“The Brilliant Teaching Turned toward the Tang Empire”

Abstract

The Chinese Christian texts produced in the Tang dynasty can be read only against the political, cultural, and religious background in which the Christian communities lived in the Chinese Tang Empire. This chapter offers a summary of the historical data that have come down to us and are attested to by the sources (Chinese, Syriac, Arabic, and others), together with an attempt to reconstruct the geographical location of Christian monasteries in the Chinese territory, the ethnic composition and internal hierarchical structure of Christian communities, as well as the different denominations of Christianity in China between about 635 and 845.