Some
Of These People I Saw At Caracarum, Where There Are Always Considerable
Numbers; And The Children Are Always Brought Up To The Same Employments
With Their Fathers.
They pay to the Moals or Mongals, a tribute of 1500
cassinos or jascots every day[3], besides large quantities of silks and
provisions, and they perform many other services.
All the nations between
mount Caucasus, and from the north of these mountains to the east sea, and
in all the south of Scythia, which is inhabited by the Moal shepherds, are
tributary, and are all addicted to idolatry. The Nestorians and Saracens
are intermixed with them as strangers, as far as Kathay, in which country
the Nestorians inhabit fifteen cities, and have a bishop in a city called
Segan[4]. These Nestorians are very ignorant, for they say their service in
the Syrian tongue, in which all their holy books are written, and of which
language they are entirely ignorant, and sing their service as our monks do
who have not learnt Latin. They are great usurers and drunkards, and some
of them who live among the Tartars, have adopted their customs, and even
have many wives. When they enter the churches, they wash their lower parts
like the Saracens, eat no flesh on Fridays, and hold their festivals on the
same days with them. Their bishops come seldom into the country, perhaps
only once in fifty years, and then cause all the little children to be made
priests, some even in the cradle; so that almost every Nestorian man is a
priest, yet all have wives, which is contrary to the decrees of the
fathers.
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