Maximum Eastern Christiantiy?

[Riain]

How about a Christian version of the Hajj? A religious duty for all Christians to go to Jerusalem for Holy Week at least once their lifetime perhaps.
I've read that the Muslim Hajj was an important factor in keeping Dar Al Islam strong, so presumably a Christian version would do something similar. At the very least it would expose these isolated eastern churches to one another and the rest of Christendom.

 

[Flocculencio]

How about a Christian version of the Hajj? A religious duty for all Christians to go to Jerusalem for Holy Week at least once their lifetime perhaps.
I've read that the Muslim Hajj was an important factor in keeping Dar Al Islam strong, so presumably a Christian version would do something similar. At the very least it would expose these isolated eastern churches to one another and the rest of Christendom.

They weren't that isolated- the Nasranis were in constant contact with Antioch. In fact one of the points which triggered their uprising against the Portuguese was that the Goan Inquisition had an incoming Syrian bishop arrested and murdered.

 

[Riain]

Did the Islamic powers try to stop the travels of bishops and the like through their territory? Not just from Antioch to India but Alexandria to Ethiopia and other places.

 

[Flocculencio]

Did the Islamic powers try to stop the travels of bishops and the like through their territory? Not just from Antioch to India but Alexandria to Ethiopia and other places.

Nope, at least as far as India was concerned- right up til the Portuguese arrived the Nasrani had been in communication with Antioch and they had consistently recieved bishops and imports of consecrated oil from the Levant.

No idea about Ethiopia- it always seems to have been rather isolationist.

 

[Riain]

I know they got their bishops from Alexandria, but that must have been a long journey through perilous country.

 

[proximefactum]

The Hindu aristocracy couldn't collect tax from the lower castes as the revenue was considered tainted. Christians and Jews took up the role of middlemen, becoming a sort of squirearchy, taxing the low caste Hindu peasants and paying tribute to the aristocracy.

"Tax farming", or the use of specific tax middlemen to generate state income through a pyramid scheme, was endemic in antiquity. The Romans were fine practitioners of the art. Remember that tax agents depended on the state for legitimacy. In turn, that legitimacy permitted tax agents to take a cut of revenue. "Money cleansing" might have been little more than a step in the money laundering process that enriched certain members of a bureaucratic hierarchy.

 

[Flocculencio]

"Tax farming", or the use of specific tax middlemen to generate state income through a pyramid scheme, was endemic in antiquity. The Romans were fine practitioners of the art. Remember that tax agents depended on the state for legitimacy. In turn, that legitimacy permitted tax agents to take a cut of revenue. "Money cleansing" might have been little more than a step in the money laundering process that enriched certain members of a bureaucratic hierarchy.

I'm aware of that but what makes this specific case interesting is the religious dimension to it. In practical terms, yes it was tax farming, but in that cultural perspective it's interesting to see that the conflict between the need to extract revenue from the peasantry and the taboo of recieving that revenue from the lower castes led to the useful adoption of members of another religion as middlemen. A parallel, I suppose, would be the Jews and their role in medieval banking.

 

[Flocculencio]

I know they got their bishops from Alexandria, but that must have been a long journey through perilous country.

I doubt it would have been all that dangerous, in peacetime at any rate. I'm sure there would be well-travelled trade routes from the Levant to Mesopotamia and thence by sea to Kerala.