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EAST ASIA.
" Prester John," which haunted the imagination of the Western peoples during
the Middle Ages.
Christianity is no longer represented in China by
the Nestorian sect. The
Uigurs, Tatars, and other northern races, who had conformed to this religion, were
converted to Islam probably about the time of Tamerlane. It was these very
descendants of the Nestorians who, under the name of Dungans, recently threatened
the integrity of the empire. The Nestorians were succeeded by the Roman
Catholic missionaries, and towards the close of the thirteenth century Montecorvino
founded churches in China and became Bishop of Peking. Later on these prose-
ly tizers were received with less favour, and were even opposed by their own country-
men, the European traders of Macao, who feared to be banished from the empire if
they favoured the Christian propaganda.
But in 1581 the Italian Jesuit, Ruggiero,
penetrated to Canton disguised as a native, and he was followed the next
year by the celebrated Ricci, a shrewd man of the world, who secured the favour
of the great by his vast learning, and who at last became a court pensioner. The
Jesuit missionaries, who continued the work of Ricci, pursued the same policy, and
made many converts amongst the higher functionaries. They were careful not to
condemn absolutely the national rites, and especially those associated with ances-
tral worship. They even tolerated the offerings of fruits and flowers, and the
sacrifices in honour of the dead, regarding these ceremonies merely as evidences of
filial devotion. But the Dominican friars, who arrived towards the end of the
seventeenth century, denounced all these acts as idolatrous, and, as in South
America, an open rupture took place between the two religious orders. A bull
issued by Clement XI. in 1715 condemned the Jesuits, and ever since the native
neophytes have been required to renounce the traditional rites of their country.
Hence conversions have became rare, and mostly restricted to the poorer classes,
whom poverty exempts from performing the funeral ceremonies. Infants also rescued
during times of war or distress, or even purchased from the famine-stricken, are
brought up in the Catholic faith, and thus are recruited the Christian communities
of the empire.
" For a hundred francs," says Bishop Perrochcau, " we are able to
regenerate at least 300 or 400 infants, of whom two-thirds go straight to heaven."
In 1876 there were about 300 European missionaries, besides hundreds of native
priests and catechists, ministering to from 400,000 to 500,000 faithful, with a
yearly increase of about 2,000.
The Protestant missions were first opened in 1842, after the treaty of Nanking,
and were for a time restricted to the five treaty ports. Since 1860 they have been
gradually diffused throughout every part of the empire except Tibet and Eastern
Turkestan. Numbering about 250, nearly all English and Americans, and assisted
by over 600 natives, the missionaries have founded over 20 hospitals and
nearly 350 schools, attended by 7,500 pupils. In 1878 the Chinese Protestants
numbered about 50,000, chiefly centred in Fokien. Most of the converts are
drawn from the Buddhist sect of the Ningpo district, which abstains from eating
flesh. To the opium trade, imposed by Great Britain on China, is largely due the
failure of the Protestant missions, the natives naturally asking themselves whether