chapter 11.

"The Medieval Church of the West found in the seventh century an immense task before it to fulfil. ... The missionaries who addressed themselves to the enormous task of the conversion of Germany may be conveniently divided into three groups--the British, the Frankish, and, entering somewhat later into an honourable rivalry with these, the Anglo-Saxon. A word or two upon each of these groups. The British--they include Irish and Scotch--could no longer find a field for the exercise of their ministry in England, now that there the Roman rule and discipline, to which they were so little disposed to submit, had everywhere won the day. Their own religious houses were full to overflowing. At home there was little for them to do, while yet that divine hunger and thirst for the winning of souls, which had so possessed the heart of St. Patrick, lived on in theirs. To these so minded, pagan Germany offered a welcome field of labour, and one in which there was ample room for all. {461} Then there were the Frankish missionaries, who enjoyed the support of the Frankish kings, which sometimes served them in good stead; while at other times this protection was very far from a recommendation in their eyes who were easily persuaded to see in these missionaries the emissaries of a foe. Add to these the Anglo-Saxons; these last, mindful of the source from which they had received their own Christianity, making it a point to attach their converts to Rome, even as they were themselves bound to her by the closest ties. The language which these spoke--a language which as yet can have diverged very little from the Low German of Frisia, must have given to them many facilities which the Frankish missionaries possessed in a far slighter degree, the British not at all; and this may help to account for a success on their parts far greater than attended the labours of the others. To them too it was mainly due that the battle of the Creeds, which had been fought and lost by the Celtic missionaries in England, and was presently renewed in Germany, had finally the same issues there as in England. ... At the same time, there were differences in the intensity and obstinacy of resistance to the message of truth, which would be offered by different tribes. There was ground, which at an early day had been won for the Gospel, but which in the storms and confusion of the two preceding centuries had been lost again; the whole line, that is, of the Danube and the Rhine, regions fair and prosperous once, but in every sense wildernesses now. In these we may note a readier acceptance of the message than found place in lands which in earlier times that message had never reached; as though obscure reminiscences and traditions of the past, not wholly extinct, had helped to set forward the present work."

_R C. Trench, Lectures on Medieval Church History, lecture 5._

"From Ireland came Gallus, Fridolin, Kilian, Trutbert and Levin. ... The order in which these men succeeded one another cannot always be established, from the uncertainty of the accounts. ... We know thus much, that of all those above-mentioned, Gallus was the first, for his labours in Helvetia (Switzerland) were continued from the preceding into the period of which we are now treating. On the other hand, it is uncertain as to Fridolin whether he had not completed his work before Gallus, in the sixth century, for in the opinion of some he closed his career in the time of Clodoveus I., but, according to others, he is said to have lived under Clodoveus II., or at another period. His labours extended over the lands on the Moselle, in the Vosges Mountains, over Helvetia, Rhætia and Nigra Silva (the Black Forest). He built the monastery of Sekkinga on the Rhine. Trutbert was a contemporary and at the same time a countryman of Gallus. His sphere of action is said to have been Brisgovia (Breisgau) and the Black Forest. Almost half a century later Kilian proclaimed the gospel in Franconia and Wirtzburg, with two assistants, Colonatus and Totnanus. In the latter place they converted duke Gozbert, and were put to death there in 688. After the above mentioned missionaries from Ireland, in the seventh century, had built churches and monasteries in the southern Germany, the missionaries from Britain repaired with a similar purpose, to the northern countries. ... Men from other nations, as Willericus, bishop of Brema, preached in Transalbingia at the beginning of the ninth century. Almost all the missionaries from the kingdom of the Franks selected southern Germany as their sphere of action: Emmeran, about 649, Ratisbona, Rudbert, about 696, Bajoaria (Bavaria), Corbinian the country around Frisinga, Otbert the Breisgau and Black Forest, and Pirminius the Breisgau, Bajoaria, Franconia, Helvetia, and Alsatis."

_J. E. T. Wiltsch, Handbook of the Geography and Statistics of the Church, 11. 1, pages 365-367._

CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 553-800. The Western Church. Rise of the Papacy.

"Though kindly treated, the Church of Rome did not make any progress under the Ostrogoths. But when their power had been broken (553), and Rome had been placed again under the authority of the Emperor of Constantinople [see ROME: A. D. 535-553], the very remoteness of her new master insured to the Church a more prosperous future. The invasion of the Lombards drove a great many refugees into her territory, and the Roman population showed a slight return of its old energy in its double hatred toward them, as barbarians and as Arians. ... It was at this favorable point in the state of affairs, though critical in some respects, that Gregory the Great made his appearance (590-604). He was a descendant of the noble Anicia family, and added to his advantages of birth and position the advantages of a well-endowed body and mind. He was prefect of Rome when less than thirty years old, but after holding this office a few months he abandoned the honors and cares of worldly things for the retirement of the cloister. His reputation did not allow him to remain in the obscurity of that life. Toward 579 he was sent to Constantinople by Pope Pelagius II. as secretary or papal nuncio, and he rendered distinguished services to the Holy See in its relations with the Empire and in its struggles against the Lombards. In 590 the clergy, the senate, and the people raised him with one accord to the sovereign pontificate, to succeed Pelagius. As it was still necessary for every election to be confirmed by the Emperor at Constantinople, Gregory wrote to him to beg him not to sanction this one; but the letter was intercepted and soon orders arrived from Maurice ratifying the election. Gregory hid himself, but he was discovered and led back to Rome. When once Pope, though against his will, he used his power to strengthen the papacy, to propagate Christianity, and to improve the discipline and organization of the Church. ... Strengthened thus by his own efforts, he undertook the propagation of Christianity and orthodoxy both within and without the limits of the old Roman Empire. Within those limits there were still some who clung to paganism, in Sicily, Sardinia, and even at the very gates of Rome, at Terracina, and doubtless also in Gaul, as there is a constitution of Childebert still extant dated 554, and entitled: 'For the abolition of the remains of idolatry.' There were Arians very near to Rome--namely, the Lombards; but through the intervention of Theudalinda, their queen, Gregory succeeded in having Adelwald, the heir to the throne, brought up in the Catholic faith; as early as 587 the Visigoths in Spain, under Reccared, were converted. ... The Roman Empire had perished, and the barbarians had built upon its ruins many slight structures that were soon overthrown. {462} Not even had the Franks, who were destined to be perpetuated as a nation, as yet succeeded in founding a social state of any strength; their lack of experience led them from one attempt to another, all equally vain; even the attempt of Charlemagne met with no more permanent success. In the midst of these successive failures one institution alone, developing slowly and steadily through the centuries, following out the spirit of its principles, continued to grow and gain in power, in extent and in unity. ... The Pope had now become, in truth, the ruler of Christendom. He was, however, still a subject of the Greek Emperor; but a rupture was inevitable, as his authority, on the one hand, was growing day by day, and the emperor's on the contrary, was declining."

_V. Duruy, History of the Middle Ages, pages 114-115, 108-109, 117._

"The real power which advanced the credit of the Roman see during these ages was the reaction against the Byzantine despotism over the Eastern Church; and this is the explanation of the fact that although the new map of Europe had been marked out, in outline at least, by the year 500, the Roman see clung to the eastern connection until the first half of the eighth century. ... In the political or diplomatic struggle between the Church and the Emperors, in which the Emperors endeavored to make the Church subservient to the imperial policy, or to adjust the situation to the necessities of the empire, and the Church strove to retain its autonomy as a witness to the faith and a legislator in the affairs of religion, the Bishop of Rome became, so to speak, the constitutional head of the opposition; and the East was willing to exalt his authority, as a counterpoise to that of the Emperor, to any extent short of acknowledging that the primacy implied a supremacy."

_J. H. Egar, Christendom: Ecclesiastical and Political, from Constantine to the Reformation, page 99._

"The election system was only used for one degree of the ecclesiastical dignitaries, for the bishopric. The lower dignitaries were chosen by the bishop. They were divided into two categories of orders--the higher and the lower orders. There were three higher orders, namely, the priests, the deacons, and the sub-deacons, and four lower orders, the acolytes, the door-keepers, the exorcists, and the readers. The latter orders were not regarded as an integral part of the clergy, as their members were the servants of the others. As regards the territorial divisions, the bishop governed the diocese, which at a much later date was divided into parishes, whose spiritual welfare was in the hands of the parish priest or curate (curio). The parishes, taken together, constituted the diocese; the united dioceses, or suffragan bishoprics, constituted the ecclesiastical province, at whose head stood the metropolitan or archbishop. When a provincial council was held, it met in the metropolis and was presided over by the metropolitan. Above the metropolitans were the Patriarchs, in the East, and the Primates in the West, bishops who held the great capitals or the apostolic sees, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, Jerusalem, Cesarea in Cappadocia, Carthage in Africa, and Heraclius in Thrace; among them Rome ranked higher by one degree, and from this supreme position exercised a supreme authority acknowledged by all the Church."

_V. Duruy, History of the Middle Ages, pages 109-110._

"The divergence of the two Churches, Eastern and Western, was greater in reality than it appears to be from a superficial view. It was based on essential variations in the character and disposition of the people in the East and in the West, on the nature of their civilization, and on the different, almost antagonistic, development of the Christian idea in one Church and in the other. ... The Eastern Church rejoiced in its direct affiliation with apostolic times, in its careful preservation of traditions, and was convinced of its especial right to be considered the true heir and successor of Christ. ... The letter of the law superseded the spirit; religion stiffened into formalism; piety consisted in strict observance of ceremonial rites; external holiness replaced sincere and heartfelt devotion. ... Throughout the West the tendency was in a contrary direction--towards the practical application of the religious idea. The effete, worn-out civilization of the past was there renovated by contact and admixture with young and vigorous races, and gained new strength and vitality in the struggle for existence. The Church, freed from control, became independent and self-asserting; the responsibility of government, the preservation of social order, devolved upon it, and it rose proudly to the task."

_A. F. Heard, The Russian Church and Russian Dissent, pages 6-10._

"On the overthrow of the Western Empire, and the demonstration, rendered manifest to all, that with the complete triumph of the new world of secular polities a new spiritual development, a new phase of Divine guidance, was opening, the conscience of the believers was aroused to a sense of the sinfulness of their cowardly inactivity. 'Go ye into all nations, and baptize them,' had been the last words of their blessed Master. ... It is to this new or revived missionary spirit which distinguished the sixth century, of which I would place Pope Gregory the First, or the Great, as the central figure, that I desire now to introduce you. Remember that the Empire, which had represented the unity of mankind, had become disintegrated and broken into fragments. Men were no longer Romans, but Goths and Sueves, Burgundians and Vandals, and beyond them Huns, Avars, Franks, and Lombards, some with a slight tincture of Christian teaching, but most with none. ... Let but the Gospel be proclaimed to all, and leave the issue in God's hands! Such was the contrast between the age of Leo and the age of Gregory! ... The conversion of Clovis and the Franks is, I suppose, the earliest instance of a Christian mission carried out on a national scale by the common action of the Church represented by the Pope and See of Rome. It becomes accordingly a great historical event, deserving the earnest consideration not of Churchmen only, but of all political enquirers."

_C. Merivale, Four Lectures on some Epochs of Early Church History, pages 172-177._

{463}

"Christianity thus renewed its ardor for proselytism, and Gregory contributed to its success most wisely by enjoining precepts of moderation upon his missionaries, and by the skillful manner in which he made the transition to Catholicism easy to the pagans; he wrote to Augustine: 'Be careful not to destroy the pagan temples; it is only necessary to destroy the idols, then to sprinkle the edifice with holy water, and to build altars and place relics there. If the temples are well built, it is a wise and useful thing for them to pass from the worship of demons to the worship of the true God; for while the nation sees its old places of worship still standing, it will be the more ready to go there, by force of habit, to worship the true God.' In the interior Gregory succeeded in arranging the different degrees of power in the Church, and in forcing the recognition of the supreme power of the Holy See. We find him granting the title of Vicar of Gaul to the bishop of Arles, and corresponding with Augustine, archbishop of Canterbury, in regard to Great Britain, with the archbishop of Seville in regard to Spain, with the archbishop of Thessalonica in regard to Greece, and, finally, sending legates 'a latere' to Constantinople. In his Pastoral, which he wrote on the occasion of his election, and which became an established precedent in the West, he prescribed to the bishops their several duties, following the decisions of many councils. He strengthened the hierarchy by preventing the encroachments of the bishops upon one another: 'I have given to you the spiritual direction of Britain,' he wrote to the ambitious Augustine, 'and not that of the Gauls.' He rearranged the monasteries, made discipline the object of his vigilant care, reformed Church music, and substituted the chant that bears his name for the Ambrosian chant, 'which resembled,' according to a contemporary, 'the far-off noise of a chariot rumbling over pebbles.' Rome, victorious again with the help of Gregory the Great, continued to push her conquests to distant countries after his death."

_V. Duruy, History of the Middle Ages, page 116._

See, CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 496-800, and ROME: A. D. 590-640.

CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 597-800. The English Church.

"It seems right to add a word of caution against the common confusion between the British Church and the English Church. They were quite distinct, and had very little to do with one another. To cite the British bishops at the Councils of Arles and Rimini as evidence of the antiquity of the English Church is preposterous. There was then no England; and the ancestors of English Churchmen were heathen tribes on the continent. The history of the Church of England begins with the episcopate of Archbishop Theodore (A. D. 668), or at the very earliest with the landing of Augustine (A. D. 597). By that time the British Church had been almost destroyed by the heathen English. ... Bede tells us that down to his day the Britons still treated English Christians as pagans."

_A. Plummer, The Church of the Early Fathers, chapter 8._

"About the year 580, in the pontificate of Pelagius, Gregory occupied the rank of a deacon among the Roman clergy. He was early noted for his zeal and piety; coming into large possessions, as an off-shoot of an ancient and noble family, he had expended his wealth in the foundation of no less than seven monasteries, and had become himself the abbot of one of them, St. Andrew's, at Rome. Devoted as he was from the first to all the good works to which the religious profession might best apply itself, his attention was more particularly turned to the cause of Christian missions by casually remarking a troop of young slaves exhibited for sale in the Roman market. Struck with the beauty or fresh complexion of these strangers, he asked whether they were Christians or Pagans. They were Pagans, it was replied. How sad, he exclaimed, that such fair countenances should lie under the power of demons. 'Whence came they?'--'From Anglia.'--'Truly they are Angels. What is the name of their country?'--'Deira.'--'Truly they are subject to the wrath of God: ira Dei. And their king?'--'Is named Ælla.'--'Let them learn to sing Allelujah.' Britain had lately fallen under the sway of the heathen Angles. Throughout the eastern section of the island, the faith of Christ, which had been established there from early times, had been, it seems, utterly extirpated. The British church of Lucius and Albanus still lingered, but was chiefly confined within the ruder districts of Cornwall, Wales, and Cumbria. The reported destruction of the people with all their churches, and all their culture, begun by the Picts and Scots, and carried on by the Angles and their kindred Saxons, had made a profound impression upon Christendom. The 'Groans of the Britons' had terrified all mankind, and discouraged even the brave missionaries of Italy and Gaul. ... Gregory determined to make the sacrifice himself. He prevailed on the Pope to sanction his enterprise; but the people of Rome, with whom he was a favourite, interposed, and he was constrained reluctantly to forego the peril and the blessing. But the sight he had witnessed in the market-place still retained its impression upon him. He kept the fair-haired Angles ever in view; and when, in the year 592, he was himself elevated to the popedom, he resolved to send a mission, and fling upon the obscure shores of Britain the full beams of the sun of Christendom, as they then seemed to shine so conspicuously at Rome. Augustine was the preacher chosen from among the inmates of one of Gregory's monasteries, for the arduous task thus imposed upon him. He was to be accompanied by a select band of twelve monks, together with a certain number of attendants. ... There is something very remarkable in the facility with which the fierce idolaters, whose name had struck such terror into the Christian nations far and near, yielded to the persuasions of this band of peaceful evangelists."

_C. Merivale, Four lectures on some Epochs of Early Church History, pages 192-198._

See ENGLAND: A. D. 597-685.

The Roman missionaries in England landed in Kent and appear to have had more influence with the petty courts of the little kingdoms than with the people. The conversion of the North of England must be credited to the Irish monastery on the island of Iona. "At the beginning of the sixth century these Irish Christians were seized with an unconquerable impulse to wander afar and preach Christianity to the heathen. In 563 Columba, with twelve confederates, left Ireland and founded a monastery on a small island off the coast of Scotland (Iona or Hy), through the influence of which the Scots and Picts of Britain became converted to Christianity, twenty-three missions among the Scots and eighteen in the country of the Picts having been established at the death of Columba (597). Under his third successor the heathen Saxons were converted; Aedan, summoned by Osward of Northumbria, having labored among them from 635 to 651 as missionary, abbot, and bishop. His successors, Finnan and Colman, worthily carried on his work, and introduced Christianity into other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms near East Anglia, Mercia, and Essex."

_H. Zimmer, The Irish Element in Mediæval Culture, pages 19-21._

{464}

"Two bands of devoted men had hitherto been employed in the conversion of England, the Roman, assisted by their converts and some teachers from France, and the Irish, who were plainly the larger body. Between the two there were the old differences as to the time of keeping Easter and the form of the clerical tonsure. ... Thus, while Oswy [King of Mercia] was celebrating Easter according to the custom he had learnt at Iona, his queen Earfleda observed it according to the rule which she had learnt in Kent, and was still practising the austerities of Lent. These differences were tolerated during the Episcopate of Aidan and Finan, but when Finan died and was succeeded by Colman, the controversy" was terminated by Oswy, after much debate, with the words--"'I will hold to St. Peter, lest, when I present myself at the gates of Heaven, he should close them against me.' ... Colman, with all his Irish brethren, and thirty Northumbrians who had joined the monastery, quitted Lindisfarne and sailed to Iona."

_G. F. Maclear, Conversion of the West: The English, pages 81-85._

The impartial historian to whom we owe all the early history of the English Church, thus records the memory of these devoted men as it remained in the minds of Englishmen long after their departure. It is a brief passage, one like those in the greater Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, which must stand for much we do not know. Referring to their devoted lives--"For this reason the religious habit was at that time in great veneration; so that wheresoever any clergyman or monk happened to come, he was joyfully received by all persons, as God's servant; and if they chanced to meet him upon the way, they ran to him, and bowing, were glad to be signed with his hand, or blessed with his mouth. Great attention was also paid to their exhortations; and on Sundays they flocked eagerly to the church, or the monasteries, not to feed their bodies, but to hear the word of God; and if any priest happened to come into a village, the inhabitants flocked together to hear from him the word of life; for the priests and clergymen went into the village on no other account than to preach, baptize, visit the sick, and, in few words, to take care of souls; and they were so free from worldly avarice, that none of them received lands and possessions for building monasteries, unless they were compelled to do so by the temporal authorities; which custom was for some time after observed in all the churches of the Northumbrians. But enough has now been said on this subject."

_The Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England; ed. by J. A. Giles, book 3, chapter 26._

The English Church passed through several stages during this period. A notable one was the rise and fall of a loose monastic system which attracted men and women of the better classes, but for lack of a strict rule brought itself into disrepute. Another was the development of classical learning and the foundation of the school at Jarrow in Northumberland resulting in making England the intellectual centre of the world. Venerable Bede, who wrote the Ecclesiastical History of the English Church, was the greatest teacher of this epoch; and Alcuin, a Northumbrian by birth, and of the school at York, of the next. Invited by Charlemagne to the Frankish Court, he carried English learning to the Continent, and although he died at the time of the foundation of the Empire, left his influence in many ways on the development of European culture. A single fact of interest will suffice, to show the close connection of this early history with that of Rome and the continent--viz., to Alcuin we are largely indebted for the parent script which formed our Roman letters. (_I. Taylor, The Alphabet, volume 2, page 180._) Northumbrian learning and the rich libraries of ancient and Anglo-Saxon literature were destroyed by the Danes, who, in their incursions, showed for a long time peculiar animosity to monks and monasteries. Although the service of this early Anglo-Saxon Church was partly in the vernacular, and large portions, if not all, of the Gospels had been translated, little remains to us of its early religious literature. The translations of the Gospel into Anglo-Saxon that have come down to us are to be attributed to a late period.

CHRISTIANITY: 9th Century. The Bulgarian Church.

"In the beginning of this 9th century, a sister of the reigning Bulgarian king, Bogoris, had fallen as a captive into the keeping of the Greek emperor. For thirty-eight years she lived at Constantinople, and was there instructed in the doctrines of the Christian Faith. Meanwhile, the administration passed into the hands of the empress Regent, Theodora. She was interested in a certain monk named Cupharas, who had been taken prisoner by the Bulgarians, and with a view to his redemption, she opened negotiations with Bogoris. An exchange of prisoners was finally effected. The sister of Bogoris was restored to him, while Cupharas was permitted to return to Constantinople. Before the release of the pious monk, however, he had striven, though quite unavailingly, to win the Bulgarian prince to the service of the Cross. These fruitless endeavors were supplemented by the entreaties of the king's sister, on her return from Constantinople. ... At last, fear snapped the fetters which love had failed to disengage. ... His baptism was celebrated at midnight with profoundest secrecy. The rite was administered by no less a personage than the patriarch Photius. He emphasized the solemnity of the occasion by presenting the neophyte with a lengthy treatise on Christianity, theoretical and practical, considered mainly in its bearings on the duties of a monarch. The emperor Michael stood sponsor by proxy, and the Bulgarian king received, as his Christian name, that of his imperial god-father. ... The battle-cries of theology rang over Christendom, and the world was regaled with the spectacle of a struggle between the rival Churches for the possession of Bulgaria, a country till recently so conspicuously destitute of dogma of any kind. The Bulgarians themselves, doubtless much astonished at the uproar for their sake, and, surely, more perplexed than ever by the manners and customs of Christianity, began to waver in their adherence to the Western Church, and to exhibit symptoms of an inclination to transfer their allegiance to Constantinople. The strife went on for years. At last, A. D. 877, the Latin clergy having been dismissed from the country, Pope John VIII. solemnly expostulated, protesting against the Greek proclivities of the Bulgarians, and predicting dire results from their identity with a Church which was rarely free from heresy in one form or another. Nevertheless, the Byzantine leanings of Bulgaria did culminate in union with the Eastern Church. {465} A Greek archbishop and bishops of the same communion, settled in the country. ... 'The Eastern branch' of the Slavonic languages, properly so called, 'comprehends the Russian, with various local dialects, the Bulgarian, and the Illyrian. The most ancient document of this Eastern branch is the so-called ecclesiastical Slavonic, i. e., the ancient Bulgarian, into which Cyrillus and Methodius translated the Bible in the middle of the 9th century. This is still the authorized version of the Bible for the whole Slavonic race, and to the student of the Slavonic languages it is what Gothic is to the student of German.'"

_G. F. Maclear, Conversion of the West: The Slavs, pages 54-69._

CHRISTIANITY: 9th Century. Conversion of Moravia.

"In the opening years of the 9th century, Moravia stretched from the Bavarian borders to the Hungarian river Drina, and from the banks of the Danube, beyond the Carpathian mountains, to the river Stryi in Southern Poland. Into this territory Christianity had been ushered as early as A. D. 801, by Charlemagne, who, as his custom was, enforced baptism at the point of the sword, at least as far as the king was concerned. Efforts were subsequently made by the archbishops of Salzburg and Passau to fan this first feeble flicker into something like a flame. But no success attended their exertions. Paganism was overpoweringly strong, and Christianity not only weak, but rude and uncouth in type. ... The story of this country, during the process of emancipation from paganism, is but a repetition of the incidents with which, in neighbouring states, we have already become familiar. Ramifications of the work of Cyril and Methodius extended into Servia. The Slavonic alphabet made way there, as in Bohemia and Moravia, for Christianity. The Servians 'enjoyed the advantage of a liturgy which was intelligible to them; and we find that, early in the 10th century, a considerable number of Slavonian priests from all the dioceses were ordained by the bishop of Nona, who was himself a Slavonian by descent.'"

_G. F. Maclear, Conversion of the West: The Slavs,