CRISTO RAUL.ORG '

THE UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY

FROM JUSTINIAN TO LUTHER. AD 518-1517

CHAPTER 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