NICHOLAS, SECOND ARCHBISHOP OF PEKIN. 395 was well adapted to give a new and strong impulse to the affairs of religion in Upper Asia. Nicholas, second archbishop of Pekin, was a Frenchman, and, what was rather remarkable, had been Professor of Theology in the faculty of Paris ; he is even mentioned in the letter which John XXII. addressed by him to the great Khan of the Tartars. "We send you," says he, "our venerable brother, Nicholas, Archbishop of Khanbalik, Professor of the order of the brothers minorites."* Nicholas had the charge, at the same time, of an encyclical letter addressed to the Tartar nation, " Universo Populo Tartarorum" and of a letter for Usbeck Khan, sovereign of Kiptchak. IV. We have already said that Christianity had numerous and fervent neophytes in Kiptckak, and above all in Serai, the capital of the countries subject to the Tartars. The prosperity of this mission had been, for a moment, disturbed by the commencement of a persecution ex- cited by the Mussulmans, who had persuaded Usbeck to forbid the bells to be rung under the pretence that it was an evil omen, and foretold something fatal to the empire. We have recorded the letter which John XXII. wrote on the 28th of March, 1318, to this Tartar prince, thanking him for the favour shown until that time to the missionaries, exhorting him to embrace Christianity himself, and begging him to revoke the edict issued three years before, and to allow the faithful liberty to ring their bells. Sixteen years after this letter of the
- " Venerabilera patrem nostrum Nicolaum, arcliiepiscopum Caraba-
liensem, ordinis Fratrum minorum professorem, &c." — Ilaynald, t. xv. p. 426. ; Wadding, t. vii. p. ] 38.
