Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/172

 150 THE DECLINE AND FALL The Chris- tians of St. Thomas in India. A.D. confouTided the gods of Palestine and of India ; but the pro- pagation of Christianity awakened the jealousy of the state, and, after a short vicissitude of favour and persecution, the foreign sect expired in ignorance and oblivion.^-^ Under the reign of the caliphs, the Nestorian church was diffused from China to Jerusalem and Cyprus ; and their numbers, with those of the Jacobites, were computed to surpass the Greek and Latin communions. 1-" Twenty-five metropolitans or archbishops composed their hierarchy, but several of these were dispensed, by the distance and danger of the way, from the duty of personal attendance, on the easy condition that every six years they should testify their faith and obedience to the catholic or patriarch of Babylon : a vague appellation, which has been suc- cessively applied to the royal seats of Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and Bagdad. These remote branches are long since withered, and the old patriarchal trunk ^'^'-^ is now divided by the Elijahs of Mosul, the representatives, almost in lineal descent, of the genuine and primitive succession, the Josephs of Amida, who are reconciled to the church of Rome,^^* and the Simeons of Van or Ormia, whose revolt, at the head of forty thousand families, was promoted in the sixteenth century by the Sophis of Persia. The number of three hundred thousand is allowed for the whole body of the Nestorians, who, under the name of Chaldaeans or Assyrians, are confounded with the most learned or the most powerful nation of Eastern antiquity. According to the legend of antiquity, the gospel was preached in India by St. Thomas. i'-'' At the end of the ninth century, fessed in the horde of the Keraites (d'Herbelot, p. 256, 915, 959. Assemanni, torn, iv. p. 468-504). '-iThe Christianity of China, between the seventh and the thirteenth century, is invincibly proved by the consent of Cliinese, Arabian, Syriac, and Latin evidence (Assemanni, Biblioth. Orient, torn. iv. p. 502-552. M^m. de I'Acad^mie des Inscript. torn. xxx. p. 802-819). The inscription of Siganfu, which describes the fortunes of the Nestorian church, from the first mission, A.D. 636, to the current year 781, is accused of forgery by La Croze, Voltaire, &c. who become the duprs of their own cunning, while they are afraid of a Jesuitical fraud. [See Appendix 7.] 1-- Jacobitas et Nestoriani plures quani Graeci et Latini. Jacob a Vitriaco, Hist. Hierosol. 1. ii. c. 76, p. 1093, in the Gesta Dei per Francos. The numbers are given by Thomassin, Discipline de I'Eglise, tom. i. p. 172. 1^ The division of the patriarchate may be traced in the Bibliotheca Orient, of Assemanni, tom. i. p. 523-549 ; tom. ii. p. 457, &c.; tom. iii. p. 603, p. 621-623 ; tom. iv. p. 164-169, p. 423, p. 622-629, &c. 1-"* The pompous language of Rome, on the submission of a Nestorian patriarch, is elegantly represented in the viith book of Fra-Paolo : Babylon, Nineveh, Arbela, and the trophies of Alexander, Tauris and Ecbatana, the Tigris and Indus. '■-•'The Indian missionary St. Thomas, an apostle, a Manichasan, or an Armenian merchant (La Croze, Christianisme des Indes. tom. i. p. 57-70), was famous, however, as early as the time of Jerom (ad Marcellam, epist. 148 [59, ed. Migne, P.L. vol. 22]). Marco Polo was informed on the spot that he suffered