Samuel Lieu

Samuel Lieu

Title: “Christianity and Manichaeism on the Silk Road”

Abstract: The discovery of an impressive bilingual stele (Syriac and Chinese) c. 1625 CE, the so-called ‘Nestorian Monument’, at Xi’an in China alerted Western scholars from the time of Voltaire onwards to the early diffusion of Christianity in pre-modern China. However, it was not until the discovery of genuine Christian and Manichaean texts from key sites along the Silk Road (especially from Turfan and Dunhuang) that the importance of the Silk Road as a conveyor of these two world religions with a common root in the Syrian Orient. The lecture will survey the main textual and epigraphic discoveries made along the terrestrial Silk Road, as well as the fascinating remains of both religions in the important medieval seaport of Zayton (Quanzhou) on the South China Coast. It will also discuss enigmatic references to one if not both religions in the Il Milione of Marco Polo (who might or might not have been to China!).

Bio: Emeritus Professor Samuel N.C. Lieu FBA, FAHA, MAE is Honorary President of the International Union of Academies (President 2017-2021) and a Bye Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge (2018-2022). Until 2016, he was Inaugural Distinguished Professor of Ancient History at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia and until 1996, Professor of Ancient History and Classical Civilisation at Warwick University, UK. Em. Prof. Sam Lieu is a Fellow of the British Academy (2021), the Australian Academy of the Humanities (1998), the Royal Society of New South Wales (2015) and an MAE (2021). He has been co-director of the UNESCO-sponsored Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum project since 1996. He is also co-ordinator of the ‘China and the Ancient Mediterranean World’ Project of the International Union of Academies. In 2012, he was awarded a DORA (Discovery Outstanding Research Award – i.e. a research professorship) by the Australian Research Council enabling him to concentrate on research on religious texts from Central Asia for three years (2013-2015). He has published extensively on the History of Manichaeism and the Christian texts and inscriptions from the Silk Road, as well as on Byzantine hagiography and historical geography. As an Honorary President of the International Union of Academies, he is actively engaged in developing a strategic alliance between the Union and the Academia Europaea.

Affiliation: Robinson College Cambridge; British Academy; Great Britain