which made an enormous sensation, and afforded for the first time to Western Europe a proper conception of the condition of Eastern Asia.[266] A regular Christian missionary enterprise, however, was first undertaken by the Franciscan Joh. de Monte-Corvino, A.D. 1291-1328, one of the noblest, most intelligent, and most faithful of the missionaries of the Middle Ages. After he had succeeded in overcoming the intrigues of the numerous Nestorians, he won the high esteem of the Grand Khan. In the royal city of Cembalu or Pekin he built two churches, baptized about 6,000 Mongols, and translated the Psalter and the New Testament into Mongolian. He wrought absolutely alone till A.D. 1303. Afterwards, however, other brethren of his order came repeatedly to his aid. Clement V. appointed him archbishop of Cembalu in A.D. 1307. Every year saw new churches established. But internal disturbances, under Kublai’s successor, weakened the power of the Mongolian dynasty, so that in A.D. 1370 it was overthrown by the national Ming dynasty. By the new rulers the Christian missionaries were driven out along with the Mongols, and thus all that they had done was utterly destroyed.--The ruler of =Persia=, Hulagu Khan, son of a Christian mother and married to a Christian wife, put an end in A.D. 1258 to the khalifate of Bagdad, but was so pressed by the sultan of Egypt, that he entered on a long series of negotiations with the popes and the kings of France and England, who gave him the most encouraging promises of joining their forces with his against the Saracens. His successors, of whom several even formally embraced Christianity, continued these negotiations, but obtained nothing more than empty promises and protestations of friendship. The time of the crusades was over, and the popes, even the most powerful of them, were not able to reawaken the crusading spirit. The Persian khans, vacillating between Christianity and Islam, became more and more powerless, until at last, in A.D. 1387, Tamerlane (Timur) undertook to found on the ruins of the old government a new universal Mongolian empire under the standard of the Crescent. But with his death in A.D. 1405 the dominion of the Mongols in Persia was overthrown, and fell into the hands of the Turkomans. Henceforth amid all changes of dynasties Islam continued the dominant religion.