Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/411

399 APOSTASY AND MARTYRDOM OF STEPHEN. 399 of the religion of the Koran. This Mussulman festival corresponded precisely in that year 1334 with Good Friday, and whilst the Christians in their churches were listening to the mournful story of the Saviour's pas- sion, one of their missionaries was denying Jesus Christ amidst the applause of the infidels. The Kadi himself took from the person of the apostate Franciscan his religious dress, which he trampled under his feet with contempt and derision ; they then clothed him in a scarlet robe, encircled his head with a beautiful turban enriched with jewels, and put a mantle of state, mag- nificently embroidered with gold, on his shoulders. The report was immediately spread in every quarter of Serai that the high priest of the Christians had just been converted to Mahomet ; there was soon an im- mense crowd in the environs of the mosque, and the chiefs of the Mahometan religion did not fail to take advantage of the general emotion, to organise a solemn procession, and celebrate by public rejoicings this happy event. The apostate missionary was pompously paraded through the city, amidst the acclamations of the vo- taries of Mahomet. He advanced, surrounded by the principal inhabitants, mounted on a horse richly capa- risoned, and preceded by numerous banners adorned with the crescent, above which was seen the religious habit of the Franciscan, carried at the end of a long pike in sign of triumph. The procession thus traversed the city in great pomp, with sound of the trumpet, to the joy of the Mahometans, but to the utter confusion of the Catholics, and above all of the priests, who, with tears in their eyes and hearts broken with grief, fled, hiding their faces, from that crowd intoxicated with