Nestorian Stele - Debate About The Stele

Debate About The Stele

The Nestorian Stone has attracted the attention of some anti-Christian, Christian anti-Catholic, or Catholic anti-Jesuit groups in the 17th century, who have argued that the stone is a fake or that the inscriptions were modified by the Jesuits who served in the Ming Court. The three most prominent early skeptics were the German-Dutch Presbyterian scholar Georg Horn (born 1620) (De originibus Americanis, 1652), the German historian Gottlieb Spitzel (1639–1691) (De re literaria Sinensium commentarius, 1660), and the Dominican missionary Domingo Navarrete (1618–1686) (Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos, y religiosos de la monarchia de China, 1676). Later, Navarrete's point of view was picked by French Jansenists and Voltaire.

By the 19th century, the debate had become less sectarian and more scholarly. Notable skeptics include Karl Friedrich Neumann, Stanislas Julien, Edward E. Salisbury and Charles Wall. Ernest Renan initially had "grave doubts", but eventually changed his mind in the light of later scholarship, in favor of the stele's genuineness. The defenders included some non-Jesuit scholars, such as Alexander Wylie, James Legge, and Jean-Pierre-Guillaume Pauthier, although the most substantive work in defense of the stele's authenticty – the three-volume La stèle chrétienne de Si-ngan-fou (1895 to 1902) was authored by the Jesuit scholar Henri Havret (1848–1902).

Paul Pelliot (1878–1945) did an extensive amount of research on the stele, which, however, was only published posthumously, in 1996. His and Havret's works are still regarded as the two "standard books" on the subject.

In the assessment of modern scholars (e.g., David E. Mungello), there is no scientific or historical evidence to support the claims of the non-authenticity of the stele. Both of Navarrete's main arguments – the absence of references in Chinese records to the events described on the stele, and the supposed widespread skepticism in 17th century China about the authenticity of the monument – appear to be mistaken.

The attitude of Western scholars to the stele has also attracted criticism, one author saying that "when Westerners discussed the Nestorian monument they were not really talking about China at all. The stone served as a kind of screen onto which they could project their own self-image and this is what they were looking at, not China. The stone came to represent the empire and its history for many Western readers, but only because it was seen as a tiny bit of the West that was already there." Similarly, some polemicists' skepticism about the stele was not a reflection of the views of Chinese themselves, but "far more a European phenomenon which sprang from sectarian rather than scholarly grounds."