XX.

MISSIONS.--THE INQUISITION.

All through the times of which I had been speaking, missions to the
heathen were actively carried on. Much of this kind was done in Asia,
and, indeed, the heart of Asia seems to have been more open and better
known to Europeans during some part of the middle ages than it has ever
been since. But as those parts were so far off, and so hard to get at,
it often happened that dishonest people, for their own purposes, brought
to Europe wonderful tales of the conversion of Eastern nations, or of
their readiness to be converted, which had no real ground. And sometimes
the crafty Asiatic princes themselves made a pretence of willingness to
receive the Gospel when all that they really wanted was to get some
advantages of other kinds from the pope and the Christians of the West.

A great deal was heard in Europe of a person who was called Prester
(that is to say, _presbyter_ or _priest_) John. He was believed to live
in the far East, and to be both a king and a Christian priest. And there
really was at one time a line of Christian princes in Asia, between lake
Baikal and the northern border of China, whose capital was Karakorum;
but in 1202 their kingdom was overthrown by the Tartar conqueror,
Genghis-khan; although the belief in Prester John, which had always been
mixed with a good deal of fable, continued long after to float in the
minds of the Western Christians.

The mendicant orders, which (as we have seen) were founded in the time
of Innocent III.,[96] took up the work of missions with great zeal; and
some of the Franciscan missionaries especially, by undergoing martyrdom,
gained great credit for their order in its early days. There were also
travellers who made their way into the East from curiosity or some
other such reason, and brought home accounts of what they had seen. The
most famous of these travellers was Marco Polo, a Venetian of a trading
family, who lived many years in China, and found his way back to Europe
by India and Ceylon. Some of these travellers report that they found the
Nestorian[97] clergy enjoying great influence at the courts of Asiatic
sovereigns; for the Nestorians had been very active in missions at an
earlier time, and had made many converts in Asia; but the travellers,
who saw them only after they had been long settled there, describe them
very unfavourably in all ways. John of Monte Corvino, an Italian, was
established by Pope Clement V. as Archbishop of