Boniface was truly attached to the popes, truly respectful to the Roman See: but he preserved his independence. His attitude towards the secular power was precisely similar. He was a great churchman, a great statesman, a great missionary; but his religious and political opinions cannot be tied down to the limits of some strict theory. His was a wide, genial nature, in things spiritual and in things temporal genuine, sincere; a true Saint, a true Apostle. Through the lives and sacrifices of such men it was that the Church came to exercise so profound an influence over the politics of the Middle Age.
[Sidenote: The Emperors and missions.]
The work which S. Boniface began was continued by weapons other than his own. When the Empire of the Romans was revived (as we shall tell in the next chapter) by the chiefs of the Arnulf house, when a Catholic Caesar was again acclaimed in the Roman churches, the ideas on which the new monarchy was to rest were decisively Christian and Catholic. Charles the son of Pippin was a student of theology, among many other things. He believed firmly that it was a real kingdom of God which he was called to form and govern upon earth. The spirit which inspired the followers of {140} Muhammad inspired him too. He was determined not to leave to priests and popes the propagation of the faith which he believed.
[Sidenote: Charles and the Saxons.]
For thirty-two years Charles the Great, as his people came to call him, was engaged in a war which claimed to be waged for the spread of the Christian faith. Charles was before all things in belief (though not always in life) a Christian, and it was intolerable to him that within the German lands should remain a large and powerful body of heathens. In 772 he marched into the land of the Angarii and destroyed the Irminsul, a column which was representative of the power which the Saxons worshipped. It was destroyed, and the army after its victories returned in triumph. In 774 the Saxons turned the tables and burnt the abbey of Fritzlar which had been founded by S. Boniface. In 775 Charles resolved to avenge this loss, but made little progress. In 776 he was more successful, and a great multitude of Saxons submitted and were baptized. In 777 there was another great baptism, but, says the chronicler, the Saxons were perfidious. In 778 when Charles was in Spain the Saxons devastated a vast tract of land, and even for a time stole the body of S. Boniface from its tomb at Fulda. Charles crushed the resistance, and from 780 he set himself to organise the Church in the Saxon lands, issuing severe edicts which practically enforced Christianity on the conquered Saxons with the penalty of death for the performance of pagan rites, and even for eating meat in Lent. A law was also decreed that all men should give a tenth of their substance and work to the churches and priests. Still the conquest was not {141} durable, for a terrible insurrection in 782 slew a whole army of the Germans and massacred priests and monks wherever they could be found. Then came years of carnage: once Charles—it is said—caused 4,500 Saxons to be beheaded in one day. In 793 there was a new outbreak. The Saxons "as a dog returneth to his vomit so returned they to the paganism they had renounced, again deserting Christian faith and lying not less to God than to their lord the king." Churches were destroyed, bishops and priests slain, and the land was again defiled with blood. They allied with the Avars, and Charles was thus beset with heathen foes in Hungary and in North Germany at once. He tried every measure of devastation and exile; but it seems that by 797 he had come more clearly to see the Christian way. "Let but the same pains be taken," he wrote—or the English scholar Alcuin wrote for him—"to preach the easy yoke and light burden of Christ to the obstinate people of the Saxons as are taken to collect the tithes from them or to punish the least transgression of the laws imposed on them, and perhaps they would be found no longer to repel baptism with abhorrence." But he was far from always acting up to this view, and he even allied with heathen Slavs to accomplish the subjugation of his enemies. As he conquered he mapped out the land in bishoprics and planted monasteries at important points: he took Saxon boys to his court and sent them back trained, often as ecclesiastics, to teach and rule. Among such was Ebbo, afterwards Archbishop of Rheims, the "Apostle of Denmark." From abroad too came other missionaries, and notable among them was another Englishman, Willehad of {142} Northumbria, who became in 788 the first bishop of Bremen. At last Christianity was, at least nominally, in possession from the Rhine to the Elbe, and in the words of Einhard "thus they were brought to accept the terms of the king, and thus they gave up their demon worship, renounced their national religious customs, embraced the Christian faith, received the divine sacraments, and were united with the Franks, forming one people."
Under Charles the organisation of the German Church, begun by Boniface, received a great extension. It was possible, after his death, to regard Germany as Christian and as organised in its religion on the lines of all the Western Churches.
[1] Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, v. 203.
[2] See p. 1-14.
[3] This seems to me the most probable date. Cf. Hauck, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, i. 448.
{143}