Western missions against the pagan Tatars and especially against the Mohammedan Tatars

Concern for the spread of the Gospel among all peoples has always been one of the most important concerns of the Christian Church at all times of its existence. The apostles devoted their entire lives to the task of enlightening non-believers with the light of the gospel teaching and in many places planted the Christian faith on an unshakable foundation. After the apostles, the Christian Church never lacked people who also devoted their lives to missionary work and ventured into all possible hardships and dangers only in order to dispel, as far as possible, religious ignorance among people and thus destroy moral corruption and all the general disorder usually generated by false religious views. It was not religious vanity that guided these people, it was not religious intolerance that prompted them to take care of correcting the religious beliefs of people often completely alien to them, but the spirit of all-encompassing Christian love - that spirit that encourages a Christian to look at all people as his brothers, which inspires a Christian with the desire that all people enjoy the high benefits delivered by the Christian religion. Only this spirit of selfless Christian love can give a person the strength to endure all hardships, overcome all obstacles that usually present themselves in the field of missionary activity and achieve favorable results. The history of the spread of Christianity can provide many facts to confirm how fruitful missionary activity can be if it is completely imbued with the spirit of Christian love and completely alien to worldly goals. It is clear from history that, at least until the 10th century, there were often conversions of masses and entire nationalities. At this time, many great national churches appeared and established themselves, many great nations converted to Christianity, for example, the Germans, Slavs, etc. Since the division of the churches, the successes of the Christian mission have become less noticeable, although there was no shortage of preachers. Both the Eastern and Western churches continued to be zealous for the spread of the Christian faith. But while the modest mission of the Eastern Church was carried out in silence, talking little about itself and about its successes, although these successes were quite significant, the noisy propaganda of Western Christianity everywhere trumpeted its victories, the reality of which is becoming more and more suspected every day. Nowadays, many reproachfully point out to the East the zeal of Western Christianity to spread its faith and the supposedly enormous successes of Western propaganda among infidels. Indeed, there was no shortage of jealousy in the West. The Latins and Protestants constantly sent their missionaries to all parts of the world. These missionaries penetrated into the most remote countries, tirelessly preaching the teachings of Christ, neglecting all kinds of hardships and dangers. However, since then not a single nation as a whole has been converted to Christianity, not a single national church has been founded, similar to those that arose in ancient times as a result of the works of ancient missionaries. There were private appeals, and sometimes quite significant ones, but they were never lasting and did not produce almost any significant improvement in the general mood of the people. China, Japan, India, and Türkiye have long been the subject of Catholic and Protestant missionary operations, and yet these countries are still stagnant in the same unbelief in which the first missionaries found them. The Christians there constitute a kind of foreign colony, consisting more of foreign settlers than of converted natives. The missionary relations of Western Christians to the tribes known as Tatars 1 represent from this side one of the particularly interesting and instructive pages in the history of the Western Church. Having appeared in Asia and Europe as world conquerors, the Tatars soon occupied such a position among the peoples of that time that they attracted special attention from Western Christians. The popes, who were at that time engaged in a holy war with the Muhammadans, soon realized what benefits could be derived from an alliance with the Tatars, especially from a religious alliance based on their conversion to Latinism, for the war with the Muhammadans and began to use all possible efforts to convert them. Thousands of Latin missionaries flocked to the Tatars, working zealously and tirelessly among them almost from the very beginning of their appearance on the stage of history. And yet Christianity made the most insignificant progress among the Tatars, despite the fact that they were still pagans at that time and did not have any special inclination towards Muhammadanism and, moreover, even from a political point of view, had an interest in being in an alliance with the Christians of the West. Here Western Christian missionary appeared and acted at the same time as Muhammadan propaganda and turned out to be less successful than the latter. With the conversion of the Tatars to Muhammadanism, the work of the Christian mission between them became even more difficult and was finally completely abandoned. In modern times, Latin and Protestant missionaries, equipped with large material resources and well prepared, tried to work among the Tatars, but again without success.... What is the reason for this failure? Was it the barrenness of the soil, or the skill of the missionaries, or what other circumstances? It is very important and useful to study this sad phenomenon, especially in view of the fact that a significant part of the Tatars occupy Russian territory and have been the subject of the Russian Orthodox mission for quite a long time. When starting to review the activities of Western missionaries among the Tatars, we mean first of all to collect into one whole the scattered and hitherto ununited facts and then, as far as possible, evaluate them at their true worth and show their true significance. To achieve this goal, we will present the history of Western missions against the Tatars in connection with the general history of Western missionary work. And since each particular fact always borrows a significant share of its character from the general conditions of its existence, then in this story we will look for the key to a true assessment of the activities of Western missionaries among the Tatars, to unraveling the mystery of its successes and failures. Thus, perhaps, although partially, although only from the negative side, the still very vaguely perceived ideal of a true anti-Muhammadan missionary will become clear. The entire history of Western missionary work after the division of churches is conveniently divided into two rather large periods: the medieval period - before the Reformation and the new period - from the Reformation to the present day. Western missionary work of both these periods differs from one another, although insignificantly, mainly only in the nature of its external manifestations and in the strength of tension, but nevertheless quite sharply. Medieval Western missions were not strictly organized; the new ones were organized with the highest degree of harmony and strictness. Medieval missions were characterized by military violence and diplomatic intrigue, while new ones were characterized by Jesuitism. These and similar features of Western missionary work in general had to be reflected in particular on anti-Tatar missionary work. Therefore, in our presentation we will divide Western missions against the Tatars into two sections: medieval missions and new missions, and we will consider them in connection with the general state of missionary methods and means in the West in a given era. When compiling this historical essay, we tried, whenever possible, to rely on primary sources, on various contemporary documents and historical news about the events described. For the medieval department, such sources served us as: 1) Correspondence of popes and European sovereigns with the Tatar khans. This correspondence is placed partly in the work of Odoric Rainald, successor to Baronius: Annales ecclesiastici (ed. 1788 - 1750. Lueae), partly in the work of Wadding: Annales Minorum (ed. 1642 - 1648. Lugduni. I - VII). In these works, letters from popes, sovereigns and khans are cited in various places when talking about the relations of the mentioned Lidas with each other. From the works of Rainald and Wadding, this correspondence was selected by Mozheim and published by him in the appendix to his work: Historia Tartarorum ecclesiastica (1741. Helmst). Here are printed in chronological order, with the exception of very few, almost all the letters of popes, European sovereigns, Tatar khans and other persons relating to the history of mutual relations between Tatars and Christians in the Middle Ages. We mainly used this edition of Mozgeym, supplementing it in places with other letters omitted from Mozgeym, but placed in Rainald or Wadding. 2) Various notes from missionaries and travelers who were with the Tatars at that time, such as: Plano-Carpini, Ascelina, Rubrukvis, Marco-Dolo and others. The full text of these travels was published by Bergeron and his edition is still considered the best, but we did not have it at hand and used mostly Russian translations and expositions, namely: The Travels of Plano-Carpini and Ascelin we used the translation of Yazykov (Travel to the Tatars of 1825 with the original text), The Travels of Marco-Polo as translated in the Readings of the Society of History and Antiquities of 1862 and 1863. We used the travel of Rubrukvis from a rather detailed and thorough presentation of it in the article: “Medieval travelers who visited Russia” (Shemyakin’s translation from the book: Länder und Volkerkunde in Biographien v. Külb, in Readings of the Society of History and Antiquities 1864) and from excerpts from it from various church historians, mainly from Fleury. For the new period and specifically for the history of the Latin mission in Crimea, the sources were several missionary letters published in the publication Aimè-Martina: Lettres edifiantes et curieuses (Paris. 1838 - 43. I – IV); for the history of Protestant missions - missionary letters published in the periodical missionary publication of 1804 - 1807 “Nachrichten von der Ausbreitung des Reiclies Jesu (t. I - V); news of the complete collection of laws and others. In addition to these sources, various historical works of general and specific content served as important aids for us, for example: BIumhardt, Versuch einer allgemeinen Missionsgeschichte (t. I - III. Basel. 1828 - 37); Heirion, Histoire general des missions catholiques (t. I – JI. Paris. 1848); Misho, History of the Crusades (pyc. nep.); Fleury, Histoire ecclesiastique; Schröekh, Christliche Kirchengeschichte, and many others listed below. The name Tatars is not the exact generic name of any folk group; It was, as it was used before, and is now used incorrectly and arbitrarily. In the Middle Ages, this name was a collective name that was adopted by many tribes completely different in language and origin, and had a meaning similar to that which the ancients associated with the name Scythian, barbarian. Currently, the meaning of this name is less extensive: Tatars are now called foreigners of the Turkic tribe, living mostly in Russia. This latter usage is even more arbitrary than the medieval one. According to the research of scientists, the name Tatars (Chinese form: Tatan) was originally a special name for one of the Mongolian tribes that lived in northeast Asia and was distinguished by its particular courage and ferocity. Since the time of Genghis Khan, whose first and most terrible army belonged to this tribe, the name Tatars began to be applied to all Mongols in general, and then, according to Chinese custom, to call the people and the country by the name of the reigning dynasty, this name was transferred to all the peoples conquered by Genghis Khan and part of his empire. Ritter. Geography of Asia. Russian translation by Semenov. countries 178, 678 et seq. Introductory reading to the course of the Turkish-Tatar language. Ilminsky. Kazan. 1862. countries. 12 – 13. You might be interested in: