Marist Messenger

by Elizabeth Isichei

In perhaps 1220, a boy was born to a prosperous couple living in what is now Beijing. They were not Han Chinese but Ongutt Turks. They had waited a long time for a baby, and called him Bar Sauma, Son of Fasting. Like many Christians in China he grew up multilingual, speaking the East Turkic language of his forbears, Mongol, Chinese, and the liturgical language, Syriac. Near the end of his life, he would write his memoirs in Persian, which he clearly acquired during his travels and at some point he learned a European language as well.
When he grew up he rejected the marriage his parents had arranged for him- much to their disappointment, since he was an only child. He decided to become a monk, receiving the tonsure from the Archbishop of Bejing, Mar (‘My Lord’) George. This proved difficult under his parents’ roof, so he moved first to a cell, and then to a mountain cave, a day’s journey from Beijing. (He was a hermit, rather than a monk living in community.) He is usually called, Rabban Bar Sauma. (Rabban, ‘Teacher,’ is an honorific, like Mar.)

Some years later, he was joined by a disciple, a much younger man called Mark, who was also an Ongutt. He was the son of an Archdeacon, and the youngest of four brothers.
After some years, Mark persuaded his reluctant teacher to go with him on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, seeking forgiveness for their sins. Members of the Christian community in Beijing tried to discourage them, quoting scripture, “The kingdom of heaven is within you” Early in their journey, they stopped at Mark’s home town, Kung-Tschang, where the Christians also tried to dissuade them, and when they failed, gave them much needed supplies- money, horses and clothing.
They then went further along the great Silk Road, struggling though deserts and resting at market towns. In some areas, both towns and crops had been destroyed by local wars. Finally they reached Baghdad, where they visited the relics of the great missionary, Mari. To their dismay, the Catholicos asked them to return to China, Mark as Metropolitan and Bar Sauma as Visitor General.Their response reflects the extreme danger and difficulty of the journey – these were ascetics, remember, who had lived for years in a mountain cave.
“We have not come from that country (China) in order to turn back and go again thither, and we do not intend to endure the repetition of the hardship which we have already suffered.”

Prevented from going to Jerusalem by war, they wanted to settle down in a local monastery. Finally, they gave in, and Mark was given a new name, Yaballah (God gives) chosen at random from a number of slips of paper on the altar. However more local wars delayed their return, and when the Catholicos died in 1281, 36 year old Mark was chosen to replace him. He pointed out that he was lacking in learning and had no knowledge of Syriac, which was rather like a pre- Vatican II Pope with no knowledge of Latin. The reason he was chosen was obvious, “because owing to his kinsmanship with the Mongols both by race and language, they would be helped by him.” He was, noted a Monophysite historian approvingly, very well disposed to Christians in this tradition. He held the position until his death in 1317, enduring trials which may have caused him more sufferiing than the deserts of central Asia..
The new Catholicos went to get his position confirmed by the Il-Khan, whose capital was not Baghdad, but in Azerbaijan. Successive Il-Khans were anxious to ally with European states to conquer the former Crusader states, in Palestine and Syria, which by now were almost entirely in Muslim hands. To facilitate this, they often dropped hints that they were contemplating conversion. It is one of the great ‘might-have beens’ of history. A later Il-Khan became a Muslim in 1295, probably because the vast majority of his subjects were Muslims, and this particular window of opportunity closed forever.
It was later decided to send Bar Sauma to Europe, to negotiate an anti-Muslim alliance. The memoir claims that he was chosen because he was the only man who knew the language. Which language was this, and where did he learn it? (If anyone knows the answer, please let me know, citing your source!) He accepted the assignment with alacrity and set sail from Trebizond, on the Black Sea.
Like Saint Paul, he found the Eastern Mediterranean dangerous and disagreeable. “This sea…is a terrible sea.” In 1287, he got to Rome, and found that the Pope had just died. He was asked about his Nestorian theology . His reply gives us a precious insight into how the Christians of the East viewed their own religious tradition. He begins with the words, “Mar Thomas and Mar Addai [Thadeus] and Mar Mari taught the Gospel in our corner of the world.”
He is not suggesting they evangelised Mongolia or China; he is referring to the dawn of the Church of the East, in Edessa and beyond.
When he was asked why a Christian monk was acting as an ambassador for the Mongol Il-Khan, he answered, “..many of our Fathers have gone into the countries of the Mongols and Turks and Chinese and have taught them the Gospel, and at the present there are many Mongols who are Christians.”
He added, “No man hath come to us Orientals from the Pope. The holy Apostles whose names I have mentioned taught us the Gospel and to what they delivered unto us we have clung to the present day.”
He then answered a number of abstruse theological questions, but pointed out he had not made his long journey to instruct people in the details of his own beliefs. “Let us set aside discussion and do ye..direct someone to show us the churches here and the shrines of the saints.”
He embarked on the visits to churches, shrines and relics so dear to his heart, and then travelled through North Italy to Paris. He gave Philip the Fair his message about an anti-Muslim alliance and joyfully visited churches, saints’ tombs and relics. He went on to Bourdeaux where he met Edward I of England,

told him of the proposed alliance, and asked hopefully about local shrines and relics. (His great love for such things was shared by European Catholics of the day.) He said Mass and gave the English king holy communion.
He then returned to Rome where a new – and very reluctant-pope had been elected. Nicholas IV

was a Franciscan who had travelled to Constantinople to meet with Greek Christians, and was therefore more familiar than most with the Christian churches of the East. Bar Sauma said Mass in his presence, and that of a large crowd, who commented, “The language is different but the use is the same.” Later Bar Sauma received communion from the Pope.The warmth and cordiality of these encounters makes a striking contrast with inter-church relations in the sixteenth century..
When Bar Sauma returned, in 1288, the Il-Khan was so pleased that he named his next son, Nicholas. But nothing concrete resulted, although Edward I had suggested the same alliance seven years earlier. By this time, the Crusader States had virtually disappeared; the last outpost, Acre, where the brooding fortress still stands, was taken by Muslim forces three years later. The Crusades left seeds of bitterness and anger in Muslim hearts, which still bear poisonous fruit today.
Bar Sauma spent his last years in Baghdad, where he died in 1294. He never went home and he never got to Jerusalem. He wrote his memoirs in Persian; they survive only in a shortened Syriac version, written about fifty years after his death, which became known to the western world only in the late nineteenth century.
When he had asked Edward what marvels he might see in Bourdeaux, the king had replied that “the true wonder was the unity of Christians, from countries so far apart”.

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