A Spark of Humor

I am working on a research project (not paper) about the Nestorians in China. I have to create an annotated bibliography, and was reading through William of Rubric's account of the Nestorians in Mongolian China, when Sheryl sabatoged my computer and wrote my annotation for me. I thought you all might enjoy it too:

William of Rubrick’s Source on These Horrible People

Translated by someone who knew no Chinese, this source is written by William of Rubrick’s based on the observations of his second cousin’s great aunt, who visited the Nestorians personally. Rubrick heard first hand from the second cousin’s best friend, who heard it from the second cousin, who heard it from his mom, who heard it from her mom, who heard it from her sister. Rubrick’s second cousin’s great aunt flatly contradicts that the Nestorians were really in Persia at all (They jumped immediately to China), and did not want to make any converts…that’s why there were not many made. This was for several reasons: 1)They knew no one would want to listen to their beliefs. 2)They didn’t really believe the beliefs themselves and 3)They were infamously terrible rhetoricians and couldn’t present their case for their lives. Rubick goes on to relate how the Nestorians had been planning on working on their rhetoric, but had been unable to find and secure a copy of Aristotle’s Rhetoric.

This was for two reasons: 1)The printing press was not yet invented, and the monks at the local monastery would not lend their one copy to those whom they considered heretics, and 2)They looked in the wrong section of the public monastery library, since they had forgotten that Aristotle’s teacher was Plato. Therefore, they were looking directly after Socrates, and since Plato wrote so much for Socrates, they couldn’t get through all of Socrates books before the library closed. If they had more time however, they could possibly have, after working through the writings of Socrates and Plato, eventually gotten to the Aristotle section. However, even if they had, they would not have been able to check it out. This is for two reasons: 1)The monks, as was aforementioned, would not lend their one handwritten copy of Aristotle’s Rhetoric to heretics and 2)They had forgotten their library cards as well as having an already over due book.

Well, she probably doesn’t have a future in historiography, but maybe she should become a comedian!