The Nestorian Stele, also known as the Nestorian Stone, Nestorian Monument,[1] or Nestorian Tablet, is a Tang Chinesestele erected in 781 that documents 150 years of early Christianity in China.[2] It is a 279cm tall limestone block with text in both Chinese and Syriac describing the existence of Christian communities in several cities in northern China. It reveals that the initial Nestorian Christian church had met recognition by the Tang Emperor Taizong, due to efforts of the Christian missionary Alopen in 635.[3] According to the Stele, Alopen and his fellow Syriac missionaries came to China from Daqin (the Eastern Roman Empire) in the ninth year of Emperor Taizong (Tai Tsung) (635), bringing sacred books and images.[4] Buried in 845, probably during religious suppression, the stele was not rediscovered until 1625.
A stele, or occasionally stela, when derived from Latin, is a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected in the ancient world as a monument. Grave stelae were often used for funerary or commemorative purposes. Stelae as slabs of stone would also be used as ancient Greek and Roman government notices or as boundary markers to mark borders or property lines.
Christianity in China appeared in the 7th century, during the Tang dynasty, but did not take root until it was reintroduced in the 16th century by Jesuit missionaries. Today, it comprises Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals and a small number of Orthodox Christians. Although its history in China is not as ancient as Taoism, Mahayana Buddhism or Confucianism, Christianity, through various ways, has been present in China since at least the 7th century and has gained significant influence during the last 200 years. The number of Chinese Christians has increased significantly since the easing of restrictions on religious activity during economic reforms in the late 1970s; Christians were four million before 1949.
Limestone is a carbonate sedimentary rock that is often composed of the skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral, foraminifera, and molluscs. Its major materials are the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). A closely related rock is dolostone, which contains a high percentage of the mineral dolomite, CaMg(CO3)2. In fact, in old USGS publications, dolostone was referred to as magnesian limestone, a term now reserved for magnesium-deficient dolostones or magnesium-rich limestones.
The Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution initiated by Tang Emperor Wuzong reached its height in the year 845 CE. Among its purposes were to appropriate war funds and to cleanse China of foreign influences. As such, the persecution was directed not only towards Buddhism but also towards other religions, such as Zoroastrianism, Nestorian Christianity, and Manichaeism.
The stele was unearthed in the late Ming dynasty (between 1623 and 1625) beside Chongren Temple (崇仁寺) outside of Xi'an.[6] According to the account by the JesuitAlvaro Semedo, the workers who found the stele immediately reported the find to the governor, who soon visited the monument, and had it installed on a pedestal, under a protective roof, requesting the nearby Buddhist monastery to care for it.[7]
The Ming dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China – then known as the Great Ming Empire – for 276 years (1368–1644) following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last imperial dynasty in China ruled by ethnic Han Chinese. Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng, regimes loyal to the Ming throne – collectively called the Southern Ming – survived until 1683.
Xi'an is the capital of Shaanxi Province, China. A sub-provincial city on the Guanzhong Plain in northwestern China, it is one of the oldest cities in China, and the oldest of the Four Great Ancient Capitals, having held the position under several of the most important dynasties in Chinese history, including Western Zhou, Qin, Western Han, Sui, and Tang. Xi'an is the starting point of the Silk Road and home to the Terracotta Army of Emperor Qin Shi Huang.
The newly discovered stele attracted attention of local intellectuals. It was Zhang Gengyou (Wade-Giles: Chang Keng-yu) who first identified the text as Christian in content. Zhang, who had been aware of Christianity through Matteo Ricci, and who himself may have been Christian, sent a copy of the stele's Chinese text to his Christian friend, Leon Li Zhizao in Hangzhou, who in his turn published the text and told the locally based Jesuits about it.[7]
Matteo Ricci, S.J., was an Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions. His 1602 map of the world in Chinese characters introduced the findings of European exploration to East Asia. He is considered a Servant of God by the Roman Catholic Church.
Hangzhou formerly romanized as Hangchow, is the capital and most populous city of Zhejiang Province in East China. It sits at the head of Hangzhou Bay, which separates Shanghai and Ningbo. Hangzhou grew to prominence as the southern terminus of the Grand Canal and has been one of the most renowned and prosperous cities in China for much of the last millennium. The city's West Lake, a UNESCO World Heritage site immediately west of the city, is among its best-known attractions. A study conducted by PwC and China Development Research Foundation saw Hangzhou ranked first among "Chinese Cities of Opportunity". Hangzhou is also considered a World City with a "Beta+" classification according to GaWC.
The history of the missions of the Jesuits in China is part of the history of relations between China and the Western world. The missionary efforts and other work of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, between the 16th and 17th century played a significant role in continuing the transmission of knowledge, science, and culture between China and the West, and influenced Christian culture in Chinese society today.
Alvaro Semedo was the first European to visit the stele (some time between 1625 and 1628).[8]Nicolas Trigault's Latin translation of the monument's inscription soon made its way in Europe, and was apparently first published in a French translation, in 1628. Portuguese and Italian translations, and a Latin re-translation, were soon published as well. Semedo's account of the monument's discovery was published in 1641, in his Imperio de la China.[9]
Nicolas Trigault (1577–1628) was a Walloon Jesuit, and a missionary in China. He was also known by his latinised name Nicolaus Trigautius or Trigaultius, and his Chinese name Jin Nige.
Early Jesuits attempted to claim that the stele was erected by a historical community of Roman Catholics in China, called Nestorianism a heresy and claimed that it was Catholics who first brought Christianity to China, but later historians and writers admitted that it was indeed Nestorian, not Catholic.[10]
The first publication of the original Chinese and Syriac text of the inscription in Europe is attributed to Athanasius Kircher. China Illustrata edited by Kircher (1667) included a reproduction of the original inscription in Chinese characters,[11]Romanization of the text, and a Latin translation.[12] This was perhaps the first sizeable Chinese text made available in its original form to the European public. A sophisticated Romanization system, reflecting Chinese tones, used to transcribe the text, was the one developed earlier by Matteo Ricci's collaborator Lazzaro Cattaneo (1560–1640).
The work of the transcription and translation was carried out by Michał Boym and two young Chinese Christians who visited Rome in the 1650s and 1660s: Boym's traveling companion Andreas Zheng (郑安德勒) and, later, another person who signed in Latin as "Matthaeus Sina". D.E. Mungello suggests that Matthaeus Sina may have been the person who traveled overland from China to Europe with Johann Grueber.[13]
Content
The heading on the stone, Chinese for Memorial of the Propagation in China of the Luminous Religion from Daqin (大秦景教流行中國碑, abbreviated 大秦景教碑). An even more abbreviated version of the title, 景教碑 (Jǐngjiào bēi, "The Stele of the Luminous Religion"), in its Wade-Giles form, Ching-chiao-pei or Chingchiaopei, was used by some Western writers to refer to the stele as well.[14]
The name of the stele can also be translated as A Monument Commemorating the Propagation of the Ta-Chin Luminous Religion in the Middle Kingdom (the church referred to itself as "The Luminous Religion of Daqin", Daqin being the Chinese language term for the Roman Empire in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD,[15] and in later eras also used to refer to the Syriac Christian churches).[16] The stele was erected on January 7, 781, at the imperial capital city of Chang'an (modern-day Xi'an), or at nearby Zhouzhi County. The calligraphy was by Lü Xiuyan (呂秀巖), and the content was composed by the Nestorian monk Jingjing in the four- and six-character euphemistic style. A gloss in Syriac identifies Jingjing with "Adam, priest, chorepiscopus and papash of Sinistan" (Adam qshisha w'kurapisqupa w'papash d'Sinistan). Although the term papash (literally "pope") is unusual and the normal Syriac name for China is Beth Sinaye, not Sinistan, there is no reason to doubt that Adam was the metropolitan of the Nestorian ecclesiastical province of Beth Sinaye, created a half-century earlier during the reign of Patriarch Sliba-zkha (714–28). A Syriac dating formula refers to the Nestorian patriarchHnanishoʿ II (773–780), news of whose death several months earlier had evidently not yet reached the Nestorians of Chang'an. In fact, the reigning Nestorian patriarch in January 781 was Timothy I (780–823), who had been consecrated in Baghdad on 7 May 780.[17] The names of several higher clergy (one bishop, two chorepiscopi and two archdeacons) and around seventy monks or priests are listed.[18] The names of the higher clergy appear on the front of the stone while those of the priests and monks are inscribed in rows along the narrow sides of the stone, in both Syriac and Chinese. In some cases, the Chinese names are phonetically close to the Syriac originals, but in many other cases, they bear little resemblance to them. Some of the Nestorian monks had distinctive Persian names (such as Isadsafas, Gushnasap), suggesting that they might have come from Fars or elsewhere in Persia, but most of them had common Christian names or the kind of compound Syriac name (such as ʿAbdishoʿ, 'servant of Jesus') much in vogue among all Nestorian Christians. In such cases, it is impossible to guess at their place of origin.
On top of the tablet, there is a cross. Below this headpiece is a long Chinese inscription, consisting of around 1,900 Chinese characters, sometimes glossed in Syriac (several sentences amounting to about 50 Syriac words). Calling God "Veritable Majesty", the text refers to Genesis, the cross, and baptism. It also pays tribute to missionaries and benefactors of the church, who are known to have arrived in China by 640. The text contains the name of an early missionary, Alopen. The tablet describes the "Illustrious Religion" and emphasizes the Trinity and the Incarnation, but there is nothing about Christ's crucifixion or resurrection. Other Chinese elements referred to include a wooden bell, beard, tonsure, and renunciation.[2] The Syriac proper names for God, Christ and Satan (Allaha, Mshiha and Satana) were rendered phonetically into Chinese. Chinese transliterations were also made of one or two words of Sanskrit origin such as Sphatica and Dasa. There is also a Persian word denoting Sunday.[19]
The Nestorian Stone attracted the attention of some anti-Christian, Protestant anti-Catholic, or Catholic anti-Jesuit groups in the 17th century, who argued that the stone was a fake or that the inscriptions had been modified by the Jesuits who served in the Ming Court. The three most prominent early skeptics were the German-Dutch Presbyterian scholar Georg Horn (born 1620) (De originibus Americanis, 1652), the German historian Gottlieb Spitzel (1639–1691) (De re literaria Sinensium commentarius, 1660), and the Dominican missionary Domingo Navarrete (1618–1686) (Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos, y religiosos de la monarchia de China, 1676). Later, Navarrete's point of view was taken up by French Jansenists and Voltaire.[20]
By the 19th century, the debate had become less sectarian and more scholarly. Notable skeptics included Karl Friedrich Neumann, Stanislas Julien, Edward E. Salisbury and Charles Wall.[9][21]Ernest Renan initially had "grave doubts", but eventually changed his mind in the light of later scholarship, in favor of the stele's genuineness.[22] The defenders included some non-Jesuit scholars, such as Alexander Wylie, James Legge, and Jean-Pierre-Guillaume Pauthier, although the most substantive work in defense of the stele's authenticity – the three-volume La stèle chrétienne de Si-ngan-fou (1895 to 1902) was authored by the Jesuit scholar Henri Havret (1848–1902).[9]
Paul Pelliot (1878–1945) did an extensive amount of research on the stele, which, however, was only published posthumously, in 1996.[23][24] His and Havret's works are still regarded as the two "standard books" on the subject.[25]
According to Professor Daniel H. Williams, of Baylor University, in recent years the debate took a different twist. According to Williams, who believes the stele to be authentic, the stele demonstrates that a genuinely Chinese Christianity existed much earlier than it is generally believed, which runs counter the idea that Christianity in China is a “foreign” religion and has obvious political implications.[26]
Numerous Christian gravestones have also been found in China in the Xinjiang region, Quanzhou and elsewhere from a somewhat later period. There are also two much later stelae (from 960 and 1365) presenting a curious mix of Christian and Buddhist aspects, which are preserved at the site of the former Monastery of the cross in the Fangshan District, near Beijing.[28]
Modern location, and replicas
The Nestorian Stele, on its turtle (Bixi) pedestal. Left: 1907 photograph by Frits Holm, without the brick cladding/pavilion seen in earlier pictures and shortly before it was moved to the Beilin Museum. Right: The Nestorian Stele in Beilin Museum in 2010.
Since the late 19th century a number of European scholars opined in favor of somehow getting the stele out of China and into the British Museum or some other "suitable" location (e.g., Frederic H. Balfour in his letter published in The Times in early 1886[29]). Their plans, however, were frustrated. When the Danish scholar and adventurer Frits Holm came to Xi'an in 1907 with the plans to take the monument to Europe,[30] the local authorities intervened, and moved the stele, complete with its tortoise, from its location near Chongren Temple[6][31] to Xi'an's Beilin Museum (Forest of Steles Museum).[30][32]
The disappointed Holm had to be satisfied with having an exact copy of the stele made for him. Instead of London's British Museum, he had the replica stele shipped to New York, planning to sell it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum's director Caspar Purdon Clarke, however, was less than enthusiastic about purchasing "so large a stone ... of no artistic value". Nonetheless, the replica stele was exhibited in the museum ("on loan" from Mr. Holm) for about 10 years.[30] Eventually, in 1917 some Mr. George Leary, a wealthy New Yorker, purchased the replica stele and sent it to Rome, as a gift to the Pope.[33] A full-sized replica cast from that replica is on permanent display in the Bunn Intercultural Center on the campus of Georgetown University (Washington, DC).
The original Nestorian Stele remains in the Forest of Steles. It is now exhibited in the museum's Room Number 2, and is the first stele on the left after the entry. When the official list of Chinese cultural relics forbidden to be exhibited abroad was promulgated in 2003, the stele was included into this short list of particularly valuable and important items.
The Daqin Pagoda (大秦塔) is a Buddhist pagoda in Zhouzhi County of Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, China, located about two kilometres to the west of Louguantai temple. The pagoda has been controversially claimed as a Nestorian Christian church from the Tang Dynasty.
The Stele Forest or Beilin Museum is a museum for steles and stone sculptures in Beilin District in Xi'an, China. The museum, which is housed in a former Confucian Temple, has housed a growing collection of Steles since 1087. By 1944 it was the principal museum for Shaanxi province. Due to the large number of steles, it was officially renamed the Forest of Stone Steles in 1992. Altogether, there are 3,000 steles in the museum, which is divided into seven exhibitions halls, which mainly display works of calligraphy, painting and historical records.
Alopen ; also "Aleben", "Aluoben", "Olopen," "Olopan," or "Olopuen") is the first recorded Christian missionary to have reached China, during the Tang dynasty. He was a missionary from the Church of the East, and probably a Syriac speaker from the Sasanian Empire or from Byzantine Syria. He is known exclusively from the Nestorian Stele, which describes his arrival in the Tang capital of Chang'an in 635 and his acceptance by Emperor Taizong of Tang. His is the earliest known name that can be attached to the history of the Church of the East in China.
Syriac Christianity is the form of Eastern Christianity whose formative theological writings and traditional liturgy are expressed in the Syriac language.
Figurism was an intellectual movement of Jesuit missionaries at the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century, whose participants viewed the I Ching as a prophetic book containing the mysteries of Christianity, and prioritized working with the Qing Emperor as a way of promoting Christianity in China.
The Catholic Church in China has a long and complicated history. Christianity has existed in China in various forms since at least the Tang Dynasty in the 8th century AD. Following the 1949 takeover by the Communist Party of China, Catholic and Protestant missionaries were expelled from the country, and the religion was vilified as a manifestation of western imperialism. In 1957, the Chinese government established the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, which rejects the authority of the Holy See and appoints its own bishops. Since September 2018, however, the Papacy has the power to veto any Bishop which China recommends.
The Church of the East or Nestorian Church had a presence in China during two periods: first from the 7th through the 10th century, and later during the Mongol Yuan Dynasty in the 13th and 14th centuries. Locally, the religion was known as Jingjiao/Ching-chiao (景教), which literally means the “Luminous Religion”.
The Jingjiao Documents are a collection of Chinese language texts connected with the 7th-century mission of Alopen, a Church of the East bishop from Sassanian Mesopotamia. The manuscripts date from between 635, the year of Alopen's arrival in China, and around 1000, when the cave at Mogao near Dunhuang in which the documents were discovered was sealed.
Yoshiro Saeki, was a Japanese scholar of religion, law, and the English language. Peter Saeki is his christian name. He is known for his theories about Nestorianism and Jewish culture in Japan and for his involvement in the planning of the new Hiroshima after the atomic bombing.
Christianity in Asia has its roots in the very inception of Christianity, which originated from the life and teachings of Jesus in 1st century Roman Judea. Christianity then spread through the missionary work of his apostles, first in the Levant and taking roots in the major cities such as Jerusalem and Antioch. According to tradition, further eastward expansion occurred via the preaching of Thomas the Apostle, who established Christianity in the Parthian Empire (Iran) and India. The very First Ecumenical Council was held in the city of Nicaea in Asia Minor (325). The first Caucasus nations to adopt Christianity as a state religion were Armenia in 301 and Georgia in 327. By the 4th century, Christianity became the dominant religion in all Asian provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire.
The Louguantai Temple, in Tayu village (塔峪村), Zhouzhi county, Shaanxi province, about 70 km, west of Xian, is the place where tradition says that Lao Tze composed the Tao Te Ching.
Álvaro de Semedo, was a Portuguese Jesuit priest, missionary in China.
Frits Vilhelm Holm was a Danish scholar and adventurer. His books usually gave his name as simply Frits Holm or Frits V. Holm, while US newspapers of the time usually (mis)spelled his name as Fritz von Holm, sometimes claiming that he was a member of the European nobility.
Hnanishoʿ II was patriarch of the Church of the East between 773 and 780. His name, sometimes spelled Ananjesu or Khnanishu, means 'mercy of Jesus'.
The Church of the East, also known as the Nestorian Church and the Persian Church, was an Eastern Christian denomination that in 410 organised itself within the Sasanian Empire and in 424 declared its leader independent of other Christian leaders. From the Persian Empire it spread to other parts of Asia in late antiquity and the Middle Ages.
The Sutra of Hearing the Messiah is a Chinese language manuscript about Christian teachings from the Church of the East. It is considered to be one of the oldest of the Jingjiao Documents, dated between 635 AD and 638 AD. The Sutra of Hearing the Messiah was found at the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang and collected by Takakusu Junjiro.
China Illustrata is the 1667 published book written by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) that compiles the 17th century European knowledge on the Chinese Empire and its neighboring countries. The original Latin title was: ”Athanasii Kircheri e Soc. Jesu China monumentis, qua sacris qua profanis, nec non variis Naturae et artis spectaculis, aliarumque rerum memorabilium argumentis illustrata, auspiciis Leopoldi primi, Roman. Imper. Semper augusti Munificentissimi Mecaenatis“.
The Painting of a Nestorian Christian figure or Fragment of a Christian figure, Nestorian painting of Jesus Christ, is a late 9th-century Tang dynasty fragmentary silk painting of a haloed man with crosses on his head and chest who has been interpreted as a Christian figure, associated with the Church of the East in China. It was discovered by the Hungarian-born British archaeologist Aurel Stein at the Library Cave of the Mogao Caves in 1908. The painting is in the British Museum in London.
References
↑ Saeki, Yoshiro (1928) [1916]. The Nestorian monument in China. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
1 2 Hill, Henry, ed (1988). Light from the East: A Symposium on the Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian Churches. Toronto, Canada. pp. 108–109
↑ Jenkins, Peter (2008). The Lost History of Christianity: the Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia - and How It Died. New York: Harper Collins. p.65. ISBN978-0-06-147280-0.
↑ Ding, Wang (2006). "Renmants of Christianity from Chinese Central Asia in Medieval ages". In Malek, Roman; Hofrichter, Peter (editors). Jingjiao: the Church of the East in China and Central Asia. Steyler Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH. ISBN978-3-8050-0534-0.CS1 maint: Uses editors parameter (link)
↑ Mungello (p. 168), following Legge, is inclined to date Semedo's visit to Xi'an to 1628, but also mentions that some researchers interpret Semedo's account as to mean a 1625 visit.
↑ The Chinese repository, Volume 13. VICTORIA, HONGKONG: Printed for the proprietors. 1844. p.472. Retrieved 2011-05-08.(Original from Harvard University)
↑ 广州市基督教两会仿制景教碑立于天河堂 盼广州教会传承景教以来众圣徒“道成肉身”的美好见证[Guangzhou CCC&TSPM Copied Nestorian Stele in Tianhe Church, Hoping to Pass Good Witnesses of "Incarnation" Since Nestorianism Saints] (in Chinese). 福音时报 (Gospel Times). 2016-03-10.
Further reading
Henri Havretsj, La stèle chrétienne de Si Ngan-fou, Parts 1-3. Full text (was) available at Gallica:
"The Jesus Messiah of Xi'an" ― translation and exposition of doctrinal passages in the stele text. From B. Vermander (ed.), Le Christ Chinois, Héritages et espérance (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1998).
SIR E. A. WALLIS BUDGE, KT., THE MONKS OF KUBLAl KHAN EMPEROR OF CHINA (1928) - contains reproductions of early photographs of the stele where it stood in the early 20th century (from Havret etc.)
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