The Church and the Barbarians Part 9

[Sidenote: His work as archbishop and reformer.]

He made rules, and encouraged schools for the training of priests. He ordered priests to learn handicrafts that they might teach them to others. He ordered that a sermon should be preached in each church every Sunday. His zeal for moral reform was seen in many canons pa.s.sed against the abuses of the age, and he did not hesitate to enforce them against the highest in the land. When the pope ordered him to absolve a great lord whom he had excommunicated for an unlawful marriage, he refused to obey.

Early in the tenth century an ill.u.s.tration of the position occupied by the English Church in relation to Rome, and of the learning of its clergy and their style of preaching, is afforded by the writings of Aelfric, who described himself in his early years as "a monk and a ma.s.s-priest," and was later on abbat of Eynsham. Of his work, besides educational treatises, eighty sermons, chiefly translated from the Latin, remain. In them he shows clearly that the claims of the papacy with regard to S. Peter were not accepted by all in England, and he taught the spiritual, not corporal, presence of the Lord's Body in the Holy Communion. The English Church differed also from Rome in the fact that many of the clergy were married, and though this was not regarded as lawful, they were not separated from their wives. But in all essential matters the English Church remained in union with the foreign Churches and retained her ancient reputation for unbroken orthodoxy.

This reputation was increased by the fame of S. Dunstan, whose sojourn abroad had served to link English churchmen again to their brothers over sea.

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The last years of the great archbishop were given to prayer and study, and to the arts of music and handicraft which he had practised in his youth. He set himself to train the young, to succour the needy, and to make peace among all men. He died on May 19th, 988, and with him the new energy he had infused into the Church seemed to pa.s.s away.

[Sidenote: The Danish invasions.] New Danish invasions turned men's thoughts other ways, but still monasteries made progress. The Benedictine rule was accepted over Southern England, and in the north the see of Durham rose replacing the older northern see, when it became the resting-place of the bones of the great missionary, S. Cuthbert.

The Danish invasions were not so barbarous now as in earlier days.

Some of the Danes were Christians, and it was at Andover that Olaf Trigvason, King of Norway, was confirmed by Bishop Aelfeah, calling King Aethelred father. He went back to Norway a Christian devoted to the conversion of his people.[4]

The English Church at the beginning of the eleventh century was in full communion with the Western Church, but was practically to a large extent apart from papal influence. Church and State walked hand in hand, and the relations between sovereign and archbishop resembled those of the New rather than the Old Rome. The missionary energy which had in former years sent forth Wilfrith and Winfrith was now for the time exhausted. England needed a new religious revival. It came later, at the time of a political conquest.

Meanwhile the Irish Church was regaining its learning and its missionary zeal: both were expressed in {122} the _consuetudo peregrinandi_ with which the Irish monks were credited in the ninth century. But from the time of the Danish invasions the Irish Church, and the Welsh also, suffered severely. Heathen settlements in Ireland were only gradually converted, as that of Dublin in 943. The disturbed state of their home encouraged Irish monks to cross the seas. Action and reaction led Ireland more close than ever to the Roman papacy.

[1] Bury, _Life of S. Patrick_, pp. 212-13.

[2] R. L. Poole, _Ill.u.s.trations of the History of Medieval Thought_, p.

10.

[3] Cf. Roger, _L'Enseignement des lettres cla.s.siques_, p. 236.

[4] See ch. xi.

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CHAPTER XI

THE CONVERSION OF SLAVS AND NORTHMEN

[Sidenote: Cyril and Methodius, 868.]

The ninth century was a great age of conversion, and the work is very largely a.s.sociated with two great names in the development of civilisation and learning, those of two brothers, born in Thessalonica, probably between 820 and 830--Constantine (who changed his name to Cyril when he was consecrated bishop by Hadrian II. in 868) and Methodius. Their lives show the connection still existing between Rome and the East in Church matters, and ill.u.s.trate the zeal for educational work which was so conspicuous a feature in the converting energy of the Church of Constantinople. Cyril was not only a priest and a missionary, he was a "philosopher." Methodius, it is said, had been a civil administrator. Both were scholars and linguists, and the influence which they exercised upon the Slavs is incalculably great.

In missions always it is the personal influence which is the most striking. But the time is needed as well as the man. So much we see again and again, however cursorily we study the evangelising work of this age.

In missions the ninth century carried out what the eighth neglected or was unable to accomplish. The {124} wars against the Finnish Bulgarians from 755 onwards brought the Church as well as the State into grave danger, or rather were defensive of each. [Sidenote: The conversion of the Bulgarians.] In the eighth century there were several isolated conversions, including a whole family of boars from whom sprang the recluse, saint Joannicius; but there was no general movement. The Bulgarians remained enemies of Christianity and destroyers of all Roman civilisation: S. Theodore of the Studium declared that it was criminal sacrilege to exchange hostages with them.

But gradually the geographical nearness brought closer connection; barbarians enlisted in the Roman armies; at last ill.u.s.trious prisoners in Constantinople were the cause of light being brought to their own land. Boris, the Bulgarian king, obtained teachers from the New Rome, and applied also to Pope Nicolas I. (858-67) for instruction. In 864 the Bulgarians accepted the faith, and the contest for patriarchal rights over them was hotly pressed between Nicolas and Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople (857-86). In the end, after receiving answers from the pope to 106 questions, and after being treated with too little consideration by Hadrian II. (867-72), Boris decided to accept an archbishop from Constantinople in 870, and ten bishoprics were founded.

[Sidenote: The conversion of the Slavs.]

But the great work of Cyril and Methodius was not directly concerned with the Bulgarian conversion. In Pannonia and Moravia and Croatia they were the great missionaries to the Slavs. Cyril invented a Slavonic alphabet, and was able to preach to the Slavs everywhere in their own tongue; and in Serbia a flouris.h.i.+ng Church sprang {125} up which retained the Slavonic rite. Early in the tenth century many Slavonian priests were ordained by the Bishop of Nona, himself a Slav by birth. But these districts were weakened by incessant strife, and their contests with the East were often fomented by the popes. Their Christianity was distinctly Byzantine; but they were never able to be a real strength to the emperor or the Orthodox Church.

[Sidenote: Poland.]

Poland, on the other hand, and later, received its Christianity from a Latin source. There may have been earlier Greek influences through the Slavonic Christians to the south-east; but it was not till 965 that the king, Mieczyslaw, was converted, when he married a Bohemian princess.

He became a member of the Empire and the va.s.sal of Otto I. The bishopric of Posen was founded in 968, and the gospel was preached by S. Adalbert, already Bishop of Prague. S. Adalbert, who for a short time held the see of Gnesen, pa.s.sed on to preach to the heathen Prussians, by whom he was martyred in 997. Otto III. visited the Christian king in A.D. 1000, and gave him a relic, the lance of S.

Maurice, still preserved at Cracow. The ecclesiastical organisation of the country was then consolidated; Gnesen was made the metropolitan see, and Polish and Pomeranian dioceses were placed under it. The Latin Church was dominant over Polish Christianity.

[Sidenote: The Prussians and S. Adalbert.]

But the pagan Prussians regarded S. Adalbert as a political emissary and a sorcerer who destroyed their crops, and killed him without hesitation; Bruno, whom Silvester II. sent to succeed him, perished within a year, and the attempt to Christianise the Prussians was {126} abandoned for nearly two centuries. Similar was the course of events among the Wends. It is not till the tenth century that we know anything of endeavours for their conversion, and then they were due to the all-embracing energy of Otto I. Henry I. had borne the royal arms in victory over the lands watered by the Elbe, the Oder, and the Saale; and now his successor began the establishment of an ecclesiastical hierarchy, under the see of Magdeburg. Boso, Bishop of Merseburg, set himself to learn and preach in the Slav tongue, but it seems that the German clergy who were introduced were unsuccessful as missionaries, and won the reputation of greedy political agitators. At the end of the tenth century a torrent of pagan fury swept over the land, destroyed the churches, and stamped the growing Christianity under foot.

[Sidenote: The conversion of Russia.]

The beginnings of Russian Christianity may possibly be found, as the patriarch Photius a.s.serted, before the results of the defeat of the barbarians by John Zimisces. But it was not till nearly a century later that anything notable occurred. Olga, a "ruler of Russia,"

visited Constantinople in 957 and was baptized. Yet the Greek missionaries made but slow progress. It was not till Vladimir married the sister of the emperor Basil in 989, and restored the city of Cherson,--in which Cyril more than a century before had been a missionary,--where he was baptized, to the Empire, that the evangelisation of Russia really began. Vladimir deliberately chose the Greek in preference to the Roman form of Christianity, and acted, it would seem, with some semblance of national consent. The baptism of the people of {127} Kiev in the waters of the Dnyepr, as one flock, "some standing in the water up to their necks, others up to their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, holding their young children in their arms," was typical of the national acceptance of Christ. Everywhere churches and schools were built and the Slavonic Scriptures taught the people; at Kiev was built the Church of S. Sophia by Greek masons, in commemoration of the debt to the great Church of the New Rome. [Sidenote: S. Vladimir, 989.] Vladimir became the apostle of his people. The Church pressed forward eagerly, forward over the vast expanse covered by the Russian power, and, not without martyrdoms and tales of heroic adventure, won its way triumphantly to Russian hearts.

[Sidenote: The conversion of the Czechs.]

The early days of Christianity in Moravia and Bohemia are wrapped in obscurity. In 801 Charles the Great endeavoured a forcible conversion of the former country, but with no more than transitory success. Yet in 836 a church was consecrated at Neutra by the Archbishop of Salzburg. A little later than this we hear of the beginnings of Christian faith among the Czechs. Early Bohemian history, when it emerges from an obscurity lighted by legend, is full of romantic incident. There are pa.s.sages again and again in its records which for weirdness and ferocity remind us of a grim story of Meinhold's.

Paganism lingered there with some of its ancient power, when it had perished, at least outwardly, in all neighbouring lands. In the eleventh century Bohemian heathens still went on pilgrimages to the temple at Arcona on the isle of Eugen, till the practice was stopped by Bretislav II. Still a beginning had been made. In {128} 845 fourteen Bohemian n.o.bles, who had taken refuge at the court of Louis the German, were baptized at Regensburg; but the conversion of the country was to come from the East. Cyril and Methodius, sent by the emperor Michael III. from Constantinople, converted the Moravians, and from them the gospel was handed on to the Czechs. It was Methodius, on whom the pope had conferred the t.i.tle of Archbishop of Moravia, who baptized the Bohemian prince Borivoj. For the history of Bohemian Christianity the earliest authority is Kristian, brother of Duke Boleslav II., in _The Life of S. Ludmilla and the Martyrdom of S. Wenceslas_. [Sidenote: S.

Wenceslas.] This is an extremely valuable book, not only as a biography--hagiological, like so much valuable early material for history, yet truthful--and as a record of manners in the tenth century, but as containing the account of the conversion of Moravia to Christianity, which shows that the conversion came first from the East, and the Church long retained a special connection with the Eastern peoples, Bulgarians and Greeks. The account of the murder of S.

Wenceslas is of great interest as showing how close was the connection of religion with family and dynastic feuds. S. Ludmilla was murdered in 927 by the orders of her daughter-in-law, who remained a pagan; a year later,[1] her saintly grandson Wenceslas was slain by the men of his evil brother Boleslav. "Holy Wenceslas, who was soon to be a victim for the sake of Christ, rose early, wis.h.i.+ng, according to his holy habit, to hurry to the church, that he might remain there for some time in solitary prayer before the congregation arrived; {129} and wis.h.i.+ng as a good shepherd to hear matins together with his flock, and join in their song, he soon fell into the snares that had been laid,"

and it was outside the church that he was slain.

[Sidenote: Restoration of Christianity in Bohemia.]

It was not till the invasion of the country by the armies of Otto I. in 938 that Christianity was restored even to full toleration, and only when Otto came himself in 950 that it was secured. Boleslav II., the nephew of S. Wenceslas, was named the Pious; and Prague, in 973, was separated from Regensburg and became a bishopric. While among the Moravians the Slavonic rite introduced by Methodius was still largely used, in Bohemia the Roman rite was followed. Voytech (Adalbert), a Czech, was the second bishop, and to him, in spite of failures and difficulties, the conversion of Bohemia was largely due. He died a martyr (as we have said), while preaching to the heathen Prussians, and for a time darkness again settled over the history of the Czechs.

[Sidenote: The conversion of the Danes]

Meanwhile the current of conversion had spread northwards. It was in 822 that Ebbo, Archbishop of Rheims, was sent to Denmark in consequence of a political emba.s.sy to Louis the Pious, emperor from 814 to 840.

Harold, the Danish king, had asked aid. The emperor gave him also a Christian teacher; and in 826 the king and his wife were baptized.

Other missionaries went northwards, but before long the Danes drove out both their king Harold and his teacher Ansgar. From Denmark, however, the mission spread to Sweden, and in 831 an archbishopric was established at Hamburg to direct all the northern {130} missions, and Ansgar was invested with the pallium by Pope Gregory IV. The missions had a chequered career. [Sidenote: and of Sweden.] Hamburg was seized and pillaged by the Northmen in 845, and the Swedish mission was for a time destroyed. In 849 a new revival took place, when Ansgar was given the see of Bremen in addition to that of Hamburg; and before long he won over the king of the Jutes and his people of Schleswig. In 853 Ansgar returned to Sweden, where he was favourably received by the king Olaf. The tale of his vast missionary labours, from which he was rightly called the "Apostle of the north," is told with spirit and feeling by Adam of Bremen, who wrote in the eleventh century, as well as by the biographer who commemorated him on his death. He not only preached, but he "redeemed captives, nourished those who were in tribulation, taught his household. As an apostle without, a monk within, he was never idle." When it was said that his prayers wrought miracles of healing, he said, "If I could but think myself worthy of such a favour from the Lord, I would pray Him to grant me but one miracle--that out of me, by His grace; He would make a good man."

[Sidenote: S. Ansgar.] S. Ansgar is, in his work as in his training, a parallel to S. Boniface. Like him one of the finest fruits of monasticism, which first taught in solitude and then sent out to work actively in the world, he was brought up at Corbie. For nearly thirty-five years he laboured incessantly among the peoples of the north, and at the very end of his life he gallantly went among heathen chiefs to rebuke them for buying and selling slaves. He died in 865, and S. Rimbert, {131} his disciple and biographer, was his successor in his sees.

[Sidenote: Norway.]

Gradually, and in different ways, Christianity spread in the far north.

Haakon, the son of Harold Haarf.a.ger of Norway, was sent to be foster-son to Aethelstan of England, who "had him baptized and brought up in the right faith," and he became a great king under the name of Haakon the Good. From England he brought over teachers, and he built churches; and then at last he addressed all the leaders of his people and besought them "all, young and old, rich and poor, women as well as men, that they should all allow themselves to be baptized, and should believe in one G.o.d, and in Christ the Son of Mary, and refrain from all sacrifices and heathen G.o.ds, and should keep holy the seventh day, and abstain from all work on it, and keep a fast on the seventh day." [2]

But it was long before his people obeyed him. Rebellion and dynastic war followed in rapid succession; and he died of a wound from a chance arrow that struck him as he pursued his defeated foes. The first Christian king of Norway died in a land which was still heathen. But the seed was sown in the hearts of the men who had seen the brave, strong, chivalrous life of him who owned Christ for Lord.

[Sidenote: Olaf Trigvason.]

In Denmark the conversion begun in the ninth century was long delayed, and it was not till Otto I. conquered the Danes and sent Bishop Poppo who instructed King Harold and his army so that they were baptized, that the land {132} became definitely a Christian kingdom. From Denmark the gospel spread again to Norway; but it was not till near the end of the tenth century that Olaf Trigvason was baptized by a hermit on one of the Scilly Isles, and then in his short reign devoted himself to converting his people, often forcibly, as a choice between death and baptism. To Iceland and Greenland too Olaf sent missionaries. He died at last, like a true Wiking hero, in a sea fight; and it was not until the next century and the days of Olaf the Saint that the faith of Christ conquered the North.

[Sidenote: The conversion of Iceland.]

There seems no doubt that Christianity in Iceland began by missionary enterprise from Irish monks. From time to time anchorites sought refuge in that _ultima Thule_, "that they might pray to G.o.d in peace"; but whether they did any direct work of conversion is doubtful. The actual conversion came undoubtedly from Norway. A Christian queen lived in Iceland at the end of the ninth century, the wife of the Norse Olaf who was king in Dublin; but little if any impression was made on the heathenism of the people. Nearly a century later an Icelander called Thorwald Kothransson brought a Christian bishop Frederic from Saxony, who wrought some conversions and left a body of baptized Christians behind him. In the year 1000 came a priest Thormod and several chiefs back from the Norse court of Olaf, and in a meeting of the Althing--the great a.s.sembly of the people--preached to them the One G.o.d in Trinity. The whole people became Christian, and the few heathen {133} customs that still lingered, as it were by permission, after the great baptism, soon fell away like raindrops in the bright sun. Among the last news that came to Olaf Trigvason was that his distant people had fulfilled the wish of his heart.