapidly, that they had twenty-five churches, amongst which that of the Dominicans was renowned for its beauty.* As the indefatigable zeal of the Franciscan John de Monte Corvine had prepared the erection of the metro- politan see of Khanbalik in China, so that of the Domi- nican Franco de Perouse effected that of the archiepis- copal see of Soultaniye, in Persia. Franco had sent Guillaume Adam, a French Dominican, into Europe, to inform the sovereign pontiff of the state of that mis- sion, and to ask for auxiliaries. Fie doubted not that if the number of the evangelical labourers were in- creased, new nations would obey the impulse already given to the inhabitants of Soultaniye ; and the Pope John XXII. was of the same opinion. In order to consolidate religion in Persia, he ad- served as an arsenal ,in 1G96, according to a missionary Jesuit who passed through Soultaniye at that time.
 * Fontana, "Monumenta Dominican.!, Ann. 1347." This churcli