CENTURY VIII.
Winfred, better known as Boniface, "the Apostle of Germany," is, perhaps, the chief ecclesiastical figure of this century. He taught Christianity right through Germany; was consecrated bishop in A.D. 723, created archbishop in A.D. 738, and Primate of Germany and Belgium in A.D. 746; in A.D. 755 he was murdered in Friesland, with fifty other ecclesiastics. Much stress is laid upon his martyrdom by Christian writers, but Boniface, after all, only received from the Frieslanders the measure he had meted out to their brethren, and there seems no good reason why Christian missionaries should claim a monopoly of the right to kill. Mosheim allows that he "often employed violence and terror, and sometimes artifice and fraud" (p. 169) in order to gain converts, and he was supported by Charles Martel, the enemy of Friesland, and appeared among the Germans as the friend and agent of their foes. A few years later, Charlemagne spread Christianity among the Saxons with great vigour. For "a war broke out, at this time, between Charlemagne and the Saxons, which contributed much to the propagation of Christianity, though not by the force of a rational persuasion. The Saxons were, at this time, a numerous and formidable people, who inhabited a considerable part of Germany, and were engaged in perpetual quarrels with the Franks concerning their boundaries, and other matters of complaint. Hence Charlemagne turned his armies against this powerful nation, A.D. 772, with a design not only to subdue that spirit of revolt with which they had so often troubled the empire, but also to abolish their idolatrous worship, and engage them to embrace the Christian religion. He hoped, by their conversion, to vanquish their obstinacy, imagining that the divine precepts of the Gospel would assuage their impetuous and restless passions, mitigate their ferocity, and induce them to submit more tamely to the government of the Franks. These projects were great in idea, but difficult in execution; accordingly, the first attempt to convert the Saxons, after having subdued them, was unsuccessful, because it was made without the aid of violence, or threats, by the bishops and monks, whom the victor had left among that conquered people, whose obstinate attachment to idolatry no arguments nor exhortations could overcome. [Mark the naïveté of this confession.] More forcible means were afterwards used to draw them into the pale of the Church, in the wars which Charlemagne carried on in the years 775, 776, and 780, against that valiant people, whose love of liberty was excessive, and whose aversion to the restraints of sacerdotal authority was inexpressible. During these wars their attachment to the superstition of their ancestors was so warmly combated by the allurements of reward, by the terror of punishment, and by the imperious language of victory, that they suffered themselves to be baptised, though with inward reluctance, by the missionaries, which the emperor sent among them for that purpose" (p. 170). Rebellion broke out once more, headed by the two most powerful Saxon chiefs, but they were won over by Charlemagne, who persuaded them "to make a public and solemn profession of Christianity, in the year 785, and to promise an adherence to that divine religion for the rest of their days. To prevent, however, the Saxons from renouncing a religion which they had embraced with reluctance, several bishops were appointed to reside among them, schools also were erected, and monasteries founded, that the means of instruction might not be wanting. The same precautions were employed among the Huns in Pannonia, to maintain in the profession of Christianity that fierce people whom Charlemagne had converted to the faith, when, exhausted and dejected by various defeats, they were no longer able to make head against his victorious arms, and chose rather to be Christians than slaves" (p. 170). The grateful Church canonized Charlemagne, the brutal soldier who had so enlarged her borders; "not to enter into a particular detail of his vices, whose number counter-balanced that of his virtues, it is undeniably evident that his ardent and ill-conducted zeal for the conversion of the Huns, Frieslanders, and Saxons, was more animated by the suggestions of ambition, than by a principle of true piety; and that his main view in these religious exploits was to subdue the converted nations under his dominion, and to tame them to his yoke, which they supported with impatience, and shook off by frequent revolts. It is, moreover, well known, that this boasted saint made no scruple of seeking the alliance of the infidel Saracens, that he might be more effectually enabled to crush the Greeks, notwithstanding their profession of the Christian religion" (p. 171). Thus was Christianity spread by fire and sword, and where-ever the cross passed it left its track in blood. While the soldiers thus converted the heathen, "the clergy abandoned themselves to their passions without moderation or restraint; they were distinguished by their luxury, their gluttony, and their lust" (p. 173). To these evils was added that of gross deception, for a bad clergy used bad weapons; false miracles abounded in every direction; "the corrupt discipline that then prevailed admitted of those fallacious stratagems, which are very improperly called pious frauds; nor did the heralds of the gospel think it at all unlawful to terrify or to allure to the profession of Christianity, by fictitious prodigies, those obdurate hearts which they could not subdue by reason and argument" (p. 171). The wealth of the Church increased year by year. "An opinion prevailed universally at this time, though its authors are not known, that the punishment which the righteous judge of the world has reserved for the transgressions of the wicked, was to be prevented and annulled by liberal donations to God, to the saints, to the churches and clergy. In consequence of this notion, the great and opulent—who were, generally speaking, the most remarkable for their flagitious and abominable lives—offered, out of the abundance which they had received by inheritance or acquired by rapine, rich donations to departed saints, their ministers upon earth, and the keepers of the temples that were erected in their honour, in order to avoid the sufferings and penalties annexed by the priests to transgression in this life, and to escape the misery denounced against the wicked in a future state. This new and commodious method of making atonement for iniquity was the principal source of those immense treasures which, from this period, began to flow in upon the clergy, the churches, and monasteries, and continued to enrich them through succeeding ages down to the present time" (p. 174). Another source of wealth is to be found in the desire of the kings of the various warring tribes to attach to themselves the bishop and clergy in their dominions; by bestowing on these lands and dignities they secured to themselves the aid which the Church officials had it in their power to render, for not only could bishops bring to the support of their suzerain the physical succour of armies, but they could also launch against his enemies that terrible bolt of mediaeval times, excommunication, which, "rendered formidable by ignorance, struck terror into the boldest and most resolute hearts" (p. 174). In these latter gifts we see the origin of the temporalities and titles attached to episcopal sees and to cathedral chapters. During this century the power of the Roman Pontiff swelled to an enormous degree, and his sway extended into civil and political affairs: so supreme an authority had he become that, in A.D. 751, the Frankish states of the realm—convoked by Pepin to sanction his design of seizing on the French throne, then occupied by Childeric III.—directed that an embassy should be sent to the Pope Zachary, to ask whether it was not right that a weak monarch should be dethroned; and on the answer of the Pope in the affirmative being received, Childeric was dethroned without opposition, and Pepin was crowned in his stead.
In the East, the Church was torn with dissensions, while the imperial throne was rocking under the repeated attacks of the Turks—a tribe descended from the Tartars—who entered Armenia, struggled with the Saracens for dominion, subdued them partially, and then turned their arms against the Greek empire. The great controversy of this century is that on the worship of images, between the Iconoduli or Iconolatrae (image worshippers), and the Iconomachi or Iconoclastae (image breakers). The Emperor Bardanes, a supporter of the Monothelite heresy, ordered that a picture representing the sixth general council should be removed from the Church of St. Sophia, because that council had condemned the Monothelites. Not content with doing this (A.D. 712), Bardanes sent an order to Rome that all pictures and images of the same nature should be removed from places of worship. Constantine, the Pope, immediately set up six pictures, representing the six general councils, in the porch of St. Peter's, and called a council at Rome, which denounced the Emperor as an apostate. Bardanes was dethroned by a revolution, but his successor, Leo, soon took up the quarrel. In A.D. 726, he issued an imperial edict commanding the removal of all images from the churches and forbidding all image worship, save only those representing the crucifixion of Christ. Pope Gregory I. excommunicated the Emperor, and insurrections broke out all over the empire in consequence; the Emperor retorted by calling a council at Constantinople, which deposed the bishop of that city for his leanings towards image worship, and put a supporter of the Emperor in his place. The contest was carried on by Constantine, who succeeded his father, Leo, in A.D. 741, and who, in A.D. 754, called a council, at Constantinople—recognised by the Greek Church as the seventh general council—which condemned the use and worship of images. Leo IV. (A.D. 775) issued penal laws against image worshippers, but he was poisoned by Irene, his wife, in A.D. 780, and she entered into an alliance with Pope Adrian, so that the Iconoduli became triumphant in their turn. While this controversy raged, a second arose as to the procession of the Holy Ghost. The creed of Constantinople (see ante, p. [434]) ran—"I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father;" to this phrase the words, "and the Son," had been added in the West, originally by some Spanish bishops; the Greeks protested against an unauthorised addition being inserted into a creed promulgated by a general council, and received by the universal Church as the symbol of faith. Thus arose the celebrated controversy on the "Filioque," which was one of the chief causes of the great schism between the Eastern and Western Churches in the ninth century.
The Arian, Manichæan, Marcionite, and Monothelite heresies spread, during this century, through the Greek Church, and, where the Arabians ruled, the Nestorians and Monophysites also flourished. In the Latin Church a phase of the Nestorian heresy made its way, under the name of Adoptianism, a name given because its adherents regarded Christ, so far as his manhood was concerned, as the Son of God by adoption only.