No one will ever know when the first knowledge of Christianity reached China. Today, some historians like to push the entry of Christianity to China back to the days of Thomas, claiming that after establishing the church in southern India, he went on to China. Evidence for this is unclear, but it is probably safe to assume that some form of Christianity made its way across the great Eurasian landmass in the early centuries of the Christian era, with the nomadic tribes who roamed along the Silk Route, stopping at the oasis towns to trade. For the historian it is unfortunate that these tribes were illiterate leaving no records for the historian to find, detailing how they became knowledgeable about Christianity.
Some scholars of Central Asia, like Jack Weatherford, who writes in Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire that some of these tribes likely came into contact with Nestorian Christians or Manicheans.
We do know that the Nestorian Monument, with the date 781 inscribed on it, was found near Xian, Shaanxi, in 1623 or 1625, giving proof that at least Nestorian Christianity had made its way that far into China during the Tang dynasty (618–960). The Monument is inscribed in both the Syriac script and Chinese characters.
Farmers digging in a field uncovered the Monument, which is not an unusual occurrence in China, particularly in the Xian region which has been inhabited for thousands of years. In the same area in 1974, farmers digging a well uncovered pottery that led archaeologists to the tomb of Qin Shi Huang-ti (First Emperor of the Qin dynasty) and his army of terra cotta warriors and horses, gold horses with a gold chariot, and other treasures.
When the Nestorian Monument was found, Chinese alerted the Jesuits working in China, who were then engaged, with their detractors, in the Chinese Rites Controversy. Immediately, a controversy erupted over the authenticity of the Monument, with the Jesuits taking the view that it was authentic while their detractors, in other Roman Catholic orders working in China, insisted it was not. The Nestorian Monument is now on display in a museum in Xian, and most scholars consider it authentic.
The Han Chinese did not have control of Central Asia on anything like a permanent basis by the eighth century, so it is impossible to tell if the practitioners of Nestorianism were ethnically Han, or if they were members of the various nomadic groups of the region. Interestingly, the first reports of Judaism and Islam reaching China also date from about the same time, but again, it is unclear whether the followers of either faith were ethnically Han or sojourners who came overland, in the case of the Jews who settled in Kaifeng, Henan, and by sea, in the case of the Muslims, who had a mosque at the southern city of Guangzhou, Guangdong.
Certainly Christianity was tolerated, if not widely practiced, in the Mongol empires of Chinggis Khan, his daughters, and his grandson, Kubilai, all of whom were known not to interfere with the religious beliefs of those they conquered. It is also likely that at least some of Chinggis’s daughters were Christians, and some scholars think Kubilai’s mother, Sulqartani, was a Nestorian Christian.
Several priests, sent out by religious orders in Europe, journeyed to China during the Song dynasty (960–1279), making this yet another of China’s encounters with Christianity. John of Plano Carpini, traveling in 1245–47, visited the center of Mongol rule. William of Rubrick made the trip in 1253–56. Then in 1289 John of Monte Corvino made the trip under the sponsorship of the Vatican, apparently at the request of Rabban Sauma, a Nestorian bishop, who had made the trip westward from Asia to Europe. None of these Western visitors and a dozen or so others made little, if any, impact on China. It is likely that at least some of these travelers were in search of the lost Christian community led by Prester John, a tale widespread in medieval Europe, and known to Christopher Columbus. Alternatively, it is also possible that one or more of these travelers was the source of the Prester John story. Likely, we will never know.
Orthodox Christianity in China
In the early modern era, the Orthodox form of Christianity arrived overland in China from the north, at about the same time the Roman Catholic form arrived by sea from the south. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the Russians were pushing eastward to the Pacific to lay claim to Siberia, on occasion they came into contact with the Manchus, who were consolidating their power in the southern Siberian and northern Manchurian regions prior to their sweep into China, when they established the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). The Russian explorers were largely military men, many of them Kazaks, but they had with them some Orthodox priests.
After the battle at Albazin in 1685, which led to the signing of the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689, some of the Russians decided to side with the Manchus and moved to Beijing. Their descendants were still there, and still practicing their religion, in the nineteenth century when Russia, along with other Western countries, sought to “open” China to the West.
Some groups of Orthodox Christians remain in China today, although their church is not officially recognized by the government. The Orthodox church in China split with its patriarch in Moscow in the 1950s. At a 2001 conference on Christianity in China held in Moscow which the author attended, the Orthodox patriarch stated, at that time, clergy from Russia were allowed to visit China to conduct services on Christian holidays. Obviously, in the twenty-first century there are both advantages and disadvantages to being officially recognized as a Christian church in China or operating on an ad hoc basis, but with the government’s knowledge.
It is also noteworthy that on the steppes of Siberia, the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689), the first between China and a Western country, Russia, was negotiated in part by Orthodox priests and Jesuits, who communicated in Latin!
St. Francis Xavier in Asia
While the Russians were penetrating northeastern Asia, the Reformation was in full bloom in Europe, producing the Protestants and, in time, the resurgence of Catholicism in the Catholic Reformation that gave birth to the Society of Jesus (Jesuits or SJ). The Society was organized for the express purpose of reconverting Protestants to Catholicism, but when the Jesuits found that few Protestants were interested in rejoining the Church of Rome, they turned their efforts to education and to the conversion of the non-Christian world to Catholicism. For the Jesuits, Asia loomed as the place most in need of conversion. Accordingly, the Jesuits sent one of the founding members of the order, Francis Xavier (1506–52), to carry the gospel to the Dutch East Indies (today Indonesia) and later to Japan.
The Protestant Dutch were in control of much of the Dutch East Indies, but Xavier worked in the Moluccas and Amboina for about a year. He then traveled to Japan where he arrived in the midst of warfare that ultimately resulted in the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1600.
Various daimyo in Japan were vying for power, with episodes of warfare that involved great armies of monks from the Buddhist monasteries, many located in the mountains around Kyoto, the imperial capital. Unaware of the political turmoil into which he had wandered, Xavier quickly found favor among some daimyo, who hoped to use the foreigner and his religion to counteract the Buddhist armies. It was not long before the Japanese, who had been aware of the arrival of Europeans on the China coast and in Southeast Asia, began to fear that Xavier was the forerunner of a military invasion by his countrymen, particularly as the Japanese knew this had happened in the Philippines.
Although Xavier made some converts, eventually the Japanese leaders asked him the one question he could not answer, namely, if his religion were the one true religion for all people for all time, why had the Chinese never heard of it? It was a question only a Japanese would ask, as they had borrowed much of their culture from China, via Korea, and it seemed to the Japanese that Xavier’s religion could not be too important if the Chinese did not know of it.
Without an answer, and losing favor with his supporters, Xavier decided to leave Japan and go to China to convert the people there. It was on the island of Shangchuan, within sight of the Chinese mainland, that Xavier died in 1552.
Xavier’s body traveled almost as far in death as he had in life. He was buried first on Shangchuan, then the body was moved to Malacca, a Portuguese colony after 1511. After the Protestant Dutch seized Malacca in 1641 Xavier’s body was taken to Goa, where it rests today. (His former grave in Malacca became a tourist attraction!) Periodically, the Goanese Catholics take his body on a great religious procession through the city. This is supposed to happen every ten years, in years ending in nine, but the date of the parade is quite flexible. The remains of Xavier’s right hand, which was severed at the time the body was moved to Goa, is in the Vatican Museum in Rome. The relic of his left arm was on display for many years in a church in the former Portuguese enclave of Macau, on the south coast of China, across from Hong Kong.
Macau reverted to China in 1997, but its Christian past remains in the façade of the Roman Catholic church the missionaries founded and in the Protestant cemetery, where many nineteenth-century missionaries, along with traders, globetrotters, assorted sailors and other foreigners who died on the China coast, are buried. Both the façade and the cemetery are tourist attractions today, but do not attract as many visitors as do the casinos!
Xavier became a saint in 1622 at the same time as Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, and Xavier is remembered in popular Catholicism as an important missionary to China. Several years ago a retired colleague of the author’s traveled to France and brought her a postcard of the altarpiece from a village church he had visited. It showed a beautiful mosaic of Xavier standing under a Burmese Buddhist monk’s umbrella, baptizing Chinese who were in the dress of the Tang dynasty, with the caption “St. Francis Xavier baptizing Chinese.” Upon glancing at the postcard the author immediately began laughing, and her colleague, a devout Catholic, looked distressed until the author explained to him what was wrong with the altarpiece. Somehow, these French villagers and the artist who had created the altarpiece had come to believe, as many Catholics do, that Xavier was a missionary to China, a country whose mainland he had never reached. Later, when the author related this story on H-Asia, a history networking site, one Asian specialist admitted that he too had not realized immediately what was so funny about the altarpiece’s portrayal of Xavier.
Christianity Challenges Chinese Society
It was not until 1582 that the Jesuits could actually establish themselves in China. The first prominent member of the Society to have a place in China’s history was Matteo Ricci (1552–1610). For the first time in the history of Christianity in China, Christians wrote letters home about their experiences that were preserved for historians to find and write about the missionary endeavor from the viewpoint of those who participated in it. This was perhaps the fourth or fifth time that Christianity had reached China, but this time there was to be a lasting, if not always tranquil, presence.
These early Jesuits who embarked for China went to convert a society about which they knew very little. Traditional Chinese society was patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal, and each person knew his or her place based on the traditional hierarchy of emperor to subject, father to son, elder brother to younger brother, husband to wife, and friend to friend, termed the Confucian relationships by Western historians. Only the last relationship was based on equality, not bloodlines or marriage. Under this system, women were clearly subservient.
For Christianity, with its teaching of the equality of all in the sight of God, to succeed in China, it had not only to challenge the traditional hierarchy, it had to destroy it. The acceptance of Christianity’s idea of equality was further complicated by such teachings as “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” and “honor thy father and thy mother,” which educated Chinese would have seen as ideals they were already practicing, albeit in their own ways.
Indeed, Ricci tried to tie Christianity to traditional Chinese beliefs and practices by pointing out the similarities between them. Liam Brockey in his Journey to the East noted that the Jesuits introduced rosaries and other religious tokens without much explanation to the Chinese as to what they were. As similar items are used by Buddhists, Brockey concluded the Chinese understood these to be the Christian versions of Buddhist amulets. He also notes that the Jesuits told the Chinese that holy water and the sign of the cross were spiritual means of protection, but it was reported that on one occasion two Christians saw their children devoured by wild wolves despite the parents making the sign of the cross repeatedly. The priests explained this by condemning the parents for not carefully observing the Ten Commandments, which had caused their actions to be ineffective!
Sorting out and understanding Christian teachings was difficult for the Chinese who became inquirers, a status that missionaries imposed before they accepted Chinese for baptism and lives as Christians. Certainly, many inquirers realized that if they became Christians they would change the dynamics of their families’ lives, as well as many aspects...
