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 522 APPENDIX (714-755) ; the "image of perfection of the five" (which M. Gueluy explains as the quintessence of absolute power) was placed in the church (a.d. 742). This emperor established a convent called the Palace of Progress, in which the monks of Ta-tsin were confounded with other ascetics. The patronage of Christianity by the succeeding emperors, Su-tsung (756-762), Tai-tsung (763-777), and Kien- chung (780-783) is then described, and the minister Izdbuzid, governor of a district in Kan-su, who was gracious to the Church although a Buddhist. After this, follows a metrical summary of the purport of the inscription, and then the date of the inscription : " This stone was erected in the second year of Kien-chung of the great Tang dynasty, in the Tso-yo of the cycle of years, in the month Tai-tsu, on the seventh day {i.e., Sundaj'], the day of the great Hosan- nas ". The Sundaj' of the Great Hosannas meant, in the language of eastern Christians, Palm Sunday ; and thus the date is precisely fixed to a.d. 781, April 8.1" The name of Ning-chu, i.e., Hanan Jesus, the Catholic patriarch of the Nestorians, is added, and the name of the scribe who drew up the document. On the left of the monument are two lines of Syriac, which run : " In the days of the father of fathers. Mar Hanan Jesus [John Joshua], Catholic patriarch ; Adam, priest and chorepiscojws and papashi of Tzinistan [China] ". There is another Syriac inscription at the foot : " In the year 1092 of the Greeks, Mar Izdbuzid, n Priest and chorepiscopos of Kumdan [that is, Si-ngan-fu], the royal city, son of Mills [Meletius] of blessed memory, priest of Balkh, city of Tokharistan, erected this tablet of stone, where is inscribed the life of our Saviour and the preaching of our fathers to the king of the Chinese ''. There follow the names of signatories in Syriac and Chinese. Hanan .Jesus was the Catholic Patriarch of the Nestorian Church from 775 to 780, as Lamy has proved from the Sj-ria^.^ historian, Elias of Nisibis. His successor Timotheus was appointed on April 11, 780, so that he was dead a year before the erection of the Chinese inscription. Thus a year had elapsed, and the news of his death had not j-et reached Si-ngan-fu from Seleucia : a fact which shows at what rate news travelled then in central Asia. Catholic Patriarch was the title of the chief of the Nestorians since the end of the 6th century ; in the 5th century the title had been simply Catholic.^- The stone of Si-ngan-fu is supposed to have been buried about a.d. 845, when "Wu-tsung issued an edict, aimed at Buddhist and other monks, enjoining the destruction of monasteries, and commanding foreigners who had come from Muhupa 13 or from Ta-tsin to cease corrupting China and return to secular life. In the following century Christianity was almost extinct in China. 8. THE LETTER OF NICETIUS TO JUSTINIAN— (P. 1.39) The extant letter of Nicetius, Bishop of Treves, to Justinian, of which Gibbon translates a passage, has been generalh' explained as referring to the Aphtharto- docetic heres}' which the emperor adopted shortlj* before the close of his reign. The meaning of the letter I must leave to theologians ; but, without venturing to intrude on subtleties which, to adopt Gibbon's phrase, must be retained in the memory rather than in the understanding, I may express my opinion that there is much force in the view of Rev. "W. H. Hutton, who argues in his Lectures on the Church in the Sixth Century (1897), that the letter does not seem to touch upon the incorruptibility of Christ's body, but to be concerned with some other heresy. I'^See Gueluy, op. cit. p. 67, 68. H His name shows his Persian origin, l-See Lamy's important explanations, p. go sqq. 13 Gaubil supposes that the Ghebers of Persia are meant.