BOOK VI.

FROM THE DEPOSITION OF POPE GREGORY VI. TO THE DEATH
OF POPE CELESTINE III, A.D. 1046-1198.
 

CHAPTER XI.

THE GREEK CHURCH—SPAIN—BRITISH CHURCHES—THE NORTH—MISSIONS.

 

THE Greek Church of the twelfth century hardly requires notice, except in so far as it was brought into contact with the Christians of the West. Its state was generally one of torpor. The clergy were held in strict subjection by the secular power, so that a patriarch, on attempting to withdraw a monk from secular judgment, was met by the declaration that “the emperor’s authority can do everything”. They were devoted to a system of forms which in great part had lost their significance. Among the monks there was very commonly a forgetfulness of the true meaning of their profession; yet there was much of fantastic asceticism, as among the dendrites or tree-monks, the pillar-monks (who, however, were not so called from living on the tops of pillars, like the stylites of earlier days, but from inhabiting narrow pillar­like cells, or from carrying little columns as a burden), the fanatics who buried their living bodies in the earth, and those who aimed at sanctity by a profession of more than the ordinary monastic filthiness. The Gnosimachi denounced all endeavour after knowledge in religion, on the ground that God requires nothing of man but good works, and prefers simplicity to curiosity. And while among the people there lingered, by the side of their Christianity, much of uneradicated heathen super­stition, there were some who, by the study of classical literature, were led back into an adoption of the old pagan creed. Thus we are told of an Italian named John, who in the reign of Alexius Comnenus became popular as a professor at Constantinople, and taught the transmigration of souls, and the Platonic doctrine of ideas. One of this man's disciples is said to have thrown himself into the sea, exclaiming, "Receive me, O Poseidon!". But the teacher himself, after having been subjected to the pressure of both ecclesiastical and imperial authority, consented to renounce his errors.

Those revivals and reformations of monachism which were continually renewed in the West had no parallel in the Greek church, where the only measures of reform were the occasional attempts of the emperors to recall the monks to their spiritual duties by means which had very much the nature of confiscation. Thus Manuel found fault with his predecessors for having enriched monasteries with lands, and revived an edict of Nicephorus Phocas against such endowments. And in order to exemplify what monachism ought to be, if freed from secular business, he removed a number of the best monks from the “Siren-like” temptations of Constantinople to a monastery which he had built in the gorges of Pontus—allowing them merely a sufficient supply for the necessities of food and clothing.

Yet it deserves to be mentioned, to the credit of the age, that under the Comnenian emperors a spirit of learning revived. A college of twelve professors presided over the studies of Constantinople, both in general literature and in theology : and the Greek church of the eleventh and twelfth centuries was adorned, if not by any original genius, yet by the industry and knowledge of such writers as the commentator Theophylact, Nicetas, bishop of Chonae or Colosse, Nicolas, bishop of Methone, Euthymius Zigadenus, Michael Psellus the younger, and Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica.

The imperial system had a tendency to encroach on the province of theology, and this was especially dangerous under those emperors who supposed themselves to be skilled in theological questions. They were not, says Nicetas, content to enjoy the pomps of empire, with the unrestrained power and privileges of despotism, unless they were also supposed to be, like Solomon, heaven-taught authorities on things divine and human. Thus, as we shall see hereafter, Alexius I disputed with the Paulicians and with the Bogomiles. His grandson Manuel, in addition to his warlike talents, was possessed of eloquence and literary accomplishments, and although he is charged with adultery, and even with incest, was especially fond of mixing in theological controversies. One of those in which he took part related to a passage in the public liturgy, where Christ was said to be at once priest and sacrifice. After much discussion, the emperor was persuaded to give his adhesion to the form, and many eminent ecclesiastics who took the opposite side were deprived. At another time Manuel started a question as to the words, “My Father is greater than I”, which he maintained to relate to the Saviour’s created humanity alone. A third question arose out of the emperor’s requiring the withdrawal of an anathema against the God of Mahomet from the catechetical tables. The patriarch Theodosius replied that the anathema was not directed against the true God, but against the imaginary deity whom Mahomet described as “neither begetter nor begotten, but holosphyrous”. On this the emperor drew up a form which he violently required the clergy to subscribe—threatening them with a council to which the pope of Rome should be invited; and some of them, among whom Eustathius of Thessalonica was conspicuous, were in danger on account of their opposition. But at length the matter was compromised by the subscription of an anathema against Mahomet with “all his doctrine and succession”. A later emperor, Andronicus, was so far from sharing in Manuel’s theological tastes that, on hearing a discussion as to the words “My Father is greater than I”, he threatened to throw the disputants into the river.

From time to time attempts were made to bring about a reconciliation between the Greek and the Latin churches. The council of Bari, under Urban II, at which Anselm of Canterbury played the principal part, has been already mentioned. In 1112 Paschal sent Peter Chrysolanus or Grosolanus, the dispossessed archbishop of Milan, to Constantinople, for the purpose of discussing the points of difference, and in 1115 the same pope addressed to the emperor Alexius a proposal for another conference, but with the unacceptable condition that the primacy of Rome should be acknowledged in all things. About the year 1135, Anselm, bishop of Havelberg, who had been sent by Lothair III as ambassador to the emperor John, engaged in discussions with Nicetas, bishop of Nicomedia, and one of the twelve principal teachers of Constantinople and in 1150, at the request of Eugenius III, he drew up a report of the conference. The chief points debated were the procession of the Holy Ghost, the use of leavened or unleavened bread in the Eucharist, and the authority of the Roman see. On the first of these the disputants appear to have approached to an agreement by means of mutual explanations. On the question of the papacy, Nicetas is represented as strongly protesting against the Roman pretensions and he proposed a general council as the most hopeful means towards a reconciliation. Although Anselm’s report of the arguments is naturally favourable to the author and his cause, the Greek champion is allowed to acquit himself creditably; and they parted with expressions of mutual respect. Another discussion was held at Constantinople about 1179, by Hugh Eterianus, a Tuscan, whose conduct in it was approved by Alexander III; a Greek abbot named Nectarius maintained the Greek views at the Lateran synod of 1119, and on his return was hailed “like another Olympian victor”; and the subject of reunion often engaged the attention of the popes. But on the whole, the increasing claims of Rome, the invasion of the East by Latin patriarchs, bishops, and clergy, the collisions between the eastern and the western churches which took place in the crusades, and other political causes, contributed to render the Greeks less and less favourable to such proposals; and the massacre of the Latins under Andronicus was at once a fearful proof of the bitter feeling with which they were regarded by the Greeks, and a pledge of further hostilities.

The Nestorians continued to carry on their missionary work in the East, although the successes which they claimed may in many cases have been only nominal. About the middle of the eleventh century stories began to be circulated in Europe as to a Christian nation of north-eastern Asia, whose sovereign was at the same time king and priest, and was known by the name of Prester John. Amid the mass of fables with which the subject is encumbered, it would seem to be certain that, in the very beginning of the century, the khan of the Kerait, a tribe whose chief seat was at Karakorum, between Lake Baikal and the northern frontier of China, was converted to Nestorian Christianity—it is said, through the appearance of a saint to him when he had lost his way in hunting. By means of conversation with Christian merchants, he acquired some elementary knowledge of the faith, and, on the application of Ebed-Jesu, metropolitan of Maru, to the Nestorian patriarch Gregory, clergy were sent, who baptized the king and his subjects, to the number of 200,000. Ebed-Jesu consulted the patriarch how the fasts were to be kept, since the country did not afford any corn, or anything but flesh and milk; and the answer was, that, if no other Lenten provisions were to be had, milk should be the only diet for seasons of abstinence.

The earliest western notice of this nation is given by Otho of Freising, from the relation of an Armenian bishop who visited the court of pope Eugenius III. This report is largely tinctured with fable, and deduces the Tartar chiefs descent from the Magi who visited the Saviour in His cradle. It would seem that the Nestorians of Syria, for the sake of vying with the boasts of the Latins, delighted in inventing tales as to the wealth, the splendour, and the happiness of their convert’s kingdom; and to them is probably to be ascribed an extravagantly absurd letter, in which Prester John is made to dilate on the greatness and the riches of his dominions, the magnificence of his state and the beauty of his wives, and to offer the Byzantine emperor, Manuel, if he be of the true faith, the office of lord chamberlain in the court of Karakorum. In 1177 Alexander III was induced by reports which a physician named Philip had brought back from Tartary, as to Prester John’s desire to be received into communion with the pope, to address a letter to the king, recommending Philip as a religious instructor. But nothing is known as to the result of this; and in 1202 the Kerait kingdom was overthrown by the Tartar conqueror Genghis Khan.

In explanation of the story as to the union of priesthood with royalty in Prester John, many theories have been proposed, of which two may be mentioned here : that it arose out of the fact of a Nestorian priest’s having got possession of the kingdom on the death of a khan; or that, the Tartar prince's title being compounded of the Chinese wang (king) and the Mongol Khan, the first of these words was confounded by the Nestorians of Syria with the name John, and the second with cohen (a priest).

 

AFFAIRS OF SPAIN

 

Among the triumphs of Gregory VII was the submission of the Spanish church, which had until then been independent, and had looked to no higher authority than the primate of Toledo. The Spanish kings were induced to favour this submission by the wish to ally themselves with the rest of Christendom, as a means of strength against their unbelieving neighbours; and it was forwarded by the influence of many Frenchmen who had been promoted to ecclesiastical dignities in Spain. In consequence of the union, Gregory wrote to Alfonso VI of Castile and to Sancho of Aragon, exhorting them to adopt the Roman ritual as a symbol of unity; and it is said that Alfonso referred the question to an ordeal, by setting up champions to fight for the Roman and the Mozarabic liturgies respectively. The national champion was victorious, and this result was hailed with great delight by the people; but Alfonso, at his queen's instigation, declared that the decision must be made by fire, and the rival books were placed on a blazing pile, from which the Mozarabic office leaped out unhurt, while the Roman or Gallican was consumed. But, says the chronicler who relates this, “Laws go as kings will”, and notwithstanding its double victory, the national liturgy was abolished, except in a few monasteries. On the recovery of Toledo from the Saracens by Alfonso, Urban II  bestowed on that city the primacy over all Spain, which it had enjoyed under the Gothic kings; but the other Spanish metropolitans contested this primacy until the Lateran council of 1215.

The popes further interfered in the Spanish peninsula by acknowledging Portugal as an independent kingdom, under the especial protection of the Roman see, and professing to grant the kings a right over all that they might be able to rescue from the Saracens. In consideration of the connection with Rome, an annual tribute was paid to St. Peter's successors.

 

ENGLAND. REIGN OF STEPHEN.

 

In 1125 England was visited by a legate, John of Crema, cardinal of St. Chrysogonus, whose exactions and insolence excited general disgust. The primate, William of Corboyl, feeling himself injured by the precedence which this legate, although only a priest, assumed over archbishops and bishops, accompanied him on his return to Rome, with a view of vindicating the rights of his see; and the matter was accommodated by the pope's bestowing on the archbishop, for his own person, a commission as ordinary legate in England. William of Corboyl, in 1135, sanctioned the usurpation of the crown by Stephen; and it was remarked as a sign of the Divine displeasure that he died within a year. During the troubles of Stephen's reign much invasion of ecclesiastical and monastic property took place. Churches were burnt or were converted into fortresses, and the wealth of monasteries was violently plundered by the irregularly-paid mercenaries who held the country in terror. “Never yet had more wretchedness been in the land”, says the Saxon chronicler, in his striking description of the miseries of Stephen’s reign, “nor did heathen men ever do worse than they did; for everywhere at times they forbore neither church nor church­yard, but took all the property that was therein, and then burned the church and all together. Nor forbore they a bishop’s land, nor an abbot’s, nor a priest’s, but robbed monks and clerks, and every man another, who any­where could. The bishops and clergy constantly cursed them, but nothing came of it; for they were all accursed, and forsworn, and lost”. But on the other hand, the clergy were in such times a body whose support could not but be very valuable; and thus they were able to increase their privileges and their power. Henry, bishop of Winchester and brother of the king, had obtained the office of legate after archbishop William, and was the most powerful member of the episcopate, while he was devoted to high hierarchical principles. It is said that he had a design of erecting his see into an archbishopric, with seven suffragans and Stephen, although greatly indebted to him for assistance at the outset of his reign, found it necessary to balance the legate’s power by promoting Theobald, abbot of Le Bec, to Canterbury; whereupon Henry in disgust transferred himself to the party of the legitimate claimant of the kingdom, Matilda, daughter of Henry I, and widow of the emperor Henry V, pretending, at an assembly of the clergy in 1141, that the right of electing a sovereign belonged chiefly to that order. The new primate found himself greatly embarrassed by the position of the legate, who, although his own suffragan, claimed authority over him, and presided at councils as his superior, until Lucius II, on succeeding to the papacy, instead of renewing the bishop of Winchester's legation, gave Theobald a commission by which the archbishop of Canterbury for the time being was appointed legatus natus of the pope. By these legatine commissions the English church was brought into more direct connection with Rome; and it is to the time of Henry of Winchester’s legation that the frequency, if not the origin, of appeals from England to the pope is traced.

In the beginning of Stephen’s reign, the bishops, on swearing fealty to him, “so long as he should preserve the liberty of the church, and the rigour of discipline”, had exacted from him an oath that he would redress the grievances which had been inflicted on the Church by Henry I, with a very full assurance of privileges and immunities; but these promises were ill observed. The clergy, however, continued to make good their interest. When the bishops of Ely, Lincoln, and Salisbury had built themselves strong castles, which they held out against the king, Henry of Winchester, as legate, declared that these prelates ought not to be liable to any other than ecclesiastical judgment. The archbishop of Rouen maintained that, if bishops were allowed to possess castles, the king ought, as in other countries, to hold the keys, and to have the right of entering. But Stephen, in fear of Matilda’s growing power, submitted to appear by proxy when summoned before a council for his treatment of the three bishops, and did penance in obedience to its sentence.

The relations between Stephen and Theobald became less friendly than they had been at first. At the instance, it is said, of his brother, who had again changed sides, the king forbade the archbishop to attend the council held by Eugenius III at Reims in 1148. Theobald, however, resolved to disregard this; and, as the coasts were guarded, he crossed the sea in a small open boat. He was welcomed by the pope with the remark that he “had come rather by swimming than by sailing”; but on attempting to return, he was met by a sentence of banishment and confiscation, to which he replied by pronouncing an interdict. In 1152 the primate was again embroiled with the king, in consequence of having refused to crown his son Eustace; but peace was restored by the death of Eustace, and by the arrangement which secured the reversion of the crown to Henry II, the son of Matilda.

 

SCOTLAND—ST. MARGARET.

 

In Scotland the church was led during this time to discard the peculiarities of its earlier system, and was gradually assimilated to the church of southern Britain—chiefly through the influence of the Cistercians and of the Augustinian canons. The beginning of this change is ascribed to the influence of the English princess Margaret, sister of Edgar Atheling, wife of Malcolm Canmore, and mother of David I of Scotland and of “Maud the Good”, the first wife of Henry Beauclerc. Margaret’s piety, charity, and ascetic life are celebrated with enthusiasm by her confessor and biographer, Turgot, a monk of Durham and afterwards bishop of St. Andrew’s. She built churches, redeemed captives, and provided hospitals for the use of pilgrims. Her husband's affection for her was unbounded; in token of it we are told that, although himself unable to read, he used to handle her books with interest, to kiss those which he observed that she loved most, and sometimes to surprise her by presenting her with one of her favourite volumes in a new and splendid binding. Under Margaret’s influence the Celtic element was depressed in Scotland, while the court took an English tone and character. Councils were assembled for the reformation of the church; and at one of these it is said that Margaret, almost unaided except by the presence and countenance of the king, who acted as interpreter, maintained for three days, with “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”, the cause of opposition to the usages or abuses which prevailed in Scotland. The beginning of Lent had been reckoned forty days before Easter, without excepting Sundays; communion, even at Easter, had been disused, even by the clergy, who alleged that they were unworthy to receive the sacrament; and marriages had been allowed which the general law of the church denounced as incestuous. Against these and other irregularities Margaret contended, and she succeeded in doing away with them.

To this time is also referred the more thorough and regular division of the country into dioceses, which seems to have been in progress from the reign of Malcolm Canmore (A.D. 1057-93) to that of David I (A.D. 1124­54), whose munificence in the endowment of bishoprics and abbeys has earned him the zealous praise of the monastic writers, and has not wanted defenders in later times against those who have censured it as tending to the impoverishment of the crown and the oppressive taxation of the people. Nor did David, who had been educated in the English court, neglect, in his care for religion, to use other means of advancing the civilization of his subjects, who, notwithstanding the influence of many English and Norman settlers, were generally in a very rude condition. Among other changes which took place during this period may be mentioned the extinction of the ancient order of clergy styled Culdees, who, although not without a struggle, were superseded by canons living under the same rules as those of other western churches.

After the death of bishop Turgot, in 1115, a remarkable case of difference took place as to the see of St. Andrews, which had by this time become the seat of the primacy, so that its bishops were styled bishops or arch­bishops “of the Scots”. Alexander I of Scotland applied to Ralph, archbishop of Canterbury, on the ground that the bishops of St. Andrews had always been consecrated either by the archbishop of Canterbury or by the pope, until Lanfranc allowed them for a time to be consecrated at York. The vacancy continued until 1120, when Alexander again wrote to the archbishop, requesting that Edmer, the monk of Canterbury to whom we are chiefly indebted for the knowledge of St. Anselm's life and character, should be allowed to accept the see; and to this Ralph assented, and obtained the consent of Henry I. But after Edmer had been invested, although he was not yet consecrated, a serious disagreement arose. The Scottish king, who had intended nothing more than to evade the claims of York, was disgusted at finding that the monk asserted the title of Canterbury to jurisdiction over all Britain. Edmer, on the other hand, declared that he would not, for St. Andrews or for all Scotland, give up his connection with Canterbury; and, although a friend named Nicolas advised him to solve the difficulty by seeking consecration from the pope, it seemed to Edmer that all hope of usefulness in the northern church was shut out by his difference with the king. He therefore returned the episcopal ring to Alexander, laid his cross on the altar from which he had taken it, and returned to England. Robert, prior of Scone, an Englishman by birth, who was appointed in his stead, refused to profess obedience to York so long as Alexander lived: but after the king's death he submitted to be consecrated by archbishop Thurstan, with the understanding that there should be no prejudice to the rights of either see.

The claims of the see of York to jurisdiction over Scotland—claims which had no real foundation except in so far as concerned that part of Scotland which had formerly been within the Northumbrian kingdom—were now renewed and kept up, chiefly perhaps with a view of counterbalancing the increased greatness of the southern metropolitan. But as to the details of this question, there is a difference between the English and the Scottish writers, as the ancient chronicles of Scotland have perished, and the later Scottish authors charge the English chroniclers not only with falsehood but with forgery. On a vacancy in the see of Glasgow, the archdeacon Ingelram, having been sent by Malcolm IV to Alexander III, was consecrated by him at Sens, notwithstanding the opposition of envoys from the archbishop of York, and returned with an acknowledgment that the Scottish church was exempt from all jurisdiction except that of the pope. In 1175, according to the English writers, when William of Scotland had been taken prisoner at Alnwick, his bishops and abbots swore at York that they would pay such submission as was due and customary to the see of York, and that the bishops of Scotland should repair to that archbishop for consecration. But at a meeting at Northampton in the following year, under the legate Uguccio Pierleone, the Scottish bishops denied that there had ever been, either by right or in fact, any such subjection as was claimed. Roger of York produced documents in proof that the bishops of Candida Casa (Whitherne) and Glasgow had formerly been subject to York; but, fortunately for the Scots, a dispute arose between the two English archbishops as to the claims of their sees over Scotland, and the matter remained undecided. Both parties appealed to Rome, and in 1176 Vivian, cardinal of St. Stephen’s on the Caelian (who had formerly been employed as a commissioner in the differences between Henry II and Becket), was sent as legate into Scotland, where he is described by the Melrose chronicler as “treading down and breaking to pieces all that fell in his way—alert to take, and not slow to seize”. The bishop of Whitherne declined the legate’s summons to a council, on the ground that he was subject to the see of York; and a war of ecclesiastical censures followed, without any decisive result. Shortly after this a dispute arose as to the appointment of a bishop of St. Andrews, which brought the Scottish king into collision with the archbishop of York and with the pope. Roger of York, who had received a commission as legate for Scotland, issued a sentence of excommunication and interdict in 1181; but after the death of this turbulent prelate the question was settled by an arrangement favourable to William, who was absolved by Lucius III in 1182, and obtained from Clement III and Celestine III an acknowledgment of the freedom of the Scottish church from all jurisdiction but that of the pope himself or of legates specially commissioned by him.

 

IRELAND. MALACHY OF ARMAGH

             

In Ireland also this period is marked, even more strongly than in Scotland, by changes which obliterated the ancient peculiarities of the church, and reduced it under the same power which had mastered the rest of western Christendom. We have already seen that the Danes who had established themselves in that country were led, on embracing the Christian faith, to seek their pastors, not from among the natives whom they had dispossessed, but from their own Norman kindred who had become masters of England. It was to the archbishops of Canterbury that the bishops of the Danish cities, Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford, repaired for consecration, and made profession of canonical obedience; and these bishops, although sometimes of Irish birth, were generally persons who had been trained in English monasteries. The connection thus begun, although at first it reached no further than England, could not fail in time to bring the Irish church into new relations with Rome.

A letter in which Gregory VII appears as addressing the Irish king Torlogh, and claiming Ireland for the Roman see, would seem to have had no effect. But in the beginning of the next century, Gille or Gilbert, bishop of Limerick (who had known Anselm as abbot of Le Bec, and had renewed his intercourse with him by letters after the conclusion of his struggle with Henry I), received a commission as legate for Ireland, perhaps through Anselm’s influence with the pope. As legate he presided over a synod at Rathbreasil, at which his influence was successfully exerted in favour of Roman customs. Ireland was to be portioned out into regular dioceses, instead of having bishops unlimited in number and without local jurisdiction; and the form of discipline and divine service was to be reduced to the Roman model—an object which Gille had before endeavoured to promote by a treatise which is still extant. It is not to be wondered at that the clergy in general were glad, in the fearful miseries of their country, to catch at any scheme which appeared to promise strength to the Church; yet it would seem that Gille’s Romanizing policy was not universally acceptable.

In this policy Gille was followed by Maolmaodhog or Malachy, whose fame has been greatly enhanced by the circumstance that St. Bernard became his biographer. Malachy, of whom Bernard says that he was no more affected by the barbarism of his nation than fishes are by the saltiness of the sea, was born about the year 1095 at Armagh, where his father, an ecclesiastic, was chief lecturer. After having acted as vicar under Kellach (or Celsus), archbishop of Armagh, he was consecrated to the see of Connor in 1125. “But”, says the biographer, “when he began to perform the duties of his office, then the man of God came to understand that he had been destined not to men but to beasts. Nowhere had he yet experienced such people, so shameless as to manners, so savage as to rites, so impious as to faith, so barbarous as to laws, so stiff-necked as to discipline, so filthy as to life”. But by the zealous labours of Malachy, who went throughout his diocese on foot, “distributing even to the ungrateful the measure of heavenly wheat”, we are told that “their hardness ceased, their barbarism was stilled; the barbaric laws were done away with, the Roman were introduced; everywhere the customs of the Church were received, and those contrary to them were rejected; churches were rebuilt, and clergy were ordained in them”.

In 1127 Celsus of Armagh on his death-bed recommended Malachy as his successor. But for five years the new bishop was kept out by Murtogh, a layman of a family which for fifteen successions had occupied the temporalities of the see—the last eight holders having moreover been married men; and, after Murtogh’s death, he had for two years longer to encounter the opposition of one Niall, whose influence among the Irish was rendered formidable by the possession of the episcopal insignia. At length Malachy obtained peaceable possession of the see; and he then insisted on fulfilling a resolution that, whenever this should be achieved, he would resign. Returning to his old diocese of Connor, he restored the ancient division of it into two, and chose for himself the inferior of these, the bishopric of Down. Here he laboured with the same zeal and energy which he had displayed elsewhere—preaching, hearing confessions, founding monasteries, and endeavouring to enforce the observance of the regular hours and manner of psalmody, which in Ireland had hitherto been unknown beyond the monasteries.

The government of the church was still but imperfectly organized. The see of Armagh had retained a superiority in consideration of its connexion with St. Patrick; but there were no regular archbishops in other sees, and Malachy resolved to remedy the defect by asking for palls in favour of Armagh and the newly-founded see of Cashel. It was not without much difficulty that the Irish nobles and clergy would allow him to set out for Rome : but after lots had been thrice cast, and always with a result in favour of the expedition, their consent could not be withheld. At Rome he was received with great honour by Innocent II, who bestowed on him the legatine commission which Gille had resigned on account of age and infirmity. The pope also confirmed the archiepiscopal dignity of Cashel; but, in answer to Malachy’s proposal as to the palls, he said that it was a matter to be managed with greater solemnity—that an application ought to be made for them by a national council of bishops, clergy, and nobles. Malachy requested the pope's leave to become a monk at Clairvaux, which he had visited on his way to Rome; but was told that he must continue his more active labours. On his journey homewards he again visited the abbey, where he left some of his companions for instruction; and by these, and some of Bernard’s disciples who accompanied them on their return, the Cistercian order was introduced into Ireland.

Malachy carried out his legation rigidly as to the enforcement of the Roman usages, while in his personal habits he still retained his original simplicity and severity. But it would seem that Pope Innocent's caution as to the palls was borne out by the actual result—that the legate found his countrymen reluctant to submit to such an acknowledgment of the Roman superiority; for he allowed the matter to rest for several years. At length, in 1148, he resolved to take advantage of Pope Eugenius’s visit to France for the purpose of renewing his suit, in the hope that his friendship with St. Bernard might recommend it to a pontiff who had formerly been a monk of Clairvaux. The consent of an Irish council was obtained, although it was again with difficulty that Malachy was allowed to go abroad in person. In passing through England he was delayed by the suspicions of King Stephen, who had forbidden that any bishop should be allowed to embark for the continent; and thus he was unable to reach Clairvaux until the pope had already returned to Rome. He was received at Clairvaux, says St. Bernard, “like a real dayspring from on high visiting us”; but soon after his arrival he fell ill, and on All-Souls' day 1148 he died in the arms of the abbot—in the place which he had desired, and on the day which he had foretold.

It would seem that, notwithstanding Malachy’s death, the application of which he had been the bearer reached the pope; and in 1152 a cardinal-legate, John Paparo, held a synod at Kells, where palls were bestowed, not only on the archbishops of Armagh and Cashel, but also on those of Dublin and Tuam. “And this”, says Robert of Mont St. Michel, “was done contrary to the customs of the ancients, and to the dignity of the church of Canterbury, from which the bishops of Ireland had been wont to ask and to receive the blessing of consecration”.

Amongst the earliest acts of Adrian IV’s pontificate was the grant of a privilege to the sovereign of his native country, bestowed at the instance of John of Salisbury. In this document the pope asserts for himself a right to dispose of all islands “on which Christ, the Sun of righteousness, hath shined”; and in virtue of this right (which, as John of Salisbury informs us, was grounded on the donation of Constantine), he authorizes Henry to invade Ireland with a view to the extension of the church, and the increase of religion and virtue, on condition that a penny shall be yearly paid from each house to the see of Rome. In 1155, accordingly, the project of an expedition against the Irish—a project which had been entertained by William the Conqueror and by Henry I—was proposed by the king to his council, but, out of deference to the objections of his mother Matilda, it was abandoned. Many years had passed, when Dermod Macmurrogh, the expelled king of Munster, waited on Henry in Aquitaine, and entreated aid for the recovery of his kingdoms Henry, although too much engaged in other business to undertake the matter on his own account, gave license for his subjects to enlist under Dermod; and a body of adventurers, under Richard de Clare, earl of Strigul or Chepstow, who was known by the name of Strongbow, succeeded in restoring Dermod to his throne, and in winning for themselves a footing in Ireland. On the death of Dermod, in 1171, Strongbow, who had married his daughter Eva, succeeded to his territories; but, finding that his own force was insufficient, he repaired to Henry, and entreated his intervention, offering to make over to him part of his acquisitions, and to hold the rest in fee under him. In October 1171, accordingly, the king of England landed with an army at Waterford. A council had already been held at Armagh, in which the Irish bishops concluded that the success of the English was a judgment on their countrymen for the practice of buying English slaves, and, in the hope of escaping the full retribution of being themselves enslaved by the English, it was decreed that all English slaves should be set free. At Waterford Henry received the homage of many princes, and of almost all the Irish prelates; and a council was soon after held at Cashel, under the legate, Christian, bishop of Lismore, at which the English king was represented by two ecclesiastics. This synod, says Giraldus Cambrensis, endeavoured by all means to reduce the Irish church to the form of the English. It was enacted that baptism should be administered in the name of the Trinity, and in the fonts of baptismal churches; for according to the English chroniclers it had been the custom in Ireland that the child, immediately after birth, should be dipped by the father in water (or, if the father were a rich man, in milk), and that the liquid should afterwards be thrown away without any reverence. The payment of tithes, which the synod of Kells had before ordered, but seemingly in vain, was now again enacted. Another canon ordered that marriages should be according to the laws of the church; for, it is said, the Irish were in the habit of having as many wives as they thought fit, and of disregarding the ecclesiastical prohibitions as to kin. The clergy were to be exempt from all taxes and lay exactions, a privilege which, in combination with the wealth provided by the introduction of tithes, had the effect of raising the Irish clergy from their previous subordination under the lay chiefs to a position like that of their brethren in other parts of the Latin churchy The payment of Peter pence was also enacted; and it was ordered that the service of the church should everywhere be conformed to that of England. The proceedings of the synod were reported to the pope, who in three letters, dated in September 1172, expressed his approval of them, and desired the princes, nobles, and clergy of Ireland to cooperate for the reformation of religion.

The chroniclers of the time tell us that, while Henry was in Ireland, all communication with England or the continent was prevented by the violence of the winds; but it has been suspected that this stoppage of communication was partly caused by the king’s wish to shut out the risk of dangerous missives from Rome, on account of the recent murder of archbishop Becket. On Easter-day 1172, in consequence of information that two legates had arrived in Normandy with a commission to decide in that matter, Henry embarked at Cork, and, after a rapid journey across England, proceeded to meet them at Avranches. His departure was followed by a rising of the Irish; and in order to suppress this he availed himself of the papal authority, by causing to be published in a council at Waterford the long-neglected letter of Adrian IV, together with a bull of Alexander III to the same effect. The insurrection proved unsuccessful; in 1175 Roderick O'Connor, king of Connaught, made his submission to Henry at Windsor, and Ireland was—partly through the influence of English clergy who were put into the highest dignities of the church—gradually reduced to the same ecclesiastical condition as other countries of the west. Many of the old Irish monasteries, which had been desolated by the Danish invasions, were now replaced by brotherhoods of Cistercians and of Augustinian canons; and, among other outward changes, may be mentioned the abandonment of the rude style of church-building in wood and wattles which was known by the name of “Scottish work”, and to which the Irish had been in some districts so exclusively addicted that, when St. Malachy attempted to build a church of stone, he was met by an indignant cry of “We are Scots, and not Frenchmen”.

The English and other contemporary writers are very strong in their denunciations of the Irish national character, and of the alleged barbarism of the people; but, without rejecting these charges so entirely as the patriotism of the more injudicious later Irish writers requires, we cannot doubt that they are much exaggerated, while it seems certain that the calamities of the Danish invasions had thrown the civilization of Ireland greatly backward. Giraldus expresses surprise that a nation which had professed Christianity from the days of St. Patrick should still be so ignorant and barbarous; but he accounts for this by the fact that the Irish were more inclined to religious contemplation than to such work as required courage and zeal, and that therefore their clergy had been rather monks than evangelists. Hence, he says, it is remarkable that the saints of Ireland are all confessors, and not one of them is a martyr; and he reports the answer which Maurice, archbishop of Cashel, made to this remark in the age of the English invasions, when the murder of Thomas of Canterbury was fresh in all memories. “Our people, however rude, have always respected the church, so that there has been no opportunity of martyrdom. But now a nation is come into the realm which is in the habit of making martyrs, and Ireland will have its share of them”. We must, indeed, modify Giraldus’s statement as to the clergy by the recollection of the many missionaries whom the Irish church sent forth; but it would seem that the zeal which sought an exercise in foreign missions disdained the humbler labours of the pastoral office at home.

 

DENMARK. SCANDINAVIA.

 

The claims of the archbishops of Hamburg or Bremen to jurisdiction over the Danish church had been resisted or impatiently endured. Adalbert of Bremen, who had even conceived the idea of erecting his see into a patriarchate, obtained from Leo IX and Alexander II privileges by which he and his successors were authorized to consecrate bishops for all the northern kingdoms, even against the will of the sovereigns, and Alexander forbade the king of Norway to violate the rights of Bremen by getting bishops consecrated in France or England. But, on the other hand, the Danish kings entreated that their kingdom might have an independent primate; and, at the council of Bari, in 1097, Eric the Good, who was present, obtained from Urban II a promise to that effect—a promise which was the more readily given because archbishop Liemar of Bremen was obnoxious to the pope on account of his adherence to Henry IV. The Danish king died in Cyprus, on his way to the Holy Land; but in 1103 or the following year a legate appeared in Scandinavia, and made choice of Lund, in Schonen (which then belonged to Denmark), as the seat of a primate to whom the northern kingdoms, with Iceland, Greenland, and other dependencies, should be subject. It would seem, however, that the bull for this arrangement was not completed; and through the influence of the emperor Lothair, who wished to recover the old superiority of Germany over the north, Innocent II, in 1133, addressed letters to the archbishop of Hamburg and other persons concerned, by which the jurisdiction of that see was confirmed in all its former extent, and the claims of Lund were in no way recognized.

The archbishops of Lund afterwards recovered their independence of Hamburg, but the Swedes and the Norwegians were discontented on account of their subjection to Lund. The mission of Cardinal Breakspear (afterwards Adrian IV) under Eugenius III resulted in the establishment of Nidaros (or Drontheim) as the seat of a primate for Norway, the islands, and Greenland. The legate provided for the erection of a primacy of Sweden, which was afterwards Axed at Upsal; while Eskil of Lund was in some measure consoled for the loss of his metropolitan rights over Sweden and Norway by being invested with the office of legatus natus for the whole north. It was also ordered by Alexander III that the archbishops of Upsal should be consecrated by those of Lund; and this became a subject of contention which lasted even into the fifteenth century. The German prelates, however, had not yet relinquished their pretensions to jurisdiction over the Scandinavian kingdoms, as appears from a letter of Lucius III, who tells Hartwig, archbishop of Hamburg, in 1185, that the consideration of the question must be deferred, because the troubled state of the north prevented the attendance of the bishops in order to an investigation of it. And in another quarter the archbishops of Nidaros were involved in contentions with those of York, as to jurisdiction over the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and the Isle of Man.

The gospel, in making its way in the northern kingdoms, had to struggle both against the barbarism of the people and against the faults of its own ministers. The cost of the new religion gave occasion to serious troubles. In Sweden complaints were raised that dying persons were induced to make bequests to the church without the consent of their heirs; and Alexander III ordered that the amount of such bequests should be limited. In 1087 the imposition of tithes in Denmark produced a commotion in which Canute the Good—afterwards the patron saint of the kingdom—was slain; and a century later the impost, with the enforcement of celibacy on the clergy, provoked a violent outbreak in Schonen, where it was demanded that the archbishopric should be abolished as a matter of useless expense, and that the clergy should marry, “lest, as heretofore, they should abuse the wives and children” of the peasantry. Breakspear, on his legation, succeeded in imposing the payment of Peterpence in Norway and Sweden, and a very similar exaction—although Danish historians indignantly deny that it was the same —appears to have been established in Denmark. To Absalom, bishop of Roskield, and afterwards archbishop of Lund, a prelate who united to his ecclesiastical function the characters of a warrior and a statesman, is ascribed the reduction of the Danish church to uniformity in the celebration of divine offices.

In Denmark and Norway, the archbishops and bishops almost rivalled the sovereigns in dignity, in the secular pomp and state which they maintained, and in the privileges which they enjoyed. Among the evidences of this, it is recorded that Pope Celestine III in 1194 renewed to Henry, archbishop of Drontheim, the royal privilege of buying falcons.

 

FINLAND. POMERANIA. OTHO OF BAMBERG.

 

The Finns were subdued by Eric IX of Sweden in a war to which a religious character was given, and attempts were made to spread the gospel among them. Alexander III complains that their pretence of conversion was commonly given up when it had served the purpose of saving them from danger. Henry, archbishop of Upsal, an Englishman, who met his death among this people, was canonized by Adrian IV, and is celebrated as the apostle of Finland.

The conversion of the Pomeranians, a rude and fierce Slavonic people, who were at continual war with their neighbours of Poland, had been attempted as early as the year 1000 by Boleslav, king of Poland, who founded the see of Colberg with a view to this work; but the attempt was fruitless, the bishopric ended with its first holder, Reinbern, and later endeavours on the part of the Poles had succeeded only in producing false and transient appearances of conversion. About the year 1120 a Spaniard named Bernard, who had been consecrated by Paschal II (probably in the room of some bishop deposed for adhering to the imperial cause), on finding that he could not gain possession of his see, resolved to undertake a mission to the Pomeranians. But the poverty of his appearance excited the contempt of the people, who are described as living in such plenty that no poor man or beggar was to be seen among them. “How”, they asked, “can we believe that a man so miserable as not even to have shoes can be the messenger of the God to whom all things belong?”. It was in vain that Bernard offered to prove his truth by allowing a house to be burnt over him, and even that he assailed a sacred pillar with an axe; he was put on board a boat, and dismissed, with a charge to exercise his zeal, if he would, in preaching to the fowls and to the fishes. After this failure he withdrew to a monastery at Bamberg; and there his reports as to Pomerania were heard with interest by the bishop, Otho.

Otho, a native of Swabia, was born about 1060, and in his youth had sought a livelihood as a schoolmaster in Poland, where he learned the language of the country. The duke, Wladislav (for this prince had given up the royal title), made him his chaplain, and employed him to negotiate a marriage with a sister of Henry IV; and thus Otho became known to the emperor, who invited him to his court, appointed him his chancellor, and in 1102 nominated him to the see of Bamberg. The canons of the cathedral expressed their disappointment that a clerk of obscure origin was recommended to them, whereas they had expected some man of distinguished family and already known to them. “If you wish”, said Henry, “to know who he is, know that I am his father, and that your church must be his mother”. Otho had already refused two bishoprics, from a scruple that such preferment, being intended by the emperor as a reward for his services, might involve something of simony; but he regarded the third offer as a sign of God’s will, and accepted it. He received investiture in the usual form from the emperor, but, not being satisfied with this, he waited on Paschal II at Anagni, Whitsunday, laid the episcopal ring and staff at his feet, and received a second investiture from the pope, who then proceeded to consecrate him. In the contests between Henry V and the pope, Otho took the hierarchical side, but with a moderation which was so unsatisfactory to the zealots of his party that Adalbert of Mainz even threatened him with excommunication. He rebuilt his cathedral, which had been destroyed by fire; he was distinguished for his exemplary life and successful labours as a bishop, and was especially famous for an unrivalled power of preaching to the people in their native tongue. In 1111 Paschal, in acknowledgment of his merits, bestowed on him and his successors the privilege of using the archiepiscopal pall and crosier.

Boleslav III of Poland, a prince whose zeal for religion was quickened by remorse for having put to death his brother and competitor Zbigniew, reduced the eastern part of Pomerania to tribute in 1121. Eight thousand of his prisoners, with their wives and children, were settled on the Polish frontier and compelled to profess Christianity; and the duke conceived the design of converting the whole country. Finding that his bishops, discouraged by the failure of former attempts, hung back, the duke bethought him of the bishop of Bamberg, whom he had known as his father's chaplain; and Otho, with the consent of pope Calixtus and of the emperor, gladly undertook the work, although he had already passed his sixtieth year. Warned by Bernard's experience, he resolved to present himself to the Pomeranians in such fashion as should prove to them that his expedition was not undertaken for the sake of gaining by them. He furnished himself largely with horses, splendid vestments, rich stuffs, precious vessels for sacred uses, and with various things which were likely to be acceptable as presents; and in April 1124 he set out attended by a numerous body of clergy.

At Gnesen the missionaries were received with great honour by Boleslav, who supplied them with interpreters, a military guard, and provisions; and, after having overcome the difficulties of the journey into Pomerania, they were welcomed by the duke, Wartislav, who had been baptized when a prisoner or a hostage in Poland, although he had not since ventured to avow himself a Christian. At Pyritz, the first considerable town which they reached, seven thousand converts were speedily made; and these, after a week’s instruction in the faith, followed by a fast of three days, were baptized in large casks or troughs, which were sunk into the earth, and were surrounded by curtains. The solemnity and decency with which the rite was performed is said to have made a great impression, and this was doubtless strengthened by the presents which were bestowed on every convert. Among the duties which Otho inculcated in his addresses were the abandonment of polygamy and of the custom of putting female infants to death; the doctrine of the sacraments was laid down; the converts were charged to communicate three or four times a year; and they were exhorted to devote their sons to be educated for the ministry of the church.

At Camin Otho found the duchess, a Christian, who eagerly exerted herself for the furtherance of his mission. The duke agreed to give up the twenty-four concubines who had shared his bed; many who had been Christians professed repentance for having forsaken the faith; a church was built, and, in the course of forty days, a great number of converts was made. A wealthy lady, annoyed at finding that labour on the Lord’s day was forbidden, broke out into blasphemous words against the new religion, called her servants to reap as they had been used to do under the gods who had hitherto prospered the country, and proceeded to show them the example; but hardly had she begun, when she suddenly fell down, and “breathed forth her guilty soul into the fire of hell”. This judgment, we are told, produced a general awe, and served to procure obedience to Otho’s precepts.

At Julin the bishop’s life was in danger, and he was driven out of the town; but he afterwards obtained from the chief inhabitants a promise that they would be guided by the example of the capital, Stettin. To Stettin, therefore, he repaired, but for some time his preaching was ineffectual. The Pomeranians, it is said, were free from the vices which poverty engenders; they were surprised that the missionaries locked up their property, as among themselves no such protection was necessary.

“Why should we turn Christians?” they asked; “among Christians there are thieves and robbers, men are punished by loss of eyes and feet, and they practise all manner of cruelty and wickedness towards each other”. It was agreed, however, that the duke of Poland should be consulted, and in the meantime Otho preached on market-days to attentive audiences of the country people. His first converts were two youths, the sons of an influential man named Domuzlav. Their mother, who had been brought up as a Christian, was delighted at finding that they had been baptized, and by her the servants of the family, with many of their kindred and neighbours, and at length Domuzlav himself were brought over to the faith. The boys themselves, by celebrating the kindness, munificence, and charitable labours of the bishop, as contrasted with the behaviour of the heathen priests, persuaded many of their own age to become converts, and the people were disposed to look on him as a god who had descended among them for the good of their country.

An answer was at length received from Boleslav, who styled himself “the enemy of all pagans”, and rebuked the Stettiners for their treatment of Otho, but declared that for his sake, and as an inducement to receive the yoke of Christ, he would remit one-half of the tribute which they were bound to pay. Fortified by this assistance, Otho told the people that he would prove to them the impotence of their gods. After having received the holy Eucharist, he and his clergy made a general attack on the idols, which fell without resistance, and the effect of this success was heightened by the disinterestedness with which he refused to accept any share of the vast wealth of the principal temple. The triple head of Triglav, the Slavonic Neptune, was sent as a trophy to pope Honorius, and the temple was converted into a church, dedicated to the martyr St. Adalbert. A splendid black horse, which had been employed to decide questions of peace and war by walking over nine lances laid on the ground, was sent into another country for sale, “as being fit rather for a chariot than for prophesying”; and the priest who had the charge of him—the only person who ventured to oppose the general movement—was suddenly struck dead. The people of Julin—a town which claimed Julius Caesar as its founder, and reckoner among the objects of its idolatry a rusty spear which was said to have been his—fulfilled their promise by conforming to the example of Stettin. Two-and-twenty thousand of the inhabitants received baptism; and Otho, after having built two churches there and having appointed a bishop, returned to Bamberg, where he arrived on Easter-eve 1125.

Otho again visited the scene of his missionary labours in 1127 or 1128, when he sailed down the Saale and the Elbe, and entered the country from the west. At Demmin, he ransomed and baptized many Leutician captives whom duke Wartislav had taken, and thus made an impression which was strengthened by the duke's commendations of his wealth, his greatness, and his disinterested zeal. As he advanced into the country, he found that the rapid successes of his former labours had not been lasting. The number of clergy had been insufficient, and the heathen party had used all possible means to recover their influence. At Wolgast the people had been exasperated against the missionaries by the trick of a priest who dressed himself up, and, showing himself to a rustic in a wood, declared himself to be the old god of the country. At Stettin a mixed religion, “after the manner of the Samaritans”, had been established. A priest had taken advantage of an unfavourable season, attended by disease among men and cattle, to assault the altar of St. Adalbert; but the hand which held his hammer fell powerless. On this he exclaimed, “It is useless to strive against the Germans’ god; let us worship both him and our old gods”; and a heathen altar had been erected beside the Christian altar. As Otho was preaching, a burly and loud-voiced priest excited the people to fall on him; but, as they lifted up their spears, their arms were stiffened in the air. Then Otho proceeded to discourse on the power of the true God, and at his blessing the use of the stiffened limbs was restored. The pagan altar was demolished; and the catching of a fish so large that all the people of Stettin partook of it was regarded as setting the seal of heaven on their reconversion. At Julin a man, on being reproved by one of the missionaries for reaping on the festival of the Assumption, said, “Yesterday we were forbidden to reap because it was the Lord's day, and today we are again told to be idle. What is the meaning of this religion, which bids us cease from good and necessary things? or when shall we get our harvest in?”. But as he began to cut his corn, he fell down dead, and his wife, who had followed his example, was unable to unloose her hold either on her sickle or on the corn which she had grasped, until after her husband had been buried. In addition to the effect of his preaching and of his alleged miracles, Otho was powerfully aided by the support of the duke of Poland, and by prevailing on him to give up a projected invasion of Pomerania he increased his own influence among the people. The conversion of Pomerania, rapid, wholesale, and in part effected by force, could not but be very imperfect; yet from the time of Otho’s second mission the country always retained its profession of Christianity. After an absence of somewhat more than a year, Otho returned to Bamberg, in obedience to a summons from the emperor, and he died in 1139.

Among the designs which Otho entertained was that of a mission to the heathens of Rügen. The chief idol of these people, Swantevit, was worshipped with human sacrifices; no merchant was allowed to trade on the island until after having made some offering to the god; and so strongly were the Rugians attached to their religion, that, on being informed of the conversion of Stettin, they broke off all intercourse with the traders of that city, sank such of their ships as were within reach, and threatened to kill any missionaries who should venture to land on their shore. One of Otho’s companions, named Ulric, resolved to brave the danger; but he was thrice driven back by storms, and Otho himself was unable to make any attempt. In 1135 the Rugians agreed to receive Christianity from the Danes on condition that Swantevit should be spared; but as soon as the Danish fleet was gone, they drove out a bishop who had been left among them, and resumed their profession of paganism. It was not until 1168 that the paganism of the islanders was overcome by the arms of Waldemar, king of Denmark, and by the skilful management of Absalom, then bishop of Roskield, to which see the island was subjected by Alexander III. But the annalist of Magdeburg speaks of the Christianity thus “impressed” on the Rugians as “a shadow, which in a short time was done away with by Waldemar’s avarice, and by the scantiness and inactivity of the teachers”.

In the neighbouring country, where the Christian king Gottschalk had reigned in the preceding century, the progress of the gospel was urged on by the power of the emperor Lothair, of Albert the Bear, marquis of Brandenburg, and Henry the Lion, of Saxony, while it was resisted by the discontent of the Slavonic population at the sway of their German masters. At one time a formidable insurrection was excited by the exactions of Norbert, as archbishop of Magdeburg; churches were destroyed, the Christians were slain or driven out, and the people loudly declared that they would rather die than again become Christians. During the general fervour against infidels in 1147, while Lewis and Conrad led their hosts to the East, and other crusaders fought the Moors in Spain, a crusade was set on foot against the pagans of north Germany, under Henry the Lion, and Albero, archbishop of Hamburg. The country was invaded by two German armies, which are reckoned at 60,000 and 40,000 respectively; and two rival claimants of the Danish crown combined for the holy cause. But the war was carried on with little spirit, and was ended by the submission of the Slaves to receive a nominal baptism.

In this region the most eminent preacher of the gospel was Vicelin, a pupil of Anselm of Laon, and afterwards a Praemonstratensian, who was consecrated as bishop of Oldenburg, and laboured with single-minded zeal from 1121 until disabled by palsy two years before his death, which took place in 1154. When required by Henry the Lion to do homage for his bishopric, Vicelin was strongly dissuaded by the archbishop and clergy of Hamburg. “We submit to the emperor”, they said, “because by this submission to one we gain the power of ruling over many; for what duke or marquis is there who does not desire to become the church’s vassal, whether it will or no?”—but they urged that to do homage to a duke would be a degradation of the church. After some hesitation, however, Vicelin complied, in order to ensure Henry’s support; and Frederick Barbarossa afterwards bestowed on the duke authority to nominate and invest bishops for all the Slavonic territory which had been subdued by his ancestors or himself. In consequence of this grant, Vicelin’s example was followed by his successor, Gerold, and by the bishops of Ratzeburg and Mecklenburg, “for His sake who humbled himself for us, and that the newly-planted church should take no damage”; but on the fall of Henry, in 1180, Frederick withdrew the three bishoprics from their subjection to the dukes of Saxony. As great numbers of the Slaves had perished in war, many Germans, Hollanders, and Flemings, were brought in to supply their places; and this contributed powerfully to establish the profession of Christianity in those regions.

 

 

CHAPTER XII.

SECTARIES—VISIONARIES