Mongke Khan's Religious Debate

A scribe's recount of Mongke Khan's Religious Debate;
The debate was organized like a Mongol wrestling match. It began when a French Christian named Rubruck was finally received to Mongke Khan's court on May 24 1254. It was clear to me and all the court that the man was not accustomed to debating issues with men who did not share his common Christian beliefs. He called himself a Catholic Christian, and claimed to speak the true word of God, and not the poisoned heretic views of the Assyrian Christians already at his Greatness's court. To me the difference between their beliefs seemed marginal and unimportant although, I have heard that these two different types of Christians constantly fight over trivial things, slaughtering each other in the name of the same God. Mongke Khan ordered Rubruck and other scribes of different religions to have a debate some days later. The debate was organized like a Mongol wrestling match, Mongols do love a good competition. "It is doubtful that representatives of so many types of Christianity had come to a single meeting, and certainly they had not debated, as equals, with representatives of the various Muslim and Buddhist faiths. The religious scholars had to compete on the basis of their beliefs and ideas, using no weapons or the authority of any ruler or army behind them. They could use only words and logic to test the ability of their ideas to persuade"(173). This was of course quite different from what I have heard happening in Europe. Some time after Rubruck returned to France, the Mongol court received word that his sponsor, King Louis IX had burned over 12,000 Jewish hand written texts. And that after this the Catholic Church named him a saint, a person that Christian followers are supposed to look up to and worship. In my opinion this should have been a point taken away from the Christians in the debate. The debate has been over for months now, by the other scribes and I have just begun to finish the Mongol court's official account of the event. One of the highlights of the debate for Rubruck was in the opening round a Buddhist from North China asked him how the world was made and what happened to the soul after death. Rubruck cleverly respond by saying the the monk was asking the wrong questions and should instead be asking about God from whom all things flow. The umpires awarded Rubruck that point.