Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/171

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 149 cessfully preached to the Bactrians, the Huns, the Persians, the Indians, the Persarmeniaus, the Medes, and the Elamites ; the barbaric churches, from the gulf of Persia to the Caspian sea, were almost infinite ; and their recent faith was conspicuous in the number and sanctity of their monks and martyrs. The pepper coast of Malabar, and the isles of the ocean, Socotora and Ceylon, were peopled with an increasing multitude of Christians ; and the bishops and clergy of those sequestered regions derived their ordination from the catholic of Babylon. In a subsequent age, the zeal of the Nestorians overleaped the limits which had confined the ambition and curiosity both of the Greeks and Persians. The missionaries of Balch and Samarcand pursued without fear the footsteps of the roving Tartar, and insinuated themselves into the camps of the valleys of Imaus and the banks of the Selinga. They exposed a meta- physical creed to those illiterate shepherds ; to those sa.r-guinary warriors they recommended humanity and repose. Yet a khan, whose power they vainly magnified, is said to have received at their hands the rites of baptism, and even of ordination ; and the fame of Pre.sfer or Presbi/ier John ^^'^ has long amused the credulity of Europe. The royal convert was indulged in the use of a portable altar ; but he dispatched an embassy to the patriarch, to inquire how, in the season of Lent, he should abstain from animal food, and how he might celebrate the FAicharist in a desert that produced neither corn nor wine. In their progress by sea and land, the Nestorians entered China by the port of Canton and the northern residence of Sigan. [si-nganfu] Unlike the senators of Rome, who assumed with a smile the characters of priests and augurs, the mandarins, who affect in public the reason of philosophers, are devoted in private to every mjde of popular si'perstition. The}^ cherished and they scriptures (I. ii. p. 13S). But the nonsense of the monk is mingled with the practical knowledge of the traveller, who performed his voyage A. i). 522, and published his book at Alexandria, a.d. 547 (1. ii. p. 140, 141. Monlfaucon, Prcefat. c. 2). [Cosmas had sailed in the " Persian " and ''Arabic " Gulfs, but this voyage to Taprobane was performed by his friend Sopater. It is not certain that Cosmas visited it himself.] The Nestorianism of Cosmas, unknown to his learned editor, was detected by La Croze (Christianisme des Indes, torn. i. p. 40-55), and is confirmed by Assemanni (Bibliot. Orient, torn. iv. p. 605, 606). [On Cosmas, his theory and his voyages, cp. Mr. C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern (jeography, p. 190 s,j,j. and 273 .wyy. j '^0 In its long progress to Mosul, Jerusalem, Rome, &c. the story of Prester John evaporated in a monstrous fable, of which some features have been borrowed from the Lama of Thibet (Hist. G<^nealogique des Tartares, p. ii. p. .^2 ; Hist, de Gengiscan, p. 31, ixc), and were ignorantly transferred by the Portuguese to the emperor of Abyssinia (Ludolph. Hist. .-Ethiop. Comment. 1. ii. c. i). Yet it is probable that in the xith and .xiith centuries Nestorian Christianity was pro-