John Macpherson.
Findhorn, March, 1889.
SECOND DIVISION.
(Continued.)
SECOND SECTION.
HISTORY OF THE GERMANO-ROMANIC CHURCH, FROM THE 10TH TO THE 13TH CENTURY.
A.D. 911-1294.
I. The Spread of Christianity.
§ 93. Missionary Enterprises.
During this period the Christianizing of Europe was well nigh finished. Only Lapland and Lithuania were reserved for the following period. The method used in conversion was still the same. Besides missionaries, warriors also extended the faith. Monasteries and castles were the centres of the newly founded Christianity. Political considerations and Christian princesses converted pagan princes; their subjects followed either under violent pressure or with quiet resignation, carrying with them, however, under the cover of a Christian profession, much of their old heathen superstition. It was the policy of the German emperors to make every effort to unite the converted races under the German metropolitans, and to establish this union. Thus the metropolitanate of Hamburg-Bremen was founded for the Scandinavians and those of the Baltic provinces, that of Magdeburg for the Poles and the Northern Slavs, that of Mainz for the Bohemians, that of Passau and Salzburg for the Hungarians. But it was Rome’s desire to emancipate them from the German clergy and the German state, and to set them up as independent metropolitanates of a great family of Christian nationalities recognising the pope as their spiritual father (§ 82, 9). The Western church did now indeed make a beginning of missionary enterprise, which extended in its range beyond Europe to the Mongols of Asia and the Saracens of Africa, but throughout this period it remained without any, or at least without any important, result.
§ 93.1. The Scandinavian Mission Field.—The work of Ansgar and Rimbert (§ 80) had extended only to the frontier provinces of Jutland and to the trading ports of Sweden, and even the churches founded there had in the meantime become almost extinct. A renewal of the mission could not be thought of, owing to the robber raids of Normans or Vikings, who during the ninth and tenth centuries had devastated all the coasts. But it was just those Viking raids that in another way opened a door again for the entrance of missionaries into those lands. Many of the home-going Vikings, who had been resident for a while abroad, had there been converted to the Christian faith, and carried back the knowledge of it to their homes. In France the Norwegians under Rollo founded Normandy in A.D. 912. In the tenth century the entire northern half of England fell into the hands of the Danes, and finally, in A.D. 1013, the Danish King Sweyn conquered the whole country. Both in France and in England the incomers adopted the profession of Christianity, and this, owing to the close connection maintained with their earlier homes, led to the conversion of Norway and Denmark.
§ 93.2. In Denmark, Gorm the Old, the founder of the regular Danish monarchy, makes his appearance toward the end of the ninth century as the bitter foe of Christianity. He destroyed all Christian institutions, drove away all the priests, and ravaged the neighbouring German coasts. Then, in A.D. 934, the German king Henry I. undertook a war against Denmark, and obliged Gorm to pay tribute and to grant toleration to the Christian faith. Archbishop Unni of Bremen then immediately began again the mission work. With a great part of his clergy he entered Danish territory, restored the churches of Jutland, and died in Sweden in A.D. 936. Gorm’s son, Harald Blaatand, being defeated in battle by Otto I. in A.D. 965, submitted to baptism. But his son Sweyn Gabelbart, although he too had been baptized, headed the reactionary heathen party. Harald fell in battle against him in A.D. 986, and Sweyn now began his career as a bitter persecutor of the Christians. Eric of Sweden, however, formerly a heathen and an enemy of Christianity, drove him out in A.D. 980, and at the entreaty of a German embassage tolerated the Christian religion. After Eric’s death in A.D. 998, Sweyn returned. In exile his opinions had changed, and now he as actively befriended the Christians as before he had persecuted them. In A.D. 1013 he conquered all England, and died there in A.D. 1014. His son Canute the Great, who died in A.D. 1036, united both kingdoms under his sceptre, and made every effort to find in the profession of a common Christian faith a bond of union between the two countries over which he ruled. In place of the German mission issuing from Bremen, he set on foot an English mission that had great success. In A.D. 1026 by means of a pilgrimage to Rome, prompted also by far-reaching political views, he joined the Danish church in the closest bonds with the ecclesiastical centre of Western Christendom. Denmark from this time onwards ranks as a thoroughly Christianized land.