Nestorian Christianity!

In the post below, I mention that UHK Museum has a collection of 985 Nestorian crosses donated by a British guy, F. A. Nixon, who lived his entire life in China back in the 19th century and who collected them as a hobby. He actually had exactly 1000 but he kept the best of them for himself, as you do.

If you don't know about Nestorian Christianity, this is the Chinese version of Christianity that goes back to about 400AD when Nestor, Archbishop of Constantinople, was condemned as a heretic and so went into China to do missionary work, spreading his own particular version of the religion. He did very well, and consequently there were a great many parishes across China right up until the 17th century, when an unknown schism ripped the entire fabric apart and had different factions at war with each other. There were a few remnant populations around for another generation or two, but then it vanished forever.

Chinese Christians? From almost the earliest days of Christianity? It was so unexpected and beyond common knowledge, that when I made the discovery it just boggled my mind.

I first came across it at an exhibition at Chinese Heritage Museum in Sha Tin - part of The Silk Road Exhibition that included the mummy of Chechen Man which was what we'd actually come to see, because, as you know, he's got red hair and wears a tartan cloak, so China had proposed that he was actually Scottish, thus, because it was all so off-the-wall that a Scot would have been in China over 3000 years ago, we all wanted to see him for ourselves to see if they were right.

(BTW, if you haven't already heard, it turns out, from DNA tests recorded in a recent documentary on Discovery Channel, Chechen Man wasn't Scottish after all, but was a mixture of five different races, including Chinese, Indian and Scythian - which explained the red hair - and so was pure "Silk Road" in every way, since they've always been a crossroads for different peoples of the world.),

Anyway, this is meant to be about the Nestorians, so let's get back there:

We came across it almost by accident too! The relics were in a room away from all the "Oh, wow! Amazing!" stuff, and, as we were leaving, I noticed we hadn't been in, so briefly stopped at the case nearest the door just to see if there was anything important I would regret not seeing, and ... voila! a whole new world opened up for me.

THERE WAS CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA FROM 400AD! How big is that!

Shocked by the discovery of something so unexpected, as soon as I got got home I googled and found that the WWW is full of websites dedicated to research into this brand of Christianity, so it really isn't either unknown or a secret at all. Go in and look for yourself. Untold heaps of stuff.

Anyway, back to these 985 Nestorian crosses. They are particularly fascinating because they aren't based on our own religious symbols - do wish I'd been allowed to take a photo of them - and I must say they look less like crosses and more like cookie cutters ... and some of them still have clay pressed into the corners so I'm now wondering if they weren't used on bricks; you know, pressed into clay bricks during their construction for some unknown reason. And also considering the possibility that China could be full of buildings that have Nestorian symbols pressed into the hidden sides of the bricks used in their construction!

Strange stuff, huh!

Oh, and before I go, I should tell you a very silly story about how I was so very mean to this poor British historian:

See, six months after the Silk Road Exhibition closed, I was at Jardine House for the Royal Geographic Society's first meeting between Gavin Menzies, after the launch of his book "1421", and various Chinese Historians who wanted to hear about it and look at his research and evidence, so Menzies gave a talk on the subject ... and then all these historians gave talks ... and everyone had heaps to say and so it went on and on and on and I was desperate to go to the loo only the room was too packed so I couldn't get out without creating a huge kerfuffle ... but the minute it was over I raced to the loo, only everyone else was obviously in the same situation because the line was about 100 deep ahead of me.

And immediately in front of me was a very nice British lady jiggling up and down and muttering furiously "I don't have time for this! I don't have time for this!"

"What's up?" I asked her.

"I've just flown from Rome to talk to Chinese historians. It's so important." and then she looked at me hard and said "You don't happen to know any, do you?"

"Not personally. But I may be able to help. What do you want to know?"

The line was moving desperately slowly, so she told me the story: "I'm a historian from Britain. I'm currently writing a biography of Galileo, and, so fortunately, was given unprecedented access to the Vatican archives. And this morning I came across something so amazing I'm still reeling. I have to find out more about it, and so when someone mentioned this meeting tonight I jumped immediately on a plane to find people to talk to."

Vatican archives? Reeling? Are you deeply interested too? Naturally I'm all "What? What?"

"Can you believe it? The meeting immediately before Galileo's first one with the pope after his book was published, Pope XXX (forgotten which one) met with a delegation of Chinese Christians who wanted a ruling on a point of faith that apparently was causing issues back in China. Christians. In China! Can you believe it?"

OK, she was so anticipating my shock and amazement I couldn't resist: I HAD to look nonchalant and indifferent, so I looked away like it was the least interesting subject ever and, shrugging, "They were probably just Nestorians!" I said.

Love it? She was then the one looked all shocked and amazed and going "What, what, what?"

"Nestorian Christianity? I though everyone knew about that! It's everywhere in cyberspace. Instead of flying here in this extravagant fashion, you should have just googled."

She looked chastened, but I was kind and told her everything I knew about Archbishop Nestor and his missionary work and the 7th century stele at Xi-an and the schism which split the church and all the blah, blah, blah! And by then we were at the head of the line, so we parted and the next time I saw her was a glimpse of her struggling through the herd surrounding one of the Chinese historians. I guess he was closer to hand than the Internet.

But, my bitchiness aside, isn't it fascinating to discover that a delegation of Chinese were in Rome in October 1630. Wonder if Gavin Menzies knows.


Much, much later:

Just discovered that the clay in the crosses has nothing whatsoever to do with Nestorian Christianity. Seems these crosses were dug out of Nestorian graves by Mongolian grave-robbers who sold them to families who intended leaving home for several years. What they'd do was seal the front door with mud and press the cross into the mud as a charm to keep their house safe.

How simple things are when they're explained to you!