When We Shall Witness This We
Will Denounce The Idolaters And Their Religion, And Then I Will Receive
Baptism; And
When I shall have been baptised, then all my barons and
chiefs shall be baptised also, and their followers shall
Do the like, and
thus in the end there will be more Christians here than exist in your part
of the world!'
"And if the Pope, as was said in the beginning of this book, had sent men
fit to preach our religion, the Grand Kaan would have turned Christian;
for it is an undoubted fact that he greatly desired to do so."
In the simultaneous patronage of different religions, Kublai followed the
practice of his house. Thus Rubruquis writes of his predecessor Mangku
Kaan: "It is his custom, on such days as his diviners tell him to be
festivals, or any of the Nestorian priests declare to be holydays, to hold
a court. On these occasions the Christian priests enter first with their
paraphernalia, and pray for him, and bless his cup. They retire, and then
come the Saracen priests and do likewise; the priests of the Idolaters
follow. He all the while believes in none of them, though they all follow
his court as flies follow honey. He bestows his gifts on all of them, each
party believes itself to be his favourite, and all prophesy smooth things
to him." Abulfaragius calls Kublai "a just prince and a wise, who loved
Christians and honoured physicians of learning, whatsoever their nation."
There is a good deal in Kublai that reminds us of the greatest prince of
that other great Mongol house, Akbar. And if we trusted the first
impression of the passage just quoted from Ramusio, we might suppose that
the grandson of Chinghiz too had some of that real wistful regard towards
the Lord Jesus Christ, of which we seem to see traces in the grandson of
Baber. But with Kublai, as with his predecessors, religion seems to have
been only a political matter; and this aspect of the thing will easily be
recognised in a re-perusal of his conversation with Messer Nicolas and
Messer Maffeo. The Kaan must be obeyed; how man shall worship God is
indifferent; this was the constant policy of his house in the days of its
greatness. Kublai, as Koeppen observes, the first of his line to raise
himself above the natural and systematic barbarism of the Mongols,
probably saw in the promotion of Tibetan Buddhism, already spread to some
extent among them, the readiest means of civilising his countrymen. But he
may have been quite sincere in saying what is here ascribed to him in
this sense, viz.: that if the Latin Church, with its superiority of
character and acquirement, had come to his aid as he had once requested,
he would gladly have used its missionaries as his civilising instruments
instead of the Lamas and their trumpery. (Rubr. 313; Assemani, III.
pt. ii. 107; Koeppen, II. 89, 96.)
CHAPTER VII.
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