Nestorian Christianity in the Middle Ages
1 2016-03-27T18:37:11-07:00 Christopher Taylor // christopher.eric.taylor@gmail.com 946e2cf6115688379f338b70e5b6f6c039f8ba6f 5281 1 plain 2016-03-27T18:37:11-07:00 Christopher Taylor // christopher.eric.taylor@gmail.com 946e2cf6115688379f338b70e5b6f6c039f8ba6fThis page is referenced by:
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Prester John's Nestorianism
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There are three texts predating the "Letter" that mention a distant priest king called John. They are listed below. All three express that this figure was a Nestorian Christian, which would have counted as a heretic in the Catholic West.
Nestorianism referred to the belief, popularized by Patriarch Nestorius, that Christ was of two natures: both human and divine. This belief was condemned as heresy by the European Catholic Church at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, two decades after being condemned at the Council of Ephesus by the Byzantine Church in 431. These condemnations all but ended the influence of Nestorianism in the European west.
By the time of Prester John's advent in the 12th century, both Nestorianism and its opposite, monophysitism (which declared that Christ was of a single divine nature), had long been considered heretical by the Catholic Church, though it must be said that the Catholic position in which Christ's human nature was "absorbed into" his divine could be understood as uncannily similar (or only slightly semantically differentiable) from Nestorianism.
Although the Letter itself does not mention John's Nestorianism explicitly, this denominational adherence became part of the lore surrounding John and his kingdom within the century.
While the influence of Nestorianism in Europe was all but nonexistent by the advent of the Prester John legend, its influence was much more significant in more eastern locales. As early as 635, Nestorian A-lo-pen arrives in China to preach. Although by 1000, the T’ang Dynasty effectively destroyed all of the Nestorian churches in China, its influence grew in Mongolia, Turkestan, and other areas of the Steppe.
According to Bar Hebreaus, an early influence on the early legend, the Mongol tribe of Keraits (conflated with the army of Prester John by Otto of Freising) were baptized into Nestorian faith and remained Nestorians from the eleventh century through the thirteenth.
Furthermore, the historically accurate association of Nestorianism with St. Thomas (and India) naturally led many of those invested in the legend to project Prester John's kingdom somewhere in India (a name that at the time of course encompassed basically everything from China to Ethiopia). The following map depicts the locations of Nestorian churches in the Middle Ages:- Anonymous - On the Arrival of the Partriarch of the Indians to Rome (1122)
- Odo of Rheims - Letter to "Count Thomas" (1122)
- Otto of Freising - History of the Two Cities (1143)
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Nestorianism
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Commonly considered by Europeans as the "Church of the East" during the Middle Ages, Nestorianism is a sect of Christianity originating from the Syriac tradition of Eastern Christianity. The name refers to the teachings of Nestorius (c. 386-450), who, from his position of Patriarch of Constantinople, taught the doctrine of a two-natured (or dyophysite) Christ. This belief, which professes that Christ had separate human and divine natures, became a distinguishing doctrine for the sect.
In the Middle Ages, Nestorian Christians could be found as far East as China. During the Middle Ages, Prester John was widely rumored to be of the Nestorian faith. Given the theories surrounding the burial place of the Apostle Thomas, a figure closely associated with the Prester John legend, it is notable that one of the first major centers of Nestorianism was Edessa, where a school of Nestorian theology thrived until 489.
Due to its doctrine of dyophysitism and its apparently accelerating popularity across eastern locales, Nestorianism was treated in Catholic Europe as both a feared heresy (perhaps more serious than all "heresies" but that of Islam) as well as a missionary opportunity. Thus it should not be surprising that several missions to Prester John's kingdom were ordered for the ostensible purpose of converting the Nestorian Prester John to Catholicism.