Nestorian Stele

The Nestorian Stele, also known as the Nestorian Stone, Nestorian Monument, or Nestorian Tablet, is a Tang Chinese stele erected in 781 that documents 150 years of early Christianity in China. It is a 279 cm tall limestone block with text in both Chinese and Syriac describing the existence of Christian communities in several cities in northern China. It reveals that the initial Nestorian Christian church had met recognition by the Tang Emperor Taizong, due to efforts of the Christian missionary Alopen in 635. According to the Stele, Alopen and his fellow Syriac missionaries came to China from Daqin (Roman Empire) in the ninth year of Emperor Taizong (Tai Tsung) (635), bringing sacred books and images. Buried in 845, probably during religious suppression, the stele was not rediscovered until 1625.

The stele is thought to have been buried in 845, during a campaign of anti-Buddhist persecution, which also affected the Nestorians.

The stele was unearthed in the late Ming Dynasty (between 1623 and 1625) beside Chongren Temple (崇仁寺) in Longquan. According to the account by the Jesuit Alvaro Semedo, the workers who found the stele immediately reported the find to the governor, who soon visited the monument, and had it installed on a pedestal, under a protective roof, requesting the nearby Buddhist monastery to care for it. The newly discovered stele attracted attention of local intellectuals. It was Zhang Gengyou (Wade-Giles: Chang Keng-yu) who first identified the text as Christian in content. Zhang, who had been aware of Christianity through Matteo Ricci, and who himself may have been Christian, sent a copy of the stele's Chinese text to his Christian friend, Leon Li Zhizao in Hangzhou, who in his turn published the text and told the locally based Jesuits about it.

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