440 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
their number was William Rubruquis, or Ruysbroeck, the Livingstone of his age, who committed to writing a vivid account of his experiences. John of Monte Corvino ven tured as far as Pekin, then known in Europe as Cambaluc and among the Mongols as Khanbaligh, " the city of the Khan."
Merciless as they were in battle, the Mongols were toler ant in religion. This was due in part to the absence among them of any well-defined system of worship. Mangu Khan, in answer to the appeals of Rubruquis, said, " We Mongols believe that there is only one God, in whom we live and die. But as God has given to the hand different fingers, so He has given to men different ways to Himself. To you Christians he has given the Holy Scriptures ; to us, sooth sayers and diviners."
Kublai showed the same spirit when he said to Marco Polo, " There are four prophets who are worshipped by the four different tribes on the earth. Christians look upon Christ as their God, the Saracens upon Mohammed, the Jews upon Moses, and the heathen upon Sogomombar-Khan (Buddha). I esteem and honor all four and pray that He who is supreme amongst them may lend me His help." Alexander Severus perhaps did no better when he placed side by side statues of Abraham, Christ, anil Orpheus and other pagan gods. It was not till after the contact of the missionaries with the Mongols that the khans of the East adopted Buddhism, while the tribes of Persia and the West chose the rites of Islam.
In 1245 Innocent IV. despatched four Dominicans to the Mongol chief in Persia and three Franciscans to the Great Khan himself. The next effort was due to Louis IX., then engaged in his first Crusade. Ambassadors from the Mon gol chief of Tartary visited the French king at Cyprus.1 Louis returned the compliment by sending back two Do minicans in 1248, and, two years later, two Franciscans, and, in the pious hope of seeing the Tartars converted, he also sent a present of a tent embroidered with representations of
1 Joinville, Chronicle of the Crusades, Engl. trans., pp. 384 sqq., 476 sqq.
§ 76. MISSIONS AMONG THE MONGOLS. 441
Scriptural scenes and so constructed as to have the shape, when put up, of a chapel. It is from one of these two Franciscans, Rubruquis, that our first reliable information of the Mongols is drawn. He found Nestorian priests using the Syriac liturgy, which they did not understand, and joining with the Mohammedans and Buddhists in offering a blessing over the khan's cups. Rubruquis reached Karkorum and had a hospitable reception at the court of Mangu Khan. One of Mangu's secretaries was a Christian, another a Mohamme dan, the third a Buddhist. A religious disputation was held in the khan's presence. After Rubruquis had asserted that all God's commandments are contained in the Scriptures, he was asked whether he thought Mangu kept them. The mis sionary adroitly replied that " it was his desire to lay before the khan all God's commandments and then the khan would be able to judge for himself whether he kept them or not."
The Mongolian chiefs in Persia and the Christians were joint enemies of the Caliph of Egypt, and after the Mongo lian conquest of the caliphate of Bagdad, embassies were sent by the pope to Persia, and Dominican and Franciscan convents established in that land; but after their adoption of Islam in the fourteenth century, the Mongols persecuted the Christians and the convents were destroyed.
In Central Asia among the Jagatai Mongols events took the same course. At first, 1840, permission was granted to the missionaries to prosecute their work. John of Marignola preached and baptized converts. These Mongols after wards also adopted Mohammedanism and persecuted the Christians.
In the Mongol empire of China the efforts gave larger promise of fruitfulness. Nicolo and Maffei Polo l carried a request from Kublai Khan to Gregory X. for missionaries
1 Nicolo was the father of Marco Polo, Maffei was Marco's uncle. Marco was born in 1254 and went on his first journey to Asia when he was seven teen, 1271. The party went first to the island of Ormus on the Persian Gulf, at that time an important market for the exchange of goods. Of it Milton speaks : —
High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Orrnus and of Ind.