Episodit
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This is the last of a dozen episodes on Rabban Sauma.Having met with all the dignitaries his embassy on Arghunâs behalf required, Sauma was anxious to return home. The delay caused by the Roman Cardinals failure to appoint a new Pope had lengthened his stay beyond what heâd anticipated. Although no record of it is given, Arghun may have urged Sauma to return by a specific date. So he packed up and started the journey back to Persia. It was April 1288.And remember, accompanying him was the French king Philipâs ambassador who bore a personal letter from the King to Arghun. The one Sauma carried was an official correspondence.His route was the same as the one he took West. The only change was his trip to Veroli SW of Rome. The Cathedral of St. Andrew was an attraction he decided to include on his way home. It wasnât much of a detour. Whatâs interesting about his stay in Veroli was his inclusion with several Roman church officials in the issuing of indulgences. These indulgences, usually issued in the Name of Christ, were rendered under the auspices of God the Father, indicating a nod on the part of the Catholics to The Rabbanâs Nestorian emphasis. The Vatican museum has some of these indulgences granted by Sauma. They bear his seal showing a figure with a halo, left hand on chest and right holding a star. It bears the text, âBar SaumaâTartarâFrom the Orientâ Tartar being the common word of Europeans for the Mongols.After Veroli, Sauma took ship and arrived back in Persia in Sept; a journey of five months. He was immediately ushered into the Ilkhanâs presence. He handed off the various gifts and correspondences heâd been given to pass along to Arghun. He then gave his report, a full account of his time in the West.Arghun was pleased that the kings of England and France were on board for an alliance against the Mamluks. Though the Pope hadnât pledged to the alliance, heâd made clear his desire for closer relations. Stoked at that prospect, Arghun looked with great favor on the Rabban. He expressed his dismay at the hardships Sauma had endured on his journey and promised to take care of him for the rest of his life. He pledged to build the Rabban a church near the palace where he could retire to a life of quiet service of God. Sauma asked that Arghun send for his old friend Mar Yaballaha, head of the Nestorian Church, to come to court to receive the gifts and letters Western leaders had sent him. While there, he could consecrate the land for the new church. The summons was duly sent.Arghun had a special tent-church constructed in anticipation of Mar Yaballahaâs arrival. When the Catholicos did, a three-day banquet was thrown with Arghun himself serving both Sauma and the Nestorian Patriarch. He commanded the people of his realm to offer regular prayers for the health of both the Rabban and Catholicos. The favor he showered on the Nestorians led to a greater boldness on their part across Persia. In 1289, Arghun appointed a Jewish physician as his vizier or prime minister and turned over a good part of the governance of the realm to his capable leadership. With both Christianity and Judaism on the rise, unease among Muslims began to roil.Arghun remained hopeful of the alliance with the West against the Mamluks. He sent a letter by way of a Genoese merchant to Kings Edward & Philip, calling for them to make good on their promise of joining in a campaign to remove the Muslims from the Holy Land. He told them the Mongols would be attacking Damascus in January 1291. They were to attack the Mamluk headquarters in Egypt. Theyâd then meet in Jerusalem, where Arghun would help them conquer the City, and once secured, turn it over to Europeans control. Both Philip & Edward replied. While Philipâs letter is lost to us, Edwardâs remains. He commended the Ilkhan for his zeal in wanting to rid the infidels from the Holy Land, but England wasnât able to mount a Crusade apart from Papal blessing, which Edward encouraged Arghun to secure. But the Pope had made it clear; no such Crusade was in the offing. Gauging the political winds, Pope Nicholas sensed the monarchs of Europe were pretty much Crusaded out.Arghunâs campaign against Damascus never materialized, and not because of the failure to gain western support. In the Spring of 1290, the Mongol Golden Horde to his north began a series of raids into Persian territory. When a rebellion broke out in the important city of Khurasan at his eastern border, it meant any movement West toward the Mamluks was out of the question. A half year later, he became gravely ill and died in March of 1291. Subsequent Ilkhans gave up attempts at an alliance with the West against the Mamluks. Though Ghazan converted to Islam, he attacked Syria and was able to hand the Mamluks a temporary defeat. Not able to hold the territory, when the Mongols retreated, the Mamluks returned. They were never able to defeat the Mamluks after that.As for the Europeans, while Edward & Philip were up for a Crusade, the Pope wouldnât sanction one. The monarchs might have pressed the issue had it not been for their issues at home. This was a time when Europe was fractured and disunited. Their inability to take advantage of the alliance Arghun offered meant the Mamluks were eventually able to conquer the last Outremer fortresses in Tripoli, then Acre.When Arghun died, Saumaâs promised church next to the palace hadnât been built. The new Ilkhan wasnât interested in the project, but at Saumaâs urging, he provided funds and permission for a new church to be built in the Nestorian headquarters in Maragha, next to Mar Yaballahaâs house. It took three yrs to construct the elaborate structure, which became the home for the many artifacts and relics the Rabban had collected on his travels. Now in his mid and late 60âs, Sauma settled into the life heâd lived years before as a young man; one of quiet study and personal ministry to everyday followers of Christ. He reports that this was the happiest and most fulfilling time of his long and eventful life.His health failing, Sauma was determined to see his good friend Marcos whoâd become the Nestorian Patriarch under the name Mar Yaballaha, one last time. Though Marcosâ residence was in Maragha where Saumaâs church was, the headquarters of the Nestorian church was in Baghdad, so the Patriarch spent a good amount of his time there. Sauma made the journey there, the last of his many travels. After an emotional meeting between the two friends whoâd shared such amazing adventures and accomplished so much, Saumaâs body, wracked by intense pain, finally gave out. In was January of 1294.Mar Yaballaha was inconsolable. He wept profusely for three straight days. That was followed by a melancholy that took months to dissipate. Then the Nestorian Catholicos engaged in a series of correspondences with the Roman Popes, following up on the lines of communication forged by Sauma.But the goodwill toward the Church launched from Arghunâs appreciation for Saumaâs embassy to the West, began to wither with the Ilkhan Ghasanâs conversion to Islam. When Mar Yaballaha died in 1317, Christianity was on the decline across Persia and Central Asia. It would never recover. The glory days of The Church of the East were now in the past, being covered by a thick dust of obscurity.Saumaâs records were discovered among his papers following his death but were lost after being translated by a Syrian scribe some 20 yrs later. THAT account, as weâve already suggested, was most likely highly abbreviate, focusing almost entirely on the religious aspects of Saumaâs adventures, specifically the many relics he viewed. The additional information in the Syrian translation comes off as little more than a setting of context for the religious narrative. Saumaâs diplomatic activities are presented as an afterthought. But, in light of Saumaâs ground-breaking and boundary-smashing embassy to the West, surely he took pains to document more than the finger and shin bones of dead saints.The Syrian translator does include Saumaâs journals of the years he spent in Persia after his return from Europe. He even goes on to recount the persecution of Christians that took place after Saumaâs death when Ghazan became Ilkhan. The translator admitted, âit was not our intention to relate and set out in order all the unimportant things which Rabban Sauma did and saw, we have abridged very much of what he wrote, . . . and even the things which are mentioned here have been abridged, or amplified, according to necessity.â That necessity being the translatorâs interest in the religious, rather than political, aspects of Saumaâs quest.And that may account for why Rabban Sauma has been largely overlooked by popular history. His political impact wasnât recognized, subsumed as it was under the editorial bias of his early chronicler. Excised as well from his report were his observations of life in Western Europe, what would have been a tremendous boon to historians researching this period.In conclusion, while Rabban Sauma never returned to China and the court of Khubilai Khan to complete his adventure, he did accomplish most of what heâd set out to do. His original ambition, encouraged by his friendship with the young Marcos, was a religious pilgrimage to the headquarters of the Nestorian Church in Baghdad and the centers of Western Christianity. His dream of visiting Jerusalem birthplace of The Faith went unrealized because of the Mamluk domination of Palestine.Sauma as a genuine scholar who did more than read books. He went to the places they wrote about. He was a gifted linguist, a skilled theologian, an effective diplomat. He must have been an imminently likable fellow who got along with everyone. All who met him embraced him quickly and sought to include him as an ally. His immense wisdom was repeatedly demonstrated in his skill at avoiding subjects sure to arouse the ire of his hosts.Finally, letâs briefly recap his accomplishments.He began as a scholar-monk in the storied Church of the East. His life of quiet study in a tiny house in the mountains of China was interrupted by a teenager named Marcos whoâd made Bar Sauma his hero. They became inseparable friends. Marcosâ itch to visit the places he and Sauma read about eventually infected Sauma with the same hunger. They appeared before the Great Khan Khubilai, asking permission to head West on a heretofore unheard pilgrimage to the birthplaces of their Nestorian Church and the Christian Faith. Khubilai not only permitted them, he endorsed them as envoys of his court to his Mongol allies in Persia, the Ilkhans.The journey West crossed some of the most inhospitable territories on the Planet. They encountered a mind-numbing plethora of different cultures, languages, customs & foods. When they arrived in Persia, the corrupt Patriarch of their church tried to turn them into political pawns. They adroitly side-stepped his shenanigans. Then, when he died, Sauma helped to have his friend Marcos elected as the new Patriarch, the Nestorian Catholicos known to history as Mar Yaballaha.After several years in Persia, the Mongol Ilkhan consented to allow Sauma to continue his trek West to visit the centers of European Christianity. He charged him with an additional task; being his official envoy asking for Christian Europe to mount another of the Crusades theyâd staged over the previous couple centuries, to clear the Middle East of the Muslim Mamluks. Sauma then embarked on his second great journey, from Persia to Constantinople where he met the Emperor and Eastern Patriarch, then on to Rome where he met the dozen Cardinals meeting to select a new Pope. When they were unable to, he headed to Paris where he met with King Philip, then to Bordeaux to meet the English King Edward. Securing promises of an alliance with the Persian Mongols against the Mamluks, Sauma headed back to Rome where he met with the newly installed Pope Nicholas IV and helped serve the Easter celebrations.When the Pope proved evasive in pledging support for a new crusade, Sauma headed back to Persia where he was welcomed by a grateful Ilkhan.Every student in Western schools learns of the famous Marco Polo. Almost any account of the Age of Discovery that helped lift the Medieval world out of its moribundosity lists the adventures and of Marco Polo as one of its premier causes. His chronicle, written down by a fellow prisoner, became a best-seller in Europe and helped whet the appetite of Europeans for the exotic riches of the Far East. Rabban Sauma, who lived at about the same time, has been overlooked in the popular telling of history. Yet his travels and accomplishments far surpass those of Polo.If only that Syrian translator had translated ALL Saumaâs journals! If only . . .
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This is the 11th episode in the story of Rabban Sauma, and weâre closing in on the conclusion.After a month-long tour of the holy sites in and around Paris, Sauma had a final audience with King Philip. He meant it to be the crowning achievement in the royal treatment heâd lavished on the Chinese ambassador.It was held in the upper chapel of Saint-Chapelle where the just completed stained glass windows filled the room with light, giving the room its nick-name â The Jewel Box. Being newly installed, the colors were vibrant. The windows tell a Biblical history of the world. The room also holds statues of the 12 Apostles and vivid paintings that all combine to literally dazzle the eye. But it was the relics the room held that would have most impressed the Rabban. Philip carefully opened an ornate box holding, what was reputed to be, Jesusâ crown of thorns. Another reliquary held a piece of wood from the cross.While several of Parisâ relics were indeed brought back from the Holy Land after the first Crusade, these two had been secured by Philipâs grandfather St. Louis in Constantinople 40 yrs before. Saint-Chapelle was built as simply a large reliquary to hold their reliquaries.Saumaâs account of viewing these precious relics reports the King told him theyâd been secured during the First Crusade IN Jerusalem. Either Sauma misunderstood, or Philip intentionally misled him. Philip wanted to encourage the Rabban in his appeal for a new Crusade. Itâs likely Philip fudged the facts so as to give Sauma the impression the French greatly honored the idea of a campaign to retake the Holy Land, even though he had no intention of making an imminent call for one. His behavior throughout the Rabbanâs visit suggests he wanted to curry the favor of the Mongol Ilkhans. Furthering that impression was the envoy and letter he sent with Sauma when he eventually returned to Persia. Before leaving Paris. Philip loaded him with lavish gifts, which the pious and humble monk lumps under the heading, âlavish giftsâ in his account.So, armed by the assumption heâd secured the French Kingâs commitment to a Crusade in alliance with the Mongols in Persia against the Muslim Mamluks, Sauma headed west to see if he could recruit the English King Edward I. It was fortunate that Edward just so happened to be near at hand, visiting his lands in Gascony, a region on the west coast of France just north of Spain. After a 3 week journey, Sauma arrived in Bordeaux in the Fall of 1287.Whereas the Parisians had plenty warning of the arrival of the Far Eastern Ambassador from the exotic Mongols and went all out in their celebration of greeting, the people of Bordeaux were surprised. âWho are you and why are you here,â they asked? When word was brought to King Edward, he sought to make amends for the poor way such an august figure had been greeted. Sauma smoothed over the rough start to his embassy among the English by giving Edward the gifts Ilkhan Arghun sent and letters of greeting from he and the Nestorian Catholicus Mar Yaballaha. Edward received them with marked appreciation, but it was when Rabban Sauma proposed an alliance with the Mongols against the Mamluks that he became most animated. âA new Crusade to liberate Jerusalem and bring aid to the beleaguered Outremer? Why that sounds stellar!â was his enthusiastic reaction. Only 6 months earlier, heâd vowed to take the cross. This seemed a glow of divine favor on his pledge, an affirmation of Godâs delight in him.While Edward intended to immediately embark on the adventure, events back home conspired to stall that plan. Wales rebelled, again; and entanglements on the Continent in the fractious politics and schemes of Europe hijacked his resources and attention.But all of that was yet future; near future to be sure, but not yet. As far as Sauma was concerned, he had the support of both the Kings of England and France in the proposed alliance with the Mongol Ilkhans in Persia in their long desire to rout the Mamluks from the Middle East.Furthering Saumaâs sense of favor by the English King was the invitation to officiate Communion for the royal court. Though Sauma consecrated and served the elements according to the ancient Syriac formula, it was enough akin to the Mass that the participants were easily able to follow along, understanding not the words, but the meaning behind each movement of the ritual.And THAT â is simply remarkable!! Think of it. Though itâs the close of the 13th C, and these two branches of The Church have been sundered from each other for 800 yrs, when adherents from the two groups engage in the focal point of their religious service, though they canât understand one anotherâs speech, they DO understand whatâs happening, because the rite itself hasnât fundamentally changed. Thatâs stunning, by anyoneâs reckoning.Once the service was finished, Edward threw a feast. It was his way to finalize and seal the agreement between England and Persia. Sauma didnât record what this royal feast served, but we have accounts of some of Edwardsâ other such feast. Let me just pass along the idea that you can go right ahead and picture the most raucous dining hall scene from any medieval movie with the ox spinning on a spit over a huge fire, chicken bones being thrown across the room in mass quantities, platers laden high with all kinds of bread and vegetables. And keg after keg of drink. Edward was known for these kinds of food & beverage extravaganzas.And once again, having achieved his official duties as Arghunâs ambassador, Sauma turned to his personal mission; visiting the holy sites of Edwardsâ domains on the Continent. Edward not only provided guides, he paid all Saumaâs expenses for this pilgrimage.When he returned, Edward did something curious. He took pains to make sure Sauma understood that European Christians believed in Christ alone. It seems someone may have gotten to the King and informed him of the ancient rift between the Nestorian and Western Church. For his part, Sauma wasnât going to throw over the much-needed alliance between East and West over nuances of theological wording that people who 800 years earlier had divided over â and THEY spoke the same language. A lengthy dissertation on the nature of the Trinity through translators just wasnât practical. So Sauma let it go.Late in 1287, with two-thirds of his mission accomplished, The Rabban decided it was time to head back to Rome and see if a new Pope had been selected. Two of Europeâs most powerful armies were now committed to the cause. All they needed was permission from Romeâs Bishop. By the end of the year, the obstinate cardinals still had not made a selection.Fleeing the cold of the French winter, he traveled to Genoa to await the election of the New Pope. Saumaâs report of Genoa makes it clear it was maybe his favorite place in all his travels. The city was a beauty, the people warm and friendly.As much as he loved Genoa, Saumaâs sense of responsibility began needling him. He wasnât, as they say, getting any younger. The trip back to Persia with his report to Arghun was going to be another major epic in a life FILLED with them. If the last monthsâ long journey from Persia to the West had aged him years, the return trip would age the now sexagenarian a decade. He couldnât return to Persia by hopping aboard a 747. It meant another rickety ship across some of the most dangerous waters of the Med, to Constantinople, then across the Black Sea with its plethora of pirates, to the western end of the Silk Roads, then across Mesopotamia to Persia. [And we complain when we need to hop in the car and drive to the market down the street!]Itâs not difficult sympathizing with Saumaâs rising guilt at enjoying Genoa when he knew how eager both his friend Mar Yaballaha and his ruler, Ilkhan Arghun was for his return and report. Sauma was a man with a profound sense of duty. What else could account for the multitude of manifest difficulties heâd endured over the previous decade? But Genoa had everything heâd been looking for in his pilgrimage. Duty won out over ease and Sauma began to chaff as he waited for the Cardinals in Rome to get it together.They finally did. In February 1288 they elected Jerome of Ascoli as Pope Nicholas IV. It was an auspicious choice for Saumaâs mission. Some years before, Jerome had been Romeâs ambassador to Constantinople to see about effecting a reconciliation between East & West. The effort proved unfruitful, but it made Jerome more aware of the needs and sensitives of the Eastern Church. If any Europeans can be said to be aware of the threat the Mamluks presented the Faith, Pope Nicholas IV was among them.It helped Saumaâs cause that Nicholas was one of the people heâd spent considerable time conversing with when heâd before been in Rome. The two had hit it off, despite the language barrier.Nicholas sent an envoy to Genoa requesting Saumaâs return to the Eternal City. Two weeks later, as Saumaâs party reached Romeâs outskirts, they were met by a delegation of church officials welcoming him to the City.Ushered into Nicholasâ presence, Sauma showed him the highest form of obeisance he could by bowing on hands and knees, kissing the Popeâs hands and feet, then rising to walk backward with arms crossed at the wrists before his chest; a Nestorian sign of the utmost honor. Sauma then delivered the last of his official letters and gifts from Arghun and Mar Yaballaha.Nicholas showed his ready acceptance of Saumaâs embassy and person by requesting he stay and celebrate Easter with his Western brethren. Nicholas knew that Sauma, as a Nestorian Rabban, would feel the need to officiate at the events of Holy Week in some church setting. So rather than travel, we suggested he stay and plan on doing so there in Rome. Plush lodgings were secured for him and his attendants.Sauma then began preparations for Easter celebrations. He requested permission to conduct Mass so as to show Western Christians how it was done in the Nestorian tradition. The pope not only granted him permission, he showed great curiosity to witness the ritual. When the time came, a huge crowd was on hand. When all was said and done, the consensus was the same as in Bordeaux. While the language was different, the ritual was so similar as to make the differences inconsequential. So interesting was Saumaâs conduct at the Mass, the Pope invited him to officiate at more services over the next few weeks. The Rabban asked in return of the Pope would favor him by serving him the Eucharist, which Nicholas heartily assented to. The day was Palm Sunday of 1288.Sauma reports that the crowds attending service that day were beyond anything his imagination could have conjured. People literally filled the streets, carrying branches of palms and olives.On Maunday Thursday of the next week, so many people packed the church where the Pope held Mass that when they said a united âAmenâ the walls shook. The service over, the Pope then made the rounds of several locations in Rome where he bestowed blessing and favor on various people and artifacts. He ended by bringing his entire household staff together and washing their feet. Sauma was hugely impressed with this act of papal humility, describing it in depth. The day ended with a huge feast for some 2000.Good Friday began with a procession from the Church of the Holy Cross, where the Pope held aloft a piece of the Cross as massive crowds once again attended the scene. The rest of the day was spent in quiet meditation on the sacrifice of Christ.Saturday saw the Pope making the rounds to bestow more blessing on individual shrines and folk. Then Easter Sunday services were conducted in the ancient Church of Saint Maria Maggiore.Sauma knew his fellow Nestorians were curious about the practices of their Western Cousins, so he paid close attention to all that was happening around him., recording the events in as intimate detail as he could.Easter being complete and his mission now finished, Sauma asked permission to return home. Nicholas asked him to stay. Sauma struck for compromise He was more than pleased to stay, especially since it came from a sincere request on the part of the Pope with whom he was getting along well. BUT, a higher purpose was to be served in his return to Persia where he could share with the Mongol ruler the favorable reception heâd been shown across Europe. Certainly, that had to be a good harbinger of a future alliance. When word got out about the success of Saumaâs mission, lingering tensions between East & West would subside. Such was the nature of medieval diplomacy.Then Sauma made a request that threatened to blow everything up.Picture that scene in a movie where two parties who are potential enemies, are in fact getting along and everyoneâs on pins and needles hoping for a new day of peace. Then thereâs a pause, and one of them says something that threatens to ruin it all. But the representative of the other aide at first just stares at them with a look of, well. Thatâs the problem; no one knows what to think. And everyone starts moving their hand slowly toward their gun because they think, âOh no. This is it. Get ready to start shooting.â But then the guy breaks out in a huge smile and starts laughing. The tension is immediately released.Thatâs the scene when Sauma asked the Pope, for ⊠Ready? Ăš Some sacred relics. At first, Nicholas was stunned at the boldness of Saumaâs request. Nay; it was more than bold; it was brazen. He told the Rabban that if he were in the habit of giving relics to every foreign emissary who came to see him, thereâd soon be nothing left in Rome to give.Still, in light of Saumaâs perilous and long journey, he was pleased to give Sauma some treasures to take home. He gave him some scraps of cloth from clothes that were said to have belonged to Jesus and Mary, as well as various relics of different saints and special vestments for Mar Yaballaha. Maybe the most significant gift Nicholas bestowed was a letter patent authorizing Mar Yaballaha and his Nestorian Catholicus successors as the authority over the Church of the East. He gave Rabban Sauma a letter patent naming him Visitor General for all churches of the East, not just China, as the previous Nestorian Patriarch had done.Implied in Nicholasâ issuing of these letter-patents was that HE, as the Roman Pope, had jurisdiction over the East. Sauma might like to have contested that. But what point? Itâs not like he was going to get Nicholas to back down. For goodness sake, the question of prime ecclesiastical authority had been going on for hundreds of years. Sauma was under no illusion he was going to set things right now. Rather, all he could do was blow up the alliance that seemed to be a done deal.After giving Sauma a large gift of gold to help pay his expenses, Sauma began preparations to return home.Nicholas gave Sauma a letter for Arghun, thanking the Mongol ruler for his beneficent rule of the Christians of his realm and thanking him for his offer of an alliance against the Mamluks. A copy resides in the Vatican museum. Then Nicholas launched into an appeal for both Mongols and Nestorians to submit to papal authority. He urged Arghun to convert to Christianity post haste and be baptized under the authority of Rome.Then he indicated while Sauma had indeed faithfully transmitted the Ilkhanâs desire for an alliance, he and he alone could call a Crusade. The secular rulers of Europe might be gung-ho but they had no authority to approve a Crusade. Only he, as the head of the Church, possessed that right. AND, knowing the mindset of the rest of Europe, besides the monarchs of England and France, a Crusade wasnât in the cards at that time. So he adroitly side-stepped making a commitment, while at the same time, encouraging the Mongols to do their best against the common enemy.Arghun had indicated a willingness in his letter to the Pope to convert and be baptized IF that baptism could be done in a reclaimed Jerusalem, one free of the Mamluk scourge. Nicholas said Arghun had it backward. He ought to convert and be baptized NOW. That would assure him of heavenâs favor in any campaign he undertook. His example would surely lead to mass conversions, furthering the promise of divine favor.So the Pope didnât out-right turn down an alliance not forbid a Crusade. He just shifted the emphasis of his letter onto the need for Arghun to trust God and surrender to him, which of course would be done by accepting the Roman Churchâs hegemony over his realm.Nicholas wasnât done with his letter writing. He penned one to Mar Yaballaha as well. This one began by praising the Nestorian Catholicus for his wise leadership of a challenged Church. But then it went into a long lecture on âproperâ Christian doctrine, something the Nestorian Patriarch wasnât at all likely to look kindly on. The last paragraph was a blatant and tactless statement of the supremacy of the Roman church.Since these letters were open, Sauma read them both. He was deeply disappointed at the tone they took with the two men he reported to. Their condescending tone was sure to dishearten and alienate their recipients. The Pope refusal to sanction a Crusade or give any support to the proposed alliance seemed to make his entire trip West pointless.No doubt disappointed, Sauma managed to tamp down any expression of it in his concluding meeting with the Pope. He was probably just glad to be quitting the West & the prospect of going home.Weâll wrap up Bar Saumaâs magnificent tale in our next episode.
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This is episode 10 in the on-going epic saga of the Chinese Marco Polo â Rabban Sauma.Realizing he couldnât get anything done in Rome since there was no Pope, and that the dozen cardinals charged with the task of selecting him were competing for the post, Sauma decided to take his request for a military alliance between Christian Europe and Mongol Persia against the Muslims Mamluks in the Middle East, directly to the Kings of France and England.Leaving Rome, he stopped in Genoa on his way to North. Since Genoa had for some years maintained a thriving trade with the Ilkhanate, that is the Mongols in Persia, Sauma had every reason to expect a warm welcome. He wasnât disappointed. It didnât hurt that one of the interpreters whoâd accompanied him from Persia was a native-born Genoese merchant.Genoa was at the height of its prosperity when Sauma visited, boasting a population of 70,000, one of the largest in Europe. Its merchants were savvy negotiators whoâd been able to arrange deals not only around the Mediterranean but reaching into the Far East. While other Italian City-States like Naples and Venice set up lucrative trade routes with select partners, Genoa was able to walk a tight-rope of diplomacy across dozens of partners who were otherwise in conflict with each other. Because of their wide-ranging connections, many realms of thought and practice combined to influence the intellectual life of Genoa. It was a truly cosmopolitan city whose routine wasnât knocked off kilter by the arrival of an Embassy form the Far East.While the commerce of Genoa was well established, its government was another matter. Genoa seemed unable to find a political system that satisfied the cityâs need for longer than a decade. At the time of Saumaâs visit, the cityâs ruler was called a Captain of the People, or Citizens. He rallied the population of Genoa to officially welcome Saumaâs party. Sauma was confused; not able to understand how such a large city wasnât ruled by a king. Knowing how far-reaching Genoaâs trade was, Sauma wondered if it might even have been better ruled by an Emperor.Once settled into the accommodations made available to him, Sauma plotted his next moves. If it occurred to him to ask the Genoese to join an alliance against the Mamluks, he quickly put it aside. The Genoese would not be drawn into a war with a force that dominated the entire Eastern Med. In fact, forging treaties was what they were known for. When they went to war, it was with their rival Italian City-States, all for the golden prize of increasing trade with everyone else. And Genoa was at that time gearing up for a campaign against their major rival Venice, which it would soon best.So, after visiting the religious sites in an near Genoa, Sauma once again packed up and headed north toward France.Saumaâs hope of help from the French was keen. After all King Louis IX, known to history as St. Louis, had played a major role in 2 Crusades to liberate the Middle East from the Muslim presence. But his son, Philip III, known as Philip the Bold, had been more concerned with securing his control of France and her neighbors. His son, Philip IV, known as Philip the Fair and later as The Iron King, had only been on the throne for 2 yrs when Sauma arrived in Paris. Barely 20 yrs of age, everyone wondered if heâd reprise the career of his famous grandfather or his more mundane father. It seemed a most propitious time for the Rabbanâs embassy, as setting out on a new Crusade to liberate the Holy Land from the Mamluks would appeal to the energy and ambitions of a young ruler seeking to make his mark.Arriving at the French border in August of 1287, Saumaâs party was greeted by a large force sent by the King to escort him to Paris. They entered the City at the end of September to much pomp & circumstance. Sauma was then ushered to palatial digs provided by King Philip. And ï it was time for a break for the Chinese Monk-ambassador.The trip from Genoa to Paris took a month. While the journey was nowhere near as arduous as that which heâd undertaken a decade before from China to Persia, he was now in his 60âs and the entire adventure was taken a toll on his aging body. Heâs been traveling for the past 6 months from Persia, to the Black Sea, Constantinople, Naples, Rome, Genoa, and now Paris. Keep in mind there were no Holiday, Ramada or Quality Inns along the way. The caravanserais theyâd enjoyed earlier were far away in Asia. They overnighted either along the roadside or in small public houses where the bedding was rarely changed. The quality of the food was most often abysmal because it was the only thing to be had by travelers.So by the time Sauma arrived in Paris, he was exhausted and needed to rest. Philip recognized that and set aside three days for him to recoup. Then he sent a formal invitation for the Nestorian monk to attend an official audience with his majesty. When Sauma arrived at court, Philip rose to greet him; an unusual gesture for a European monarch at that time. Guests at court were usually required to process a long path to the dais holding the throne, stopping at the foot of the stairs, they then bowed and remained thus in a posture of supplication until told to stand. The entire time the king remained seated. Rising to greet Sauma was a surprising move on Philipâs part because it signaled the court the French King viewed Sauma as an equal.Then, it was down to business. Why, Philip asked, as Sauma there? What did he want? Why had he come and whoâd sent him?If Sauma was surprised by the bluntness of the kingâs query, he recovered quickly and responded in kind. He told Philip that while originally set on a religious pilgrimage endorsed and sponsored by the Great Khubilai Khan in China, heâd been made the Mongol Ilkhanate in Persiaâs official envoy back to Khubilaiâs court. But before returning to China to fulfill that task, heâd been given a special assignment: Travel West to the Christian rulers of Western Europe, asking them for an alliance with the Ilkhanate against the Mamluks and recovery Jerusalem from Muslim control. Sauma then handed Philip the letter and gifts from Ilkhan Arghun. These gifts were most likely the kinds of things that would convey the seriousness of the embassy, but could be easily transported by individuals traveling light; jewels, small packages of luxurious silk cloth, so highly prized by the elite of Western Europe.Sauma reports the French King was favorable toward the proposed alliance. Philip was moved by the Mongols desire to free Jerusalem from Muslim hegemony, even though those Mongols werenât officially Christian. Philip remarked that Christian Europe ought to rise to the challenge presented by the Ilkhans. Rabban Sauma was equally impressed by the Kingâs devotion to the Faith and his interest in embarking on a new Crusade. For the first time, Saumaâs mission to the West seemed to be bearing fruit.BUT: Sauma wasnât hip to European politics which had shaped Philipâs exuberant response. Philip was less interested in a Crusade to recapture the Holy Land as he was in securing his control over the contested domains of his north. Ever since ascending the throne, heâd been in contention with Englandâs King Edward I who owed him fealty in Gascony. In the Spring of 1286, Edward went to Paris to pay Philip honor as his suzerain. But Philip never bought this show of fealty. He had reason to distrust Edward since England backed Franceâs enemies in the contentious affairs in Aragon. Tensions between the two rulers grew until war broke out in 1294.Another trouble Philip dealt with was a degenerating relationship with the Roman Church. Needing funds in his campaigns to secure the North, the French monarch confiscated the tithes destined for Rome. His nobles already struggled with the burdensome taxes the crown had levied. The only place to secure the much-needed funds was the Church. So in an appeal to nationalism, Philip said French gold and silver ought to stay in France, not shipped off to Rome and the interests of the Pope, whose schemes were cast as contrary to French well-being. All of this would later lead to the major rift that occurred between the French crown and Papacy that we covered in Season One of CS.While Philipâs enthusiastic response to Saumaâs appeal was no doubt sincere, on further reflection, Philip realized mounting a new Crusade wasnât practical. At least not in the short term. Maybe after movement on his domestic fronts, a Crusade could be staged.On Saumaâs part, having achieved seeming success on the official phase of his embassy, he turned to his personal adventure; visiting the religious sites of Paris and its environs. Philip assigned him an escort and off they went visiting churches and shrines; Sauma once again focusing on relics rather than the marvelous architecture and art.The Rabban was stunned by the large number of students in Paris, which was one of the sites of the new centers of learning called universities. He reports there were 30,000 students in the City.And that brings up a point of historical tension it might be wise for us to skim the surface of.As many subscribers know, the value of numbers in reporting of history has been a contentious issue for a long time. The tension comes over the almost universal tendency of ancient historians to give big numbers while many modern historians are committed to reducing those numbers to a tenth of the original. We see that here. Sauma says Paris had 30,000 students. Modern historians say the City of that time had maybe 3,000. This assumed inflation of numbers by the ancients and chroniclers of yore is just about universal among modern historians. Some wonder if that skepticism is valid. The fact that nearly ALL pre-modern accounts give much larger figures than modern historians allow is provocative. Recent archaeology has caused historians to revise their estimates of population upwards in some cases, significantly.Itâll be interesting for those of us who are historically interested, to watch what happens in the realm of statistics over the next few years as researchers review past assumptions in light of new evidence. Since I tend to give the ancients more credit for veracity, I suspect weâll see a revising of the numbers upward, dramatically.The University of Parisâs primary course of study was theology. But the school quickly branched out into other areas, including law, medicine, philosophy, rhetoric, and math. The pursuit of these subjects was boosted by a renewal of interest in the recently-published works of Aristotle.As a self-taught scholar whoâd studied everything he could get his hands on back in China, Sauma quite impressed with Parisâ schools.Saumaâs chronicle relates his impression of the gorgeous Church of Saint-Denis where French monarchs were interred. He mentions the Chapel of Sainte-Chapelle, but he gives no mention of the nearby Notre Dame; the pride and joy of Paris whose spire could be seen from anywhere in the city. Indeed, Notre Dame and Paris become synonymous. So why does the Rabban omit it from his account? Several opinions are given, probably the best of which is the most obvious. Sauma was a Nestorian monk. He belonged to the Church of the East, a branch of the Faith severed from the West over the identity of Mary. Was she Theotokos, the Mother of God as the West said, or Christotokos, Mother of Christ, as the East said? The Cathedral of Notre Dame was all about the Virgin Mary. Sauma most likely left off mentioning his visit to Notre Dame because of his desire to not end up saying a bunch of critical things about his stay.Weâll finish up his time in Paris and get into his trip north to meet the King of England in our next episode as we move to conclude the amazing tale of Rabban Sauma.
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This is Episode 9 in the on-going epic tale of Rabban Sauma.Finally, Sauma has arrived in Europe. After two months aboard ship, his party arrives in Naples. Which is unusual because the trip from Constantinople ought to have taken less than a month. Here again, itâs Saumaâs account that seems to be lacking detail. Being a commercial vessel, most likely theyâd used the route to further their business, so had put into port along the way for days at a time.Sauma took some time in Naples to recover from the long voyage before setting out for Rome. While there, staying at a mansion provided by the ruling family of Anjou, Sauma witnessed from the roof, the Battle of the Counts on June 23rd in the Bay of Naples. This was part of the larger War of the Sicilian Vespers between the Houses of Aragon and Anjou. Sauma says the Anjou lost 12,000 men. What surprised him was the care given by both sides to avoid harming non-combatants. Familiar with the Mongol method of war, Sauma assumed no distinction between civilians and soldiers in battle. He was deeply impressed by the caution exercised in the fighting to avoid civilian casualties.Naples had proven to be unsafe due to the conflict, so Sauma decided it was best to leave, even before having a chance to visit the cityâs religious sites. An unusual move for him since that was his personal primary motivation. His unease may have been due to the sketchy political situation he sensed taking place around him. Better to âgitâ while the âgittingâ was good.So they packed up and headed for Rome.The trip across Italy was yet another surprise for the Chinese monk. There was simply little landscape without some kind of settlement. Whether that was a solitary farm, hamlet, village, town, or city, the road led across a land that was, to Saumaâs thinking, filled with people. This was in sharp contrast with the territory heâd spent the previous decade in. It was possible to travel for days in Central Asia and not see another soul nor evidence of settlement. The path he now took went up and down hills, but after the towering peaks heâd traversed earlier in his pilgrimage, they were but bumps in the road.As he approached Rome, he rehearsed his speech to the Pope, asking for him to call a Crusade of Europeâsâ monarch against the Muslim Mamluks that would coincide with a Mongol attack from the East. But word was carried to Sauma that Pope Honorius IV had died in early April. Instead of being disheartened, Sauma increased his pace, hoping to be among the first to speak to the new Pope.But it was not to be. The twelve cardinals charged with the task of selecting the pope couldnât reach a decision, largely because several of them wanted to wear Peterâs ring.Arriving in the City, he sent word to the Cardinals of his presence, requesting an audience. Surprisingly, they invited him into that sacred place where the pope is chosen, the papal palace next to the Church of Santa Sabina. No one else was allowed into their deliberations but their closest assistant. So this was an uncommon honor. Even so, Sauma was briefed on proper etiquette when meeting the Cardinals. He made a good impression and proved a welcome distraction from the grinding machinations of the would-be popes. Their task proved so stressful, half of the Cardinals died before the end of that Summer.After initial introductions and realizing how far the Rabban had traveled, the Cardinals expressed their dismay and concern for his health. They assumed it would take weeks for him to recover his strength and urged him to rest. He assured them his stay in Naples had been sufficient and that he had pressing, indeed, supremely urgent matters to share with the Pope. In this way, he hoped to impress on them the need to be quick to find Honoriusâs replacement.But they would not be hurried. They insisted he get more rest and pondered what his arrival and embassy might mean for the future of Europe and the Church. How might Saumaâs mission effect WHO they selected as the next Pope? Should they pick someone whoâd be amenable to his request for an alliance with the Ilkhans, or someone whoâd refuse?They decided it was best to avoid political discussions with the Rabban altogether. A safer subject, and one of genuine interest to them, was Saumaâs faith. How was the Church of the East now different from the Roman church? The rift that had separated East and West occurred all the way back in the 5th C. It was over 800 yrs later. How had the two expressions of the Christian Faith diverged, they wondered. And how had Christianity reached all the way to the Far East so that a monk would embark on such a seemingly impossible pilgrimage as Sauma had?In his account Sauma admits some frustration with the Cardinalsâ refusal to let him pursue his political assignment. But when it was clear they would not entertain his embassy along those lines, he warmed to the task of explaining his beliefs and the history of the Nestorian Church.Sauma explained that the headquarters of his church was in Baghdad and that he was the Patriarch of the Church of the Eastâs official representative to the court of the famous Khubilai Khan. The Cardinals were eager to hear how Christianity had reached China. Of chief concern to them was whoâd brought them the Gospel. Sauma spoke of the Apostle Thomas who carried the message of Christ to Mesopotamia, Persia, and all the way to India. Thaddaeus and Mari also played a role in planting churches in the East. These were all names the Cardinals were familiar with and settled any concerns they had that the Nestorian Church rested on an apostolic foundation.Sauma told them of the extensive missionary activity of the Nestorian Church. Theyâd planted churches among the Mongols, Turks, and Chinese. Their outreach to the children of the Mongol elite had proven especially effective. Then he brought the conversation back round to his embassy. Christianity was favored in the Mongol realm of Persia. In fact, the Ilkhan leader Arghun was a good friend and supporter of the Nestorian Catholicus Mar Yaballaha. Like the Europeans, Arghun wanted to dislodge the Mamluks from the Middle East. âHey, how about an alliance?âThe Cardinals retreated to safe ground. They couldnât agree to anything without a pope, they said. Besides, the previous Pope, Honorius IV, had already tried to rally support for a campaign against the Mamluks, but Europeans leaders werenât interested.So the Cardinals once more shifted the conversation back to theological issues. They wanted to know how closely the Nestorian Church aligned with Catholic doctrine. Sauma said no envoy from the Pope nor representative from the Vatican had come East with those doctrines. What the Nestorians believed was drawn from the apostles and fathers heâd mentioned earlier. The Cardinals asked him for a run-down of Nestorian theology.This was a critical moment for Sauma. He needed to keep the door open with them. But he was aware of some differences between Nestorian & Catholic doctrine, especially in regard to the nature of Christ.Consider for a moment how monumental the task was for Sauma. He has to explain the complexities of theology, specifically the intricacies of the Trinity, in Persian, which is then translated into Latin. The Cardinals listen, formulate questions for clarification, speak them in Latin which is translated into Persian and passed along to Sauma. For goodness sake! Itâs difficult enough explaining the Trinity to someone in your own tongue.Saumaâs managed to describe the Nestorian belief in the nature of Christ in such a way that the Cardinals took no offense. Next, they queried his beliefs about the Holy Spirit. He engaged them in a back and forth Socratic dialog that not only satisfied their concerns about his doctrine but greatly impressed them with his erudition.In fact, Rabban Saumaâs replies, included in his account of the meeting, did convey ideas the Cardinals would have found heretical. But it seems they wanted to avoid controversy as much as he did. Realizing further discussion with its parsing of details would only increase the chance of running afoul of their favor, Sauma indicated he thought his explanation of Nestorian theology was sufficient. He now realized the lack of a head for the Catholic church was a hindrance to his mission. He asked the Cardinals to appoint him someone who could take him round the religious sites to be seen in Rome. They assigned him several monks to escort him on a tour of the Eternal Cityâs churches and monasteries.The first and most impressive site he was shown was the old Basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican. Of course, what he saw is not the St. Peterâs of today. That wasnât built till the 16th & 17th Cs. Still, the church of his time was massively larger than anything heâd seen besides the Hagia Sophia. He wrote of it, âThe extent of that temple and its splendors cannot be described.â He was shown the 180 columns erected by Constantine, the altar from which only the Pope served Mass, Peterâs Chair, and Peterâs tomb, in which a gold sarcophagus was placed inside a bronze coffin, topped by a solid gold cross weighing 150 pounds.Sauma was especially impressed by a relic purported to bear the image of Christ. Another feature in the church he enthused over was a throne on which popes crowned emperors. He reports his guides told him the pope picked up the royal crown from the floor with their feet, transferred it to their hands then placed it on the rulerâs head. This showed the supremacy of the Church over State; that secular power was under religious authority.Either Saumaâs misunderstood or was misinformed. That wasnât the procedure. After being crowned, the Emperor knelt and kissed the Popeâs feet. But it was a ritual going out of practice by Saumaâs time. Hostility between popes and monarchs was already growing.After seeing St. Peterâs Basilica, Sauma was shown several other sites, all of major significance to the faith in Rome. While the architecture and furnishings of these churches and shrines were remarkable, Saumaâs account gives little attention to that aspect of them. He was far more interested in the hundreds of relics he was shown. Body parts, clothing, instruments, items tied to the Biblical stories of the saints were his special fascination. Itâs clear Sauma attached deep spiritual significance to these relics, giving them a special place as means of communicating grace to his soul.Having had his fill of the religious dimensions of Rome, and realizing the absence of a pope was stalling his mission, he decided to carry out the next phase of his task, visiting the rulers of Western Europe. The subject of our next episode.
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This is episode 8 in the remarkable tale of a Chinese Marco Polo named Rabban Sauma.Well, itâs taken us 7 episodes to get to the point of Saumaâs story thatâs set him as a historical figure we even know about. If it werenât for what follows, even though heâs already lived a genuinely epic life, heâd be little more than a footnote to his companion Marcosâ story. For it was Marcos, not Sauma who became the Catholicos, the reigning patriarch of the entire Nestorian Church, under the name of Mar Yaballaha III.But itâs what happens next that moves Sauma into the ranks of historyâs greatest tales.Having been commissioned and provisioned by the Mongol Ilkhan Arghun in Persia to head west with an embassy to the Christian rulers of Europe to enter an alliance against the Muslim Mamluks holding the Middle East, Rabban Sauma set out in early 1287.This section of his travels was nothing like his earlier trek from China to Persia, fraught as that had been with trackless deserts and precipitous peaks. The geography was far more easily traversed, and the population more dense, so there was little worry for provisions along the way. One thing that was similar to the earlier journey was the numerous bandits and petty warlords, then the pirates that sailed the Black and Mediterranean Seas.Accompanying him were a couple European merchants whoâd been conducting business in the East and could act as translators. Mostly like due to the editing of Saumaâs Syrian translator, described in the last episode, the route he took from Persia to the Black Sea is omitted from the account. He most likely took the main caravan route that passed through Mosul in Mesopotamia and ended at Trebizond.Because this route was well travelled by an ever-burgeoning column of merchants, caravanserais were established every 20 miles. These were large camps were caravans could replenish and night. Each caravanserai had a large central court surrounded by a curtained area, open to the sky, for various functions, like, sleeping, bathing, and prayers. Larger, more established caravanserais had mosques, churches, or conversely, brothels. Caravanserais provided protection from local bandits as well as entertainment in the form of jugglers, dancers, and storytellers. A good number of Arabic folk tales center on the life of the caravanserais. Merchants, guides, and camel grooms passed along information about local conditions to one another, as well as news from the wider world.At Trebizond, Saumaâs party entered a ship to sail over the Black Sea. The ship must have been a large one as it held 300 passengers. Sauma reports it was overcrowded, lacked adequate provisions and had no accommodations for sleeping. Sauma made the best of the time by giving lectures on the tenets of his faith which the other passengers and crew found interesting. Fortunately, the trip was both uneventful and short. No storms or pirates troubled them. A few days after launching from Trebizond, they landed at Constantinople.Now in the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Sauma followed the pattern heâd keep for the rest of his adventure in the West. He immediately sought contact with the ruler. He sent two assistants to the palace notifying officials there of the arrival of an embassy from the Mongol Court of Persia. Of course, these assistants werenât the first to bear news to Emperor Andronicus II of the arrival of someone of importance from the East. The Byzantine Empire was, after all, Byzantine; the Emperor had eyes and ears everywhere. Thatâs why Sauma was careful to make sure he reached out to Andronicus quickly. Lest the Emperor begin to wonder why he was there. Now notified of Saumaâs desire for an audience, officials were sent from court to issue a formal invitation.Sauma was greeted with pomp and ceremony. He was received in the Great Palace, then undergoing repairs after the Venetian occupation of Constantinople the indignities they inflicted on the City. Following the welcoming ceremonies, Andronicus assigned Saumaâs party a place to stay on the palace grounds. After a few dayâs rest, the formal audience was held.And about that Ă Thereâs not much to say. Whether the Syrian translator edited the account, or Sauma omitted the real cause of his trip west, we donât know. They began with some innocuous pleasantries.âHow was the trip?â // âFine.ââAre you rested now?â // âYes. Thank you. The food here is marvelous. I especially love the candied dates.âThen Sauma asked permission to visited local Christian sites and view relics. If Andronicus was wondering WHY the Ilkhan sent this embassy, now it seemed clear. It was a religious venture; a pilgrimage â all the rage at that time.So â a little background on where the Byzantines stood in terms of the political situation in the Middle East.Andronicusâ father, Emperor Michael Palaeologus, had married his daughter Maria to the Mongol Ilkhan Abakha. But that was just to cool any hostility the Ilkhans might have toward him. He sought at the same time to steer a middle course with the Ilkhanâs enemies the Golden Horde and the Mamluks. When Andronicus ascended the throne, he continued his fatherâs policy. He wasnât about to break the tenuous but lucrative trade agreements with the Horde & Mamluks for a military alliance with the Ilkhans. But â being ultra pious, he understood the motivation of a man like Sauma who simply came to visit the religious sites of the West. Granting him permission to do so would upset no alliances.Itâs likely Sauma knew this and so didnât even broach the subject with the Emperor. If he hadnât been forewarned back in Persia of the political situation, he no doubt was given a heads up by a Byzantine official whoâd been dispatched ahead of the royal audience to provide Sauma a briefing on the state of affairs as well as proper procedure for abiding by court etiquette. The Emperor ought not be put in the place of having to say âNoâ to an official envoy. That just wouldnât be kosher. So itâs likely Sauma was briefed on what subjects could and couldnât come up during their meeting.And â truth be told, aside from his assignment as Arghunâs envoy, Saumaâs real goalâhis personal ambition was religious. If heâd had his druthers, heâd have skipped the whole military-alliance-proposal deal and just gone sight-seeing. But, heâd given his word and would keep it. The problem was, keeping it with Andronicus might very well have ended his embassy if the Emperor felt his interests were best served by not allowing Sauma to continue his journey west. The LAST thing the Byzantines wanted was another Crusade by those pesky Europeans, coming over with their knights, getting all worked up into a lather about reclaiming the Holy Lands. They were still recovering from the previous debacles. So, Sauma played nice. Smiled a lot, and asked an easy give; something Andronicus was more than happy to obligeâpermission to visit the religious sites of his realm.The Rabban was enthralled by what he saw. The Hagia Sophia stunned him, as was to be expected and as it had every other visitor since the 6th Century. Another wonder was the sheer number of churches in the city, many of them being architectural marvels in their own right. While Christianity dated back to the 8th Century in the Far East, Christians were never found in large numbers. The Nestorian church was well rooted in the East, but was a minority. They never commanded the resources the Western Church had. Even in Mesopotamia, birthplace of the Church of the East, their buildings were simple and functional, given much less ornamentation.While Sauma gave passing descriptions of some of the monasteries and churches heâd visited so far in his journeys, the Hagia Sophia was the first he described in detail. Besides the architecture, he elaborated on the contents; its ornaments, art, and relics. Many of these had been looted by the Venetians in the 4th Crusade earlier that Century and replaced with replicas. Sauma was either unaware of that, or didnât care. His account lists them as legit.In a bit of local truth-bending, Sauma was shown a portrait of the Virgin Mary supposedly painted by St. Luke, the hand of John the Baptist and body parts of Lazarus and Mary Magdalene. He saw the tombs of both Constantine and Justinian. Which is strange, because Constantineâs not buried in the Hagia Sophia.This and many other wonders in and around the royal city dazzled him.Maybe the most unusual site Sauma visited was the Monastery of St. Michael where the bodies of the 318 orthodox bishops whoâd attended the 4th C Council of Nicaea were reputed to be buried; their bodies said to bear no mark of decomposition.To the lament of historians, missing from Saumaâs account is any record of his observation on the great differences in the cultures of East and West. What a treasure it would be to read his account of daily life in what was for him, The West. Either Sauma didnât care to record it, or more likely, his Syrian translator deleted it as it didnât advance his goal of giving a religious travelogue.Another option is that Sauma prepared two accounts of his journey; an official diplomatic account in which he recorded the details of his embassy, and another more personal one chronicling just his religious pilgrimage. The first he intended for the Mongol Ilkhans, the second was for his fellows Nestorians. The first has been lost to us while itâs the second personal account we possess. If this option holds, we still might expect a bit more detail on Saumaâs description of daily life and customs in the West. And the account we do have, does include a record, brief as it may be, of his diplomatic dealings.Most likely, in addition to the Syrian translatorâs editing of the account, Sauma depended on local guides to take him round the sites. Those guides were assigned by local officials, who most certainly had given strict instructions on what Sauma was to be shown and not shown. Both Byzantines and Europeans knew right well that deception was part and parcel of the Mongolian strategy. Theyâd already tasted the bitter side of that Mongolian tactic. Who knew but that the Mongols were using this seeming religious pilgrimage as a scouting foray in preparation for a new invasion? So Sauma may have been shielded from meeting commoners or learning about the daily life of the average citizen with their views on the politics of the era. Rulers arenât keen for potential enemies to learn of unrest in their realm.If we flip it, and consider Europeans like Marco Polo and John of Plano Carpini who went East, their time was spent almost exclusively with the elite. They were kept on a tight leash by their hosts.Well, after getting his fill of the sites round Constantinople, and realizing he couldnât even bring up the subject of an alliance between the Byzantines and Ilkhans, Sauma decided it was time to move on. He had a last audience with Andronicus, explaining that he needed to continue his journey West. The Emperor loaded him with a substantial gift of gold and silver to help with the costs of the journey and sent him off with his blessing. In the middle of April, 1287, Saumaâs embassy set sail for Naples.Saumaâs account describes the voyage as fraught with peril. The path they took was often struck by storms. Shipwrecks were common along the route. And â there was a dangerous sea serpent that harassed travelers. Ăš Uh â no! This was surely a fabrication on the part of the shipâs crew trying to make the trip more interesting for themselves at the passengersâ expense. What fun terrifying a bunch of people, making yourself look so brave for sailing these dangerous waters for a living. Telling harrowing tales of seas monsters and the many friends lost at sea.One note of interest was Saumaâs report of a volcano they saw pouring smoke into the air. That was most likely Mt Etna in Italy, which exploded on June 18, 1287. After two months of travel, they landed in Naples, exhausted both physically and emotionally.
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This is the 7th episode in the on-going saga of Rabban Sauma.Last episode ended with the Mongol Ilkhan Arghun in Persia surrounded by enemies. He had a powerful ally in the Great Khan Khubilai, but Persia and China were too far apart and Khubilai was already locked into his own troubles in his contest with his cousin Khaidu.Arghun had risen to the Ilkhanate in Persia by supplanting his nemesis Ahmad, a pro-Muslim ruler whoâd been removed & executed after a short reign. Arghun worried Ahmadâs allies, the Muslim Mamluks to the West would embark on a campaign to conquer Persia. But as he looked for allies, the offerings were slim. Khubilai was not help. Only one option remained; Christian Europe. The same realms the Mongol Machine had just a few decades before almost overwhelmed. Would Christian Europe set aside that recent horror to ally with the Ilkhanate in a new Crusade to purge the Middle East of the Muslim threat? Well, thatâs the plan Arghun settled on. For Europeans, the Mongols were deemed as great a threat as the Mamluks. Maybe more so. So, in a nod to the old saw, âthe enemy of my enemy is my friend,â Arghun hoped maybe an alliance could be forged between Persia and the crusading states of Europe.But, who to send with the proposal? This is where we open chapter 2 on Rabban Saumaâs amazing epic.We open that chapter with some background on the political situation in Persia & Europe.Arghun wasnât the first Ilkhan to propose a treaty with Christian Europe against the Mamluks. In 1265, Abakha sent an embassy to the Pope requesting an alliance. Since the Mamluks were pressing hard to wipe out the last of the Outremer; the Crusaders states in the Middle East, Abakha assumed theyâd gladly want assistance in the fight. But Europe was weary of crusading. Much ado had been made over the previous 200 yrs with little lasting result. Indeed, the success of the First Crusade was followed on by tragedy after tragedy. In addition to that weariness, the European kingdoms werenât exactly getting along. Just in Italy, the Pope was faced with hostility between the many city-states, with the conflict between Venice and Genoa dominating the Mediterranean.A further intrigue inserted at this time was the relationship between Charles of Anjou and the Pope. Brother of the French King St. Louis IX, Charles was quite ambitious. He secured the Popeâs blessing to become the King of Naples and Sicily. His goal was to dominate the Byzantine Empire so as to control trade in the Eastern Med. He saw the Mongols in Persia as a threat to that ambition because the Ilkhan Abakha had married a Byzantine princess. Charles let the Pope know he wasnât to entertain any overtures from the Mongols for an alliance. Both Kings Edward of England & Louis of France wanted to stage a Crusade. But the turmoil in Europe stalled their plans.They managed to pull a Crusade together in 1270, but Charles once again deftly managed to take charge of the venture. He changed the goal of the Crusade from the Holy Land to Tunis in North Africa, a land he wanted to conquer in his bid for naval hegemony. When the Tunisians sued for peace and promised to pay tribute, Charles declared the campaign a success. Edward was stunned and sailed his forces to Acre on the coast of Palestine. He then sent an embassy to the Ilkhan Abakha, asking for an alliance against the Mamluks in Syria. But wouldnât you know it? It just so happened that the Chagatai Mongols on Persiaâs Eastern border had invaded and Abakha was now engaged there. He had no troops to send to Edwardâs aide. Even though Edward was without allies and had a relatively small force, he carried on his campaign for a year that wore both sides out. The Mamluks agreed to a truce that safeguarded the Outremer for 10 yrs.Edward went home, and things settled down for a while, only to spin up again a few yrs later when a new Pope, Gregory X, came to Peterâs chair. Heâd lived for a time in Acre and was eager to see the Crusader States in the Middle East secure against the Muslim threat. He hoped to unite European monarchs in another Crusade and used an Ecumenical Council in an attempt to forge an alliance. It was not to be because he died before it could be organized.It turns out Europe was a lot like the Mongol domains; fractured & divided among many interests. These attempts on the part of both Europeans and Persian Mongols to secure an alliance against the Mamluks just never gelled.Then, in the first half of the decade of the 1280âs things began to change. Charles of Anjou, whoâd been such a trouble-maker, lost power and died. His removal saw new alignments. One of the most significant was Veniceâs giving up- itâs long-held aspiration to invade Constantinople and take over the Byzantine Empire. Theyâd been Charlesâ ally in that scheme. But when he passed from the scene, they instead, made a treaty with the Byzantines. Trade began flowing from Venice to Constantinople once more. An uneasy peace was made among the Italian city-states.Back in England, Edward was making plans. He was still amped to participate in REAL Crusade. He viewed his earlier foray in Syria as little more than a protracted raid. He wanted to see a major campaign of European nobility sweeping Islam from the Middle East. To that end, he began plans to make an alliance with the Mongol Ilkhans in Persia through marriage. He believed the Ilkhan was a Christian and that a suitable match could be made between their courts that would cement an alliance in preparation for a new crusade. The Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers sent a message to Edward that the Battle of Homs between the Mongols & Mamluks had severely weakened the Muslims and the time was ripe for a new campaign. But in yet another example of timing, Edward had to divert the funds heâd set aside for the crusade to deal with an uprising in Wales.Then, in 1285, Honorius IV became Pope, replacing the pro-Charles Martin IV. Honorius owned different political priorities than Martin. He was all for a Crusade and opened talks with Edward to stage one. When Edward asked for special treatment by the Pope, negotiations stalled and plans for the campaign were put on hold.Back in Persia, the Mongols were encouraged in their hope for an alliance with the West when a group of Franciscans sent by Pope Nicholas III stopped there on their way East. They were the answer to Khubilai Khanâs request for Christian teachers who could instruct his court and people in the Faith. The Ilkhans assumed they were an embassy sent to them. They did stay for a while but then moved on. Then, in 1285 the Ilkhan Arghun sent a letter to Pope Honorius informing him of the careful treatment and favor Christians received in his domains. He then requested a joint campaign against the Mamluks in Syria. Since Honorius was having problems uniting the Europeans in a crusade, he was unable to commit or make any promise of an imminent alliance. But he did make clear Europeâs willingness to enter into one when the time was right.In 1286, Arghun decided it was time to ramp things up by sending an official embassy to Europe. The Mamluks had forged ties with Turks and Kurds in harassing Nestorian communities in the Ilkhanâs realm. Because they were his subjects, he wanted to protect them. But he also viewed their harassment as a possible inducement for the Christian West to come to their aide. He promised that if a joint action against the Muslims was successful, the Europeans could take control of Jerusalem and their settlements in the Outremer would be safeguarded. The key to acceptance of the offer, Arghun believed, would be proportional to the importance of the embassy he sent. He needed an experienced traveler; someone who could take the long and difficult journey and arrive in Europe ready to go. He needed someone fluent in several languages. A scholar well-versed in the learning of the age. Someone with notable accomplishments that would commend him as worthy of listening to. Oh, and he needed to be a Christian since heâd be meeting with Christian leaders. Because Europeans were so hung up on status and class, the envoy needed to be of high rank; someone whose office required attention.Rabban Sauma was the perfect fit for these requirements. Since he was unable to pursue his mission as ambassador to the court of the Great Khan in China due to the war with Khaidu, why not send him the opposite direction â West, to the capitals of Europe?But how would he communicate with Europeans? Sauma knew many languages now. But Italian, German, French, and English were not among them. He had picked up Persian though. And the flourishing trade between Europe and Persia meant there were many merchants who could translate for him.As for office, Sauma was officially an ambassador. And he was a close personal friend of the Nestorian Patriarch, Mar Yaballaha. Indeed, heâd been instrumental in his selection. While Sauma waited for the paths East to open so he could fulfill his role as ambassador to Khubilai Khanâs court, Yaballaha had made Sauma his chief of staff.Arghun couldnât ask Sauma directly if heâd take on the embassy West. He had to go through proper channels and asked Yaballaha for his counsel on who to send. The Patriarch suggested his friend Sauma, then immediately regretted it. This would be the first time for many years theyâd been separated. Yaballaha leaned on Saumaâs wisdom in leading the Nestorian Church. Heâd be greatly missed. Though Saumaâs record doesnât say so, he must have needed some persuading as well. But the travel and adventure bug his young protĂ©gĂ© Markos, the now Patriarch Mar Yaballaha, had infected him with years before in their isolated cave in the Fang Mountains of China took over. Their main ambition to visit Jerusalem and the birthplace of Christianity was thwarted by the Mamluk presence there. The next best thing would be to visit the headquarters of both the Eastern Orthodox Church in Constantinople and the Roman Catholic Church in Rome. If he could pull it off, Sauma would have the singular privilege of having visited the HQâs of the 3 main branches of the Church. And not just as a pilgrim, but as an official envoy. Someone granted access to see the most sacred places of the Faith after the Holy Land itself.So, Sauma agreed. YesâHeâd be Arghunâs embassy to Europe.Sauma thus becomes the Mongolâs first ambassador to meet a European monarch, Heâs the first Chinese to write an account of his travels to the West.Arghun gave him written communications and gifts to pass along to the Byzantine Emperor, the Pope, and the kings of France and England. He gave him gold for the journey, a caravan of attendants, and the all-important letters-patent, the forerunners of the modern passport, that ensured Saumaâs safe passage.Sadly, we donât have Saumaâs own account of his travels. What we have is an early translation of it into Syriac. The monk who did it appears to have edited Saumaâs account so that while it gives detailed descriptions of the holy sites Sauma visited it skims over the diplomatic aspects of his mission. So thereâs no account of the contents of the letters Arghun sent West. Saumaâs impressions of Europe are all highly abbreviated. The translator was only interested in the religious aspects of Saumaâs account and only includes an outline for context in those religious moments.Weâll pick it up here in the next episode, as Sauma embarks on his journey West.
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This is the 6th Episode in the amazing story of a Chinese monk named Rabban Sauma.We ended the last episode with Saumaâs protĂ©gĂ© and friend Markos, firmly ensconced in the seat of the Catholicus of the Church of The East.Because weâve already had 5 episodes in this series spread over 5 weeks, itâs easy for subscribers who listen to each episode when it goes up, to forget the arc of Markosâ story.He showed up at the door of the monk Saumaâs cell in the Fang Mountains of China when he was only 15. He let Sauma know he wanted to become his disciple. Sauma knew the rigors of his solitary existence were beyond the pale of most peopleâs endurance. But Markos proved good to his word and sworn devotion. He was a quick learner and as willing to brave the ardor of the asceticâs life as humbly and silently as his mentor. The two men became close friends. Years passed. Saumaâs lessons spoke of lands of wonder in the West. They fired Markosâ imagination. He wanted to go see the places he was learning of. He shared the travel and discovery itch with his elder friend. And over time Saumaâs curiosity was sparked as well. So the two decided to make the journey to the headquarters of their Faith, as well as the Holy Land, birthplace of that Faith. This was at a time in history when âthe Silk Roadsâ were more an idea than a reality.Securing resources from the local Nestorian community and permission from the Great Khan Khubilai, they set out. Months later with dozens of harrowing and death-defying moments behind them, they finally arrived in Maragha, Persia, headquarters of the Nestorian Church. The Nestorian Patriarch, bearing the title of Catholicus was a conniving schemer who sought to use the fame and favor of the two Chinese envoys to his own advantage. Their babes-in-the-woods demeanor was but a convenient mask over their more than savvy awareness of the Catholicusâ shenanigans. When the way to Jerusalem, their ultimate destination, proved closed due to the hostility of the Muslim Mamluks, they decided to wait things out in Persia to see if the path would eventually open. They reluctantly agreed to take the promotions the Catholics insisted. Which proved a wise move, since he then soon died. The church leaders responsible for selecting his replacement considered Markos the perfect candidate and against his protests, installed him as the new Catholicus. He was just 36 years old. His elevation was quickly and enthusiastically endorsed by the Mongol Ilkhan, Abakha.Markosâ transformation from a 15-year-old wannabe Chinese monk into Mar Yaballaha, the Nestorian Catholicus, would be similar to a teenage Siberian farmhand becoming a deacon at his local church, then 20 years later walking to Rome and becoming Pope. Itâs that strange a story.And what of Sauma? What of the man whoâd been Markosâ mentor, his tutor, his teacher and guide. There arguably would not have been a Markos without a Sauma. Most men would be envious of the advancement and promotion of their student. Not Sauma. He encouraged Markos and gave him wise counsel at the outset of his ascension into office as head of the Church of the East.And thatâs where Saumaâs story would have ended; a footnote to the story of his protĂ©gĂ© and friend who rose from obscurity to fill the seat of one of the most important offices in church history. But all thatâs occurred so far is the preface or maybe better, Chapter 1, to Saumaâs tale.Because the turmoil in Central Asia between the forces of Khaidu and Khubilai kept the route East closed, Mar Yaballaha asked his friend to stay and manage his household, which he moved from Mar Denhaâs capital at Maragha, to the older capital of Baghdad.The Mongol Ilkhan Abakha was eager to shore up relations with his non-Muslim subjects after a severe trouncing by the Mamluks at the Battle of Homs in 1281. He worried the Muslim victory might raise insurrectionist leanings and hoped his Christian, Buddhist and Jewish subjects would prove a counterweight to any violence. So, making a visit to Baghdad, he granted Mar Yaballaha the power to levy taxes to support church works. But before the law could go into effect, Abakha died, most likely from complications due to alcoholism, a frequent problem with Mongol rulers. It was the Spring of 1282.Abakhaâs death set off the powder keg that was the reality of Mongol succession. To the victor go the spoils. The intrigues that followed are the stuff of legend, but wide of our scope here. Let me summarize by saying that the short reign of a pro-Muslim Ilkhan set the Nestorians adrift. Mar Yaballaha was accused by Muslim advisors of the Ilkhan of conspiring with his enemies and supporting his rival in the contest for succession. Their accusations were furthered when a couple envious and ambitious Nestorian bishops joined the whisper-conspiracy against the Catholicus.The Ilkhan was duped and had Mar Yaballaha, Rabban Sauma and the governor of Mosul they were accused of being in cahoots with, arrested and hauled to trial in the Spring of 1283. As the trial commenced, a long laid conspiracy unfolded. Witness after witness was brought in who accused the three of conspiring to stage a coup. Theyâd supposedly sent letters to Khubilai defaming the Ilkhan as an apostate and turn-coat intending to side with the Great Khanâs enemies. So, Yaballaha, Sauma and the governor were brought in one by one and questioned. Because they were innocent of the charges, their answers all lined up, though they had no idea of what they were being charged with ahead of time. Then Yaballaha made an astute suggestion, evidencing the quickness that had commended him as Patriarch in the first place. An easy way to prove their innocence was to send a rider after the dispatches theyâd sent East to Khubilai. Go get them and read them for yourself, Yaballaha told the Ilkhan. A rider was sent, the letters were read, and the conspiracy against the three was exposed. There was nothing in the letters to the Great Khan that were derogatory toward the Ilkhan.Then it became clear the Ilkhan himself may have been in on the conspiracy from the outset. Though it had been exposed, he refused to release or exonerate them. He kept them in custody as his Muslim officials dug dirt, rooting round for some other way to condemn them. When nothing could be found, the Ilkhan toyed with the idea of just asserting his right as ruler to execute them. He was only barely persuaded not to by more fair-minded officials and his own mother, who was a Nestorian. She convinced him he had nothing to fear from the three; that they only desired to be good citizens and to encourage their congregation in the same vein. So he reluctantly released them and returned the gold letter-patent to Mar Yaballaha.The Catholicus realized staying near the seat of power was unwise as it provoked the Muslims who now felt empowered and used their favor to advance their position at the expense of the Christians, Jews and Buddhists. He moved to a small Nestorian community near Lake Urmiya. While there, he had a vision in which he learned heâd never see Ilkhan Ahmad, again. He never did.His rival Arghun, who Yaballaha and Sauma had been accused of being in league with, continued to stage raids in the hinterlands. Just after the turn of the year 1284, things fell apart for Ahmad. His departure from the celebrated Mongol religious tolerance to a certain favoritism toward Islam only served to alienate the majority of his officials and counselors who were NOT Muslims. They remained loyal, but that loyalty began to erode as they watched him being progressively moved into a posture hostile toward his non-Muslim subjects. Ahmad arrested and executed one of his brothers accused of being in league with Arghun. Then in July, Arghunâs forces were defeated and he was captured. But instead of executing him, Ahmad turned him over to his officers and went home to his new bride. This proved a fatal mistake. Arghun became the rallying point for all the turmoil Ahmadâs mismanagement provoked. One official after another began voicing discontent with his rule. The discord grew as they realized others felt the same way they did. It quickly became clear the unrest was widespread. Ahmadâs willingness to treat with their enemies the Mamluks, his arrogance, his ill-advised dismissal of widely regarded officials because some of his close favorites were envious, and his very public mistreatment of the popular Mar Yaballaha and Rabban Sauma for no reason but prejudice, combined to throw him into a disfavor provoking a coup. Sensing one was about to ensue, Ahmad attempted to flee to the Ilkhanateâs northern enemies, The Golden Horde. That was all the proof Arghun needed that Ahmad was indeed a traitor. His contest for succession to the Ilkhanate after Abakha was now proved valid. They ought to have selected him rather than the disastrous Ahmad. When it was clear to Ahmadâs supporters he was doomed, even they switched sides and laid hold of him so he couldnât flee North.Arghun reluctantly executed his uncle Ahmad on August 10, 1284.Once Arghun took his seat in the Mongol capital at Tabriz, Mar Yaballaha gathered a group of church officials and headed there to congratulate the new Ilkhan. Arghun was informed of the trials Yaballaha and Sauma had endured at the hands of the previous regime and promised a new day of favor with the Mongol throne and court. He offered to have the Nestorian conspirators against Yaballaha arrested and executed. The Catholicus said the Church had its own way of handling them and asked that he be allowed to deal with them. Arghun agreed. The two Metropolitans were defrocked and excommunicated.What would the new administration mean for Rabban Sauma, who, while officially designated as the Nestorian Visitor-General to China, couldnât go there because of the on-going hostilities in Central Asia?The new Ilkhan Arghun, was beset on all sides by enemies. The Muslim Mamluks to the West and South. Their allies The Golden Horde to the North. And Khaidu, the enemy of Arghunâs ally Khubilai to the East. The Ilkhanate had little to fear from the East because Khaidu was preoccupied on his Eastern front with the Great Khan. They also didnât worry much about a massed attack from the Golden Horde in the North. As fellow Mongols, they held an uneasy peace neither wanted to break. The real threat came from the Mamluks, who the Golden Horde was more than willing to let act as surrogates for them in the contest with Ilkhanate Persia. The Ilkhans had tried to extend their conquests into the Holy Land but were rebuffed by the Mamluks. When the Mamluks pushed Eastward beyond their bases in Syria, the Mongols were able to pull off a draw that stung the pride of the heretofore victorious Mamluks. But the Mamluks hadnât really staged a concerted effort. The clashes were more limited forays than major campaigns to take the East.Arghun worried now that the pro-Muslim Ahmad had been removed & executed, the Mamluks would take offense and stage a major campaign to conquer Persia. But as he looked around for allies, the offerings were slim. Khubilai was too far away and already locked in a struggle with his cousin Khaidu. No help would come from that corner. Only one option remained â Christian Europe. The very realms the Mongol Machine had just a few decades before almost overwhelmed. Would Christian Europe set aside that terrifying and recent horror to ally with the Ilkhanate in a new Crusade to purge the Middle East of the Muslim threat? >> Thatâs the plan Arghun settled on. It was an ambitious, an audacious proposal. Far-fetched, to say the least. Certainly to the Europeans, the Mongols were as great a threat as the Mamluks. Maybe even more so. But Arghunâs back was to the proverbial wall. If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, maybe an alliance could be forged between Persia and the crusading states of Europe.But, who to send with the proposal? What embassy would the West receive and treated the offer of an alliance with the seriousness it needed? How about a Chinese monk whoâd been promoted to Ambassador and helped install a Patriarch?
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This is Episode 5 in the on-going saga of Rabban Sauma.We left Markos and Bar Sauma headed to Tabriz, the Mongol Ilkhanâs capital in Persia.By way of recap, âIlkhanâ means âunder-khan.âThe Mongol realms of the late 13th C were fractured and divided up into warring camps. The Ilkhans of Persia owed allegiance to the Great Khan, Khubilai, whose capital in China would eventually be known as Beijing. Lying between the Ilkhante in Persia and the realm of Khubilai was a Central Asian breakaway region ruled by Khubilaiâs estranged Cousin, Khaidu. This was called the Chagatai Khanate.To the north of the Ilkhans in Persia over a much-contested border, was the Mongol Golden Horde, AKA the Kipchak Khanate.The Ilkhan had moved their capital from Maragha to Tabriz to keep a large force near that contentious border with the Horde. It was the plateau of Azerbaijan with itâs rich pastures that was contested. The Mongol mounts that had made their conquests possible needed those pastures, which became increasingly rare the further west they drove.Though Tabriz would eventually grow into a major center of trade, when Sauma & Markos arrived it was already thriving, with European merchants well-established in the city. Its religious mix included both a Dominican and two Franciscan monasteries. The churches of Tabriz represented quite a mix. There were Byzantine, Armenian, Georgian, Nestorian and Jacobite congregations. During times of doctrinal de-emphasis, the Jacobite and Nestorian churches often lined up to share a Patriarch. Then, when doctrinal nuance regarding the person of Christ returned to the fore, the groups split apart once more.But it wasnât just the Christians that were represented by different groups in Tabriz. It was also a meeting place of various Muslim groups and sects. Because of the famed Mongol policy of religious tolerance, all these various groups lived side by side in a mostly amicable relationship. Combined with a rich East-West trade network, it all made Tabriz a genuinely cosmopolitan city and served as a fit setting for the two monks to meet the Mongol Ilkhan, Abakha. Presented with credentials from both The Great Khan, Khubilai and the Nestorian Patriarch, Abakha demonstrated his quick apprehension of the gravity of his visitors' journey by immediately granting their request to endorse Mar Denhaâs appointment as Catholicus. He then gave his officials strict orders to assist Bar Sauma and Markos on the last leg of their journey to Jerusalem.With little delay, the two commenced their journey West to Ani on the Araxes River in Armenia. Ani was known as the city of âa thousand and one churches.â The Ani Cathedral was designed by the same 10th Century architect who redesigned Constantinopleâs Hagia Sophia.Leaving Ani and its gorgeously designed and decorated churches, they headed toward the Black Sea where they hoped to catch a ship headed to the Palestinian coast. But the report of robbers, the Golden Horde and their Mamluk allies who controlled Palestine combined to convince the monks that the way forward was closed.By late 1280, they were back in Maragha, the previous capital of the Ilkhanate and home to the recently confirmed Nestorian Catholicus, Mar Denha, He was pleased with their return. Their presence afforded him more opportunity to work his schemes. He agreed with the assessment of their Armenian hosts that the way to Jerusalem was closed, insinuating that that is what heâd tried to tell them previously when heâd done no such thing. He suggested they instead defer their desire to visit the holy relics of the Holy Land to the several relics he oversaw. Thinking to accrue to himself some of the august spiritual mojo surrounding the two Eastern visitors, Mar Denha promoted Markos to a Rabban, a Master, and declared his intent to install him as the Metropolitan of all East Asia. Sauma was also promoted to the rank of a Rabban and made Visitor-General in China, a kind of Papal ambassador, except for the Nestorian Patriarch rather than the Pope. By these appointments, which due to Markosâ & Saumaâs popularity were sure to pass, Mar Denha hoped to secure his grip over Nestorian affairs far & wide. Heâd be installing one of his own as Bishop over the vast area of East Asia in Markoâs See, and would have a voice and ear in the councils of the Great Khan Khubilai.A little background on the power and scope of the Nestorian Catholicusâs authority would be helpful here. The Catholicus of the Nestorian Church, AKA, The Church of the East, was equivalent to the Byzantine Patriarch and Roman Pope in terms of authority as sole head over the Church. The Catholicus bore both spiritual & secular power. Besides steering the Nestorian ship, he was responsible for overseeing the purity of doctrine and appointing all other church officials. He weighed in on secular matters as well, giving guidance and counsel to the civil ruler as the overseer of a large number of the rulerâs subjects.Mar Denha had risen to power as Catholicus more by political machination than spiritual devotion. He elevated Markos and Sauma because his previous movements in China had been disastrous and he hoped to re-secure his base. The previous Metropolitan heâd appointed had promptly denounced him as a fraud. So Denha revoked his appointment and had him sequestered in an out of the way monastery, from which he escaped. Recaptured and returned, he and four of his supporters were soon found dead in their cells. The ensuing scandal threatened to see the Nestorian church black-listed in the Far East. Denha hoped the elevation and appointment of the now famous Chinese monks would return his patriarchy to favor in the Court of the Great Khan.Abraham Lincoln said, âNearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.â The newly minted Rabbans Sauma and Markos were offered immense power and influence. Theyâd left home humble monks. They could return as genuine movers and shakers. Men without local peer.They chose a different route.If theyâd had any doubts of Mar Denhaâs motives before, they saw clearly now. His power had indeed outed him. So they treated him carefully. They flattered him by saying as the head of their church, his words were equivalent to Jesusâ own. Then they pointed back, reminding him of the long and arduous journey theyâd recently completed. It was too soon to return home. They begged off the appointments he offered, listing their lack of training in leading the church. They were, after all, humble monks, devoted to a life of study and prayer. If it pleased the august Catholicus, theyâd prefer to retire to a quiet monastery and spend their days there.Mar Denha didnât buy it. Not even close. His mind was made up. He made it clear he considered their objections unworthy of the faith HEâD entrusted in them. How dare they, humble monks as they claimed to be, doubt his perception of their ability! So, Rabbans Sauma & Markos were forced to yield and began preparations for their return to China.Right then, tensions between Khubilai and Khaidu heated up. Word got back to Maragha from merchants making the trip from East to West that fresh hostilities had broken out and the routes through Central Asia were closed.Anticipating their quick re-opening, Mar Denha pressed forward with the ceremonies attendant on the elevation of Markos and Sauma to their new posts. These ceremonies were elaborate. In Markosâ case, as a Metropolitan, he was given a new name, one reflecting the Syrian origin of the Nestorian faith. Several slips of paper with appropriate names were laid on the altar of the main church in Maragha. One was picked at random. It carried the moniker, Yaballaha = God-given. To that was added the revered title âMarâ meaning âYour.â Thus, Markos became Mar Yaballaha.When the routes Eastward failed to open as quickly as Mar Denha had hoped and having them hang around his estate became awkward, he granted their request to head back to the monastery at Mar Michael, where theyâd wanted to go all along.February of 1281 proved an eventful month. Mar Denha died unexpectedly. It was later reported that in the few months prior to his death, several church officials had premonitions a major change was coming to their church. Markos was one of them. He made a trip to Baghdad to secure some items appropriate to his role as Metropolitan; a pastoral robe and crozier = the shepherdâs staff. ON his way back to the monastery at Mar Michael, a friend brought him news of the Catholicusâ death. Markos then went to Maragha where he wept profusely over the body.The day after Denhaâs entombment, church leaders met in Baghdad to select a new leader. The discussions didnât take long. They asked Mar Yaballaha to become their new Catholicus. He seemed a perfect choice. His devotion to both God and church were exemplary. His motives had been proven pure. Knowing the Mongol tongue and customs, heâd be the perfect bridge between their church and rulers.He was astonished at their selection and resisted. He didnât know Syriac, the main language of the Nestorian Faith. He wasnât a skilled public speaker. He wasnât schooled in the nuances of Nestorian doctrine. He assumed surely these disqualified him. But all his resistance did was further affirm in the officials' minds that his humility commended him as the perfect candidate. With Mar Denhaâs megalomaniacal tenure fresh in their minds, Markoâs humility was a refreshing change that only served to secure his appointment.Realizing they werenât going to take âNoâ for an answer, Markos, or we must now call him, Mar Yaballaha finally consented. His first thought was, âI gottaâ tell my buddy.â So he high-tailed it back to the monastery and informed Rabban Sauma. Sauma was elated and urged the new Catholicus to immediately secure the Ilkhan Abakhaâs affirmation.The two returned to Maragha where they gathered a retinue of church officials and headed back to Tabriz. Abakha was ensconced in the nearby mountain retreat where he liked to spend the Summer. The Ilkhan was more than happy to replace the Islamophobic Mar Denha with a patriarch who held no special animosity toward Muslims. It helped to have someone connected to the Great Khan back East as well. In affirming Mar Yaballaha as the new Catholicus, he mused that Sauma and Markosâ journey to Jerusalem had been arrested, not by the Mamluks, but by God, to ensure His Church would be provided with solid leadership in the challenging times that lay ahead. Abakha wanted to make sure his approval ofMar Yaballaha was clear, so he gave him a robe fitting his office, a chair resembling a throne, a large sun-umbrella that functioned like a canopy used also by the royal family, a new, comprehensive letter-patent made of solid gold, and official conference of the great seal marking the authority of the Nestorian Catholicus. It was that seal Mar Denha had waited many years to secure from the Ilkhan, the very same seal Sauma & Markos had secured for him. Abakha now gave it confidently to Mar Yaballaha. From then on, Mar Yaballahaâs commands carried the weight of law for the Nestorian community. As a final signifier of his approval, Abakha had his administrators designate substantial funds to pay for the ceremonies that would install Markos into his new office.The group then headed back to Baghdad and Mar Yaballaha was installed as the new Catholicus in November of 1281. Metropolitans, that is, Nestorian bishops, traveled from as far as Western Armenia, Samarkand, and Tripoli to attend the event.So, at the age of only 36, Markos of China, a humble teenager who aspired to little more than the life of a monk in the Fang Mountains of his homeland, had risen to become THE leader of his entire denomination. And not just denomination, but one of the 3 major branches of the Christian Church and Faith â The Nestorian Church of the East!Itâs quite a story. But itâs just getting started. For his mentorâs tale has much farther to go. Everything till now has been but the preface to Rabban Saumaâs epic. Join us next time for Part 6.
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This is Episode 4 in the Saga of Rabban Sauma.After their 6 month rest at the oases of Khotan, Bar Sauma & Markos renewed their journey West. Cautious of the fighting taking place between Khubilai Khan and his cousin Khaidu, their guides escorted them around the regions of greatest threat, lengthening the journey by several weeks. They stopped at a Talas, a town in what is today Kyrgyz.500 yrs before, Talas was the scene of one of the most important battles in history. The forces of the Tang Dynasty smashed into those of the Arabian Umayyads. Talas was Khaiduâs HQ. And while the two monks had before been leery of encountering the treacherous would-be khan, they now decided to present themselves before him. They were careful to avoid any hint they were emissaries of his enemy Khubilai. They were just two monks on a spiritual quest, pilgrims to the birthplace of their Faith.Though they already had the precious letters-patent form the Great Khan, they knew securing another passport from Khaidu might grease the wheels for any future local chieftains who aligned with him. So after placing a blessing on Khaidu, they requested the precious letters of passage.Sauma & Markosâ passage across this region, embroiled as it was in war, proved typical for East-West trade and travelers at this time. While groups found all kinds of causes to fight over; ethnicity and religion being foremost, when it came to trade, such distinctions were often set aside in favor of an apolitical posture that was willing to overlook the reasons for war. This allowance for trade across such a wide spectrum of people and faiths was due to the realization trade was a major source of income to the various kingdoms. Harming or hindering it in one area meant diminishing it across the board. So with rare exception, trade was regarded as apolitical.Leaving Talas, the next portion of Markos and Saumaâs journey was yet another challenge to endurance. They headed southwest into Khorasan in northeastern Persia, skirting present-day Afghanistan. Crossing rugged mountains and deserts little better than the Taklamakan which had just about ended them, they lost a good part of their baggage. The mountains soared so high travelers were beset by intense cold, thin ice, howling wind, and the ever-present threat of avalanches.This was also an area fraught with local warlords who survived by robbing caravans. The problem of brigandage was so severe, the Mongols set rules for how caravans were to protect themselves. Disheartening to all who traveled here were the frequent skeletons of camels, pack animals, and humans found regularly along the path.But this was the last leg of their journey from the Far to the Middle East. They finally arrived in the first of their destinations; Persia. But they were likely shocked at what they found. This eastern region in Persia had suffered terribly at the hands of the Mongols. If a city surrendered when first approached, it was spared. If it resisted, the entire population was wiped out. Many cities of this region had thought to resist the invaders and had suffered for it. But as the invaders moved southwest into the heart of the greater Persian plateau, word spread and cities capitulated. The Mongols then recruited skilled craftsmen and the educated into their burgeoning bureaucracy. They drew from Persian Muslims, Jews, and Christians.The year was 1280 when Bar Sauma & Markos settled into a monastery on the outskirts of Tus [Toos], Mongol capital of Khorasan in the northeast frontier region of Persia. Tus was the birthplace of several historical notables as well as the burial place of the great Caliph Harun al-Rashid, whose reign and court provided the literary base for the Arabians Nights.Tus was often the scene of conflict between Shiâa and Sunni pilgrims because not only did it hold the tomb of the Sunni al-Rashid, it was the burial place for the 8th Shiâa Imam Ali al-Rida.While Islam was the predominant religion in Persia at that time, there was a sizeable population of Jews, Buddhists, and Christians as well. Prior to the arrival of the Mongols, the majority Muslims ruled these minority faiths with a begrudged tolerance. After the Mongol Conquest, the Muslims protested that they were treated no better than the others. They believed their vastly superior numbers ought to gain them advantages. But the Mongols enforced their standard policy of religious tolerance. Muslims worried when they saw large numbers of Nestorians promoted into high office in the Mongol system. But the Mongols werenât showing a religious bias; they were merely filling the ranks of their civil government with the most educated, who happened to come from the highly literate Nestorian clergy.Having recouped their strength in Tus after their arduous passage across Central Asia, Bar Sauma and Markos renewed their journey West. Resupplied by the local Christian community, they set out across Azerbaijan, skirted the Caspian Sea and Dashti Kavir Desert and headed toward Baghdad. Baghdad was HQâs of the Nestorian Church, home of their Great Patriarch, Mar Denha.But if they hoped to meet the grand leader of their church, they didnât need to travel to Baghdad to do so. Mar Denha was visiting Azerbaijan at the same time Sauma & Markos were passing through. He granted them an audience in the Mongol Capital of Maragha. The Ilkhan Hulegu had made Maragha a gem, building a large observatory there for the famed astronomer Nasir al-Din Tusi. This observatory was a mecca that attracted Muslim scholars from all over. It housed several ingenious astronomical devices and itâs growing body of discovery and work became the envy of Chinese and Europeans scholars alike. The attached library held 400,000 volumes. So impressive was this center of learning, wealthy Muslim leaders and merchants established grants to fund it.The City provided a fitting stage for the meeting of the two Chinese monks and their churchâs leader. Markos and Bar Sauma bowed before him and amidst many tears expressed their gratitude theyâd made the difficult journey to see him and carry the collective greetings of his people and churches in the Far East. Mar Denha was deeply moved by the expression of the faith their journey had demonstrated. He was surprised to hear the two monks had met with and been sent on their way with official endorsement by the Great Khan Khubilai. When they said their ultimate goal was to visit the birthplace of the Faith, the Patriarch assured them God would see they made it. After a few more days of meetings with the Mar Denha, they asked for permission and blessing to visit sites of interest to their Faith. There were tombs, churches, and shrines to visit in and around Baghdad, current HQs for the Church of the East. Itâs oldest and most revered site was in nearby Ctesphon which they also wanted to visit.In Baghdad, they were given a tour of the Great Church of Koke and the ancient monastery of Mar Mari, named for the early 4th C missionary who planted the church in Ctesiphon.Bar Saumaâs account lists the sites they visited in the many towns between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Besides cataloging these shrines, he gives little description of what life was like for the locals.Other records tell us Baghdad of 1280- was a seething cauldron of tension between Muslims and Christians, who were universal of the Nestorian brand. The previously mentioned Catholicos Mar Denha had stirred the pot by inciting his flock into hostility toward Islam. When an apostate Christian became a Muslim, Mar Denha ordered his execution by drowning in the Tigris. The Muslims responded by trying to assassinate Mar Denha and burning down his house. Three years later, when an attempt was made on the civil governorâs life, Christians and Muslims blamed each other. So local Nestorian congregations were greatly encouraged by the arrival of the two monks as it seemed to signal support from the Great Khan. After, all they did bear his august approval in tangible form in that letters-patent they carried. They may have been in the minority, but Khubilai and sent them succor in Sauma & Markos.The two ended their tour of Nestorian sites at the Mar Michael monastery in Arbil. Having been so long away from the monkâs life, they decided to renew it by staying in the monastery as participants for a season before setting off for Jerusalem.While Mar Denha had originally applauded and affirmed their plan to travel to Jerusalem, he changed his mind. Heâd seen how the two monks had generated hope and much-needed vitality to the increasingly moribund church he presided over. He wrote them a letter, berating them for thinking only of themselves in entering the monastery at Arbil. How dare they seek personal peace, he said, when their brothers and sisters were beset by dangers at the hands of their Muslim neighbors, left & right?Mar Denha was the Catholicos, the Patriarch of the Nestorian Church by selection of church officials. But the Mongol ruler reserved the right to affirm such elections. It had been 15 years and the Mongol Ilkhan, Abakha, still had not officially endorsed him. Abakha was Buddhist but married to a Christian. Because Mar Denha was a well-known antagonist and rabble-rouser in matters involving the majority Muslims, Abakha balked at granting Denha the official title. He knew to do so would risk riots form his Muslim subjects.Mar Denha saw in the two Chinese monks the lever to move the Ilkhan. After all, they enjoyed the favor of The GREAT Khan, did they not? Serving as Khubilaiâs unofficial envoys, their counsel could easily be passed off as a directive from the Far Eastern court.So, guilted into it, Sauma & Markos left the monastery, trekked back to Baghdad and met with Mar Denha. They agreed to approach the Ilkhan >> IF >> Denha would provide them an escort who could return him the credentials verifying his title and office, as they continued on their way to Jerusalem. Though the monks had previously treated Mar Denha as a near god-like figure, these shenanigans unmasked him as grasping, power-hungry, & self-serving. Because of the way theyâd been treated by other Nestorian leaders back in China, they didnât trust the Catholicos to keep his word. They knew if they secured the treasure credentials, theyâd make themselves too valuable a resource to let go. So their intention was to high tail it out of town as soon as they got Mar Denha what he wanted. So eager was he for the Ilkhanâs recognition, Denha agreed.Eager to be on their way and out of Denhaâs grasp, Sauma & Markos traveled to Tabriz, Abakhaâs capital on the fringes of Azerbaijan.What would the Ilkhan say to their request for recognition of the scheming Mar Denha as Catholicos? Weâll find out next time in Part 5.
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This episode continues our series on the remarkable Rabban Sauma with Part 3.In Part 1, we looked at the opening chapter in Saumaâs life. By way of a quick recap . . .He was the treasured son of an Onggud noble family who from an early age showed a remarkable passion for pursuing the spiritual. Adept in his studies and excelling in piety, by the age 25 he was a member of the Nestorian clergy, a monk-priest. It was the year 1248.Choosing a life of isolation rather than a monastery, he retreated from the Mongol capital at Tai-tu [later â Beijing] to the Fang Mountains where he devoted himself to study. The isolation he yearned for was often interrupted by people who made pilgrimage to his humble hamlet, seeking a glimpse, maybe a word, from the holy man whose fame was spreading. Though he preferred a life of quiet contemplation, he met with all those who sought him out.That would have been his entire life and one weâd never have known of, were it not for one of those pilgrims, a fifteen-year-old young man named Markos. Markos didnât just want to spend a couple days with the holy man. He wanted a mentor, someone whoâd teach him everything he had to share. Sauma tried to dissuade the young man, just as his parents and others had tried to dissuade him when he was young. It didnât take long before Sauma recognized in Markos the same zeal and dedication that burned in his soul. Three years later Marcos had proven himself devotionally sincere, academically capable and of equal spiritual mettle with his master, so he was ordained as a monk in the Nestorian church.After a decade together in their mountain fastness, Marcosâ intellectual curiosity prompted a spiritual itch that saw the two men descend from the heights and embark on a journey of literally epic consequence. Marcos wanted to visit the scenes and sites where the Bible story had played out, as well as the birthplace and headquarters of the Nestorian church. In his studies, he read of Christians of other flavors and stripes and wanted to meet them. Nothing less than a journey to the far-reaches of the West could scratch that itch. Markos shared this dream with Bar Sauma, who was now more friend than master. It took a while, but eventually, the younger manâs hunger to discover, breathed new life on the embers of Saumaâs soul and the two decided to pursue their vision. It was 1275 when they began plans to set out, the same year Marco Polo arrived in China. They gave away what few possessions they had and headed to Tai-tu to hire guides and gather provisions. Because theyâd taken vows of poverty, they had to ask the local Nestorian churches to support them. The Nestorian leaders scoffed at the undertaking. Such a venture was deemed both physically impossible and spiritually wasteful. There simply wasnât a safe, navigable route West. And what use was it visiting the Holy Land, they wondered, when the Bible said The Kingdom of God is within us?But by this time, both Bar Sauma & Markos were deft at waving aside objections about the arduousness of the journey. Since they already counted themselves dead and had mortified the flesh, death along the route was of little consequence. Their only ambition was to faithfully follow the path they were convinced God had set before them. Their steely-eyed focus won the Nestorian community over and they went from resistance to a hearty support for their venture of faith.The journey they proposed would be expensive since theyâd need an entire caravan. They needed guides, camels, and since camels require considerable attention to stay healthy, camel-attendants, a highly specialized trade.Camels are able to carry between 4 and 500 lbs. Mules, their closest rival as a beast of burden can carry 250 lbs. But camels require far less water and feed. Their hooves are better suited to the sandy soil covering large swaths of the territory in Central Asia. Camels are also reputed to be able to predict sandstorms and can locate underground water. Their dung makes decent fuel for fires. But camels arenât prolific in the progeny department, so theyâre expensive. Their care & upkeep requires special training, so handlers fetch a tidy sum.Markos and Sauma also needed baggage-handlers, cooks, & several other assistants. To give you an idea of how large a group weâre talking about, a 14th Century European handbook for merchants recommended a China-bound caravan have no less than 60 people. But Bar Sauma & Markos werenât transporting commercial goods, just themselves and some small items to give as gifts to Western Nestorian leaders.They might have joined a merchant caravan, but the two monks intended to spend considerably more time at places along the route than a commercial interest would be willing to.Adding to the cost was the sheer length of time the trip would take. Six months wasnât an unreasonable estimate. That meant buying provisions for their entire caravan, as well as paying the inevitable levies and passage fees from petty lords who fancied themselves strong enough to extort coin. Then there was the obvious need for a reserve fund, because who knew what might befall them on the way.So, once the Nestorian community got on board with the venture, they generously supplied the needed funds. When the Mongol Court saw the seriousness with which Markos & Sauma proceeded with their plans, they decided to hop on. This was during the reign of the famous Khubilai Khan. A pragmatic ruler, Khubilai wanted to cover all his religious bases and hoped to gain the Nestorian Godâs favor by supporting the monksâ trip. He gave them financial support, provided them with the all-important letters-patents that allowed them to pass unmolested across all Asia. These letter-patents were called pai-tzu in Chinese and were the forerunner of our modern passports. They not only served as evidence of official sanction from Khubilaiâs throne, they were certain to provide a warm welcome among Khubilaiâs allies. Even those less than friendly to the Khan would be careful to treat his emissaries with respect. For mistreating a Mongol envoy was a sure way to a lot of pain.After Khubilaiâs successful contest with his brother for the khanate, he saw it as imperative to gain the favor of as many of his subjects as possible. Supporting Saumaâs & Markosâ trip seemed a good way to gain favor with the Nestorian leaders and to recruit their scholars into his burgeoning bureaucracy. According to one account, Khubilai gave a set of royal clothes to Sauma with instructions to baptize them in the Jordan River then place them over Jesusâ burial place in Jerusalem.So, with both Church & State backing, Sauma & Markos set off on their great adventure. Weâre not sure of the exact date of their departure. It was sometime around 1276.The guides they hired in Tai-tu took them on the first leg of the journey, then were replaced with new guides familiar with the territory they were entering.Leaving Tai-tu, their first stop was in Markoâs hometown where the locals assumed heâd returned for good. They were delighted at the prospect the two holy men would assume the mantle of leadership in their church. They were stunned by the news Bar Sauma & Markos were headed to Jerusalem.Their next stop was at the headquarters of two Onggud chieftains allied by marriage to the Mongol court. They also assumed their exalted position and promises of major favors would entice the monks to stay and become a part of their royal retinue. They likewise were surprised at their insistence to continue their journey. Why brave the hardships that most certainly lay ahead when a life of ease and comfort was being handed them on a gilded platter. Such appeals only offended the monks, who were affronted by the idea their devotion to God could be sold for an offer of worldly influence. At one point the Onggud chiefs were so set on retaining them, they plotted their capture. But the presence of Khubilaiâs passport worried them. They realized it would be unwise to interfere in the affairs of the Mongol ruler. It seems word reached Sauma and Markos of the rulersâ earlier plans to hang on to them. So in an appeal to their mercy, they sought to load them up with exorbitant gifts of gold, silver, and precious rarities. When the monks refused, they prevailed on them to see it as a loan, and to pay it back by making a generous donation to the Nestorian Churches of the West.They followed the Yellow River southwest along the Alashan Mountains to Ning-hsia just South of the Gobi Desert.The route out of China was a fairly straight-forward affair since the Chinese had long before set up a system of postal stations spaced roughly every 20 miles apart along their frontier. These postal stations served a multitude of purposes. Officials stayed there in making inspection rounds. Merchants and traders were able to resupply at them. Troops stationed there kept a careful lookout on the frontier. Though there wasnât a highway from station to station, the trail between them was clear.That changed as the monksâ caravan left China and entered Central Asia. Here the stations ended and the trail petered out. An occasional pole or rock cairn might be seen on the horizon, but as often as not, such landmarks were washed away by floods, avalanches, & storms.Leaving Ning-hsia, they followed the route of the Southern Silk Road just south of the dreaded Taklimakan Desert. Bar Saumaâs account includes the terse comment that this was a âtoilsome & fatiguingâ part of their journey. Which, knowing how austere and arduous their prior lives had been, we might use terms like âbrutal & soul-crushingly exhausting.â The Taklimakan Desert has 60-foot tall dunes frequently savaged by dust storms. Marco Polo reported that travelers in this region are often separated from their mates by the opaque winds. Once alone, the bleakness and heat cause hallucinations in which people think they are being called from over the top of this or that mountain of sand. But each peak they traverse only takes them further away from the proper course.Entering the Tarin Basin, they skirted the northern foothills of the Kun-lun Mts. To their South was India. Though Bar Saumaâs account doesnât say so, they likely stopped for a time in the caravan center at Miran, a trade mecca that saw about as diverse a mix of cultures as to be found anywhere on the planet. Then following the Cherchen River, they embarked on a 500-mile long journey to their next major stop, the city of Khotan, one of the most renowned oases of Central Asia. It took two months for them to travel from Ning-hsia to Khotan and all during this time they only had 8 watering holes.Khotan was a center of the white & black jade prized by the Chinese. As a result, it had become a major center of trade and a meeting place for the Far East & Middle East. Lying north of India, it became a center for the dispersal of Buddhism. A 6th Century Chinese record attributed Khotan with a plethora of Buddhist temples, stupas, monks and nuns. Khotan was so important to Chinese interests, they established military garrisons there from the 7th thru 10th Cs.The residents of Khotan had long before used the nearby river to produce an elaborate irrigation system that produced an abundance of crops. This agricultural bonanza supported a healthy community of merchants and craftsmen who produced a plethora of goods highly prized far & wide. The bazaar boasted fine carpets, silk, and glass. Traders brought goods from Europe, China, & the Middle East, all headed in the opposite direction of their origin to be sold at steep rates due to their rarity in the market of their ultimate destination.Khotan hosted a mixed population, with Uyghurs, Mongols, Chinese, Persians, and locals all adding to the cosmopolitan feel. Finding a community of Nestorians with which they were able to share both their faith and language, Bar Sauma & Markos spent 6 months there. The extra time they spent in Khotan is likely due both to their need for recovery from the difficulty behind them AND to turmoil in the Mongol world that made the path West uncertain.Conflict between Khubilai and his cousin Khaidu had shattered the Pax Mongolica in the region. Khubilaiâs general charged with securing the area had been captured by Khaiduâs forces, handing the Great Khan a major setback. While their letters-patent ought to have secured them safe passage, Khaiduâs treachery was a cause for concern. So the two monks decided to cool their heels in Khotan to see if things would steel down. A side trip to the Nestorian See at Kashgar sounded like a good idea. After all, visiting the center of their Faith was the whole point of their expedition and Kashgar was the home of a beloved Metropolitan. But when they arrived, they were shocked to discover the recent inter-Mongolian conflicts had left the city ransacked and depopulated. Marco Polo had visited Kashgar just a few years earlier and described the city as flourishing and prosperous.Weâll end this episode with Bar Sauma and Markos back in Khotan, readying to set out on their westward course once more. The route was no more secure, but they determined to trust themselves into Godâs hands and press ahead.
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This is Part 2 of our series on Rabban Sauma.We begin with a brief review of the political scene into which Rabban Saumaâs story fits.Trade between the Roman Empire and the Far East was established as early as the First Century. But this trade was conducted by intermediaries. No single Western merchant made the entire trek to China, nor vice-versa. Goods traveled a ways from East to West or West to East by local caravans, which deposited them at a market, to be picked up by another caravan local to that region to continue the journey. After the Fall of the Han dynasty in the 3rd Century, and the ensuing chaos of the 4th thru 6th Centuries in China, trade stopped. With the emergence of the Tang Dynasty in the 7th Century, trade resumed. Goods flowed from the Middle East to China and back. But still, no Westerner met with his Chinese counterpart. The West prized Chinese silk and porcelain, while the East wanted frankincense, myrrh, jasmine, horses, and camels. Trade increased as Chinese dynasties and Islamic caliphates grew stronger. When they were in decline, trade did as well because of increased raids by brigands and the various protection schemes of money hungry local warlords.In these early centuries, trade flowed between Western and Eastern Asia. Europe wasnât involved because Medieval Feudalism simply had no market for Eastern goods. That changed with Europeâs emergence from the Middle Ages and the new appetite for Eastern goods stimulated by the Crusades. The foothold Europeans established in the Outremer during that time opened routes between the Middle East and Europe that brought goods to the marketplace the newly emerging Middle Class were able to afford. It wasnât long before silk began to adorn the wardrobe of the rich, and in a trend thatâs existed since time immemorial, what the rich wear, the poor aspire to.The Mongol conquests of the 13th Century saw an increase in trade between East & West and the first contact between Europeans and Chinese. By the end of the 1270âs the Mongols controlled more territory than any other empire in history, from Korea and South China, large parts of what would later be Russia, all Central Asia, a large portion of the Middle East and all Persia.In the 12th Century, mythical stories of a Christian Ruler in the East named Prester John motivated a handful of Europeans to initiate contact in the hope of an alliance to back down the threat from Islam. The legend of Prester John was stoked by Christian communities in the Middle East who knew vaguely of the Nestorian Church of the East and had heard tales of a Central Asian ruler named Yelu Tashih, King of Khara Khitay whoâdâ defeated the Muslims of his realm. They just assumed he must be a Christian. He wasnât. But why let a little detail like that mess up a perfectly good story that might illicit assistance from Europeans in launching a Crusade that would lift the Muslim heel form the necks of Middle Eastern Christians?As the Mongols moved steadily westward in the early 13th Century, King Bela of Hungary sent a Dominican emissary named Julian to learn more about what was obviously a very real threat. Julian never reached the Mongol base. He was met instead by Mongol envoys dispatched by the Mongol ruler Batu with an ultimatum of unconditional surrender and the release to the envoys of several enemies of the Mongols whoâd fled to Bela for refuge.Julian returned to Hungary with the ultimatum and an account of the Mongol army, which he said, was formidable due to its mobility. He reported it was the Mongol ambition to conquer all the way to Rome and add to their already ridiculous wealth by sacking the richest parts of Europe.The Mongol conquest of the cream of Hungary and Polandâs elite warriors and armies in 1240 by what was just the Mongol front screen put all Western Europe on notice about the new threat from the East. But Europe as fractured and disunited. The Pope and Holy Roman Emperor were at odds over who had supremacy. The call for yet another Crusade to liberate the Holy Land from the infidel floundered due to this disunity while the Christian cities in the Outremer pleaded for assistance.Three embassies were sent over the course of 1245 & 6 to the Mongols in an attempt to gather information about their intentions. Only one of them, lead by John of Plano Carpini was successful. He traveled all the way to the Mongol capital of Khara Khorum where he delivered a letter from the Pope, urging the Mongols to convert to Christianity and to leave off any further conquests in the West. While there, John witnessed the ascension of Genghisâ grandson Guyug to the position of Great Khan.Why the Mongols forsook their long history as a loose collection of nomadic tribes ruled by local chieftains to a massed nation under a supreme leader is a matter for a different study and podcast. Of our interest is the liberal policy the Mongols took toward religion in the years of their early expansion. The native religion of Mongolia was shamanism. Most of the tribes were originally ruled by a chieftain in conjunction with a shaman n a power-sharing mode. But shamanism wasnât well suited to the ruling of the settled populations the Mongols began conquering in China and the Middle East. These peoples tended to be more literate and sophisticated and needed a Faith that reflected deeper interests than shamanism could address. As a result, the Khans either adopted the predominant religion of the region they conquered, or they maintained a policy of toleration that allowed several faiths to prosper. As a result, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity were all accepted forms of Faith in Mongol realms. What wasnât appreciated by Mongol rulers were demands they embrace a particular faith. So the Popeâs demand he convert and forsake an invasion enraged the Great Khan Guyug. John of Plano was sent home with a letter to Pope Innocent and al Europeâs leaders to submit to the Mongols. If they balked, Guyug boasted, it would be a war the likes of which Europe had never seen.Johnâs embassy to the East was a disaster. Not only had he failed to convert the Mongols, heâd managed to alienate the very people the West had hoped to ally with in a campaign against the resurgent Muslims of the Middle East. And while his mission was unfruitful, Johnâs written account of what he experienced in the East proved to be a major boon as it lifted the veil of ignorance the West had to the East. If the Mongols had been shrouded in mystery up to that point, the mystery was dispelled with Johnâs comprehensive, though at times inaccurate, description of their way of life. After John of Plano Carpiniâs mission, there were several attempts by Western rulers like Franceâs Monarch Louis to forge an alliance with the Mongols against the Muslims. Some emissaries were official, while other missions were undertaken in a more covert fashion. Western insistence on the conversion of Mongol rulers to Christianity and Mongol intransigence on European submission were perennial sticking points. At one point Nestorian emissaries sent by The Great Khan Guyug to King Louis fabricated the lie that Guyug HAD converted and that he was married to the daughter of the fabled Prester John. Impressed, Louis sent two embassies to the Mongol court. Since Guyug was now dead, the Great Khanate became a prize rivals wrangled over; creating an impossible situation for the Western envoys when they became part of the prize being fought for.Relations between the Mongols and Europe remained unproductive until 1256 when The Great Khan Mongkeâs brother Hulegu was sent on a mission to enlarge their territory at the expense of hostile Muslim dynasties in the Middle East. It was well-known that Huleguâs wife was an ardent Nestorian who figured prominently in her husbandâs counsels. With Nestorian support, the Mongols under Hulegu captured a portion of Armenia, known then as Cilicia, and two years later overthrew the Abbasid Dynasty and entered Baghdad, executing the last Caliph. The Mongols thus became the rulers of Persia and surrounding territories of the Middle East. In 1261, Hulegu took the title of Ilkhan, meaning under-khan. The Mongol rule of wider Persia became forever after known as the Ilkhanate. It was technically subservient to the domains of the Great Khans but for all practical purposes ended up becoming just another region of Mongol dominance until a resurgent Islam was able to push out the weakening Mongols.After the conquest of Baghdad, Huleguâs forces continued Westward toward the Mediterranean. After taking territory in Syria, as so often happened in Mongol history, Hulegu was obliged to head home to Mongolia for the selection f the next Great Khan. His brother Mongke had died and as the tradition was among the Mongols, the next Khan would be selected by vote or the subordinate Mongol leaders, who themselves had all risen to position by merit, an innovation devised by the legendary Genghis. Before he departed for home, Hulegu appointed one of his commanders too continue the struggle against the Muslims by taking the key city of Damascus. Once Damascus fell, the rest of Syria would quickly follow. Up to this point, the Mongolian forces had seemed irresistible. But a change in Egypt meant a new state of affairs. In 1249, Turkish mercenaries of the Ayyubid dynasty revolted against their masters and established the Mamluk Dynasty. Fielding a far more powerful army, they set out to face the Mongols in Syria.Both armies were large and the Mongols had early success. They captured Damascus but were handed a serious defeat at the famous Battle of Ayn Jalut on Sept 3, 1260. This was the Mongols first defeat in the West. The Mongol commander was killed and the Mamluks retook Damascus. They then swept the Mongols from the rest of Syria.When word reached Hulegu of the defeat, he turned around without ever reaching Khara Khorum, rallied his defeated forces, determining to avenge his dead. Hulegu feared the Mamluk victory would embolden the Muslims under his rule in Persia to revolt. Since they were in the majority, a rebellion would prove devastating. But disunity in the Mongol world kept Hulegu from dealing with the Mamluks. To his north was his cousin Berke, ruler of the Mongol Golden Horde in what is today Russia. Berke and Hulegu were at odds with each other over the adjoining region of Azerbaijan, a rich plateau needed for the raising of their mounts, crucial for their style of warfare. Azerbaijan was also the region through which the increasingly rich East-West trade flowed, bring vast wealth. Exacerbating the tension between the cousins was Berkeâs conversion to Islam. He wasnât at all happy Hulegu had ended the Abbasid Caliphate and was now embroiled in hostilities with the Muslim Mamluks. So these two regions of Mongol dominance were at odds rather than united. With the defeat of the Ilkhanate at the Battle of Ayn Jalut, Berke allied with the Mamlukâs against Hulegu.Joining the fray against the Ilkhanate in Persia was the Mongol realm lying to the East in Central Asia, the Chaghadai Khanate. The tensions here were the same as those between Hulegu & Berke â over territory and religion.Surrounded by hostile realms, Hulegu sought allies to bolster his hold on Persia. Persia and the Middle East simply didnât provide the pasturage the Mongol army required to wage effective warfare. Defeating the Mamluks and Golden Horde meant bolstering his forces with capable allies. His alliance with the ruler of Armenia provided some assistance, but Hulegu realized their addition could only forestall defeat, not attain the victory that would end the incessant conflicts.Huleguâs alliance with his brother, the Great Khan Khubilai was more a thing of theory than practice. In Khubilaiâs contest with their other brother, Arigh Boke, for the Khanate, Hulegu backed Khubilai, but due to the distance, wasnât able to offer anything more than verbal support. The same as now true in reverse. While Khubilai supported Hulegu and the Ilkhanate of Persia, he wasnât able to provide any forces to the contest. The result was Huleguâs turn to the West for allies. To defeat the Mamluks and regain Syria, heâd need Christian Europeâs help. He figured theyâd be open to such an alliance since they still possessed few holdings in the Outremer after the disasters of the Crusades and a resurgent Islam. Hulegu realized the haughty demands of his predecessors would not endear Western rulers to ally with him against the Mamluks. Heâd have to appeal to them as equals.What Hulegu didnât know about was the disunity among Europeâs rulers at the same time as such disorder in the Mongol realms. Also, the year 1260, when Hulegu began casting his net for allies to the West was only 20 years after the harrowing defeat of Hungary and Polandâs military elite at the hands of the Mongols. Europe was terrified of them. Since treachery was a standard part of Mongolian warfare, offers of an alliance would be regarded as ploys for conquest rather than sincere overtures of alliance. From Europeâs perspective, neither the Mamluks nor Mongols were a safe bet for alliance against the other. The best course was deemed as neutrality, and the hope the Mongols and Mamluks would duke it out in a war that would effectively cripple both. The Crusaders could then sweep in and take over.But Hulegu was ignorant of these Western impulses and dreamed of an alliance with the Christian West in a campaign against the Mamluks. Once the threat to his south and west was contained, the Ilkhans would be free to deal with the Golden Horde to their Northeast. While Huleguâs dream of a Mongol-European alliance was never realized, after his death in 1265, his successor carried on the same hope, putting feet to it in the career of the remarkable Rabban Sauma, whose tale weâll return to in our next episode.
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Rabban Sauma is the title of this Episode, Part 1.So -- there I was, walking through the Genghis Khan exhibit at the Reagan Library, reading the various offerings on the Great Khan and Mongols - a subject that as a student of history I find fascinating when I came upon an offering that launched an investigation. It spoke of a Nestorian priest who was a Chinese version of the famous Marco Polo. As I read the exhibitâs terse account of Rabban Sauma, I knew I had a new investigation to make. Why had I never heard of this fascinating character before? Why havenât YOU?The story of Marco Polo is part & parcel of the teaching of World History. His life and career are central to the prompts of whatâs called the Age of Discovery. Mini-series have been made of his amazing tale. Virtually unknown to westerners is the story of an equally fascinating character of the same period. A Chinese Christian priest who ended up acting as an ambassador of the Mongols to the Pope and the kings of both France and England. Before that, Rabban Sauma was instrumental in establishing the new Patriarch of the venerable Church of the East. This man lived a truly epic life containing three separate sagas.The Ongguds were a Turkic people living just North of the Great Wall. Theyâd allied with their Chinese neighbors in the past, and had proven a fertile field for Nestorian missionaries. They were one of the first groups to throw in with Genghis, benefiting from the Great Khanâs liberal toleration policy. The Mongols were largely illiterate while the Onggudâs, having converted to Christianity centuries before, possessed an academic class of priests and scholars. These provided the administrative core of the emerging Mongolian Empire. To prove his loyalty, the Onggud ruler gave one of his sons in marriage to the Khanâs daughter.Shiban was an Onggud noble who married a woman of his class. Longing for a child but unable to conceive, they prayed and fasted. Their prayers were answered and a son was born, whom they named Bar Sauma â Son of the Fast. This was right around 1225. The piety of the parents was passed on to the son, who showed an extraordinary interest in spiritual things from a young age.He was given a religious education and proved so adept at his studies was entrusted with special duties at the church of his hometown. While his parents were proud of their sonâs piety, they were disappointed when at the age of 20, he made a vow to abstain from meat and alcohol. Theyâd hoped Bar Sauma would eventually use his mental acuity as a scholar or official. His vow made it clear he planned on pursuing the life of a monk. While Nestorian monks were required to be celibate, deacons and priests were encouraged to be married. In some eras, they were even required to have a wife as the thought was it would better equip them to offer counsel and guidance. So Bar Saumaâs parents arranged a marriage for their son, hoping to steer his aspirations into a more amenable course. They requested he delay his commitment to becoming a monk, as he prayerfully pondered continuing the Chinese tradition of continuing the family line. They asked him, âHow can it possibly be pleasing to you for our seed and name to be blotted out?â Who would inherit their property and wealth, a not insubstantial consideration since they were figured amount the Onggud nobility? This query reflects the assimilation of the Ongguds into the larger and far more dominant Chinese culture. Bar Sauma deferred to his parents wished and delayed his commitment for three years.He continued his education with the teachers his parents had arranged but stayed true to his earlier commitments. Rather than softening to his parentsâ requests, they softened toward his and agreed that their son was destined for a religious life. The arranged marriage, part of which had already been formally conducted, was suspended and then annulled.Bar Saumaâs diligence in the study of the Bible came to the attention of the bishop of the Mongol capital at Tai-tu, the city that would eventually be known as Beijing. Mar Giwargis inducted Bar Sauma into the Nestorian clergy at the age of 25.That closes ch. 1 of Rabban Saumaâs amazing story. Before we open ch. 2, it would be wise to set the scene on two important dimensions of his story. The unique aspects of his Nestorianism, and the world scene his story is a part of.We spent some time on the tale of Nestorius and his theological and political contest with Cyril of Alexandria back in Season 1. While Nestorius was declared a Heretic by the Council of Chalcedon in the 5th Century, we saw that the man himself did NOT espouse heresy. The councilâs decision was based more on the politics of the day than a careful analysis of his theology. BUT: it is certainly true those who came after Nestorius by a few generations did indeed deviate from orthodoxy. When Nestorius was banished from Constantinople, he went West to the monastery where he began in Antioch. After Chalcedon, his followers moved to Persia and gave rise to a rich religious tradition that came to be known as The Church of the East, synonymous with The Nestorian Church.Eventually, the very thing the Western Church accused Nestorius of, but heâd vehemently denied, became the doctrinal position of his followers; that Christ possessed not just two natures as God and Man, but that He was two PERSONS. In contradistinction with the West, Maryâs role was downgraded. She wasnât Theotokos, that is, the bearer of God; she was Christotokos, the bearer of Jesusâ humanity. If the Nestorians had stopped here, they might eventually have been understood to merely use different terminology to describe Jesus as the Son of God and Man. But they went further than Nestorius himself had by editing their view of the Trinity. Jesus wasnât just subordinate to the Father in the teaching of the Church of the East, He was understood as produced by The Father, with the Holy Spirit then subsequently proceeding from both Father and Son. In other words, ontologically, The Father existed first, then the Son, then the Spirit. This has the Son and Spirit coming into being after the Father -an idea utterly anathema to Western Orthodoxy as it makes the Son and Spirit creations. But, itâs important to make this clear, in classic Nestorianism, the Son and Spirit are understood, not as creations, but as deity co-equal with the Father.The Church of the East retained the sacraments of the West, although as the two branches of the Faith evolved, theyâd take on somewhat different expressions.Banished from Roman & Byzantine provinces int eh 5th Century, Nestorians settled in the Middle East and Central Asia. Beng highly missionary in outreach, they extended their reach all the way t the Far East and China. Their new headquarters was set up in Persia where they established a rich tradition with an emphasis on education and scholarship.From the 6th through 9th Centuries missionaries converted many of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia. In the 7th Century, Nestorians reached China and established themselves amongst the Tang Dynasty, lasting into the 10th Century. In the late 11th and 12 Centuries, Nestorianism had taken root among the Mongols, with several of their elite women as adherents of the Faith. There was a Nestorian church in the Mongol capital at Khara Khorum.Almost counter-intuitively, The Church of the East was a settled feature of the religious scene in the 13th Century across Central Asia and the Middle East. Thatâs counter-intuitive because Islam had swept this area centuries before. Christianity would not decline in this region until the late 14th Century when Mongol influence also declined. It was then that a resurgent Islam saw both a voluntary and coerced conversion of other Faiths.It may be fairly said that Nestorianism spread much further than itâs Western Cousin over the same period because of its missionary zeal and scholarly ardor. Nestorian leaders were highly motivated to plant churches and extend the borders of the faith into new realms.Facilitating the spread of the faith eastward was the development of new trade routes that connected West & East. Today, we know these routes as the Silk Road, better understood as Roads â plural, as there wasnât just one route. And they werenât roads as we think of them. Donât picture some kind of ancient highway, a wagon trail with clearly defined ruts across hundreds of miles of territory. Thatâs not what the Silk Roads of this time were. No map charted their course. Few guides could lead others on them. The path Marco Polo & Rabban Sauma took was little more than an idea when they traversed it. Later, their routes would indeed become those trails countless others would travel. But Polo & Sauma were trail-blazers, pioneers of commerce and Faith. It was Nestorian merchants who helped make the old Silk Roads. And everywhere they went, their churches followed.Another factor enhancing the spread of The Church of the East was the Nestorian policy of cultural adaptation. Missionaries didnât require converts to adopt a Persian or Middle Eastern culture. The Gospel was understood as transcending culture. Even to the point where missionaries accommodated some decidedly unbiblical practices, such as polygamy, a common practice among the nobility of Central Asia. It isnât that Nestorianism endorsed or approved of polygamy; they just would not see the reach of the Faith stalled until people accepted monogamy. Nestorian missionaries reasoned, Do we require monogamy before we preach The gospel and accept converts, or preach the Gospel, make converts, then disciple them toward a Biblical view of marriage? They decided for the second option.Because of this, not a few of the Mongol nobles were converted, especially among the women. And that insured the protection of Nestorianism as a viable faith under the Mongol policy of religious toleration in their rise to hegemony over all Central Asia, the Far East, and eventually into the Middle East.Nestorianismâs spread over such a vast area, combined with its assimilation of various cultures, resulted in the Faithâs diversification. While keeping its central doctrines intact and uniform, the WAY it was expressed and practiced, in terms of its rituals, took on different forms. So across the whole body of the Church of the East, while some churches looked very different from their Western counterparts, others look quite similar. Rabban Sauma will be asked to conduct a Mass in Italy before Western Church leaders and while his words were translated into Latin, what he said was readily understood and approved of, a remarkable thing when we realize the split between East & West was at that point 700 years old.Another factor that contributed to the success of Nestorianismâs spread across such a vast region is the looseness of its organization. The Church of the East was headquartered in Seleucia-Ctesiphon, modern day Baghdad, led by a Patriarch known as the Catholicus. He appointed archbishops called Metropolitans over the major dioceses. Because travel and communication between these dioceses were difficult and slow, the Metropolitans had considerable flexibility to lead their regions as they saw fit without much interference or guidance from the Catholicus. Each metropolitan, being highly educated and a willing adherent of the Faith, held firm to the doctrinal core of Nestorianism while adapting it to the cultural sensibilities of the locals.Eastern Christianity accommodated itself to local festivals and holidays. Nestorian priests blessed objects brought to them by commoners. Holy sites were designated and made the goal of pilgrimages. Relics took on special significance. What really enhanced the religionâs reach was the Nestorian clergyâs tendency to make medical treatment a part of their practice. This gained the Faith many converts.In part 2, weâll take a look at the political scene into which Rabban Sauma stepped and lived his amazing life.Listeners to & subscribers of CS are encouraged to visit the FB page and leave a comment on where they live so we can see just how wide the CS family is.Since the podcast has grown tremendously, requiring a major expansion in our hosting requirements, we now want to invite donations to help support the podcast. Many thanks to those whoâve already done so. You can make a donation by going to sanctorum.us and hitting the Donate button.
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Think Iâm on safe ground when I say Ă Those listening to this are mostly likely students of history. Your knowledge of the past is probably more comprehensive than the average person. And of course, the range of knowledge among subscribers to CS spans the gamut from extensive to, well, not so much. Yet still, more than the average.If asked to make a list of the main thinkers of the past; philosophers, theologians, and such like, of Western tradition, weâd get the usual. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. Seneca, Cicero, Virgil. Clement, Origen, Augustine, Aquinas.A name far less likely to make that list is the subject of this episode. Though heâs not oft mentioned in modern treatments of church and philosophical history, his work was a major contributor to medieval thought, which was the seedbed form which the modern world rose.His full name was Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus. But heâs known to us simply as Boethius.Born to a Roman senatorial family sometime between 475 & 80 in Italy, Boethius was left an orphan at an early age. He was adopted by another patrician, Memmius Symmachus, who instilled in the young man a love of literature and philosophy.Symmachus made sure Boethius learned the vanishing skill of literacy in Greek. With the split between the Eastern & Western Roman Empires now settled, and the Fall of the Western Empire to the Goths, it seems Greek, primary language of the East, fell to disuse in favor of Latin. In the West, Greek became increasingly the language of scholars and those suspected of lingering loyalty to the East.Nevertheless, Boethiusâ familiarity with the classics commended him to the new rulers of the West â the Ostrogoths. Their king, Theodoric the Great, appointed the 35 year old Boethius as consul. While the office of consul was technically linked to the ancient Roman Republican Consul, by the 6th C, it was an office far more of image than substance. Still an important position politically, but wielding none of the authority it once had. By Boethiusâ time, that is the early 6th C, being a senator meant little more than, âThis is someone to keep your eye on as a potential future leader.â Being made a consul was like making the finals in the last round of the playoffs. But with an emperor seated on the throne, all rule and authority was concentrated in the royal court. A 5th & 6th C Roman Consul was more a political figurehead; a polite fiction; a nod to the glory of ancient Rome and her amazing feat of world conquest. From Augustus on, the Roman Senate and her consuls steadily lost place to the new imperial bureaucracy. After Augustus, who moved swiftly to relocate and consolidate all power within his executive office, Roman emperors turned to the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard as the new go to guy in executing Imperial policy. By the time of Boethius, that office had evolved into what was called the Magister Officiorum; head of all government and judicial services.When Boethiusâs term as consul was up, his two sons were appointed co-consuls in his place, one for the West, the other for the East. He was then promoted into the role of Magister Officiorum â the highest administrative position in King Theodoricâs court.And thatâs where the fun begins. Ă Well, it wasnât so fun for Boethius. I probably ought to say; thatâs where the political shenanigans and devious machinations began. For it was there, serving Theodoric, that Boethius ran afoul of the ambitions of powerful men.They used Boethiusâ faith to bring him down.And here weâre back to the old Arian-Nicaean Controversy. You see, while Arianism had been debunked and expelled from the Western Church long before all this, it found a home among the Goths of the East; the Ostrogoths, who now ruled what was left of the Western Roman Empire. King Theodoric was an Arian, as were his Ostrogoth pals, many of whom were jealous that an outsider like Boethius had the highest post they could aspire to. Oh, and donât forget that Boethius is fluent in Greek, the language they speak over in the Eastern Empire. Whose Emperor, Justinian I was openly known to aspire to reclaim Italy from Theodoric. Oh, and to add fuel to the fires of controversy & suspicion, those Easterners are also Orthodox, Nicaean Christians, people whoâve systematically wiped out Arians.Boethiusâ was doing a stellar job as Magister Officiorum, so they knew they couldnât attack him directly. They went instead after his less well-connected friends, accusing them of conspiring with Justinian in his designs on Italy. They knew Boethius would come to their defense, and that would be enough to cast a pall over his imperial favor. The ruse worked, and Boethius was arrested, hauled off to an estate in Pavia, where he spent a year in confinement, then quietly executed when the news cycle shifted to other more pressing matters. Ha! Today, the news cycle is down to about 5 days. Back then, it was several months.Now, you may be wondering, what does Boethius have to do with CHURCH history? Iâm so glad you asked.Boethiusâ main contribution to history in general and to Church history in particular lies in his impact on the relationship between theology and philosophy. Heâs regarded by many as the last of the ancient philosophers.Boethius adored the ancient Greeks. It was his lifeâs ambition, to translate the works of Plato and Aristotle into Latin. He died before he was able, but he made a good start. His singular contribution to history is his serving as a bridge between the classical and medieval ages for understanding Aristotelean thought, especially as it regards Aristotleâs work in LOGIC. Boethius recast Aristotleâs principles in terms that Medieval Europeans could grasp. His work then was foundational to many other theologians and philosophers for hundreds of years. One can argue that without Boethius, Roman Scholasticism, might not have happened, or at least it would have adopted a very different form. Boethius provided much of the vocabulary of medieval theology and philosophy. Heâs sometimes called âthe first scholasticâ because in his work titled Opuscula Sacra, written to defend orthodox theology, he applied Aristotelian logic, seeking to harmonize faith & reason â the great task of later Scholastics.But it was during his year of imprisonment in Pavia, as he awaited execution that Boethius wrote his most well-known volume, The Consolation of Philosophy, regarded as the single most influential work on Medieval and early Renaissance Christianity, & the last great Western work of the Classical Period.Written in 523, The Consolation of Philosophy presents a conversation between himself and Lady Philosophy, whoâs come to console him. Itâs essentially a theodicy; an examination of the age-old dilemma addressing the challenge posed by the dual proposition of the existence of evil & Godâs omnipotence and love. A theodicy seeks to answer the question: If the God of the Bible is real, why is there evil in the world; a potent question for a man like Boethius, an innocent man awaiting execution by the wicked.During Lady Philosophyâs discourse, subjects like predestination and free will are examined. The Consolation isnât an overtly Gospel centered work. Jesus isnât even mentioned. A rather generic God is assumed; a deity who certainly aligns loosely with The God of Scripture; but a distinctive Christian Trinitarian God isnât defined. For this reason, some historian claim Boethius wasnât a Christian. But that assessment simply doesnât square with the rest of his life, his other writings, or why he was accused of treason. His enemies went after him precisely because his orthodoxy raised Arian suspicion.So, what are we to make of the Consolationâs lack of Gospel content? Surely the answer is found in Boethiusâ intended audience. He wasnât writing to or for Christians, showing them how to link faith and reason. He wrote to convince pagans that real philosophy, the kind that led to a better life, the BEST life, doesnât flow in tandem with paganism. The best life is a moral life, where justice and moderation are virtues. It was no doubt Boethiusâ hope, once pagans realized pagan religion hindered a better life, theyâd investigate Christianity, because at that time in Europe those were the only two options, the only available worldviews: Christianity & Paganism. Take down paganism, and people would move to the only thing left â The Gospel.
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Taken as a whole, leaders demonstrate a wide array of skills and talent. While great leaders often exhibit some consistent marks, thereâs simply no set script they follow. No inventory of essential traits all must possess to excel. Indeed, some great leaders demonstrate contradictory traits from each other. One is gregarious, another reserved. Once is upbeat and energetic, another taciturn and subdued.Many of the Churchâs great leaders have been brilliant, their intelligence ranking them as a genius. Others, while being astute, could not be given that lofty epithet. Some had skills that enabled them to accomplish so much, their influence was felt for decades, even centuries, after. Pope Gregory I was of that category. Bruce Shelly says Gregory combined great executive ability with a warm sympathy for the needs of others. Gregory was such a good leader and man, history has given him the title âGregory the Great.â His tenure as Pope laid the foundations for Medieval Christianity. Since religion played such a central role in European society, Gregory was one of the main architects of Medieval Europe.Born in 540 to a well-established Roman senatorial family, Gregory was groomed from a young age for civil service. But a career in politics at that time was an inordinately difficult proposition. The City of Rome and the lands it had once held hegemony over in the Italian peninsula were like a torn-up soccer ball kicked back and forth by one group after another. The Visigoths were replaced by the Byzantines, who were booted by the Lombards, who did their best to leave Italy a smoldering wreck.As Gregoryâs father had been Prefect of Rome & Gregory had trained for govt service, the Eastern Emperor Justin II appointed Gregory to replace the prefect when he retired. He was 33. In all likelihood, it was Justinâs wife Sophia who made the appointment, since the Emperor had gone insane and she was ruling in his place. Not long after Gregory took the office, the Byzantine governor of the region and the reigning Pope, died.Like many young men who train for a position because itâs expected of them, Gregory found that worldly power didnât appeal to him in the least. He much preferred the solitude of the monastery. So after a few years as prefect, he resigned. When his father passed, leaving Gregory as the heir to a wealthy estate, he used a good part of his fortune to found 7 monasteries, gave the rest to the poor, and turned his mansion into yet another monastery dedicated to St. Andrew; following the Benedictine order. Eschewing all trappings of worldly power that had attended his rank as prefect, Gregory devoted himself to a rigorous asceticism; his diet consisted solely in raw vegetables & fruit. He wore a hair-shirt, prayed most of the night, and applied himself to a diligent observance of his monastic duties. His asceticism was so extreme, it began to weaken his physical frame.Then, in 579, at the age of 39, Pope Pelagius II made Gregory a deacon in the Roman church. This was a position of tremendous influence because the 7 deacons were commissioned with administrative oversight of the Roman Church. Gregory was sent as a papal ambassador to Constantinople, which of course at that time was the new center of what was left of the Roman Empire.He returned to Rome 6 years later and was appointed as abbot over the St. Andrew monastery. Gregory was more than content to serve out what was left of his life in that role. But wider events hijacked his plans.Early in 590, Rome, already hammered by war and flood, found itself in the teeth of a new pestilence; the Black Death, Plague. Romeâs streets emptied as the carts piled higher with the dead. Even Pope Pelagius succumbed.The papal chair remained empty for half a year. Then, Gregory was elected as the new Pope. Instead of rejoicing in his selection, he fled, taking refuge in a nearby forest. Trackers were sent to find him and haul him back. Reluctantly, he allowed himself to be consecrated in the Fall of 590 with Constantinopleâs approval.Gregory immediately called for several processions over the next 3 days to demonstrate the Cityâs repentance and make a plea for divine intervention. Not long after, the plague seemed to make a reversal. Slowly but surely, life made halting strides of returning to normal. But no sooner did hope rekindle than it was once again squashed under the hooves of the Lombardâs who ransacked Italy and laid siege to Rome.The Lombards shattered what little was left of the old Roman order. By the time they rode away, the only institution still standing was The Church. All civil govt had been swept off the board, while the Church was still lead by an organization staffed with capable men. Gregory threw himself into the task of restoring order and providing for the needs of people wherever that order was needed.The power & influence of the Medieval Papacy is in large part due to Gregoryâs prolific work during this period of recovery. He was literally, everywhere, doing everything. By everywhere, I donât mean geographically; Iâm referring to the fields into which he stepped. Though never aspiring for the position of Pope, when once there, he USED the position to bring order out of the chaos of the previous years. He took a lead in civil affairs; a hand in economic & military matters.As the Lombards moved on Rome, Gregory had to address the defense of central Italy. He appointed a military governor, and arranged a truce. This positioned the Pope as the most important Italian representative to the Lombards. It also inserted the Church squarely into Italyâs political fortunes. That influence would only grow from that point forward, spreading till it touched most of Europe during the Middle Ages. Beginning with Gregory, the pope became an important political figure.The Church of Rome owned some 1800 sq miles of land in southern Italy. The administration of all this property had been simple when it was productive. But after the devastation left by the Lombards, the survivors were left without a means of support. The survival of thousands in whole cities and communities became the responsibility of Pope Gregory. A task he managed to pull off with aplomb.He engaged the role of being a leader & inspiration to church leaders everywhere. He wrote a manual on church leadership called the Pastoral Rule â exhorting bishops to be a good example of the truths they taught.The amount of work he accomplished is all the more remarkable when weâre confronted with his age and health. His previous and concurrent asceticism saw him often confined to bed. In 601 he wrote a friend, âFor a long time, I have been unable to rise from my bed. I am tormented by the pains of gout; a kind of fire seems to pervade my whole body: to live is pain; and I look forward to death as the only remedy.â But Gregory kept such comments limited only to a few close confidants.It was also during Gregoryâs term that the power & centrality of the Roman Papacy took another leap forward. This began in earnest with Leo the Great 150 yrs before Gregoryâs time. Gregory moved the ball further down the field. It all took place in a skirmish with the Eastern Patriarch, John IV.The Patriarch of Constantinople liked to refer to himself as the âuniversal bishopâ and often did so in official correspondence. The title had been fixed to the Patriarchate by the Eastern Emperors Leo and Justinian, and confirmed in the Synod of Constantinople in 588.This irritated Gregory to no end. He condemned such approbations as the sinister outworking of a demonically-inspired pride. Gregory urged the Emperor to revoke such titles and refused further communiques with John till he renounce such exalted terms.Historians have debated whether Gregory was provoked by the lack of humility such titles evinced, or that it was only the Roman Pope who deserved them. The juryâs still out on the matter. It is true that there was a centuries long contest between Popes and Patriarchs over who was the rightful leader of the Christian Church & Faith. That debate led to the eventual E/W Rift manifest today in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.The fact that Gregory preferred to be known simply as âthe servant of the servants of God,â does suggest he simply rejected lofty titles, rather than Johnâs sole claim to them. When he was once addressed as âuniversal pope,â he quickly and vehemently denied the approbation, saying: âIâve said that neither to me nor to any one else ought you to write anything of the kind. Away with words which inflate pride and wound charity!âGregoryâs favored title ended up becoming a standard title for subsequent Popes. Though it seems rather forced when the man itâs attributed to stands decked out in his complete papal regalia; jewel encrusted stole, hat, crozier; the value all of which would buy a whole kingdom.Itâs fascinating that while eschewing lofty titles, Gregory expanded the power of the Pope to the extent he did. So influential did the Popes become that they began to take on ever more elevated labels.Gregory was the first Pope to have been a monk. Moving from the monastery to basilica in no way changed his habit of personal austerity. He moved many fellow monks he knew ot be men of marked integrity into leadership positions.Earlier in Gregoryâs life, heâd desired to replant the Roman Church in England as a missionary monk. Once he became Pope, he sent 40 brother Benedictine monks under the leadership of Augustine to accomplish the task. They did so, at Kent. Itâs that work that provides the British-American Church with its connection back to the early church.A few moments ago I said Gregory may not have possessed the intellectual chops as some other church leaders. His talent lay far more in his administrative abilities. But thatâs not to say Gregory was a theological slouch. Far from it. He took quite seriously his call to defend the faith. He looked to Jerome, Augustine and Ambrose as His primary theological influences. Though Gregory devised no new theological formulas, he played the role of amalgamator. He took the common faith of the day as expressed by the councils and creeds, & expanded it to incorporate some of the more popular beliefs, practices, even superstitions of the common people. This then became the Christianity of Medieval Europe.Gregory said The Fall affected all Adamâs descendants; it weakened but did not utterly destroy their moral and spiritual freedom. Once someone is moved by grace, she/he can cooperate with it to perform genuine good works.Gregory said through baptism, God forgives sin previously committed. But sins committed after baptism have to be atoned for by doing penance, which includes sincere repentance, confession, and doing good works. BUT, the believer could not know if she/he had done enough penance for sin until they arrived in heaven.In that needed atonement for sin, people had the potential help of the martyrs & saints, who could be invoked to plead for them with Christ. This belief arose long before Gregory, but he popularized and made it a central feature of medieval church practice. Gregory cast Jesus as a stern judge, the angels arrayed around Him as agents of divine retribution, while the saints, by virtue of their humanity, were more inclined to assist poor mortals.Gregory also encouraged the veneration of relics; the supposed remains of saints. Things like locks of hair, teeth, fingernails, clothing. All these were deemed to possess special power & efficacy to provide protection.If proper penance wasnât provided before death, then sins could always be expunged in Purgatory after death, Gregory claimed.Gregory regarded the Mass as the supreme miracle of the Faith. In which the bread and wine were turned into the literal body and blood of Christ. Feeding on them imparted grace directly to the soul & nourished the streams of eternal life. The power of the Eucharist lies in its being understood as a present atoning sacrifice. The priest offers it for sins; not the sins of all people as Christ did at the Cross, but only for those who participate in the Mass. It has the same effect as penance, offsetting a certain amount of suffering generic penance would require. So, Masses could benefit the dead suffering in Purgatory since it would lessen their debt.Gregory, along with the earlier Popes Celestine I & Sixtus III, was one of the first church leaders to organize the Roman liturgy and its music. He established a center for the learning & singing of plainsong in Rome called the Schola Cantorum. Plainsong, or chant, as itâs more commonly called, was already in use since the time of Celestine I. Gregoryâs work in finalizing the style of plainsong has been memorialized in the phrase Gregorian chant. But recent research has cast doubt on Gregoryâs contribution to the tradition of plainsong in Church use.
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During the early-mid 19th C, an interesting phenomenon spread over the thinking of parts of Western Europe and the US. It was a general negativity about the present, but a strong optimism about the future. In some places, it was almost giddy. The current political and economic situation might be a mess and the number of social ills piling higher. But the Enlightenmentâs promise of a bright new day gripped the imagination of thousands. The recent boom in technological progress with things like steam engines, cotton gins, and spinning machines promised endless new products, markets, and employment. Medicine was making dramatic steps forward, promising less pain and longer life. Trains & steamships conquered distance in a way the generation before could not have imagined.âYeah, today might be tough; but hang on, because tomorrow is going to be awesome.âWhile that mentality was spotty in Western Europe, it was pretty much a blanket across the United States. European immigrants remarked on the nearly euphoric positivity of their new homeland. This positivism was largely the product of the pervasive Evangelical Revivalism that owned most American churches and a good portion of the population. That Evangelicalism conveyed the idea that conversion to Faith in Christ conveyed a new heart that sought after holiness. People began to reason that that new heart ought to pursue holiness in a new world shaped by holiness. All this spilled into numerous reform efforts; attempts to remedy past grievances and address the growing number of new challenges industrialization had produced. For progress did not come cheap. As Charles Dickenâs wrote, âIt was the best of times. It was the worst of times.âSo, Evangelicals went to work on reforming society.Charles Finney championed abolition as being part & parcel of the Christian faith. He went so far as to refuse Communion to slave-holders.Stephen Caldwell called for new tariffs to protect American wages and to fund the Christianizing of the public school system.In 1816, the American Bible Society proposed distributing Bibles as a moral and spiritual antibiotic aimed to eradicate Theological Liberalism and any goofy ideas brought over by Immigrants.The American Sunday School Union set up dozens of schools in urban centers to educate the growing pool of child laborers.By 1858, Evangelicals in NYC had established 76 missions to minister to the needs of the urban poor.While most reform-minded Evangelicals engaged the culture, a smaller group decided to pursue holiness by withdrawing from society to form separatist communes. Nathaniel Hawthorne labelled these religiously-motivated separatists âCome Outers.âOne example is a group known as the Shakers. Their original name was the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. They began in the mid-18th C as a splinter group from the Quakers who at the time were moving away from their reputation as enthusiasts of ecstatic forms of worship. The Shakers didnât just want to maintain that reputation; they wanted to ramp it up. So they became knowns as the Shaking Quakers. They were lead by the ardent and eloquent preaching of Jane Wardley who said the Millennium was about to begin with the Return of Christ. In preparation for the Return of Christ, they gave themselves to strict celibacy and a remarkable egalitarianism that saw a notable influence of women in the leadership of the group.Shakers settled in colonial America but never saw many members until this era of reform in the mid-19th C when their community grew to its largest number, about 6000. The policy of celibacy as well as changes in society saw the eventual dwindling of the Shaker movement to just a single community today.Another group of Come Outers were the Millerites.William Miller was a well-off farmer and Baptist lay preacher in NE New York. He became convinced Christ would return sometime between 1843 & 44. His calculations convinced a large number of people across many churches and denominations. They set the date of March 21st, 1843 as the likely day Jesus would Return.But Millerism, as it came to be known, was rejected by most clergy. By the beginning of 1843, the movement had hardened around enthusiasts and those who opposed it. Advocates of Millerism left their churches to form a new group of like-minded supporters. It hardened even more when after the evening of March 21st, Millerites donned special ascension robes and waited the big event. Some had gone so far as to give away their property. When the morning of the 22nd dawned, they were supremely bummed out. Because â and I donât think Iâm giving anything away here â Jesus in fact had NOT returned!Miller did some quick figuring and said, heâd missed some minor calculations and needed to revise the date to April 18th. On April 19th, he re-upped by saying it wasnât the days heâd gotten wrong, but the year. It would be March 21st, 1844; then Oct. 2nd. But by then the Millerites were a laughing stock and no new dates were set.But instead of calling it quits and going back to their old denominations, the Millerites formed a new one â called the Adventists. In a bit of revisionism, they said that Christ really HAD come at the aforesaid & appointed time, but in Spirit, rather than in flesh. By 1863, the Adventists had 125 churches. They made themselves odious to many Americans by declaiming the US as the Great Whore of Babylon, doomed to the plagues of Revelation.But the most extreme form of come-outerism was the 1830 emergence of the Mormons, under the leadership of Joseph Smith. Taking the name, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Smith claimed to have unearthed a record of a Pre-Colombian group of immigrants whoâd had travelled all the way from the Middle East to settle in the New World. They fashioned an extensive civilization in the Americas but were wiped out by other Native Americans.The Golden Plates Joseph Smith unearthed contained the record of that lost civilization, with a proper understanding of the Christian Faith. Smith claimed the Church as it was, was a horrible corruption â something God had never intended it become. Mormonism claimed to restore the Gospel Jesus and the Apostles taught.But there was little connection between Joseph Smithâs vision of the Gospel and the Bible, so most churches and denominations opposed Smithâs emerging movement. They moved from New York to the Midwest. But when hostility broke out there, in 1847 they decided to make the big leap and head to a place all their own in the consummate come-outer move. They headed west and settled along the Great Salt Lake in what would one day be the State of Utah. They might as well have settled on the moon.While each of these come-outer sects was radically different in its theological leanings, what united them was their short term pessimism about the world in which they lived. Thatâs how they justified their break with society. But they maintained a long term optimism about their ability, once theyâd come out of a corrupt society, to found a healthy & holy community that could achieve itâs grand vision of establishing, if not heaven on Earth, then at least an outpost of it.And each reprised a story that dates all the way back to the Desert Fathers we talked about early in Season 1. The hermits, who, having swallowed the dualism of Greek philosophy, fled the City to dwell alone in caves for years or sit atop a pillar for weeks. They understood holiness as physical separation from the world.If thatâs what Jesus had meant by being holy, thatâs what Heâd have done. Itâs not. Jesus was to be found with people; often the kind of people least likely to show up at synagogue or church. Yes, Jesus spent time alone in the wilderness, but only in preparation for the City. He wasnât a man OF the City, but He was IN it; where the love of God for needy souls could be seen and passed off to others. His strategy for reform wasnât to withdraw FROM the world, it was to enter INTO it.Secular reform movements copied religious come-outers in creating communes dedicated, not to a religiously-fueled spirituality, but a philosophically-based morality. Transcendentalists founded Brook Farm as an experiment in communal living. The Northampton Association organized an economic industrial cooperative. Oberlin, Ohio, was organized as a colony and college, with the college based on a philosophy of self-sufficient manual labor.The American obsession with reform drew criticism from some. They saw it as the dark side of democracy. Brownson thought all the enthusiasm for reform was the logical consequence of Protestant individualism. Author Nathaniel Hawthorne who coined the term âcome outersâ said most reform was based on an overestimation of human nature.Alexis de Tocqueville, by far the shrewdest observer of Americanism in the 19th C regarded the reform impulse as a mark of the health of American democracy.
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In this episode of CS, weâll take a look at something many of our listeners are familiar with; at least, they think their familiar with it â Evangelicalism. Not a few of them would describe themselves as Evangelicals. But if pressed to describe what exactly that means, theyâd be hard pressed to say. And they have little to know awareness of the historical roots of the movement they are indeed a part of. // So, letâs start off with a little definition of terms.Evangelicalism is a global movement within Protestantism that crosses denominational lines. Instead of Evangelicals having a comprehensive and extensive list of doctrinal distinctives, they rally round a core of just a few. At the heart of their faith is a conviction that the Gospel, or Evangel, from which they draw their name, is that salvation is by Godâs grace, received by faith in Jesus Christâs atoning work. Salvation commences with a conversion experience called, being âborn again.â They hold to the authority of the Bible as Godâs Word and the priority of sharing the Gospel message.As a discernable movement, Evangelicalism took form in the 18th C. But it didnât rise out of a vacuum. There were numerous trends that merged to for m it. Most important to Evangelicalismâs rise was John Wesley and the Methodists, the Moravians under the leadership of Count Zinzendorf and their community at Hernhutt, and Lutheran Pietism.As we saw in Season 1, Pietism emerged in Germany in the 17th C as a reaction to a moribund Lutheran church. It protested the cold formalism the institutional church had adopted under Protestant scholasticism. Pietists called for a faith that experienced a real relationship with God. It set high standards of piety for both clergy and laity. Pietism crossed all lines in terms of those who embraced it; from those who stayed in the State Church and followed the old rituals, to separatists who rejected such trappings.Pietism jumped its Lutheran hothouse to influence other groups. When it entered the Presbyterian realm in Britain, it took on a concern for Protestant orthodoxy, as well as an openness to revivalism, a tradition that went all the way back to the 1620s. Puritans added an emphasis on the need for personal experience of conversion to be a part of the church, as well as a dedication of individuals to the study of Scripture.With this involvement of Lutherans, Pietists, Presbyterians and Puritans, weâd assume High-Church Anglicans would have stayed far away. But the movementâs appeal attracted even some of them. They brought to the burgeoning movement of Evangelicalism several traits that would mark the movement. One was a concern for recapturing the essence of âprimitive Christianity,â manifest mainly in imitating the ascetic practices of early Christians, as well as a more frequent celebration of Communion than either he Presbyterian or Puritans followed. Anglicans also encouraged the forming of voluntary religious societies and groups.It was in the 1730s when Evangelicalism emerged as a distinct movement. It was a product of revivals in Old & New England. While the Church had witnessed revivals before, those of the 18th C seemed more fervent and far reaching. It began with the First Great Awakening in the 1730s in New England. Then it hopped the Pond and broke out in England & Wales. This was the time of the careers of such famous revivalist as George Whitefield and the Wesleys. Pietism entered the Evangelical stream through several ports, but primarily through John Wesley, who was deeply impacted by the example of the Moravians.Established Christians and New Converts alike were emboldened with confidence and enthusiasm to share the Gospel, leading to the conversion of thousands more and the planting of hundreds of new churches.If weâre looking for the real dynamism that infused Evangelicalism and made it such a pervasive trait of Protestantism during the 18th & 19th Cs, we could say it was the conviction of those converted to the Faith that theyâd really had a supernatural experience of salvation. Their conversion had not just gained them heaven after they died; it ushered them, then and there, into a new relationship with God that became the new center and ordering principle of their lives. And while pastors and other church leaders might have a unique role to play in leading the local church, each individual Christian had equal access to God without the need for the mediation of a priestly class or ritual. Each and every Evangelical felt a very real connection to God and owned a sense of their personal responsibility to apply themselves to the practice of their faith. In other words, the duty of religion for the medieval Christian was traded in for the privilege of relationship for the modern Christian.The dawn of the 19th C was a time of increased outreach both locally and abroad with several mission societies being started. The Second Great Awakening spanning the transition from the 18th to 19th Cs, was centered largely in the US. It boosted the ranks of Methodist and Baptist churches. Charles Finney was a major figure in this revival.19th C Evangelicalism in England carried a distinct social justice flair. British Evangelicals bore the conviction that their Faith ought to be more than a privately held affair. To be real, it ought to impact the world for good. They became leaders in the movement for reform and the end of corruption in government and commerce. They led the charge for Abolition under such notables as William Wilberforce.Toward the end of the 19th C, that party within the Methodists whoâd long argued for what they called âentire sanctificationâ started a Holiness Movement that separated itself from the rest of Methodism. While it was never popular in England, certain portions of rural America proved fertile soil for it.It was during the 19th C that an Irish-Anglican minister named John Darby popularized an emphasis on End Times Prophecy, a subject that had languished in obscurity for hundreds of years. This interest in the End Times was layered over Darbyâs system of dividing history into different eras, called dispensations, in which Godâs overall plan went forward with a different focus in the various dispensations. Others took Darbyâs ideas and edited them to their own taste, but Dispensationalism proved to be a convenient way for people to better understand both the Bibleâs story and how it related to history at large. It became a part of the emerging energy within Protestantism now called Evangelicalism. What kicked Dispensationalism into high gear was the publication of the popular Scofield Reference Bible, a King James Bible with a comprehensive set of notes that helped readers parse Scripture, along Scofieldâs framework, that is. Through Scofieldâs influence, Evangelicalism adopted a literalist view of interpreting Scripture.Notable figures for the last half of 19th C Evangelicalism are CH Spurgeon & Dwight Moody. These men began a trend in Evangelicalism to see the movement led & represented by well-known religious celebrities, whose fame was tied to their ability to preach to large audiences.Founded in 1812, Princeton Theological Seminary stepped into the role of being the intellectual center of Evangelicalism from 1850 to the 1920âs. Under the guidance of Charles Hodge, Archibald Alexander, and BB Warfield, Evangelicals were armed with an erudite defense of conservative orthodoxy in that face of the challenge presented by European Liberalism. When in the 1930âs, the governors of Princeton decided to open the school to Theological Liberalism, the conservatives left to start Westminster Theological Seminary. But the theological work of the Princeton theologians continues to shape the core of conservative Evangelicalism.Church h istorian Mark Noll, describes this as influence as including, a devotion to the Bible, concern for religious experience, sensitivity to the American experience, Presbyterian confessions, Reformation systematics, and Common Sense Realism, which we talked about in Season 1.[1] Common Sense Realism was a push-back by several Scottish philosophers to the skepticism of David Hume.As Theological Liberalism pressed in to challenge the centers of Evangelicalism in the early 20th C, a reaction rose that came to be known as Fundamentalism. It drew its name from its insistence there were certain fundamentals that could not be negotiated, essentials of The Faith apart from which no one had the right to say they were a Christian. The main point of contention with Liberalism was over the inerrancy of Scripture. This became the main point of contention because Evangelicals regard Godâs Word as the ultimate authority. Everything else flows from Scripture. Theological Liberals honor the Bible as a record of humanityâs progress. Itâs instructive, but not ultimately authoritative. Itâs ideas at points may be inspired and it is certainly inspirational, but no more than that. Human reason, aided by the scientific method, is a superior source of knowledge. Fundamentalists replied that not only is the Bible inspired, that inspiration extends beyond its ideas to its words. The Bible isnât just the ideas of God filtered through bumbling scribes, it is the Word & words of God Himself, transmitted through human agents, who when they penned, infallibly reported what God wanted written.Needless to say, the contest between Liberals & Fundamentalists was fierce. It lives on to this day. Every decade or so, Theological Liberalism hoists its battering ram and makes another raid on the fortress of Evangelicalismâs tenacious clinging to Scriptureâs Inspiration, Infallibility & Inerrancy. They batter the door of this Evangelical group or that denomination. And while mainstream Evangelicalism still adheres officially to the doctrine of Inerrancy, the long-range effect of the contest has been a softening round the edges, so that many Evangelicals are barely aware whatâs at stake in the whole debate.Up to the dawn of the 20th C, Evangelicalism was largely a white church deal centered in North America and the UK. A major boon to the energy of Evangelicalism and a subsequent movement into world missions came about after the Welsh Revival of 1904-5. The Revival swept across Europe and reached into far-flung regions across the globe. The Azusa Street Revival of 1906 in Los Angeles birthed Pentecostalism which added even more spiritual energy and motivation to Evangelicalism.Following WWII, Evangelicals split between those who wanted to engage the culture and those who felt the best way to live was to withdraw. It seemed a reprise of the old Anglican argument between the Puritans and Separatists. In this case, the Separatists were the Fundamentalists while those who wanted to engage culture were mainstream Evangelicals. Many Evangelicals had come to regard Fundamentalists as narrow-minded moralists wed to traditions that were no longer relevant . While this is an oversimplification, let me illustrate this way . . .Fundamentalists had staunchly defended the doctrine of inerrancy, right? What they defended of course, at least in the popular sense, for the Fundamentalist on the street at least, was the King James Bible. THAT Bible was inspired & inerrant. So any other translation or version was suspect. Fundamentalists were determined defenders of The Reformation; they adored the Reformers, but were suspicious of more modern authors & theologians. That suspicion grew to be a kind of general negativity to the wider culture and society. The world was wicked, under Godâs wrath; something to be shunned. The result was that Fundamentalists began to be viewed by society as misanthropes. They became the subject of jokes.Most Evangelicals saw what was happening to Fundamentalism and set another course. Called Neo-Evangelicals, they adopted a positive posture of engaging the culture through dialog and exchange. They intentionally backed down from the combative militancy that marked Fundamentalists. Instead of retreating to a theological ghetto where the only people they talked to were like them, they re-applied themselves to an intellectually-astute and Biblically-sound response to the issue facing society. They reasoned that the Gospel was a message of hope for All People, and needed to be shared in as many ways as possible; by deed, as well as in word.This led to a split between Fundamentalists & Evangelicals. Evangelicals came to regard Fundamentalists as something of an ugly cousin they wanted to avoid & disavow. Fundamentalists regarded Evangelicals as sell-outs, wishy-washy compromisers more concerned with the worldâs approval than Godâs.Over time, the ranks of Fundamentalists dwindled while those of Evangelicals swelled.The Charismatic renewal of the 1960âs and early 70âs saw a resurgent Pentecostalism cross denominational lines. It even swept a number of Catholic churches.Until the Charismatic Renewal, most Protestant churches were affiliated in some way with a denomination. The Renewal saw large numbers of Christians whoâd previously identified with their denomination, now identifying as a Charismatic. When local pastors and denominational leaders resisted the Charismatic Renewal, those church members who were part of the renewal often left to start new churches. They established independent, non-aligned or un affiliated works. So the trend of non-denominational churches exploded. They didnât identify as Protestant so much as Evangelical because it best described their overall theological framework. As the number of non-denominational churches grew and aged, many saw a need for connection to a larger movement and began forming voluntary associations. They became a kind of non-denominational denomination.As the 20th C closed out and moved into the 21st, Evangelicalism faced a new challenge from itâs old nemesis â Liberalism. Once again Liberalism morphed into a new form called Post-modernism. If classical Liberalism assailed the doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy, Post-modernism went after Truth as a whole.[1] Mark A. Noll, The Princeton Theology 1812â1921 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 13.
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In this Episode of CS weâll take a look at a figure of church history anyone whoâs done any reading in such has likely encountered â Eusebius of Caesarea. Heâs a prominent figure because heâs known as the Father of Church history for his classic work Ecclesiastical History which charts the course of the early church from its inception to the late 3rd C.His history of the Church was originally composed in 10 volumes. He began it during the Great Persecution of 303â313 and completed it around 315. Over the next 10 years he edited and revised it several times. It charted the course of primitive Christianity from obscurity in the backwater province of Israel to the favored faith of the new Emperor Constantine. Along the way, Eusebius does future generations a great service by giving careful lists of church regions and their sequence of leaders. He quotes early Christian authors; writings long since lost to us but now preserved by the pen of Eusebius. He describes the early churchâs labor to define and understand the Trinity as over against the various heresies that sought to hijack orthodoxy. Though Eusebius began his chronicle during the Great Persecution, he lived to see The Faithâs emergence from the catacombs during the time of Constantine, to stand on the threshold of a new world in which Christ could be envisioned as triumphant over Caesar. [1]While Eusebius is honored today as the Father of Church History for his literally ground-breaking work, his generation knew him simply as the bishop of Caesarea and a friend of Pamphilus, a scholar who fought valiantly against the Arian heresy.Little is known of Eusebiusâ life prior to his tenure as lead pastor at the important church of Caesarea. He seems to have been born in the Roman province of Palestine around 260. He became a pupil of Pastor Pamphilus at Caesarea, then his chief assistant. Pamphilus had come from Alexandria and made at Caesarea one of the greatest libraries of Christian writings. Just before Pamphilus arrived, the great scholar Origen had centered his work at Caesarea and composed the famed Hexapla there, a Bible in 6 side-by-side languages. It was kept in the library there. Though Pamphilus expanded Caesareaâs library, it was Origen whoâd started it with volumes heâd collected during his many travels. Eusebius so revered his teacher he called himself âson of Pamphilus.â Pamphilus was imprisoned in the last days of the Great Persecution and died a martyr in 310. Eusebius wrote a 3 volume biography of his mentor.The persecution that claimed Pamphilus continued to wreak havoc among the Christians in Caesarea, so Eusebius fled to Egypt for a few yrs where things were less dicey. When he returned to Caesarea in 313, the church elected Eusebius as bishop. The city had a population of 100,000; no small number of a city of that time and place. There he wrote 3 of his longest works;1) A refutation of paganism in 15 volumes he titled Preparation,2) A 20 volume look at Old Testament prophecyâs fulfillment by Christ titled Demonstration of the Gospel,3) And something he titled Chronicle which was a record of world history to 303, which Eusebius intended as a preface to his magnum opus, Ecclesiastical History.A few yrs after Eusebius became bishop at Caesarea, the Arian Controversy broke out in full force, threatening to tear the church apart. It seemed what persecution had been unable to do during the reign of Diocletian, an argument over theology would accomplish when persecution was over.As the student of Pamphilus, Eusebius did not support Ariusâ idea that Jesus wasnât God. But Eusebius would not go along with the movement to declare Arius a heretic and toss him and his many supporters from the church. For this, Eusebius himself was excommunicated in early 325 aby an Anti-Arian synod at Antioch. At the Council of Nicea later that year, he defended himself before the Emperor by bringing forth a copy of the baptismal creed used in his church at Caesarea. It stated an orthodox view and proved Eusebius was no Arian. What he was, was a church leader who felt the Arian controversy had been turned by some into a grievous black-mark on Christian unity. He though it would be better to keep Arius and his many supporters IN the Church and deal with them as men who needed correction, than to cast them out and see them agitate for their position there where the world would look on it all as a shameful display of pettiness.The Caesarean baptismal formula was such a clear affirmation of an orthodox view, it was apparently used as the template from which the Council of Nicaea crafted its final position and developed the Nicaean Creed. But some members of the council found the Caesarean formula a tad too vague. Then sought to remedy that vagueness by adding the controversial term homoousios that we talked at length about in Season 1.Eusebius reluctantly voted with the rest of the Council in approving the creed, though he was one of many bishops less than thrilled by the inclusion of that word. Over the next months and yrs, controversy raged over the word homoousias, and the condemned Arius returned to favor. The tables turned and orthodoxy seemed to go down to defeat at the hands of a resurgent heresy. And it would have too, were it not for the courageous stand of Athanasius, who refused to allow the Truth of Godâs Word to be edited by the prospect of pragmatic church politics. Sadly, Eusebius sat on the board that condemned Athanasius. Again, not for doctrinal reason, but because Eusebius judge Athanasius an divisive agent who hindered unity. What Eusebius had been reluctant to do with a heretic, that is, oust him, he was willing to do with a man who was orthodox.The Emperor Constantine was impressed with Eusebius and asked him to produce a speech to be given at the 13th Anniversary of the Emperorâs ascension. Eusebius followed that up with a grandiloquent eulogy of Constantine when he died in 335.Eusebius himself died 4 yrs later.One of the works Eusebius produced that has been a source of much help to historians is called the Onomasticon. It was something of a ground-breaking innovation on Eusebiusâ part. In modern terms, weâd call it a Bible atlas, or a geographical gazette. His goal was to provide an easily referenced list of all the places the Bible mentions and give a short description of where they were located. He used Roman miles as a measure of distance, and listed them alphabetically and by book of the Bible.When Eusebius was an assistant to his mentor Pamphilus, theyâd worked on the challenge of textual criticism with the Septuagint, the Common Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, as well as manuscripts of the NT. Jerome tells us Origen had already collected the Septuagint and that was the text Pamphilus and Eusebius worked on. Eusebius also set about to produce a kind of harmony of the 4 Gospels so that people could read the story of Jesus in a collected format. This work was a favorite text of Medieval scholars and became the source of many illuminated manuscripts.Besides these major works of Eusebius is a plethora of shorter & lesser works; letters, short treatises, notes and such that all bear his distinctive mark. Eusebius is recognized by no one as an author of great prose or eloquence. His writing is classically workman-like. What distinguishes his style, in everything except his praise of Constantine, is its refusal to embellish or fabricate. Not everything he wrote was factual, but whatever he did pen was a careful and faithful transmission of what heâd been told or had researched. For that reason, scholars tend to give Eusebius general credence in his recording of history.[1] Walter, V. (1992). Eusebius of Caesarea. In J. D. Douglas & P. W. Comfort (Eds.), Whoâs Who in Christian history (pp. 239â240). Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House.
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In his marvelous one volume book on Church History, Bruce Shelley relates how the World Council of Churches came up with its motto.In 1962, its General Secretary, Willem Hooft, met a delegation of Russian Orthodox leaders in a Leningrad hotel over breakfast. The Russians complained the current WCC motto left out a crucial element of their theology, without which they couldnât join. They needed to see some reference to the Trinity, however brief.From discussions with many Protestant groups, Hooft knew what kept them from joining; an absence in the motto of any reference to the importance of the Bible. In a flash of insight, he grabbed the breakfast menu and penned, âThe World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior according to the Holy Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfill together their common calling to the glory of one God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.âThat revised motto was adopted in the New Delhi meeting of the WCC later that year and has remained the organizationâs credo to this day.Letâs go back a bit, to the end of the 16th C. Overlooking the plethora of smaller groups that developed following the Reformation, the major branches of the Christian Faith were four. Europe had both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. The Middle East & Asia had Eastern Orthodoxy and the Nestorian Church of the East, which, after the depravations of Islam and the Mongols was a scant shadow of its former self.The Protestant church was further split into 4 main groups; Lutherans, Reformed, Anabaptist, and Anglican. As the 16th C folded into the 17th, Protestantism continued to fracture into different movements and groups. These new groups were most often the result of an emerging emphasis on some point of doctrine or practice. By the 20th C, there were hundreds of denominations, and thousands of movements and churches claiming to be non-denominational.Jesusâ prayer that His people would be one, seemed to be forgotten by the very institution that claimed to be the Earthly manifestation of His will. Seeing this, a new movement began, one seeking to bring Christians and churches from all these various groups together. That movement was Ecumenism.The word âecumenicalâ means general, universal. It was adopted by leaders of this movement to bring about unity among disparate Christian groups. As early ecumenists set out to establish unity, they quickly realized the monumental task theyâd set themselves. Unityâs a great idea. Forging it means convincing people the things they believe, and that led to the launching of their movement generations before, arenât really worth clinging to. Thatâs a tough proposition. If people were willing to depart their parent group over an issue at the groupâs inception, how much more wed to that idea, teaching, whatever, are they likely to be when tradition reinforces it?So, the early Ecumenical architects realized their only hope of achieving their goal was to devise a creed on which all Christians could & would agree.On what subjects do all people think alike? The list is small. And itâs no surprise to anyone listening when I say, Christians arenât unanimous on all aspects of their Faith. They hold differences in doctrine, worship, organization; even issues of morality. Most donât regard their distinctives as mere opinion either. Theyâre deeply cherished convictions. Individual believers as well as entire denominations even disagree over what constitutes the divisions that separate them. Some defend their distinctives while others regard them as a scandalous failure to heed Christâs call to unity. That scandal, and the sensitivity of some t the way disunity in The Church was a glaring black-mark hindering the Gospel and Christâs command to make disciples of all nations is what fueled the early ecumenists.If the Middle Ages can be called the Era of Catholic Christianity, the 16th-18th Cs, the Era of Protestant Proliferation, the 19th C, The Challenge of Rationalism, then the 20th could be labeled the C of Ecumenism.The first effort to secure cooperation among Protestants took place in 1846. Leaders from 50 Evangelical groups from England & the US met in London to hammer out guidelines for fellowship. They called themselves the Evangelical Alliance. Their work was promising and soon there were nine branches in Europe. They stood for religious liberty and encouraged their various groups to engage in joint activities and events that would give visible proof to an emerging unity. After a flurry of success at this, enthusiasm cooled toward the end of the C.Other leaders lamented the growing apathy of the Evangelical Alliance and decided to try again. Some thirty American denominations formed a Federal Council of Churches in 1908. The Council issued a string of official statements on political, economic, & social issues, to the dismay of conservative Christians who found them to be little more than the rants of liberal theology. In 1950, the Federal Council re-branded under the name, the National Council of Churches of Christ.But the most widely known expression of 20th C Ecumenism is the World Council of Churches which began in Amsterdam in 1948. When I say âbegan,â what I mean is, âemerged,â for the WCC was really the coming together of three previous groups.In 1910, The International Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh, Scotland, gathered a thousand delegates from all over the world to address the task of world missions. Setting aside their difference in favor of the massive challenge of winning the world to Faith in Christ the delegates realized a profound sense of unity. This whet their appetite for more.One of the delegates at the Conference was a young man of charismatic nature named John Mott, an American Methodist layman whose zeal for God was infectious and positioned him as a nexus for on-going work. He was appointed as the chairman of the committee that would continue the work of the conference. He served in that capacity for the next 20 yrs and became one of the key ingredients to the eventual emergence of the WCC.Another major contributor was a Canadian Anglican named Charles Brent whoâd served as a missionary to the Philippines. If Mott was driven by a deep love of God, Brent was amped by a commitment to doctrine. He knew the chief obstacle to unity among the various denominations was the doctrinal disputes that had split them in the first place. Brent advocated setting these disputes into two categories, essentials and non-essentials. While denominations could continue to affirm those things that differed between them on incidentals, they ought to rally round and unite over those beliefs considered essential for salvation.Brent left the Edinburgh conference with a conviction to call his fellow Anglicans to become leaders in urging unity around the Essentials. They agreed and issued an invitation to another conference to be called âThe World Conference on Faith and Order.â When WWI broke out, the conference was delayed till 1927. Then 150 reps from nearly 70 denominations met in Lausanne, Switzerland to pass a set of resolutions laying the foundations for the yet to come World Council.The third movement that gave rise to the WCC was led by a Lutheran archbishop in Sweden named Nathan Söderblom. Söderblom may have been Charles Brentâs theological polar opposite. His appointment by the King of Sweden was a shock to conservatives because Söderblom was a well-known liberal who openly rejected the orthodox understanding of the dual nature of Jesus as Divine and human; two elements of the faith Brent set in the essentials category.As an advocate of the Liberalism then sweeping many churches in Europe, Söderblom wanted to shed many of the tenets of orthodox Christianity he and his peers considered unacceptable to modern man. He said revelation was ongoing, and that the faith of the Apostolic Age was to be reinterpreted in light of Rationalism. He contended that true religion isnât located in what we believe about God but in our moral character. Itâs not what a person believes; itâs in what they DO!Söderblomâs impetus toward unity was centered in his conviction that as the different groups learned to respect one another, over time, progressive revelation would lead all to a single Faith. His was an evolutionary ecumenism; the inexorable result of forces no one could stop.Söderblomâs contribution to Ecumenism was in his organizing of the Conference on Life and Work held in Stockholm in the Summer of 1925. 500 delegates from 40 countries and 90 denominations agreed that the moral challenges facing modern society were simply beyond the scope of individual effort. They had to address them together or no lasting headway would be made.Brent & Söderblom were strange bed-fellows indeed. But by 1937, they and their organizations realized the task of Christian unity required a more inclusive organization. They issued a call for the formation of the World Council of Churches.As WWI had delayed The World Conference on Faith and Order, WWII delayed the creation of the World Council. It finally met in 1948 in Amsterdam, bringing together 350 delegates representing almost 150 denominations & 44 countries. Those opting out were Roman Catholics, some conservative Evangelicals, and the Russian Orthodox Church.Willem Adolph Visserât Hooft was made the General Secretary. It was he who secured the membership of the Russian Orthodox church and several Protestant groups in 1961. Under his leadership, WCC conventions were a carefully orchestrated mosaic of different cultures and concerns.It was never the aim of the WCC to produce a new Super-Church. It aimed simply to affirm and give voice to the central purpose for the Church; to rightly represent God and The Gospel in the world. It was able to achieve its objective in the early years by following Brentâs plan of unity around the Essentials and charity around non-essentials. But as the years passed, secularism and the influence of Söderblomâs liberalism asserted themselves. The demand for social justice replaced the Gospel Mandate. The WCC seemed to many to become little more than a shill for such important causes as overcoming racism, war, poverty, alcoholism & drug addiction. Instead of working for unity, the WCC issued statements that divided people. It became an organ of the all too oft repeated slogan, âUnityâs what we say it is,â & âWe can be in unity, as long as you agree with us.âIndeed, todayâs WCC is likely something neither Mott, Brent, nor Söderblom would want to be a part of.
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The title of this episode, Part 6 in the Series 500 Yrs, in commemoration of the Half-Millennial anniversary of The Reformation, is âThe Way It Was;â a brief look at popular religion of the Middle and Late Middle Ages in Europe.(more…)
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https://storage.googleapis.com/communio-sanctorum/500Years-Part05.mp3As we come up to the 500 year anniversary of Reformation Day, when Martin Luther tacked his revolutionary list of exceptions to current church practice and belief to the Castle Church door in the German town of Wittenberg, weâre faced with the realization that the Reformation embraced many more people than the popular telling of history enumerates. Many more.(more…)
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