entrusted with the selection of certain brethren of his order to go upon this distant and dangerous mission, and four missionaries were selectedAnselm, of Lombardy; Simon, of Saint Quentin; Alberic and Alexander, who were to go into Persia; whilst four Franciscans-Benoit, of Poland; Laurent, of Portugal; and Jean, of Plan Carpin, were deputed to Tartary.

He

Such was the origin of the first Romanist missions to China and Tartary. They had been long preceded, as we have seen, by those of the Greek, or orthodox Church, and by those of the Nestorians from the East: they were instituted to protect the western nations from the irruptions of barbarians, and the men selected for this task belonged to two brotherhoods, at that time no less distinguished by their learning and their zeal than they were for their powers of endurance. The first mission was so far successful that the monks received no ill treatment. They were present at the election of Couyouk (Kuyuk), which was attended by ambassadors from almost all the sovereigns and potentates of Asia. The successors of Tchinguiz Khan had at that time no settled form of worship, and they therefore tolerated all alike. Tourakina, the mother of the great khan, was, however, a Christian. It was not till the time of Khoubilai that they adopted Buddhism, and imposed that faith upon their subjects. The missionaries returned in safety, after undergoing great fatigues and privations, with a letter to the Pope, in which Couyouk styled himself khan by the grace of God, and emperor of all men. made war, he said, against the people of the West because they had not obeyed God and Tehinguiz Khan, and had killed the Tartar ambassadors. "You people of the West," he added, "you say you worship God; you believe yourselves to be the only Christians, and you despise all others. But how do you know to whom he deigns to confer his grace? We worship God, and it is by his strength and power that we shall destroy all nations from the east to the west. If man had not the strength of God, what could men do?" Jean Carpin was sixty-five years of age when he undertook this perilous embassy, and he was afflicted with such a heavy corpulence that he died of his fatigues and privations shortly after his return, after having been appointed Bishop of Antivari, in Dalmatia. As to the Franciscans, who were deputed at the same time, they only got as far as the camp of Baidjou, in Persia. This rough soldier treated them with the utmost contempt, and after three several times resolving upon their death, and contemplating sending back their stuffed skins to the Pope, he dismissed them with two emissaries, who met with a very different treatment at the hands of the Christians.

The Crusaders had the effect of making the Tartars, who heard of their military prowess, more respectful to the nations of the West. They even sent an embassy to Saint Louis, when he was at Cyprus, on his way to Egypt. These ambassadors declared that Couyouk had been baptised by a bishop named Malasias, who we must suppose was a Nestorian. Iltchikidai, who had succeeded to Baidjou as lieutenant of the khan, said in his letter that there was no distinction between Latin, Greek, Armenian, Nestorian, and Jacobite, and he begged that Louis would treat them all alike with the same clemency. The names of the pretended ambassadors were David and Mark, and it is manifest that they came in the interest solely of the Christians of the East, or, as M. Huc speaks of

churches, every one of them older than that of Rome, "the invitation given to the king of France to make no distinction between the Roman Catholics and the heretics, or oriental schismatics, had much more the appearance of coming from those schismatics themselves than from a general who, even supposing him to be converted, could not be very familiar with the dissensions which afflicted the Church, or at all events could not be much interested in them." This, however, is begging the question, because the Tartars, who had been long located on the frontiers of Persia, were in the very heart of the Armenian, Nestorian, and Jacobite schisms; they knew that the Syrians were of the so-called Greek Church, and they would no doubt have heard that the new combatants for the Cross designated themselves Latins.

Saint Louis deputed a mission of three Dominicans, André de Lonjumel, Jean de Carcassone, and Guillaume, charged with a tent, richly decorated as a chapel, a piece of the true Cross, and letters which, M. Huc says, must "à coup sûr étonner un peu la cour de Kharacorum." The missionaries, starting from Antioch, took a whole year to reach the court of the grand khan. Couyouk was dead, but they were well received by the regent Ogoul and her son, and they accepted the presents sent to them as a testimony of the submission of Louis XI. to the authority of the khan. The missionaries were then dismissed with a letter, in which the Tartar chief claimed an annual tribute of gold and silver from the French king, under pain, in case of neglect, of putting him and his to the sword, as he had done many other monarchs. Louis was naturally much disgusted at the result of his mission, and Joinville says, "que il se repenti fort quant il y envoia." The monks returned with an extraordinary legend, which has been repeated by Raynald and others, of a Tartar chief who had been converted by a Divine majesty, seen seated on a mountain by the side of a queen. Mosheim having criticised the monkish legend, on the grounds that Jesus did not constitute his mother queen of heaven, M. Huc remarks in favour of the legend that the good monks could not have foreseen at the beginning of the thirteenth century that Luther would come three centuries afterwards to reform the celestial hierarchy. But to this it might be again answered that Luther did not reform the New Testament, which says nothing of a queen of heaven, nor was Mary admitted as such by the primitive churches in the East, or has the Virgin been so exalted by the Nestorians, whilst the Roman Catholics have gone on, with one addition after another to the simplicity of the Scriptures, until they have arrived at the dogma of the "Immacu late Conception."

Louis was not, however, discouraged by the results of the first mission to Tartary. Satisfactory information had been obtained of the existence of many Christians in Higher Asia. The mother of the new khan, Mangou, was a Christian, as the mother of Couyouk had been, and a prince of the name of Sartak, who ruled between the Don and the Volga, had acquired quite a reputation for his sanctity. A new mission was organised, and of the two Franciscans engaged, one Guillaume de Rubruk, a native of Brabant, has acquired European celebrity under the name of Rubruquis, by the interesting account which he has given of the tribulations and dangers which they experienced in their travels, of the camp of Sartak, of the Christians at the court of Batou, of the manners of the

Tartars, of the audience given to them at the imperial court of the grand khan Mangou, of the little-known city of Kara Korum, and of a solemn discussion that took place between the Mussulmans, the Buddhists, and the Christians. Rubruquis was a candid, straightforward missionary. The Tartars did not make a favourable impression upon him. "These ," he said, "are so proud and haughty that they think that the whole world should implore their favour, and truly, if it was permitted to my profession, knowing them to be such as I do, I should strongly counsel that a war of extermination should be carried on against them." It is well deserving of being placed on record that the worthy monk found a church surmounted by a cross, with a magnificent altar, served by an Armenian priest, close to the imperial palace.

Plenty of materials, as M. Huc has satisfactorily shown in his present great work, exist to chronicle the labours of the Dominicans and the Franciscans in China and Tartary; but few or none remain to record the influence of the Nestorian, Armenian, and Greek Churches with which the Tartars were most thrown in contact during their long occupation of the countries where those faiths were professed, more especially in their almost permanent tenure of Crim Tartary, and in countries bordering on the Caspian. Even in the time of Rubruquis, an Armenian king was at the court of the grand khan, a record of which visit, preserved by a monkish descendant of the said king, was translated into French by a monk of Saint Bertin, in St. Omer, in 1351, and was afterwards published in Gothic characters in 1529, in the "Hystoire Merveilleuse du Grant Caan."

This same Armenian king, called Hayton, asked the grand khan to send an army to the Holy Land, to conquer and restore it to the Christians; and Mangou, after having received the sacrament of baptism, deputed Houlagou to the conquest of Western Asia, while Koubilai was sent to China. Such, we are assured, was the origin, or the pretexts, for the carrying out of that terrible campaign which shook the khalifat to its foundations, and established a new Tartar empire in the East.

The march of Houlagou was one series of victories and exterminations. The first who fell before him were the renowned Haschischin, the killers of kings, who had attempted the lives of St. Louis and of our Edward I., and from whom we derive the ominous word, assassin. The Christians alone found favour in the eyes of the Tartar conqueror; his wife, Dhogouz Khatun, was a Christian, and Armenians, Georgians, and Syrians had their oratories in the Tartar camp. The Christians of the East were indeed delighted with the spectacle of the ruin and devastation of the city of the Khalifs. The Nestorians of Baghdad were spared, and Houlagou gave to their patriarch, Machicha, one of the palaces of the khalifs, situate on the banks of the Tigris.

At this crisis the Latin Church took the most impolitic line of conduct that it was possible to do. M. Huc himself cannot defend his party. Not only were all the Christian nations and churches who had joined the Tartars treated as deserters from the cause of Christianity, but the Pope actually urged the Prussians and Livonians to enter upon a crusade against the Tartars and their accomplices, by which was meant the Russians. It is difficult in the present day to estimate what a de

plorable effect this obstinate antagonism of the Churches of the East and of the West, at such a crisis, may have had in preventing the christianising of almost all Asia. Alexander IV. could not send the thousand balistaires that were asked of him to sustain the antagonism which he had advocated, but he promised a concession of indulgences. One of the first untoward results of this policy was the martyrdom of a pious colony of forty-five Dominicans, at Sandomir-a martyrdom which, the "Monumenta Dominicana" relate, was announced to the poor monks the previous evening in letters of gold-and the destruction, at the foot of the altar, of an aged Hungarian prince, who had long since adopted the habit of the same brotherhood, and become a most pious and zealous missionary. The death of Mangou having necessitated the return of Houlagou to his own country, he left his general, Kitou Boga, who was well affected towards the Christians, to restore to them the Holy Land. Unfortunately, the schism between the Latin and the Oriental Churches defeated these good objects; the Franks of Sidon quarrelled with the Tartars, and even killed the nephew of the lieutenant of the empire. The general of the Mongols having heard of this mischance, he took Sidon from the Christians by assault, and from that time there was overt war between the Tartars and the Christians of the West.

We have dwelt the more upon this point, because it is in reality the most novel, in an historical point of view, in M. Hue's first two volumes. The relation of the Tartars at the time of their renowned invasions of Western Asia with the native Christians, and the hostility they met with at the hands of the Latin crusaders, has never yet been made sufficiently manifest.

Koubilai, who usurped the throne of Houlagou, extended his conquests in China and Thibet; and Houlagou, left by this usurpation to his own resources, and defeated in Egypt, sought for a time the amity of the Francs. The reconciliation was still further cemented by the marriage of Mary, a natural daughter of Paleologus, with Abaga, the successor of Houlagou. Frequent communications now took place between the Tartars and the Christians of the West; their ambassadors even reached this country, and were well received by Edward I.; but these missions had no result. The passion for crusading was waning out, and the Tartars were divided into two nations, those of High Asia and those of Western Asia, and were therefore no longer so powerful as of yore. When they did act, they did not do so in concert: a fatal expedition was undertaken to Tunis, where the Tartars could not co-operate, and there was only our Edward, who went directly to the Holy Land, but too late to check the rising power of the Turks.

Koubilai made Peking the seat of his empire, and the Nestorians had a metropolitan church there, under the patriarch of Seleucia. The Pope, Nicholas III., not only deputed missions at the same time to China, but also appointed a bishop. The progress of the Latins was, however, then, what it has been ever since-moments of favouritism alternating with periods of persecution, intervals of peaceful, learned, and laborious proselytism, succeeded by fierce and sanguinary onslaughts. The successor of Koubilai, Tagoudar, became a Mussulman, under the name of Ahmed, and he put to death a great number of Franciscans with atrocious cruelty. Argoun, on the contrary, protected the Latins, the Franciscans enjoy

ing, during his sovereignty, greater liberty than they have ever since; and if they did not succeed in establishing themselves on a firmer footing, it was, M. Huc argues, in great part owing to the hostility of the Nestorians, whose patriarch was at that time a Mongolian. The chief of the missionaries deputed at this epoch by the general of the Franciscans was Jean de Monte Corvino, who became celebrated throughout the East, and died Archbishop of Peking.

But the successors of Argoun were by no means so favourably disposed to the preachers of the Gospel as that monarch had been. Gaikhatou was a fanatic Mussulman; Baidou was more conciliatory, but weak; Gazan persecuted them even to death; but he was converted by a miracle, in which M. Huc places full faith. He had wedded an Armenian princess of exceeding beauty, who bore him a child of equally remarkable ugliness. The Mussulmans persuaded the king that it was the child of adultery. Mother and child were accordingly condemned to the flames. The only request that the unfortunate princess made was, that the child should be baptised first. But the moment the holy water was sprinkled on the infant a marvellous change took place, and ravishing beauty succeeded to a repulsive deformity. Gazan, it is related, converted by this miracle, became as zealous a friend to Christianity as he had before been an

enemy.

That most remarkable period in the history of the Tartar dynasty in China, under Koubilai Khan, when the Latin missionaries first met with favour, when Jean de Monte Corvino was archbishop at Peking, with seven bishops in his retinue, and Oderic de Frioul was deputed with the bones of four martyrs, has been preserved to us in the narrative of Marco Polo. But with the advent of Tamerlan, Christianity was, for the time being, utterly extinguished in China. The few missionaries who survived the general massacre deputed the English monk Royer and Ambroise of Sienna to induce the Pope to give them aid, and they are said to have obtained the assistance of twenty-four Franciscans, but nothing is known of their proceedings. The communications that had formerly existed between Europe and the remoter parts of Asia were for a time being almost entirely put an end to by the universal disorganisation that followed upon the devastations of Tamerlan, and the overthrow of the Mongolian dynasty in China.

The discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, and the advent of the Portuguese in Asia, constituted a new epoch in the history of Christianity in China. The establishment of Macao became the point from whence religious propagandism gradually diffused itself into the interior. It was not, however, till after many failures and reverses that it did so, and it was at Tchao-King that permission was first obtained to build a house and erect a church. François Xavier perished without even penetrating into the interior; that honour is attributed to Gaspard de la Croix, who was followed by the Fathers Roger and Matthieu Ricci, and a footing was obtained in the province of Kouang-si.

The success of the Latin missionaries was at the onset of a very dubious nature. The first convert they obtained was an outcast, dying on the wayside from a loathsome and incurable disease, and who signified his adhesion to the faith of those who had pity on him, and who harboured and tendered him in his last moments. Another, one Martin, was an