Church of the East (Nestorian Christianity)

Assembled from 46 blocks · 1 evidence · 59 related

1. Story
2. The eastern Christian church that separated from the imperial churches after the Council of Ephesus in 431 and expanded along the trade routes through Persia, Central Asia, India and China. The label Nestorian is an outsider's term the church itself rejected. Its arrival in China is documented precisely: a stele erected at Chang'an in 781 records that the missionary Alopen reached the Tang capital in 635 and received imperial permission to preach. The Tang proscription of foreign religions in 845 curtailed it in China, but it revived under the Mongols, several of whose ruling families included Christians, and it remained the most geographically extensive Christian church of the Middle Ages. A belief system, not a place.
3. Knowledge
4. Church of the East (Nestorian Christianity)
5. Christianity
6. Silk Road religious corridor
7. Limits of religious diffusion
8. Connections
9. Chang'an
10. Christianity
11. Limits of religious diffusion
12. Silk Road religious corridor
13. Alopen reaches Chang'an
14. The Nestorian Stele is erected at Chang'an
15. Xi'an Stele (Jingjiao / 'Nestorian' Stele)
16. Alopen received at the Tang court
17. The Xi'an stele is erected
18. Church of the East (Nestorian Christianity)
19. Alexandria
20. Constantinople
21. Judaism
22. Jerusalem (Old City)
23. Aksum
24. Armenia's traditional adoption of Christianity as state religion
25. The 'Edict of Milan' — toleration and restitution in the Roman Empire
26. Aksum adopts Christianity under King Ezana
27. Alopen received at the Tang court
28. Measured global religious composition, 2010-2020
29. Church of the East (Nestorian Christianity)
30. Zoroastrianism
31. Measured global religious composition, 2010-2020
32. Fall of the Sasanian Empire to the Rashidun Caliphate
33. Zoroastrian migrants reach Gujarat — the Parsi settlement
34. Buddhism
35. Church of the East (Nestorian Christianity)
36. Xuanzang
37. Dunhuang
38. Indian Ocean maritime trade network
39. Ashoka's bilingual Greek-Aramaic inscription at Kandahar
40. Buddhism attested in Han China
41. Traditional founding of the first cave at Mogao
42. Xuanzang's overland journey to India and return
43. Alopen received at the Tang court
44. The Xi'an stele is erected
45. Evidence
46. Records in Chinese, with a Syriac colophon listing clergy, that the missionary Alopen reached Chang'an in 635 and received Tang imperial permission to preach, and summarises a century and a half of the Church of the East in China. The primary documentary object for Christianity on the overland routes.