A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

The new reign proved to be brief, as Shah Kavad died only a few months after his coup, but significant goodwill gestures to Christians and their advance into the centre of action in the empire continued. Kavad had quickly ordered that a new Catholicos should be chosen for the Church, ending a hiatus of twenty years in which Shah Khusrau had prevented the office being filled. The man singled out, Ishoyahb II, proved an outstanding diplomat of wide vision who gave official encouragement to those taking Christianity into China. He sent a delegation to the Chinese Tang emperor led by a bishop whom the Chinese called Alopen. Alopen was well received on his arrival in 635. The occasion was long remembered and celebrated by Chinese Christians, for it led to the foundation of the first of several monasteries in China, with official encouragement, and in no less a setting than the then Chinese imperial capital, Chang’an (now Xi’an).