Missionaries in Asia

European missionaries in Asia entered the fields of the Lord in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in unprecedented numbers, to convert all mankind, thereby to usher in the final days and God's reign on earth. They were active on every flank of Europe, even in Asia , where the faith was carried ad Tartaros (to the Tartars). That effort was different from prior and contemporary medieval missions. Most evangelization had taken place on the borders of emerging European civilization, in circumstances which encouraged acculturation between contiguous communities, to bring peoples living adjacent to, or in the midst of, established Christian communities into the fellowship of faith. Evangelists to eastern Asia, however, advanced into a non-Christian world, as in Apostolic times, when the first missionaries in Asia took up the gospel challenge: "Go, therefore, and make all nations your disciples: baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19).

The problems they encountered during missionaries in Asia ought to have made missionaries reevaluate the meaning of conversion and how it should be fostered. Not surprisingly, reports from the missions and instructions sent to Asia do provide insights into what missionaries (and the larger society that sent them) thought they were about. Unfortunately, the few surviving sources convey only the outline of this mission. Lacunae in the record notwithstanding, the mission ad Tartaros well illustrates the diverse and sometimes contradictory facets of the medieval movement to convert all mankind. Like their counterparts closer to Europe, missionaries in Asia lands usually relied on preaching and personal example to win converts. But because they were embarked on high adventure and incredibly difficult travels, they improvised boldly in the exotic environment Mongol patronage provided. The records suggest that, as missionaries were making converts in Asia , they and the church that sent them were inventing the foreign mission, laying foundations for future evangelization.

A recurring theme of missionaries in Asia is the evangelists' success in conferring baptism, sometimes in questionable circumstances. Perhaps to justify their heroic efforts, missionaries report thousands of baptisms, but give scant evidence that recipients experienced meaningful conversion. Inner conversion should have been a prime concern, even for those working in Tartar lands. Canon lawyers and university doctors had discussed the respective roles of God and man in the processes of redemption for more than a century, refining conceptualizations of free will and grace. Commentaries and Summae mandated catechesis before the administration of baptism, insisting that no one be christened unless there was a reasonable expectation that they would thereafter lead a Christian life. Speculation about what ought to be done with neophytes seems to have had little impact in the mission field, however, where converts were being baptized. Reports from eastern missions, in particular, leave the clear impression that pagans desiring the sacrament were speedily brought to the font. If baptism was performed casually in Asia , with scant instruction and little expectation that recipients would undergo a lasting change of life, this would have been contrary to accepted European practice. This concern provides a central focus for the following review of missionaries' in Asia actions and intentions in Asia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Questions concerning Armenia and the position of the Christian populations of the, Balkans were to some extent brought nearer to, him by the proximity of such men as Mr. George Washburn, once Principal of the Robert College at Constantinople, who was living at Boston, and by the widespread interest felt in the work of American missionaries in Asia Minor. Information-however, came to him from every quarter of the globe, so numerous were his correspondents and so widely distributed in, space.