Early European History

by Hutton Webster

126. SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY OVER EUROPE

THE ROMAN CHURCH AND THE BARBARIANS

Almost all Europe had been won to Christianity by the end of the eleventh century. In the direction of this great missionary campaign the Roman Church took the leading part. [23] The officers of her armies were zealous popes, bishops, and abbots; her private soldiers were equally zealous monks, priests, and laymen. Pagan Rome had never succeeded in making a complete and permanent conquest of the barbarians. Christian Rome, however, was able to bring them all under her spiritual sway.

RECONVERSION OF THE ARIAN GERMANS

Christianity first reached the Germanic invaders in its Arian [24] form. Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Burgundians, and Lombards were all Arians. The Roman Church regarded them as heretics and labored with success to reconvert them. This work was at last completed when the Lombards, in the seventh century, accepted the Catholic faith.

FRANKS AND ANGLO-SAXONS CONVERTED TO ROMAN CATHOLICISM

The Franks and the Anglo-Saxons, whose kingdoms were to develop into the chief states of medieval Europe, adopted from the outset the Catholic form of Christianity. The conversion of the Franks provided the Roman Church with its strongest and most faithful adherents among the Germanic tribes. [25] The conversion of Anglo-Saxon Britain by Augustine and his monks, followed later by the spread of Roman Catholicism in Ireland and Scotland, firmly united the British Isles to the Papacy. [26] Thus Rome during the Middle Ages came to be the one center of church life for the peoples of western Europe.

ST. BONIFACE AND THE CONVERSION OF THE GERMANS

An Anglo-Saxon monk, St. Boniface, did more than any other missionary to carry Christianity to the remote tribes of Germany. Like Augustine in England, St. Boniface was sent by the pope, who created him missionary bishop and ordered him to "carry the word of God to unbelievers." St. Boniface also enjoyed the support of the Frankish rulers, Charles Martel and Pepin the Short. Thanks to their assistance this intrepid monk was able to penetrate into the heart of Germany. Here he labored for nearly forty years, preaching, baptizing, and founding numerous churches, monasteries, and schools. His boldness in attacking heathenism is illustrated by the story of how he cut down with his own hands a certain oak tree, much reverenced by the natives of Hesse as sacred to the god Woden, and out of its wood built a chapel dedicated to St. Peter. St. Boniface crowned a lifetime of missionary labor with a martyr's death, probably in 754 A.D. His work was continued by Charlemagne, who forced the Saxons to accept Christianity at the point of the sword. [27] All Germany at length became a Christian land, devoted to the Papacy.

CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS

Roman Catholicism not only spread to Celtic and Germanic peoples, but it also gained a foothold among the Slavs. Both Henry the Fowler and Otto the Great attempted to Christianize the Slavic tribes between the Elbe of the Slavs and the Vistula, by locating bishoprics in their territory. The work of conversion encountered many setbacks and did not reach completion until the middle of the twelfth century. The most eminent missionaries to the Slavs were Cyril and Methodius. These brother-monks were sent from Constantinople in 863 A.D. to convert the Moravians, who formed a kingdom on the eastern boundary of Germany. Seeing their great success as missionaries, the pope invited them to Rome and secured their consent to an arrangement which brought the Moravian Christians under the control of the Papacy. [28] From Moravia Christianity penetrated into Bohemia and Poland. These countries still remain strongholds of the Roman Church. The Serbians and Russians, as we have learned, [29] received Christianity by way of Constantinople and so became adherents of the Greek Church.

FINAL EXTENSION OF ROMAN CATHOLICISM

Roman Catholicism gradually spread to most of the remaining peoples of Europe. The conversion of the Norwegians and Swedes was well advanced by the middle of the eleventh century. The Magyars, or Hungarians, accepted Christianity at about the same date. The king of Hungary was such a devout Catholic that in the year 1000 A.D. the pope sent to him a golden crown and saluted him as "His Apostolic Majesty." The last parts of heathen Europe to receive the message of the gospel were the districts south and east of the Baltic, occupied by the Prussians, Lithuanians, and Finns. Their conversion took place between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries.