CRISTO RAUL.ORG ' |
THE UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY |
FROM JUSTINIAN TO LUTHER. AD 518-1517CHAPTER XV.TEUTONS, POLES, AND RUSSIANS
THE thirteenth and fourteenth centuries witnessed a
long struggle between the Germans and Swedes on the one side, and on the other
side, the races, both Indo-European and Ural-Altaic, that lived on their
frontiers. The Ural-Altaic people were the Livs and Ehsts,
relatives of the Finns. The Indo-Europeans were (1) the Slavonic Poles and
Pomeranians, and (2) the Lithuanians, Letts, and Old Prussians, three Baltic
races akin to the Slavs. The Slavs of Russia were inevitably affected, and the
Eastern Church no less than the Western was involved in the half-religious,
half-political movements of the time.
To spread Christianity among the heathen Letts, Livs,
and Ehsts, there was founded in 1202 a German Order
of the Knights of the Sword of Livonia, which was soon afterwards recognized by
Pope Innocent III. Missionaries sent by the Archbishop of Bremen had begun to
labor among the Livs and Ehsts by 1186, and in 1201 a
bishopric was established at Riga. The first missionary was an Augustinian
canon named Meinhard, but the Chapter of Riga was composed of
Premonstratensians. In 1255 Riga was made the seat of an archbishop, whose
province included the bishoprics of Kurland, Dorpat, and Oesel.
The Order of the Sword united with the Teutonic Order in 1237, but, unlike the
latter, it was under the feudal authority of the bishops of the province. The
result was that the Order of the Sword found itself engaged in constant
quarrels with the Archbishop of Riga, a town which became an important centre of trade between the Hanseatic towns in the West and
Novgorod and other Russian cities in the East. To the end of the Middle Ages
the bishops and the cathedral chapters were not Letts or Ehsts,
but Germans, and for this reason Lutheranism in the sixteenth century became,
and still remains, the religion of the majority of the people.
The Teutonic Order, or German Order of the Knights of
St. Mary's Hospital at Jerusalem, was one of the most characteristic creations
of the Middle Ages. It began as a philanthropic society, it became an
aristocratic club and a commercial partnership, and was finally metamorphosed
into a Protestant duchy. Its stormy career was started in 1190, when some good
German merchants, at the time of the siege of Acre, drew ashore a vessel which
they converted into a hospital ship. A few years later the brethren of the
German Hospital, now established at Jerusalem, were raised to the order of
knights, and from thenceforth only noblemen were admitted to its ranks. Unlike
the Order of the Templars, it was of a national character. It was essentially
German. For a hundred years its headquarters were at Acre, but as early as 1228
the Polish Duke of Masovia, Conrad, invited the knights to settle at Kulm and
aid him in subduing the heathen Prussians. They came and took a leading part in
the great struggle between the Teuton and the Slav, which has never really
ceased.
The Germans, farmers, merchants, and monks, had long
been spreading German civilization and religion between the Oder and the
Vistula, and their influence was extending into Bohemia and Poland. Missionary
work began in Prussia in 1206 under Abbot Gottfried of Stekno,
and was continued by a Cistercian named Christian, who in 1215 became Bishop of
Prussia under the jurisdiction of the See of Gnesen in Poland. The peaceful
penetration of the Gospel was soon combined with more violent measures.
Christian obtained the help of Conrad, and founded an order of knights to
conquer Prussia for the Church and for Masovia. He was not successful in his
crusades, and so the Teutonic Order was invoked, as we have noticed, and was
promised any territory that it might conquer. Fortresses were built at Thorn
and Elbing, Danzig and Konigsberg; Livonia was secured in 1237 and later Samogitia. Independent of all secular authority, the Order
also freed itself from all episcopal authority in 1234 by surrendering its
territories to the Pope and receiving them back again as a fief. The Grand
Master settled at Marienburg on the Vistula, where he held a splendid court.
Under him was a general chapter or advisory board. The Order comprised twenty
districts, each of which was under a commander. Each individual was entirely
subject to his superiors. The Church was identical with the State, and the
bishops and most of the canons belonged to the Order.
By the middle of the fourteenth century the wealth of
the Order, the brilliance of its court, and its spirit of chivalry and
adventure were renowned over the greater part of Europe, and Chaucer's perfect
knight is represented as having travelled in its borders. But the facts that
the Order was an Order of aliens, and that its military and commercial success
was more obvious than its piety, bred strife among its subjects at home.
Externally, the hideous cruelty shown by the knights towards the pagan Lithuanians
of Samogitia in 1378 was the immediate harbinger of
their downfall, and the conversion of Lithuania itself in 1386 deprived the
Order of any excuse for posing as a missionary power. The time for crusades was
over and gone.
Poland was slow in recovering from the military
defeats and pagan revival of the early half of the eleventh century. At the end
of the same century there was some improvement, and early in the twelfth
century, under Boleslav III, aided by St. Otto, Bishop of Bamberg, the heathen
Pomeranians under Polish rule were converted. A hundred years later Pomerania
was sufficiently powerful to assert its independence, and in 1241 the Tatar
savages appeared, defeated the Poles, burnt Cracow, invaded Silesia, and conquered
its princes, and then defeated the King of Hungary, Bela IV. The Tatar chief
Batu found his forces at last exhausted by their repeated victories, and he was
defeated by the Moravians at Olmütz. The result of the Tatar invasion of Poland
was to modify the whole future history of the country, though not in the same
way as the history of Russia was modified. The population was so greatly
diminished that it was necessary to invite foreigners to supply new blood for
the life of Poland. The Germans came to sell their goods and ply their crafts,
and, enjoying special privileges from the prince, they formed strong and
flourishing towns. There was another disastrous Tatar raid in 1259, and then
the Poles had to fight the Lithuanians. The ruin of the country seemed certain,
and the knights of the Teutonic Order were hastening that ruin until they were
defeated by Vladislav I at Plowce in 1332. His son
Casimir III (1333-1370) transformed the whole condition of affairs.
Far-sighted, persevering, and astute, he did not contest the rights which had
been secured by the nobility in the previous years of anarchy, but he covered
the country with a network of administration which secured justice for every
class. The poor were protected against aristocratic tyranny, order was
maintained in the towns, and military service was attached to the ownership of
property. The laws were codified and brigandage was suppressed. The cities of
Cracow, Posen, Lemberg (Lvov), and Lublin became rich and busy international
markets. The Jews, who had come northwards from the Adriatic and eastwards from
the Rhine, were under royal protection, and increased the wealth of the
country. Schools were multiplied as well as fortifications, and a university
was founded at Cracow under papal authority in 1364. Fine churches were erected
in a style akin to German Gothic. The official language of the State was Latin.
Casimir realized that he was not strong enough to
fight the Teutonic Order, and turned his attention to the Red Russians
(Ruthenians) of what is now the eastern part of Galicia. Once the cradle of the
Serbian and the Croatian peoples, it had come under Russia in the twelfth
century. The Russian authority waned and the people were threatened by Tatars,
Lithuanians, Hungarians, and Poles. In 1335 they chose to be under the Poles,
with whom they were far more closely connected than the rest. And though Casimir’s
right to rule Galicia was disputed, he maintained it successfully, and Polish
rule was established along the whole length of the river Vistula. The
establishment of Polish rule in Galicia was quickly followed by the
establishment of a Latin archbishopric at Galitch,
removed later to Lemberg, with suffragan sees at Przemysl, Chelm, and Vladimir,
a measure which bore bitter fruit in later days.
Lithuania has the distinction of being the last
country in Europe in which paganism was the official religion. This
Indo-European people, as fair as the Angles who attracted St. Gregory in Rome,
retained amid the forests and marshes near Vilna and Kovno a language which is
nearer to the Sanskrit than any other language in Europe, and a mythology which
has left deep traces in their songs and speech. In the thirteenth century they
were almost entirely cut off from access to the Baltic by the Teutonic Order and
the Order of the Sword, who first conquered and then colonized, with the result
that a strip of Germanized territory stretched from Danzig to Libau and
eastward beyond Riga. In the fourteenth century the Orders encountered a
valiant opposition from the Lithuanians, now an organized as well as
independent state. About a hundred years earlier their prince Mendovg, a cunning and valiant leader, had united his
people and had been baptized in 125o at Novgorod Litovsk, accepting a crown
from Pope Innocent IV. He thus checkmated the Teutonic Order by placing himself
under papal protection. As soon as he had gained sufficient influence among the
tribes nearest to the Lithuanians, he threw away the pretence of being a Christian and successfully attacked his German enemies (126o).
Internal wars followed, and he was killed in 1263.
Mendovg had retained and enlarged the authority which his father had exercised over the
neighboring branches of the Russian race. Gedymin (1316-1341) increased it,
gaining Pinsk, Grodno, Polotsk, and other districts,
and made an alliance with Poland against the Knights of the Sword of Livonia.
His sons Olgierd and Kiejstut were no less enterprising and showed remarkable
gifts of statecraft. Olgierd was a diplomatist in favor of union with Russia.
His wife was a Christian, and he himself was baptized according to the Eastern
Orthodox rite. Kiejstut was a pagan and a warrior, and engaged in constant wars
with Livonia. He and his brothers recognized the supremacy of Olgierd, and
Lithuania seemed likely to become one of the largest states in Europe. It
included many of the Tatars in the south, the White Russians of Vitebsk, Mohilev, and Minsk, and the Little Russians of Podolia,
Volhynia, and Kiev. Thus the Lithuanian princes, who actually used White
Russian as their official language, held possession of some of the most
hallowed Russian soil and were naturally regarded with fear and hatred by the
Russians of Moscow. The union of Poland and Lithuania was the result of their
common fear of the Teutonic Order.
The Teutonic knights, hoping to divide and conquer,
tried to estrange the two brothers, with the result that Kiejstut was murdered
in 1382. The Teutonic Order then set up his son Vitovt in opposition to Jagiello, who had succeeded his father Olgierd. Jagiello saw
his danger; he made peace with Vitovt and looked
towards Poland. After the death, in 1382, of Lewis, the successor of Casimir,
the Polish nobles proclaimed as their sovereign Jadviga (Hedwig) his younger
daughter. She was already betrothed to William, son of Leopold of Austria. But
the nobles, supported by the voice of the people, forced William to leave
Cracow and encouraged Jagiello the Grand Duke of Lithuania in his overtures for
the hand of Jadviga. The conditions necessary for their espousals were that he
should embrace the Catholic faith and recognize the rights of the Polish
nobility. He consented, and took the title of Vladislav II. The marriage took
place in 1386, although Jadviga had little desire to wed the ruler of the last
openly pagan country in Europe. But the Lithuanians, who had hated Christianity
as the German religion, were now ready to accept the faith, and in a few years
peaceful persuasion and encouragement did more for religion than the sword of
the Teutonic Order had accomplished in generations.
Jagiello staunchly supported the Church, and founded a
bishopric at Vilna. A plan of the city as it existed near this period shows an
Orthodox church and monastery, churches of the Franciscans and Dominicans, and
two heathen temples, one of which was on the site of the present cathedral.
While Lithuania was brought into a new and invigorating contact with
Christianity and civilization, Poland was immensely strengthened by its union
with a state far larger than itself, and became fitted for the high position
which it occupied in the sixteenth century. Cracow was not only a centre of art and learning, but also a centre of commerce, being situated between the East and the West and in touch with
Danzig, Moscow, Breslau, and Prague. And it enjoyed the steady patronage of the
kings of Poland, who for several generations were crowned and buried in the
cathedral church.
When Vitovt, in 1383, came
into possession of his father's dominions, he had by no means severed his
connection with the Teutonic Order. A capable ruler who did much for
Christianity in his own country, he conceived the grandiose design of annexing
a large part of Russia with the help of the Teutonic knights. To do this he
must beat the Tatars who still held sway over Russia. He met them in August
1399 at the battle of Voskla on the Lower Dnieper,
where the Lithuanians were crushed by hordes of Tatar warriors. Defeated but
not daunted, Vitovt saw the wisdom of a close
alliance with Poland. It was agreed that he should be recognized as the
independent Grand Duke of Lithuania, but that the two states should have a
common policy. The wisdom of this agreement was quickly proved. He was involved
in a series of wars with the Teutonic Order, and, stung by their savage methods
of 'converting' the Samogitians, he concluded a treaty with Jagiello in 1409
for the purpose of defeating them. The combined forces of the Lithuanians,
Poles, Ruthenians, White Russians, and Czechs met the Teutonic Order at
Tannenberg in July 141o, and inflicted on them a defeat so crushing that the
Order never recovered. It was only left in possession of East Prussia, and held
it as a vassal of Poland.
Vitovt's ecclesiastical affinities were wide and varied. Although his success at
Tannenberg was won with the help of Hussite auxiliaries from Bohemia, he was
duly respected at Rome as a commanding personality who had actively promoted
Christianity within his own dominions. He had given his daughter in marriage to
Basil, Grand Duke of Muscovy, and his subjects were to a large extent members
of the Eastern Church. Kiev, the holy city of Russia, which had been for eighty
years (1240-132o) in the hands of the Mongols, formed part of his dominions,
and he promoted a learned Bulgarian named Tsamblak to
this important see. At one time it seemed likely that his opposition to the
Germans would lead him to oppose their form of Christianity and so gratify the
national and religious sentiments of his subjects.
Jagiello and his Polish aristocracy had not the least
desire to support such a policy. The Poles would not break with a Church to
which they owed so much. The connection between Rome and Poland was close and
honorable. Not only had Cistercians, Dominicans, and Franciscans labored for
the conversion and edification of the people, and papal legates frequently
visited the country, but the clergy had really served the interests of the
humbler classes and even protected them from the Teutonic knights. The Poles therefore
could neither break with Rome nor take a step which would imply that Poland was
to follow the lead of Lithuania. The solidarity of the two states was cemented
by the Union of Horodlo in 1413, which modeled the
constitution of Lithuania after that of Poland. Lithuania thus became a
vanguard of the Western Church, and Poland became unhappily involved in the
hostility between Lithuania and Moscow, a misfortune which one day was to cost
Poland her independence.
The history of Russia from the thirteenth to the
fifteenth century is very unlike the history of Poland. It is a tale of sorrow
and struggling until the little state of Muscovy became a powerful
principality, and emerged from the tutelage of Tatar Muslims into the rank of
the chief protector of Orthodox Christianity. If early Russia was to some
extent bound together by the ascendancy of Kiev, that unity was shattered by
the 'terrible strangers' who poured into the country early in the thirteenth
century. The former home of their leaders had been Mongolia, and they were
known as the 'Golden Horde'. They were pagans, practicing the crude necromantic
Shamanism which still lingers among the Tatars of Siberia, but they adopted
Islam in 1272. They built for themselves on the Lower Volga a capital called
Sarai, and held Russia in subjection for nearly three centuries. It was a
broken and mutilated Russia. The Baltic provinces were taken and colonized by
the Teutonic Order. And the more western Russians, the Red Russians, the Little
Russians, and the White Russians, came under the power of Lithuania, and
through Lithuania came into contact with Poland. They became more progressive
than the people of central Russia and more amenable to Western culture and
religion.
The real Russia was a region which had been
comparatively recently colonized by the Russian people. It included the four
principalities of Riazan, Tver, Suzdal, and Moscow. For a time, however, a more
northerly city, Great Novgorod, where the primitive vikings had settled, was
the most important centre of Russian life. Here the
great national hero of Russia, St. Alexander Nevski,
became ruler as a mere boy in 1228. A contemporary of the Tatar invasion he was
forced into constant wars with the Germans, Swedes, and Lithuanians, who,
trying to profit by the arrival of the Tatars, were eager to take Novgorod and
Pskov from the harassed Russians. He won his title of conqueror of the Neva by
defeating the Swedes on the bank of that river in 124o. Two years later he
recovered Pskov from the Teutonic Order. Appointed by the Grand Khan to rule
first in Kiev and Novgorod, and afterwards in Vladimir, he devoted himself to
the amelioration of the lot of the Russians under Tatar rule. He journeyed to
Sarai and obtained both a mitigation of the tribute exacted from the Russians
and their exemption from military service under the Tatars. He died on his way
home in 1263, and was canonized for his devotion to his people and his Church.
The struggle with the Swedes continued after his death and was not ended until
1323, when the Swedes were left in possession of the territory of Abo, their centre in Finland, and the Russians finally secured the
land around the site of the future city of St. Petersburg.
One of the most touching stories in the history of
Christendom is told in connection with a visit which Alexander Nevski paid to the Golden Horde. The Tatars, not intolerant
towards Christianity, were determined that he should show his respect for their
religious susceptibilities by doing obeisance to one of their idols. The
alternative was the devastation of his country. Alexander was therefore faced
with a cruel dilemma. If he complied with the demand of his pagan masters, he
believed that he would lose his own soul. If he refused, he knew that his
people would be exposed to the horrors of massacre and starvation. But he
decided to yield, willing to be, in the words of St. Paul, 'accursed from
Christ for his brethren'. He bowed himself down before the Shamanist idol and
was allowed to depart in peace, but with the conviction that he had paid the
utmost that man could ever pay for his fellow men.
Although Novgorod and its famous churches had escaped
devastation at the hands of the Tatars, it was Moscow and not Novgorod that
secured precedence among the rival Russian principalities. It was surrounded by Riazan, Tver, and Suzdal, but, instead of being smothered by its neighbors,
it gradually became their master. Not only did the representatives of the
princely line possess a rare degree of perseverance, but they turned to their
own advantage their subjection to the khans of the Golden Horde. The conquerors
lived in their own camps, and were tolerant so long as their vassals were
submissive and paid a regular tribute. The mere fact that Moscow seemed
insignificant inspired them with confidence in the Muscovite. The princes
levied the taxes for the Golden Horde, kept peace at home, erected a new and
pliant aristocracy, and attracted a loyal and contented population. They never
hurried. They bought, they took, and, if absolutely necessary, they fought; and
by the time of Ivan Kalita (1328-1341) their territory had increased sixfold
and their commercial relations soon extended from England to the Crimea.
The princes, now 'Grand Princes', were staunch allies
of the Church. The metropolitans kept the old title of Metropolitan of Kiev,
though they began to live in Moscow. One of them, Peter, travelled to the
Golden Horde in 1313 and obtained from Usbek a
document which exempted from taxation all priests with their families and
property. Ivan Kalita met him at the court of the Khan and brought him to
Moscow, where the next metropolitan permanently installed himself (1328). Side
by side with the hierarchy were numerous monks and hermits, who exercised a
deep influence over the common people. They acted as pioneers of civilization
almost unawares. After Suzdal had been submerged by
the Tatars, the hermits were the first to resume the work of colonization. They
made their homes in desolate places, the faithful visited their cells as the
faithful in earlier ages had visited the cells or pillars where the ancient
hermits of the desert worked and taught. Walls were built, near the shelter of
which the peasants began to settle, markets were founded. Thus the monks took
possession of the basin of the Volga and the coast of the White Sea.
In Russia, as in Western Europe, the monks played an
important part in missionary work among the heathen. St. Stephen, Bishop of
Perm, was born in the remote district of which he was to be the evangelist and
the bishop. A zealous student in the monastery of St. Gregory at Rostov, he
spent thirteen years in preparing himself to teach the barbarous people whose
language he had acquired in his youth. He learnt Greek in order to make better
translations of sacred books, and he reduced the language of Perm to writing.
He preached the Gospel, confounded the magicians, destroyed idols, and taught
young converts how to be the teachers and priests of a native Church. He was
consecrated bishop in 1383, and devoted himself to both the material and the
spiritual welfare of his flock, defending them against the oppression of their
Russian rulers. He died at Moscow in 1396, a worthy forerunner of the Russian
missionaries who labored among the Tatars and the Japanese in modern days.
A contemporary of St. Stephen of Perm was St. Sergius
(d. 1392). He was the founder of the Troitsa (Trinity) monastery, forty miles from Moscow, a place which continued to our
own day to be visited by princes and peasants, and was a focus of Russian faith
and patriotism. In the troublous days of the seventeenth century the Troitsa monastery became for a time the very heart of the
movement which rescued Russia from the Poles. It would be difficult to
exaggerate the influence exercised by the great Russian monasteries where
pilgrims flocked to pray at the shrines of departed founders and patriots.
It was St. Sergius who gave his blessing to Dmitri Donskol, to whom the Tatar khan had granted the title of
Grand Prince at the request of the Duma, or senate of nobles. Dmitri (d. 1389)
pursued a policy more adventurous and heroic than his predecessors. He
determined to subdue the Russians of Tver and Riazan, who became the allies of the Lithuanians and the
Golden Horde, with the result that Dmitri appeared as the champion of Orthodoxy
against Muslims and Latins. He sent an army against Kazan and crushed the Tatar
forces. All eastern and southern Russia then hoped that the dawn of their
deliverance had come. The Tatars, seeing their danger, brought up a huge army
to the plain of Kulikovo on September the 8th, the
Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, 1380. They were brilliantly defeated by
Dmitri, who prevented a junction of the Tatar and Lithuanian armies and took
the victory out of their hands by ordering a concealed body of cavalry to
charge at the critical moment. The people hailed Dmitri by the title of conqueror
of the Don (Donskol). But their joy was soon turned
to sorrow. The Golden Horde was reorganized by Tokhtamych,
and the Tatars, reinforced from the wilds of Asia, burnt Moscow and massacred
its inhabitants. Dmitri in one sense failed; but linked with his failure was
success, for the memory of Kulikovo served to remind
the people that they had conquered, and might still conquer, their alien
rulers.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century Muscovy was
slowly beginning to recover. A period of savage strife between the different
members of the princely family followed under Basil III (1425-1462). But in the
year that Constantinople fell Basil's supremacy was absolutely safe, and he was
left as the sole sovereign who could succeed to the Greek emperors as the chief
layman in the Orthodox Eastern Church (1453). Throughout the period which we
have just reviewed the Muscovite rulers had done much to secure this heritage
for their throne. In the days of St. Alexander Nevski,
Pope Innocent IV endeavored to gain a recognition of his supremacy from the
ruler of Muscovy, but the Russian replied that he preferred to abide by the
Holy Scriptures and the Ecumenical Councils. The attachment of Poland and
Lithuania to Rome strengthened the antipathy of Russia to the papacy, an
antipathy which declared itself very plainly after the Council of Florence,
which was held to promote union between East and West at a time when the Turk
was almost at the gates of Constantinople.
CHAPTER XVI.
LATER MEDIEVAL PIETY
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