page_title: Church of the East in China
section_title: Mongol era
hierarchical_section_title: Church of the East in China / Mongol era
caption_attribution_description: English: Nestorian Christian relic from Imperial China, a bodhisattva-like figurine seated on a cross, probably Yüen dynasty (1271–1368).
context_page_description: The Church of the East or the sometimes referred to as Nestorian Church historically 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.
  After centuries of latency, the 21st century marked a historical moment between the Assyrian Church of the East and the Church in China, when the Liturgy of Addai and Mari was celebrated.
context_section_description: The Church of the East had significant evangelical success under the Mongol Empire. The Mongol invasion of China in the 13th century allowed the church to return to China. By the end of the century two new metropolitan provinces had been created for China: Tangut and 'Katai and Ong'.
  The province of Tangut covered northwestern China, and its metropolitan seems to have sat at Almaliq. The province evidently had several dioceses, even though they cannot now be localised, as the metropolitan Shemʿon Bar Qaligh of Tangut was arrested by the patriarch Denha I shortly before his death in 1281 'together with a number of his bishops'.
  The province of Katai [Cathay] and Ong, which seems to have replaced the old Tang dynasty province of Beth Sinaye, covered northern China and the country of the Christian Ongut tribe around the great bend of the Yellow River.  The metropolitans of Katai and Ong probably sat at the Mongol capital Khanbaliq.  The patriarch Yahballaha III grew up in a monastery in northern China in the 1270s, and the metropolitans Giwargis and Nestoris are mentioned in his biography.  Yahballaha himself was consecrated metropolitan of Katai and Ong by the patriarch Denha I shortly before his death in 1281.
  During the first half of the 14th century there were Nestorian Christian communities in many cities in China, and the province of Katai and Ong probably had several suffragan dioceses. In 1253 William of Rubruck mentioned a Nestorian bishop in the town of 'Segin' (Xijing, modern Datong in Shanxi province). The tomb of a Nestorian bishop named Shlemun, who died in 1313, has recently been discovered at Quanzhou in Fujian province. Shlemun's epitaph described him as 'administrator of the Christians and Manicheans of Manzi (south China)'. Marco Polo had earlier reported the existence of a Manichean community in Fujian, at first thought to be Christian, and it is not surprising to find this small religious minority represented officially by a Christian bishop.
  The Church of the East declined in China substantially in the mid-14th century. Several contemporaries, including the papal envoy John of Marignolli, mention the murder of the Latin bishop Richard and six of his companions in 1339 or 1340 by a Muslim mob in Almaliq, the chief city of Tangut, and the forcible conversion of the city's Christians to Islam. The last tombstones in two East Syriac cemeteries discovered in Mongolia around the end of the 19th century date from 1342, and several commemorate deaths during a plague in 1338. In China, the last references to East Syriac and Latin Christians date from the 1350s, and it is likely that all foreign Christians were expelled from China soon after the revolution of 1368, which replaced the Mongol Yuan dynasty with the xenophobic Ming dynasty.
  Roman Catholicism in China was expanded at the expense of the Nestorians during the Yuan dynasty.
  The Mongols called "Nestorian" Christians (or "Nestorian" Christian priests in particular) Arka′un or Erke′un, which was later applied for Christians in general (including Roman Catholics) whereby Christianity was named in Chinese as 也里可溫教 (Yělǐkěwēn jiào). However, there is a suggestion that the term Yělǐkěwēn jiào might be used also for Míng jiào and some other religions in Jiangnan.
caption: Bodhisattva-like figurine seated on a cross, a Nestorian relic from Imperial China, probably Yüen dynasty.
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