A Key to the Knowledge of Church History Part 16

Between A.D. 964 and A.D. 968, several bishoprics were founded in this country by Otho the Great, and amongst them the metropolitan see of Magdeburg. A revolt of the Wends frustrated for the time the success of the emperor's plans, but in the next century Gottschalk, who became king of the Wends A.D. 1047, and was himself a Christian, did all in his {130} power to aid the missionary work of the Church among his people. He was martyred by his subjects, A.D. 1066, and heathenism triumphed once more. During the twelfth century, the Wendish kingdom was dissolved, and its territories divided amongst different German princes, after which the Church gradually regained and extended its hold on the country. The northern Wends, who obstinately adhered to their Pagan superst.i.tions, were at last converted chiefly by the labours of St. Vicelin, who became Bishop of Oldenburg, A.D. 1148.

[Sidenote: of Pomerania,]

The conversion of Pomerania was first attempted by the Poles, who, on obtaining possession of the country at the end of the tenth century, founded a bishopric at Colberg, A.D. 1000. It was not, however, until their more complete subjection to Poland about a hundred years later, that any marked result was obtained. Otho, Bishop of Bamberg, who placed himself at the head of the Pomeranian mission A.D. 1124, was at last enabled to overcome the fierce opposition which the heathen natives offered to the work of the Church, and by A.D. 1128 Christianity had gained a firm footing amongst them.

[Sidenote: of Prussia Proper.]

From Pomerania the Church extended itself eastward to Prussia Proper, about A.D. 1210. Here, too, Christianity was very distasteful to the natives, partly as being the religion of their enemies the Poles.

About A.D. 1230, the "Order of Teutonic Knights" was inst.i.tuted for the purpose of subjugating Prussia; and, after a depopulating warfare of fifty years' duration, the remaining inhabitants embraced Christianity.

Before the end of the thirteenth century, the German element had quite superseded the Sclavonic in Prussia, as well as in Pomerania, and in what had formerly been the kingdom of the Wends.

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[Sidenote: Extent of Roman influence in Germany.]

The Church in Germany, taken as a whole, was very much under Roman influence, partly, perhaps, on account of the early connexion between the emperors of the West and the see of Rome, and partly from the constant state of civil warfare into which Germany was plunged from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. In these contests the near neighbourhood of the Popes to the Italian possessions of the Western Empire gave them a hold on the affairs of Germany which they were not slow to use, and the turbulent German n.o.bles were disinclined to resent an interference which was so often exerted in their behalf against an unpopular sovereign. The temporal power of the Popes was, however, much weakened by the great Schism; and though the Church of Germany acknowledged the true Pope, there was, amongst its members, a very widespread sense of the urgent need of some searching reformation. To this feeling may be traced, not only the unhappily disappointed expectations with which so many persons looked to the Councils of Constance and Basle, but also the unsound and exaggerated teaching of such men as John Huss and Jerome of Prague.

Section 5. _The Church of Hungary._

[Sidenote: Conversion of Hungary.]

The Hungarians or Magyars were descended from a Tartar or Finnish tribe, who settled in Pannonia towards the close of the ninth century, and thence made fierce inroads on Italy and Germany. In A.D. 948, two Hungarian chiefs were baptized at Constantinople, and the daughter of one of them afterwards marrying Geisa, Duke of {132} Hungary (A.D.

972-A.D. 997), Christian influences were, by degrees, brought to bear upon the Hungarian people. About the same time German missionaries began to labour in Hungary, but it was not until the reign of St.

Stephen, the first King of Hungary (A.D. 997-A.D. 1038), that the country was completely evangelized. [Sidenote: Hungary Latinized.]

Stephen did all in his power to aid the work of the German missionaries; Hungary was divided into dioceses, and the originally eastern origin of the Hungarian Church, as well as the Sclavonic origin of the people, forgotten under the desire felt by the king to keep on a friendly footing with the German emperors and the Popes.

[Sidenote: Attacks of the Turks.]

The Church of Hungary suffered severely from the invasion of the Mongul Tartars, A.D. 1241, and when, about a century later, some of these Tartars returned from Asia and settled in Europe under the name of Turks, Hungary, owing to its frontier situation, was constantly liable to their attacks. During the fifteenth century, Hungarian bravery was the great barrier that opposed the spread of Mahometanism over Western Europe. Even after the fall of Constantinople, the Turks vainly endeavoured to make themselves masters of their Christian neighbours, and found themselves obliged to retreat discomfited from the siege of Belgrade, A.D. 1456.

Section 6. _The Church of Poland._

[Sidenote: Conversion of Poland.]

The Church of Poland was founded about A.D. 966, when a daughter of the Christian Duke of Bohemia married Miecislav, Duke of Poland, and introduced Christianity into her adopted country.

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[Sidenote: Romanizing the church of Poland.]

The Polish Church at first bore traces of its Eastern origin in its liturgy and ritual, but these traces were removed by Casimir I. (A.D.

1040-A.D. 1058), who, previous to his accession, had been a monk in a French or German monastery, and who made a point of bringing the Church of his own country into uniformity with the other Churches of the West.

Section 7. _The Scandinavian Churches._

[Sidenote: Conversion of Denmark]

About A.D. 822, a mission was sent from France to Denmark under Ebbo, Archbishop of Rheims, which resulted in the conversion of Harold, King of Jutland, who was baptized at Mayence, A.D. 826. At the request of Harold, a fresh mission to Denmark was organized and headed by Anskar, a monk of Corbey, near Amiens, who is often known as the "Apostle of the North." [Sidenote: and Sweden.] From Denmark Anskar made his way to Sweden, A.D. 831, where he was favourably received by the king, and a year or two later was consecrated Archbishop of Hamburg, with jurisdiction over the whole northern mission. [Sidenote: Slow advance and vicissitudes of the Church.] At first the progress of the Church, both in Denmark and Sweden, was very slow and fluctuating, and the ravages of the northern pirates, or Vikings, caused great loss and suffering; but after some years, Anskar was enabled to disarm the opposition of Eric the heathen King of Denmark, and to make a favourable impression upon the Swedish n.o.bles. After his death in A.D.

865, the Church in Denmark went through many vicissitudes owing to irruptions of the Northmen and other invaders, as well as to native opposition. {134} Svend, who reigned over Denmark A.D. 991-A.D. 1014, though brought up a Christian, persecuted the Church until his re-conversion during a victorious sojourn in England. [Sidenote: English missionaries in Denmark] Svend's son and successor, Canute the Great (A.D. 1014-A.D. 1033), was very zealous in his endeavours to undo the evil effects of his father's violence, and sent missionaries from England, by whom the bulk of the Danish nation were converted to Christianity.

[Sidenote: and Sweden.]

In Sweden, too, the Church made but slow progress after the death of Anskar, until, in the beginning of the eleventh century, the King Olaf Skotkonung, having been himself baptized about A.D. 1008, invited to Sweden certain English clergymen, who laboured there with great success. The first bishopric in Sweden was placed at Skara in West Gothland, and filled by Turgot, an Englishman.

[Sidenote: Conversion of Norway, by English missionaries.]

The knowledge of the Gospel was first brought, in the tenth century, into Norway from England by Hacon, who is said to have been educated at the court of Athelstan, and who endeavoured, with the aid of English priests, to bring about the conversion of his subjects. Hacon was, however, induced, by the bitter opposition of his countrymen, to yield a weak compliance to their idolatrous practices, and the Church languished and almost died out until the reign of Olaf Trygovason (A.D.

993-A.D. 1000), who had been baptized in the Scilly Isles during a piratical expedition. The labours of the English missionaries were finally successful in the reign of Olaf the Holy (A.D. 1017-A.D. 1033), who was earnest in his efforts to further the work of the Church. It may be remarked that Norwegian Bishops were usually consecrated either in England or France, {135} though all the Scandinavian Churches were still professedly dependent on the Archbishopric of Hamburg.

[Sidenote: Conversion of Iceland,]

In Iceland some traces of early Christianity, probably the result of the labours of Irish missionaries, were still remaining when it was colonized by Norwegian settlers in the ninth century; and towards the end of the tenth century successive attempts were made by a Saxon Bishop and by missionaries from Norway, to revive and deepen these impressions. The opposition of the heathen colonists was, however, of so determined a character, that it was only by the gradual conversion of the mother country, and the labours of new bands of missionaries, chiefly English and Irish, that Paganism was by degrees overcome.

[Sidenote: Greenland,]

From Iceland the Church made its way to Greenland, another Norwegian colony, which was converted mainly by the instrumentality of an Icelandic missionary, in the first half of the eleventh century; but this ancient Church died out in the fifteenth century. About the same time Christianity spread through the Norwegians to the Orkney, Shetland, and Faroe Islands.

[Sidenote: and Lapland.]

The Church was first planted amongst the Lapps by Swedish missionaries in the thirteenth century, but it was not until the sixteenth and two following centuries that Christianity became the religion of the country.

Section 8. _The Churches now comprehended in European Turkey and Greece._

We look in vain in the history of the Church in Eastern Europe for the missionary activity which {136} bears so prominent a place in the annals of Western Christendom. [Sidenote: Lack of missionary zeal in the East.] The minds of Eastern Christians were still much occupied by continued contests between the Catholic Faith and developments of already condemned heresies, and to these succeeded the scarcely less absorbing controversy about Image-breaking. Nor was there in the East the same pressing contact with Paganism, which made it in the West a political necessity no less than a religious duty at once to christianize and civilize the ever advancing hordes of heathen barbarians. [Sidenote: Conversion of Bulgaria.] The evangelization of Bulgaria was, however, begun early in the ninth century, by the carrying off of the Bishop of Adrianople and many of his flock, in a victorious inroad of the Bulgarians, A.D. 811. Half a century later the Bulgarian King Bogoris, influenced by his sister, who had been brought up a Christian at Constantinople, put himself and his country under the tuition of the Greek patriarch Photius. Soon after, becoming weary of his Eastern instructors, he applied for aid to the Western Church, and, in A.D. 867, the Pope Nicholas I. despatched two Italian Bishops and other missionaries to Bulgaria. [Sidenote: Collision between Greek and Roman missionaries.] This interference of the Roman Church, in an already occupied field of missionary labour, added considerably to the jealousy between East and West, and helped to bring about the eventual and lamentable schism. Bogoris soon after returned to his allegiance to Photius, insisted on the withdrawal of the Roman Mission, and obtained a Greek Archbishop of Bulgaria from Constantinople.

[Sidenote: Peculiar position of the Eastern Church.]

The state of external isolation in which the Church of the Eastern Empire was placed by the {137} Schism of A.D. 1054, had a tendency to increase its exaggerated spirit of conservatism, which was also encouraged by the indolent unenterprizing temper of the Greeks of the later empire, whose blood had not been quickened by the same admixture of races as had given new life to the worn out nations of the West.

[Sidenote: Effects of the Crusades.] Under these circ.u.mstances the crusades were hardly less a cause of terror to the Greeks than were the advances of the Turks themselves, and tended to widen rather than to heal the unhappy breach between the Latin and Greek Churches.

[Sidenote: Unjustifiable proceedings of the Latins.] The foundation of a Latin Patriarchate at Jerusalem, after the taking of that city in A.D. 1099, could not but be accounted an usurpation on the part of the Pope, which was, however, far surpa.s.sed in injustice by the erection of a Latin empire and a Latin Patriarchate in Constantinople itself, A.D.

1204. During the time that this oppressive arrangement lasted (i.e.

till A.D. 1261) the rightful Patriarch took refuge at the court which the Eastern emperors held at Nicaea in Asia Minor, and the fugitives there clung to their national Church, and her rightful independence.

[Sidenote: Attempts at reunion.] The Emperor Michael Palaeologus, after driving out the Latins from Constantinople, endeavoured once more to effect a reunion between East and West, partly from political and partly from personal motives, and a formal act of union was signed, A.D. 1274. Neither the Greek Clergy nor the Greek people would, however, consent to give up their own national religious customs, nor to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope; and this shadow of union died out with the death of the Emperor, its originator. [Sidenote: Invasion of the Turks.] In the fourteenth century {138} the Turks were treacherously invited over to Europe as allies of the usurper, John Cantacuzenus (A.D. 1347-A.D. 1353), and so firm a footing did they gain, that the rightful Emperor, John Palaeologus (A.D. 1341-A.D.

1391), found himself obliged to appeal to Rome for aid, promising in return to reconcile the Greek Church to the Roman communion. The affairs of Western Europe, were, however too unsettled to admit of such aid being afforded, and the Emperor was obliged to give up all his possessions to the Turks, except Constantinople, Thessalonica, part of the Morea, and a few islands. Another appeal was made, with the same results, by his son, Manuel Palaeologus (A.D. 1391-A.D. 1425).

[Sidenote: New attempts at reunion.] John VII. (A.D. 1425-A.D. 1448) opened fresh negociations with the West, and he and the Patriarch of Constantinople, together with twenty-one other Eastern Bishops, appeared (A.D. 1438) at the Council of Ferrara (afterwards transferred to Florence). At this council a decree of union was once more signed by the Greeks, on condition of their receiving aid against the Turks (A.D. 1439). This fresh attempt at union was repudiated by the Eastern Church at large, but a troop of French and Italian crusaders started for the East. Constantinople was, however, doomed, and the good and brave Constantine Palaeologus (A.D. 1448-A.D. 1433) was the last, as he was one of the best, of the Greek emperors. [Sidenote: Fall of Constantinople] The city fell, after an obstinate defence, on the 29th May, A.D. 1453, and Constantine was among the slain. The Turks pillaged and slaughtered indiscriminately, and turned into a mosque the beautiful Church of St. Sophia, built by the Emperor Justinian in honour of the "Holy Wisdom" of G.o.d.

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[Sidenote: and the Greek Empire.]

All the Greek Empire had now fallen into the hands of the Turks, except the small mountainous district of Albania, which held out until the death of George Castriota (dreaded by the Turks under the name of Scanderbeg), A.D. 1467. The rocky strip of land known as Montenegro has been enabled to maintain an unbroken independence.

[Sidenote: State of the Church of Greece under Turkish rule.]

The Church of Greece was now no longer the dominant and recognized religion of the country, but it was not extinguished. The numerous mountain monasteries, inaccessible from their construction and position, were the chief strongholds of the Christian Faith; and so, "cast down, but not destroyed," the Church in Greece struggled on, until, after nearly three centuries of Turkish rule, Greece itself once more became a Christian kingdom.