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Yangzhou Latin Tombstones: A Christian Mirror of Yuan China Society

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2018, BA, Oberlin College, Art.
In 1950s, two fourteenth-century tombstones with Latin inscriptions were discovered in Yangzhou, China. Both tombstones were made for an Italian merchant family. The tombstones bear Christian iconography such as the Last Judgment, the Virgin and Child and the martyrdom of St. Catherine of Alexandria, while non-western details are represented as well, including the Mongol garments, Chinese furniture and Islamic and Nestorian gravestones. My research considers the dynamic matrices of various religious and ethnic groups, which concomitantly arrived in Yuan China under an overarching control of the Mongol Empire. By valorizing the pictorial language on the tombstones, I will illustrate how the Christian funerary monuments, traversing their private and religious boundary, reflect the pluralistic society of Yuan China. Given the lack of primary textual evidence directly related to the Yangzhou Latin tombstones, my study aims to reconstruct the contextual situation of the tombstones by assembling and interweaving fragmentary historical and visual information. My cross-cultural study attests to the potential of images in articulating their own circumstances against a “messy” culture.
Erik Inglis (Advisor)
Bonnie Cheng (Other)
77 p.

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Citations

  • Bai, , M. (2018). Yangzhou Latin Tombstones: A Christian Mirror of Yuan China Society [Undergraduate thesis, Oberlin College]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1530141020070354

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Bai, , Mengtian. Yangzhou Latin Tombstones: A Christian Mirror of Yuan China Society . 2018. Oberlin College, Undergraduate thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1530141020070354.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Bai, , Mengtian. "Yangzhou Latin Tombstones: A Christian Mirror of Yuan China Society ." Undergraduate thesis, Oberlin College, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1530141020070354

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)