BOOK V.

FROM THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE TO THE DEPOSITION OF POPE GREGORY VI,

A.D. 814-1046.

CHAPTER VII

THE BRITISH CHURCHES - MISSIONS OF THE TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES.

 

 

The most remarkable subject in the religious history of England between the death of Alfred and the Norman conquest is the struggle between the monks and the secular clergy. The distaste for monachism which had grown up among the Anglo-Saxons has been mentioned in a former chapter. The long-continued invasions of the Danes contributed to the decline of the system, not only by laying waste a multitude of religious houses and butchering or dispersing their inmates, but by compelling men to study almost exclusively the arts of self-preservation and self-defence. Thus the monastic life became extinct in England; and when Alfred attempted to revive it by founding a monastery for men at Athelney and one for women at Shaftesbury, it was found that, although Shaftesbury prospered under the government of one of the king’s own daughters, no Englishman of noble or free birth could be persuaded to embrace the monastic profession; so that Alfred was obliged to stock his establishment at Athelney with monks and children from abroad.

In some of the religious houses which had suffered from the Danish ravages, a new class of inmates established themselves. Perhaps (as has been suggested) many of them were persons who had belonged to those inferior orders of the clergy which were not bound to celibacy. Such persons may, in the scarcity of other clerks, have been raised by bishops to the higher degrees without being required to forsake their wives; and the practice thus begun may have been extended to a general neglect of enforcing celibacy on the ministers of the church. From this and other causes it came to pass that the monasteries were occupied by a married clergy, among whom, without too literally understanding the gross accusations of their enemies, we may reasonably believe that there was much of irregularity and of worldly-mindedness. The monastic life, properly so called, was no longer followed; the Englishmen who wished to lead such a life either withdrew to lonely hermitages or betook themselves to foreign monasteries, among which that of Fleury on the Loire—lately reformed by Odo of Cluny, after having fallen into an utter decay of discipline—was the most favourite resort. Such was the state of things when Dunstan entered on his career of reform.

Dunstan was born about the year 925, of noble parentage, in the neighbourhood of Glastonbury—a place which enjoyed a peculiar veneration, not only on account of the legends which made it the scene of the first preaching of Christianity in Britain by Joseph of Arimathea, but also from later associations. The fame of St Patrick was fabulously connected with Glastonbury; it was even said to be his burying-place and it was much frequented by Irish, some of whom lived there in the practice of strict devotion, although not bound by any monastic rule, and drew a large number of pupils from the surrounding country. Under these masters Dunstan became a proficient in the learning of the time, and acquired extraordinary accomplishments in calligraphy, painting, sculpture, music, mechanics, and the art of working in metals, so that his skill and ingenuity brought on him the charge of magic. His earlier history abounds in details of rigid asceticism, in tales of strange miracles, of encounters with devils, and of fierce mental conflicts. Having been introduced at the court of king Edmund, he received from the king the church of Glastonbury, with a grant of new privileges; and he erected a magnificent abbey, which he filled with Benedictine monks—the first of their kind who had been seen in England for two hundred years. Dunstan acquired high office and powerful influence in the state. We are familiar from childhood with some version of the story of his contest with Edwy “the All-fair”—how on the coronation-day he forcibly dragged the king from the society of Ethelgiva, and compelled him to rejoin the boisterous festivity of his nobles; the expulsion of the monks by Edwy from Glastonbury and Abingdon, the only monasteries which then belonged to them; the exile of Dunstan, and his triumphant return as a partisan of the king’s brother Edgar, who forced Edwy to a partition of the kingdom, and soon after became sovereign of the whole. Under Edgar, Dunstan enjoyed an unlimited power. In 958 he obtained the bishopric of Worcester, to which in the following year that of London was added; and in 960 he was advanced to the primacy of Canterbury, as successor of his friend and supporter Odo. He received the pall at Rome from John XII, and, with the approbation of the pope and of the king, he began a reform of the clergy. Edgar, whose cooperation was exacted as a part of the penance incurred by his having carried off a novice or pupil from the nunnery of Wilton, is said to have inveighed at a council in the severest terms against the corruptions of the seculars. The sees of Worcester and Winchester were filled with two of the archbishop’s most zealous partisans—Oswald, a nephew of the late primate, and Ethelwold, abbot of Abingdon, who was styled “the father of monks”, and was a confidential adviser of the king. Seculars were ejected wherever it was possible; all preferment was exclusively bestowed on the regulars; monks were brought from Fleury and other foreign monasteries, to fill the places of the expelled clergy, and to serve as examples to the  English of the true monastic life. The canons of Winchester are described by Ethelwold’s biographer as sunk in luxury and licentiousness; they refused to perform the offices of the church, and it is said that, not content with marrying, they indulged themselves in the liberty of changing their wives at pleasure. The bishop, armed with a special authority from the pope, John XIII, summoned them to appear before himself and a commissioner from the king. Throwing down on the floor a number of monastic cowls, he required the clergy either to put on these or to quit their preferments. Three only complied, and the rest were dismissed with pensions from the property of the church. The reformation of Worcester was effected by means of another kind. Oswald, with a company of monks, established in the city a service which rivalled that of the cathedral. The people flocked to the new comers; and the canons of the cathedral, finding themselves deserted, were reduced to acquiesce in the bishop’s measures. In other parts of his diocese, however, Oswald purged the monasteries by a forcible expulsion of the married clergy, and established monks in their room. During the reign of Edgar, forty-seven monasteries were founded, restored, or recovered from the secular clergy. The monks were governed by a rule modified from that of St Benedict, and chiefly derived from Fleury.

Under the next king, Edward the Martyr, a reaction appeared to be threatened. Some noblemen expelled the regulars from monasteries situated on their lands, and reinstated the seculars with their wives and children. Councils were held for the consideration of the matter. At Winchester, Dunstan is said to have gained a victory by means of a crucifix which uttered words forbidding the proposed changed. At Calne, where the cause of the seculars was eloquently pleaded by a Scotch or Irish bishop named Beornhelm, Dunstan solemnly told the assembly that he committed the cause of his church to God—on which, it is said, the floor of the hall in which the council was assembled immediately gave way; some were killed and many were severely hurt; while the archbishop and the friends who surrounded him were saved by the firmness of the beam over which they stood. The story of the speaking crucifix appears to be a fiction; the other may be explained without the supposition either that a miracle was wrought in behalf of Dunstan, or that he deliberately contrived a fraud which involved the death or bodily injury of his opponents. The regular clergy got the victory for the time, but it was very imperfectly carried out. With the exception of Worcester and Winchester, no cathedrals were reformed. Dunstan, although he lived to made no attempt to introduce a change at Canterbury—whether it were that he was afraid to venture on such a work, or that reform appeared less necessary there than elsewhere and his coadjutor Oswald, on being translated to the archbishopric of York, held that see for twenty years (972-992) without disturbing the seculars of his province. The renewal of the Danish invasions diverted the general attention from such matters. Canterbury was transferred to monks by archbishop Aelfric, in 1003; but the other cathedrals remained in possession of the seculars until the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, and throughout the kingdom the triumph of the one or of the other party depended on their strength in each locality. At the council of Eanham, in 1009, it was laid down that all marriage of the clergy is improper; but the council seems to have practically contented itself with attempting to suppress the greater evils which had arisen from such prohibitions—that clerks took more than one wife at a time, or discarded one for another. The secular clergy of England continued to marry, and their issue was regarded as legitimate.

 

IRELAND.

 

In common with other western countries, Ireland suffered severely from the ravages of the Northmen, and in resistance to these enemies the clergy frequently took to arms. Favoured by the discords of the native chiefs, the Danes made extensive settlements in Ireland; their princes were established at Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford—the last of these a town altogether of their own foundation. Various tribes of Northmen contended for the possession of Dublin. But the power of the strangers was weakened by their internal feuds, and was at length irrecoverably broken at the great battle of Clontarf, fought on Good Friday 1014, where Brian Boru, king of all Ireland, fell at the age of eighty-eight in leading on his countrymen to victory. Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick, however, still remained in possession of the Danes.

The Danes (or Ostmen) of Dublin were gradually converted to Christianity. They would not, however, receive bishops from the Irish, but sought consecration for their pastors from the English church, with which their own race had become closely connected. And it was by means of this Danish intercourse with England that Ireland was for the first time brought into connection with the Roman church.

 

SCOTLAND.

 

The obscurity which hangs over the church-history of Scotland during this period has been lamented by all who have made that history the special subject of their inquiries. The ancient chronicles have perished, and the story, instead of resting, as elsewhere, on the satisfactory evidence of contemporary narratives, must be sought out and pieced together by the laborious industry and the doubtful guesses of the antiquary. Scotland was much infested by the Danes, who succeeded in establishing themselves in the country to such a degree that a large Scandinavian element may to this day be traced among its population. In 806 they attacked Iona, where sixty-eight of the monks were slain; and it appears that, in consequence of the dangers to which St. Columba’s island sanctuary was exposed, Kenneth III in 849 translated the patron’s relics, and removed the seat of the Scottish primacy, to Dunkeld, From that time the abbots of Dunkeld exercised the same authority over the church which had before been vested in the abbots of Iona; but the abbot of Iona continued to be the head of the Columbite order of monks. About 905 it is believed that Dunkeld itself became unsafe, and that the primacy was translated to St. Andrews; and in this more permanent seat it acquired a character more nearly resembling the primacy of other countries, by being vested in the bishops of St. Andrews, who were styled “Episcopi Scotorum”, while the other bishops of the kingdom were subject to them in the same manner as they had formerly been to the successors of Columba in Iona and Dunkeld.

In the absence of certain information, writers of Scottish history have freely indulged in fables and wild conjectures. Nor has the national fondness for claiming eminent men as our countrymen been limited to those cases in which the ambiguous term Scotus might give some plausibility to the claim—such as that of the philosopher John, whose other designation, Erigena, has been interpreted as meaning a native of Ayr! Thus it has been attempted, in opposition to clear historical evidence, to maintain that Alcuin was a Scotsman; that Einhard the biographer of Charlemagne was a Scot whose real name was Kineard; that Raban Maur was a Scot, and a monk of Melrose; and even one of the more critical writers, although he grants the English birth of Alcuin, yet imagines that in the same age there was another Albinus, a native of Scotland, to whom he ascribes the authorship of the Caroline Books.

It is unnecessary here to go into a controversy which has been waged as to a class of ecclesiastics styled Culdees, in whom a precedent has been sought for the Presbyterian form of church-government. Their name, which signifies servants of God—a designation specially restricted to monks,— is first found in Ireland; and the Culdees of Scotland appear to have been in reality a species of monks, representing the ancient Irish order of St. Columba, although with a discipline which, like that of the English monasteries, had been relaxed in consequence of the Danish invasions. But so far were they from rejecting the episcopal polity, that in many cases they were attached to cathedrals, (as in the archiepiscopal church of York); and in some places, as at St. Andrews, they claimed a share in the election of the bishops. At St. Andrews they retained until the twelfth century the Scottish or Irish ritual, which had been used at York until the time of Alcuin—celebrating their services in a retired corner of the church; but, notwithstanding this and other peculiarities, the contentions which are recorded between such societies and bishops related, not to any difference in religion, but to questions of property or privileges.

 

RUSSIA

 

The Greek church in this period extended its communion by the conversion of a nation destined to play an important part in later history the Russians.

The ruling tribe of Russia were Scandinavians, or Northmen, who, while their kinsmen infested the countries of the west, carried their adventurous arms into the vast territory which lies to the south-east of their original seats. The first mention of them in history is under the year 839, when some Russians, who had been sent to Constantinople, accompanied the eastern emperor’s ambassadors to the court of Louis the Pious. In 864 the Russian monarchy was founded by Rurik. The northern conquerors gradually enlarged their boundaries; their race intermingled with the older inhabitants of the country, and their Teutonic language was forgotten. They became known to the Greeks by commerce carried on across the Euxine, and by repeated attempts which they made to get possession of Constantinople. Some of Rurik’s companions, leaving him in possession of his conquests, proceeded to the eastern capital, where they entered into the imperial service; and the Varangian guard, which was thus formed, was recruited by adventurers of kindred race from England and the Scandinavian countries.

The story of the first introduction of Christianity into Russia is embellished by fable. According to the Greek writers, Basil the Macedonian, on concluding a peace with the Russians, sent a bishop and other missionaries into their country. The bishop, in the presence of the Russian prince and nobles, dwelt on the evidence borne by miracles to the truth of the Gospel revelation. They listened attentively, but answered that they would not believe unless they might themselves witness a miracle. The  bishop warned them not to tempt God; but, as they had been especially struck by the story of the three youths delivered from the furnace, he proceeded to show a miracle of a similar kind. At his prayer, the book of the Gospels was cast into a fire, and after many hours it was taken out uninjured.

Photius, in his letter to the oriental patriarchs, states that the fierce and barbarous Russians had been converted by the Greek church. But his language greatly overstates any effect which the Christian teachers had at that time produced among them; and although his predecessor Ignatius is said to have consecrated a bishop for Russia, and to have taken measures for spreading the Gospel in that country, paganism was, in the middle of the following century, again all but universal among the Russians.

In 955, Olga, widow of the Grand-Prince Igur, and regent of Russia, appeared with a large train at Constantinople, where she was received with much honour by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and was baptised. It is uncertain whether she had undertaken the expedition in consequence of some Christian instruction which had reached her in her own land, or whether, having gone to Constantinople with a view to secular business, she there received impressions which led her to seek for admission into the church. Olga, who at baptism took the name of Helena, endeavoured, after her return to Novogorod, to spread her new faith among her subjects. Her son, Svatoslaff, however, withstood her attempts to convert him, alleging that his nobles would despise him if he should change his religion.

Vladimir, the son and successor of Svatoslaff, was importuned, it is said, by the advocates of rival religions of Judaism, of Islam, and of Greek and Latin Christianity. He saw reason for rejecting the Jewish and Mahometan systems, and, in order that he might be able to decide between the two forms of Christianity, he sent commissioners to observe the religion of Germany, of Rome, and of Greece. When at Constantinople, they were deeply impressed by the magnificent building of the patriarchal church, and by the solemn, majestic, and touching character of the Eucharistic service which they witnessed; they told the Greeks who were with them that daring the performance of the rite they had seen winged youths circling through the church and chanting the Trisagion. By the report of these envoys Vladimir was determined to adopt the Christianity of the Greeks. In 988, having taken the city of Korsun from the empire, he made proposals for the hand of a Greek princess, Anna, sister of the emperor Basil II and of Theophano, wife of Otho II. To the difficulties raised on the ground of religion, he answered that he was willing to become a Christian. His resolution was shaken by a temporary blindness, which he ascribed to the vengeance of the gods against his apostasy; but at Anna’s urgent request he consented to be baptized, and his change of religion was justified by the recovery of his sight as he received the imposition of the bishop of Korsun’s hands. The marriage took place forthwith, and Korsun either was restored to the empire, or became the dowry of Vladimir's bode. According to Russian writers, Vladimir, who at baptism had taken the name of Basil, renounced the laxity of his former life for a strict observance of conjugal fidelity, and of other Christian duties; and both he and Anna are numbered among the saints of their church. The Latins, however, assert that his actions did no credit to his new profession.

On his return to Kief the grand-prince ordered the idol of Perun, the chief Russian god, to be dragged through the streets at a horse’s tail, and thrown into the Dnieper. Many of the Russians burst into tears at the sight; but, when a proclamation summoned them to repair to the river next day, on pain of being regarded as rebels, the dutiful people argued that, if the proposed change of religion were not good, the prince and nobles would not recommend it. A general baptism of the population took place. “Some”, says Nestor, “stood in the water up to their necks, others up to their breasts, holding their young children in their arms; the priests read the prayers from the shore, naming at once whole companies by the same name”. Bishoprics were now established, churches were built on the Byzantine model by Greek architects, relics were imported, schools were opened, and children were obliged to attend them, although it is said that the mothers wept, and were as much afraid to send their children for instruction as if they had been sending them to death. The Scriptures, in Cyril’s Slavonic version, were introduced a fact which, in defiance of chronology, has been turned into the statement that Cyril himself laboured as a missionary among the Russians.

On the death of Vladimir, in 1015, the division of his dominions among his twelve sons, and the bloody family discords which ensued, interfered with the progress of the Gospel. But Yaroslaff, who at length became the sole ruler of the country, A.D. 1019, zealously carried on the work. He caused translations of some edifying Greek books to be made for the benefit of his subjects, encouraged the composition of original religious works, and even himself took part in the literary labour. The ‘Nomocanon’, or collection of ecclesiastical laws, by Photius, was introduced as the rule of discipline. The clergy were exempted from taxes, and from civil duties; but, whereas they had until then been subject to the patriarch of Constantinople, Yaroslaff was careful to place the church on a national footing, with a native Russian for its primate.

 

BOHEMIA

 

Although Bohemia had been reckoned among Christian countries, the Gospel was but very imperfectly established in it. On the death of duke Radislav, in 925, his mother Ludmilla (whose conversion has been already mentioned) undertook the care of his two sous, Wenceslav and Boleslav. But the widow of Radislav, Dragomira, who was a zealous pagan, contrived that Ludmilla should be murdered, a crime to which she was instigated alike by the violence of religious enmity and by a fear of losing her share in the administration. Notwithstanding his mother’s efforts to turn him away from Christianity, Wenceslav was deeply devoted to it. He lived a life of the strictest sanctity, and is supposed to have been on the point of exchanging his crown for the monastic cowl when his reign was violently brought to an end. His brother Boleslav attacked him when on his way to perform his devotions in a church. Wenceslav, being the stronger of the two, disarmed the traitor, threw him to the ground, and uttered the words “God forgive thee, brother!”. But the cries of Boleslav brought his servants to the spot, and, supposing their master to have been attacked, they fell on the duke and slew him.

Boleslav, who is styled “the Cruel”, usurped the government. On the birth of a son, soon after, he was led by a strange mixture of motives to devote the child to a religious life by way of expiation; but for many years he carried on a persecution of his Christian subjects, expelling the clergy, and destroying churches and monasteries. In 950, after a long struggle against the power of Otho I, he was obliged to yield, and the emperor, in granting him a peace, insisted that he should establish freedom of religion, and should rebuild the churches which he had demolished.

During the remaining seventeen years of Boleslav’s reign the church enjoyed peace; but the complete establishment of Christianity was the work of his son Boleslav “the Pious”, who took vigorous measures for the suppression of paganism, and with the consent of the emperor, and that of Wolfgang bishop of Ratisbon, to whose see Bohemia had been considered to belong, founded in 973 the bishopric of Prague. The diocese was to include the whole of Boleslav’s dominions, and was to be subject to the archbishop of Mentz (Mayence), as a compensation for the loss of the suffragan see of Magdeburg, which had lately been erected into an independent archbishopric.

The second bishop of Prague was a Bohemian of noble family, who had studied under Adalbert, archbishop of Magdeburg, and, at receiving confirmation from him, had adopted the prelate’s name instead of the Bohemian Woytiech. The bishop displayed great activity in his office. He persuaded the duke to build churches and monasteries, and, as his German education had rendered him zealous for the Latin usages, he exerted himself to suppress the Greek rites which had been introduced by way of Moravia. He found that much paganism was still mixed with the Christian profession of his flock, and that gross disorders and immoralities prevailed among them; that the clergy lived in marriage or concubinage; that the people practised polygamy, and marriage within the forbidden degrees; that they sold their serfs and captives to Jewish slave dealers, who disposed of them to heathens and barbarians sometimes for the purpose of sacrifice. Adalbert set himself to reform these evils; but the rigor of his character and his somewhat intemperate zeal excited opposition, which was greatly swelled by his attempting to introduce the Roman canons without regard to the national laws, and to assert for the church an immunity from all secular judgments. The feuds of his family were also visited on the bishop, and such was the resistance to his authority that he twice withdrew from Bohemia in disgust, and made pilgrimages to Rome and to Jerusalem. In obedience to a Roman synod, he resumed his see; but he finally left it in 996, and, with the sanction of Gregory V, who gave him the commission of a regionary archbishop, he set out on a missionary expedition to Prussia, where, after ineffectual attempts to convert the barbarous people, he was martyred on the shore of the Frische Haff in April 997.

Boleslav, duke of Poland, who had encouraged the mission, redeemed the martyr’s corpse, and placed it in a church at Gnesen, where, as we have seen, it was with great devotion by Otho III in the year 1000. On that occasion the emperor erected Gnesen into an archbishopric, which he bestowed on one of Adalbert’s brothers. In 1039, while the Polish throne was vacant, and the country was a prey to anarchy, the Bohemians, under Bretislav I, took possession of Gnesen, seized on the vast treasures which had been accumulated around the shrine of Adalbert, and resolved to carry off the body of the saint, whose memory had risen to great veneration in his native country. Severus, bishop of Prague, who had accompanied the army, took advantage of the feeling. He declared that Adalbert had appeared to him in a vision, and had made him swear that the Bohemians, as a condition of being allowed to enjoy the presence of his relics in their own land, would bind themselves to the observance of such laws as he had in his lifetime unsuccessfully attempted to establish among them. The relics were then with great solemnity translated to Prague : but Polish writers assert that the invaders were mistaken in their prize, and that the real body of St. Adalbert still remained at Gnesen.

The Slavonic liturgy, which had been sanctioned by pope John VIII for Moravia, was introduced from that country into Bohemia, and naturally excited opposition on the part of the German clergy who laboured among the Slavonic nations. A letter bearing the name of John XIII, which, in professing to confirm the foundation of the see of Prague, requires the Bohemian church to use the Latin language and rites, is said to be spurious. But the use of the Slavonic liturgy was represented by its opponents as a token of heresy. The abbey of Sazawa, founded in 1038, became the chief school of the native Bohemian monasticism, and maintained the Slavonic form. In 1058 the Slavonic monks were expelled from it by duke Spitihnew; but five years later they were restored by duke Wratislav, who endeavoured to obtain from Gregory VII an approbation of their vernacular service-book. The pope, however, in 1080, replied in terms of strong disapprobation. It was, he said, God’s pleasure that Holy Scripture should not be everywhere displayed, lest it might be held cheap and despised, or should give rise to error; the use of the vernacular had been conceded only on account of temporary circumstances, which had now long passed away. Wratislav, who adhered to the emperor Henry IV in his contest with Gregory, continued to sanction the Slavonic ritual at Sazawa; but in 1097 it was again suppressed by his successor, Bretislav II, and the monastery was filled with monks of the Latin rite, who destroyed almost all the Slavonic books. Yet the liturgy thus discountenanced by Rome and its partisans was revived from time to time in Bohemia; and in the convent of Emmaus, at Prague, founded in the fourteenth century by the emperor Charles IV, it was especially sanctioned by pope Clement VI, although with the condition that the use of it should be limited to that place.

In some cases, where people of Slavonic race bordered on the Greek empire, the popes found it expedient to gratify their national feelings by allowing the vernacular service; but elsewhere they endeavoured to root it out. Thus, although Alexander II, in 1067, permitted the Slavonic rite in the province of Dioclea, a council held at Spalatro in the following year, under a legate of the same pope, condemned it, on the ground that the Slavonic letters (to which the name of “Gothic” was given) had been invented by Methodius, a heretic, who had written many lying books in the Slavonic tongue against the Catholic faith. The Slavonic liturgy, however, has continued to be used in many churches of Illyria down to the present time, although unhappily its antiquated language has not only become unintelligible to the people, for whose edification it was originally intended, but is said to be little understood even by the clergy who officiate in it.

 

POLAND.

 

It has been supposed that some knowledge of Christianity found its way into Poland from Moravia, and more especially by means of Christian refugees after the ruin of the Moravian kingdom. Yet nothing considerable had been effected towards the conversion of the Poles, when in 965 their duke, Mieceslav, married Dambrowka, a daughter of Boleslav the Cruel of Bohemia. Two years later Dambrowka persuaded her husband to embrace the Christian faith, and he proceeded to enforce it on his subjects under very severe penalties; thus, any one who should eat flesh between Septuagesima and Easter was to lose his teeth. The German chronicler who relates this, Thietmar or Ditmar, bishop of Merseburg, adds that among a people so rude, who needed to be tended like cattle and beaten like lazy asses, means of conversion akin to the severity of their barbaric laws were more likely to be useful than the gentler methods of ordinary ecclesiastical discipline.

The story that the Polish church was organized under the superintendence of a papal legate, with seven bishoprics and two archbishoprics, is now exploded. Posen was the only bishopric in the country, and was subject to the archbishops of Magdeburg, until in 1000 Gnesen was made an archiepiscopal and metropolitan see by Otho III. Although the original Christianity of Poland was derived from Greek sources, the fourth wife of Mieceslav, Oda, daughter of a German marquis, influenced the duke in favour of the Latin system. This princess was active in the encouragement of monks, and in works of piety and charity; and the clergy, in consideration of the benefits which the church derived from her, were willing to overlook the fact that her marriage was a breach of the vows which she had taken as a nun. The establishment of the Latin Christianity was completed under Boleslav, who has been already mentioned as the patron of Adalbert’s mission to Prussia. The popes were careful to draw close the bonds which connected Poland with Rome; and from an early time (although the precise date is disputed), a yearly tribute of a penny was paid by every Pole, with exception of the clergy and nobles, to the treasury of St. Peter.

The title of king, which Boleslav acquired, was probably bestowed on him by Otho III on the occasion of his visit to Gnesen. If, however, the dignity was conferred by the imperial power, the popes, according to a story of doubtful authority, soon found a remarkable opportunity of exhibiting and increasing their spiritual jurisdiction over the new kingdom. After the death of king Mieceslav or Miesco II, in 1034, Poland fell into a miserable state of confusion. Paganism again reared its head; there was much apostasy from the Gospel, bishops and clergy were killed or hunted out, churches and monasteries were burnt, and the Bohemian invasion, already mentioned, was triumphant. The Poles, it is said, at length resolved to offer the crown to Casimir, a son of the late king, who had been driven into banishment; and, after much inquiry, he was discovered in a monastery either that of Cluny or the German abbey of Braunweiler. Casimir had taken the monastic vows, and had been ordained a deacon; and the abbot declared that, although grieved for the misery of Poland, he could not release the prince from these engagements, unless by the pope’s permission. For this, application was made to Benedict IX, by whom, after much entreaty, Casimir was discharged from his ecclesiastical obligations, and was given up to the Poles, with permission to marry and to undertake the government; but the pope stipulated that, in remembrance of their having received a king from the church, every male of the nation should use a certain sort of tonsure, and that other marks of subjection should be shown to the see of St. Peter.

 

NORTH GERMANY

 

During the tenth century the German sovereigns especially Henry the Fowler and Otho the Great laboured to provide for the suppression of paganism in the northern part of their dominions. With a view to this, bishoprics were established at Meissen, Merseburg, and elsewhere, and Magdeburg was erected into a metropolitan see. But little impression could be made on the Slavonic tribes in those quarters. A natural prejudice was felt against the Gospel as a religion which offered to them by the Germans; the German missionaries were ignorant of Slavonic; and it is said that the clergy showed greater eagerness to raise money from the people than to instruct them. From time to time extensive insurrections against the foreign power took place, and in these insurrections churches were destroyed and clergy were slain. In 1047, the kingdom of the Wends was established by Gottschalk, who zealously endeavoured to promote Christianity among his subjects. He founded churches and monasteries, and, like the Northumbrian Oswald, he himself often acted as interpreter while the clergy preached in a tongue unintelligible to his people. But in 1066 Gottschalk was murdered by the pagans; many Christians were massacred at the same time, among whom the aged John, a native of Ireland and bishop of Mecklenburg, was singled out as a victim for extraordinary cruelties; and Christianity appeared to be extirpated from the country.

 

HUNGARY

 

The history of the introduction of Christianity into Hungary has been the subject of disputes, chiefly arising from the question whether it was effected by the Greek or by the Latin church. It appears, in truth, that the first knowledge of the Gospel came from Constantinople, where two Hungarian princes, Bolosudes and Gyulas, were baptized in the year 948. Bolosudes relapsed into paganism, and, after having carried on hostilities against both empires, he was taken and put to death by Otho the Great in 955. But Gyulas remained faithful to his profession, and many of his subjects were converted by the preaching of clergy who were sent to him from Constantinople, with a bishop named Hierotheus at their head.

The great victory of Otho in 955 opened a way for the labours of the neighbouring German bishops among the Hungarians. About twenty years later, Pilligrin, bishop of Passau, reported to pope Benedict VII that he had been entreated by the people of Hungary to assist them; that he had sent clergy and monks, who had baptized about five thousand of them; that the land was full of Christian captives, who had formerly been obliged to conceal their religion, and had only been able to get their children baptized by stealth, but that now the hindrances to the open profession of Christianity were removed; that not only the Hungarians, but the Slavonic tribes of the neighbourhood, were ready to embrace the Gospel; and he prayed that bishops might be appointed for the work. This representation of the state of things may probably have been heightened by Pilligrin’s desire to obtain for himself the pall, with the title of archbishop of Lorch, which had been conferred on some of his predecessors, while the rest, as simple bishops of Passau, had been subject to the archiepiscopal see of Salzburg. The pope rewarded him by addressing to the emperor and to the great German prelates a letter in which he bestows on Pilligrin, as archbishop of Lorch, the jurisdiction of a metropolitan over Bavaria, Lower Pannonia, Moesia, and the adjoining Slavonic territories. Yet little seems to have been done in consequence for the conversion of the Hungarians; Wolfgang, who was sent as a missionary to them, met with such scanty success, that Pilligrin, unwilling to waste the energies of a valuable auxiliary in fruitless labours, recalled him to become bishop of Ratisbon.

Geisa, who from the year 972 was duke of Hungary, married Sarolta, daughter of Gyulas, a woman of masculine character, and by her influence was brought over to Christianity. Although the knowledge of the faith had been received by Sarolta’s family from Greece, her husband was led by political circumstances to connect his country with the western church, and he himself appears to have been baptized by Bruno, bishop of Verdun, who had been sent to him as ambassador by Otho I. But Geisa’s conversion was of no very perfect kind. While professing himself a Christian, he continued to offer sacrifice to idols, and, when Bruno remonstrated, he answered that he was rich enough and powerful enough to do both. In 983, or the following year, a bishop named Adalbert probably the celebrated bishop of Prague appeared in Hungary, and baptised Geisa’s son Waik, then four or five years old. The young prince, to whom the name of Stephen was given, became the most eminent worthy of Hungarian history. Unlike his father, he received a careful education. In 997, he succeeded Geisa, and he reigned for forty-one years, with a deserved reputation for piety, justice, bravery, and firmness of purpose. A pagan party, which at first opposed him, was put down; he married a Bavarian princess, Gisela, sister of duke Henry (afterwards the emperor Henry II), and in 1000 he obtained the erection of his dominions into a kingdom from Otho III. In fullfillment of a vow which he had made during the contest with his heathen opponents he earnestly exerted himself for the establishment of Christianity among his subjects. His kingdom, which he extended by the addition of Transylvania and part of Wallachia, (a territory known as Black Hungary), was placed under the special protection of the blessed Virgin. He erected episcopal sees, built many monasteries and churches, and enacted that every ten villas in the kingdom should combine to found and endow a church. Monks and clergy from other countries were invited to settle in Hungary, and it appears that the services which Stephen had done to the church procured for him a commission to act as vicar of the Roman see in his dominions, a privilege which his successors continued to claim. He founded a college for the education of Hungarians at Rome; he built hospitals and monasteries for his countrymen at Rome, Ravenna, Constantinople, and Jerusalem; and such was his hospitality to pilgrims that the journey through Hungary came to be generally preferred to a sea voyage by those who were bound for the Holy Land. The means which Stephen employed to recommend the Gospel and the observance of its duties were not always limited to pure persuasion; thus a free Hungarian who should refuse to embrace Christianity was to be degraded to the condition of a serf; any one who should be found labouring on Sunday was to be stopped, and the horses, oxen, or tools used in the work were to be taken away from him; and any persons who should converse in church were, if of higher station, to be turned out with disgrace; if of “lesser and vulgar” rank, to be publicly flogged into reverence for the sanctity of the place.

Stephen died in 1038. His son Emmerich or Henry, for whom he had drawn up a remarkable code of instructions, had died some years before; and the king bequeathed his dominions to a nephew named Peter, who was soon after dethroned. A period of internal discord followed; and twice within the eleventh century, the paganism which had been repressed so forcibly that king Andrew, in 1048, had even enacted death as the punishment for adhering to it, recovered its ascendency in Hungary so as for a time to obscure the profession of the Gospel.

 

DENMARK

 

Among the nations to which Anskar had preached, Christianity was but very partially adopted. Its progress was liable to be checked by the paganism of some princes; it was liable to be rendered odious by the violent measures which other princes took to enforce it on their subjects; while the barbarism and ignorance of the Northmen opposed a formidable difficulty to its success. Hamburg and Bremen, the sees planted for the evangelization of Nordalbingia and Scandinavia, were repeatedly attacked both by the Northmen and by the Slaves; but the victories of Henry I established the Christian power, and he erected the Mark of Sleswick as a protection for Germany against the northern inroads. The conversions in Denmark had been limited to the mainland; the islands were still altogether pagan, and human victims continued to be offered in Zealand, until Henry obtained from Gorm, who was the first king of all Denmark, that Christians should be allowed freedom of religion throughout the kingdom, and that human sacrifices should cease. Unni, archbishop of Bremen and Hamburg, undertook the work of a missionary in Denmark. His endeavours to make a convert of Gorm were unsuccessful; but he baptised one of the inferior kings named Frode, and found a supporter in Gorm’s son, Harold Blaatand (Blue-tooth or Black-tooth), who had derived some knowledge of the Gospel from the instructions of a Christian mother. The prince, however, was still unbaptized; he retained the cruelty, the rapacity, and the other usual vices of the northern plunderers, and for many years his religious belief was of a mixed kind. In 966 a missionary named Poppo, while enjoying Harold’s hospitality , fell into an argument with some of the guests, who, although they allowed Christ to be God, maintained that there were other Gods of higher dignity and power. In proof of the exclusive truth of his religion, Poppo (it is said) underwent the ordeal of putting on a red-hot iron gauntlet, and wearing it without injury to his hand, until the king declared himself satisfied. From that time Harold attached himself exclusively to Christianity, although he was not baptized until Otho the Great, after defeating him in 972, insisted on his baptism as a condition of peace. The intemperate zeal with which the king now endeavoured to enforce the reception of the Gospel provoked two rebellions, headed by his own son Sweyn; and, after a reign of fifty years, Harold was dethroned, and died of a wound received in battle.

Although Sweyn had been brought up as a Christian, and had been baptized at the same time with his father, he persecuted the faith for many years, until, towards the end of his life, when his arms had been triumphant in England, he was there brought back to the religion of his early days. In 1014 he was succeeded by Canute, who, both in England and in his northern dominions, endeavoured, by a bountiful patronage of the church, to atone for his father’s sins and for his own. When present at the coronation of Conrad as emperor, he obtained from him a cession of the Mark of Sleswick. Monasteries were founded in Denmark by Canute, and perhaps the payment of Peter’s pence was introduced by him; hospitals for Danish pilgrims were established at Rome and at some stations on the way to it. Three bishops and a number of clergy were sent from England into Denmark; but Unwan, archbishop of Bremen, regarding these bishops as intruders into his province, caught one of them, compelled him to acknowledge the metropolitan rights of Bremen, and sent him to Canute, who thereupon agreed to submit the Danish church to the jurisdiction of that see. Sweyn Estrithsen, who, eight years after the death of his uncle Canute, obtained possession of the Danish throne, although a man of intemperate and profligate life, was very munificent to the church, and did much for the extension of Christianity in the islands of his kingdom. The English missionaries had preached in their native tongue, while at every sentence their words were explained by an interpreter; but Sweyn, to remedy this difficulty for the future, provided that such foreigners as were to labour in the instruction of his subjects should be previously initiated in the Danish language by the canons of Hamburg. Among the memorable events of this reign was the penance to which the king was obliged to submit by William, bishop of Roskield, for having caused some refractory nobles to be put to death in a church a penance imitated from that of Theodosius. Sweyn died in 1076.

 

CHRISTIANITY IN SWEDEN

 

The Christianity planted by Anskar in Sweden was almost confined to the neighbourhood of Birka, and for about seventy years after the apostle’s death the country was hardly ever visited by missionaries. Unni, archbishop of Bremen, after the expedition to Denmark which has been mentioned, crossed the sea to Sweden in 935, and laboured there until his death in the following year. A mixture of paganism and Christianity arose, which is curiously exemplified in a drinking song still extant, where the praises of the divine Trinity are set forth in the same style which was used in celebrating the gods of Walhalla.

The reign of Olave Stotkonung, who became king towards the end of the tenth century, and died about 1024, was important for the propagation of the Gospel in Sweden. Some German clergy, and many from England, were introduced into the country; among them was Sigfrid, archdeacon of York, who laboured among the Swedes for many years. Two of his relations, who had joined him in the mission, were murdered by heathens. The chief murderer escaped, and his property was confiscated; some of his accomplices, who were found, were, at Sigfrid’s intercession, allowed to compound for their crime by payment of a fine; and the funds thus obtained served to found the bishopric of Wexio, to which Sigfrid was consecrated by the archbishop of Bremen. Olave had meditated the destruction of the temple at Upsal, which was the principal seat of the old idolatry; he was, however, diverted from his intention by the entreaties of his heathen subjects, who begged him to content himself with taking the best portion of the country, and building a church for his own religion, but to refrain from attempting to force their belief. On this he removed to Skara, in West Gothland, and founded a see there, to which Thurgot, an Englishman, was consecrated. The ancient Runic characters were superseded among the Swedes by the Latin alphabet, and the influence of Christianity triumphed over the national love of piracy.

But the violence of the measures by which Olave endeavoured to advance the Gospel excited a general hatred against him among the adherents of the old religion, and he was obliged to admit his son Emund to a share in the government. Emund, after his father’s death, had a disagreement with the archbishop of Bremen, and set up some bishops independent of that prelate’s metropolitan jurisdiction having obtained consecration for them in Poland. But this arrangement was given up by his second successor, Stenkil, whose mild and wise policy was more favourable to the advancement of the faith than the more forcible proceedings of Olave had been. Under Stenkil, the number of churches in Sweden was increased to about eleven hundred. His death, which took place in 1066, was followed by bloody civil wars, and for a time paganism resumed its ascendency; but in 1075 king Inge forbade all heathen worship, and, although this occasioned his expulsion, while his brother-in-law Soen was set up by the heathen party, Inge eventually recovered his throne, and, after much contention, Christianity was firmly established in the country. According to Adam of Bremen, a contemporary of the king, the scandal produced by the covetousness of too many among the clergy had been the chief hindrance to the general conversion of the Swedes, whom he describes as well disposed to receive the Gospel.

 

NORWAY

 

Among the Norwegians, some converts had been made in the time of Anskar, and the more readily, because the profession of Christianity opened to them the trade of England and of Germany. Yet such converts, although they acknowledged the power of Christ, and believed him to be the God of England, had greater confidence in the gods of Odin’s race, whom they regarded as still reigning over their own laud; and it was not until a century later that a purer and more complete Christianity was introduced into Norway.

Eric “of the Bloody Axe”, whose cruelties had rendered him detested by his subjects, was dethroned in 938 by his brother Haco. The new king had been educated as a Christian in the English court, under Athelstan, and was resolved to establish his own faith among his subjects. Some of his chief adherents were won to embrace the Gospel. He postponed the great heathen feast of Yule from midwinter in order that it might fall in with the celebration of the Saviour’s nativity; and while the other Norwegians were engaged in their pagan rejoicings, Haco and his friends, in a building by themselves, kept the Christian festival. Clergy were brought from England, and some congregations of converts were formed. But when the reception of Christianity was proposed in the national assembly, a general murmur arose. It was said that the rest of Sunday and Friday, which was required by the new faith, could not be afforded. The servants who had attended their masters to the meeting cried out that, if they were to fast, their bodies would be so weakened as to be unfit for work. Many declared that they could not desert the gods under whom their forefathers and themselves had so long prospered; they reminded the king how his people had aided him in gaining the crown, and told him that, if he persisted in his proposal, they would choose another in his stead. Haco found himself obliged to yield. He was forced to preside at the next harvest sacrifice, where he publicly drank to the national gods; and, as he made the sign of the cross over his cup, Sigurd, his chief adviser, told the company that it was meant to signify the hammer of their god Thor. The heathen party, however, were still unsatisfied. Eight of their chiefs bound themselves to extirpate Christianity; they assaulted and killed some of the clergy, and at the following Yule-feast Haco was compelled to submit to further compliances : to drink to the gods without making the sign of the cross, and to prove himself a heathen by partaking of the liver of a horse which had been offered in sacrifice. Feeling this constraint intolerable, he resolved to meet his opponents in arms; but an invasion by Eric’s sons, who had obtained aid from Harold Blaatand of Denmark, induced the Norwegian parties to enter into a reconciliation, and to turn their arms against the common enemy. From that time Haco lived in harmony with his people, not only tolerating their heathenism, but himself yielding in some degree to the influence of a heathen queen. In 963 his nephews renewed their attack, and Haco was mortally wounded. He expressed a wish, in case of recovery, to retire to some Christian land, that he might endeavour by penance to expiate his compliances, which weighed on his conscience as if he had been guilty of apostasy. But when his friends proposed that he should be carried to England for burial, he answered that he was unworthy of it that he had lived as a heathen, and as a heathen should be buried in Norway. His death was lamented by a scald in a famous song, which celebrates his reception into Walhalla, and intimates that, in consideration of the tolerance which he had shown towards the old religion, his own Christianity was forgiven by the gods.

Harold, the son of Eric, who now became master of the kingdom, endeavoured to spread Christianity by forcible means. After some commotions, in the course of which the son of Eric was slain, Harold Blaatand added Norway to his dominions, and appointed a viceroy, named Haco, who, unlike his master, was so devoted a pagan that he sacrificed one of his own children. The viceroy exerted himself for the restoration of paganism, and, by the help of the party who adhered to it, established himself in independence of the Danish king. But the oppressed Christians invited to their relief Olave, the son of a petty prince named Tryggve, and Haco was dethroned in 995.

Olave Tryggvesen is celebrated in the northern chronicles as the strongest, the bravest, and the most beautiful of men. After a life of wild adventure, in the course of which he had visited Russia and Constantinople, and had spread terror along the coasts of the western ocean, he had been baptized by a hermit in one of the Scilly Islands, and had been confirmed by Elphege, bishop of Winchester, in the presence of the English king Ethelred. Although his Christian practice was far from perfect (for, among other things, he married his stepmother, and endeavoured to obtain a knowledge of the future by the arts of divination), yet his zeal for his religion was unbounded, and manifested itself in exertions for the spreading of the faith, which savoured less of the Christian spirit than of his old piratical habits, and of the despotism which he had seen in Russia and in the eastern empire. Gifts and privileges of various kinds, and even marriage with the king’s beautiful sisters, were held out to the chiefs as inducements to embrace the Gospel; while those who should refuse were threatened with confiscation of property, with banishment, mutilation, tortures, and death. In the most blamable of his proceedings, Olave was much influenced by the counsels of Thangbrand, a German priest from whom he had derived his first knowledge of the Gospel, but whose character was so violent that he did not scruple even to kill those who offended or thwarted him. The king visited one district after another, for the purpose of establishing Christianity. “Wheresoever he came”, says Snorro Sturleson, in describing one of his circuits, “to the land or to the islands, he held an assembly, and told the people to accept the right faith and to be baptized. No man dared to say anything against it, and the whole country which he passed through was made Christian”.

Strange stories are related of the adventures which he encountered in destroying idols and temples, and of the skill and presence of mind with which he extricated himself from the dangers which he often incurred on such occasions. In one place Olave found eighty heathens who professed to be wizards. He made one attempt to convert them when they were sober, and another over their horns of ale; and, as they were not to be won in either state, he set fire to the building in which they were assembled. The chief of the party alone escaped from the flames; but he afterwards fell into the king’s hands, and was thrown into the sea. Another obstinate pagan and sorcerer had a serpent forced down his throat; the creature ate its way through his body, and caused his death. A less unpleasing tale relates Olave’s dealings with a young hero named Endrid, who at length agreed that his religion should be decided by the event of a contest between himself and a champion to be appointed by the king. Olave himself appeared in that character; in a trial which lasted three days, he triumphantly defeated Endrid in swimming, in diving, in archery, and in sword-play; and having thus prepared him for the reception of Christian doctrine, he completed his conversion by instructing him in the principles of the faith. The insular parts of Olave’s dominions were included in his labours for the extension of the Gospel; he forced the people of the Orkneys, of the Shetland, the Faroe, and other islands, to receive Christianity at the sword’s point. In obedience to a vision which he had seen at a critical time, Olave chose St. Martin as the patron of Norway, and ordered that the cup which had been usually drunk in honor of Thor should in future be dedicated to the saint. In 997, he founded the bishopric of Nidaros or Drontheim.

Olave’s zeal for Christianity at length cost him his life. Sigrid, the beautiful widow of a Swedish king, after having resisted the suit of the petty princes of Sweden so sternly that she even burnt one of them in his castle, in order (as she said) to cure the others of their desire to win her hand, conceived the idea of marrying the king of Norway, and with that view visited his court. Olave was inclined to the match; but, on her refusal to be baptized, he treated her with outrageous indignity, which filled her with a vehement desire of revenge. Sigrid soon after married Sweyn of Denmark. Her new husband, and the child of her first marriage, Olave Stotkonung, combined, at her urgent persuasion, in an expedition against Norway, and their force was strengthened by a disaffected party of Norwegians, under Eric, son of that Haco whom Olave had put down. A naval engagement took place, and the fortune of the day was against Olave, His ship, the “Long Dragon”, after a desperate defence, was boarded; on which the king and nine others, who were all that remained of the crew, threw themselves into the sea, in order that they might not fall into the hands of their enemies. Rude and violent as Olave was, he was so beloved by his subjects that many are said to have died of grief for him, and even the heathens cherished his memory. He was believed to be a saint; it was said that he had performed miracles, and that angels had been seen to visit him while at his prayers; and legends represented him as having long survived the disastrous fight. Nearly fifty years later, it is told, a Norwegian named Gaude, who had lost his way among the sands of Egypt, was directed by a dream to a monastery, where, to his surprise, he found an aged abbot of his own country. The old man’s questions were such that the pilgrim was led to ask whether he were himself king Olave. The answer was ambiguous; but the abbot charged Gaude, on returning to Norway, to deliver a sword and a girdle to a warrior who had sought death with Olave but had been rescued from the waves; and to tell him that on the fatal day no one had borne himself more bravely than he. Gaude performed his commission, and the veteran, on receiving the gifts and the message, was assured that the Egyptian abbot could be no other than his royal master.

The progress of the Gospel in Norway was slow during some years after the end of Olave Tryggvesen’s reign. But his godchild Olave, the son of Harold, who became king in 1015, was bent on carrying on the work. Many missionaries were invited from England; at their head was a bishop named Grimkil, who drew up a code of ecclesiastical law for Norway. Although his own character was milder than that of Olave Tryggvesen, the king pursued the old system of enforcing Christianity by such penalties as confiscation, blinding, mutilation, and death, and, like the elder Olave, he made journeys throughout his dominions, in company with Grimkil, with a view to the establishment of the faith. He found that under the pressure of scarcity the people were accustomed to relapse into the practice of sacrificing to their old gods. He often had to encounter armed resistance. At Dalen, in 1025, the inhabitants had been excited by the report of his approach, and on arriving he found 700 exasperated pagans arrayed against him. But, although his own party was only half the number, he put the peasants to flight, and a discussion on the merits of the rival religions ensued. Grimkil “the horned man”, as the heathens called him from the shape of his cap or mitre maintained the cause of Christianity; to which the other party, headed by a chief named Gudbrand, replied that their own god Thor was superior to the Christians’ God, inasmuch as he could be seen. The king spent a great part of the following night in prayer. Next morning at daybreak the huge idol of Thor was brought to the place of conference. Olave pointed to the rising sun as a visible witness to his God, who created it; and, while the heathens were gazing on its brightness, a gigantic soldier, in fullfillment of orders which he had before received from the king, raised his club and knocked the idol to pieces. A swarm of loathsome creatures, which had found a dwelling within its body, and had fattened on the daily offerings of food and drink, rushed forth; and the men of Dalen, convinced of the vanity of their old superstition, consented to be baptized.

The forcible means which Olave used in favour of his religion, the taxes which he found it necessary to impose, and the rigor with which he proceeded for the suppression of piracy and robbery, aroused great discontent among his subjects. Canute of Denmark and England was encouraged to claim the kingdom of Norway; his gold won many of the chiefs to his interest, and Olave, finding himself deserted, fled into Russia, where he was honourably received by Yaroslaff, and was invited to settle by the offer of a province.

But, while hesitating between the acceptance of this offer and the execution of an idea which he had entertained of becoming a monk at Jerusalem, he was diverted by a vision, in which Olave Tryggvesen exhorted him to attempt the recovery of the kingdom which God had given him. The Swedish king supplied him with some soldiers; and on his landing in Norway, multitudes flocked to his standard. Olave refused the aid of all who were unbaptized; many received baptism from no other motive than a wish to be allowed to aid him; and his soldiers marched with the sign of the cross on their shields. On the eve of a battle he gave a large sum of money to be laid out for the souls of his enemies who should fall; those who should lose their lives for his own cause, he said, were assured of salvation. But the forces of the enemy were overpowering, and Olave was defeated and slain.

After a time his countrymen repented of their conduct towards him. It was rumoured that he had done miracles in Russia, and on his last fatal expedition his blood had healed a wound in the hand of the warrior who killed him; a blind man, on whose eyes it had been accidentally rubbed, had recovered his sight; and other cures of a like kind were related. A year after his death his body was disinterred by Grimkil, when no signs of decay appeared, and the hair and nails had grown. The remains of the king were removed to the church of St. Clement at Nidaros, which he himself had built, and when, in the following century, a cathedral was erected by the sainted archbishop Eystein (or Augustine) they were enclosed in a magnificent silver shrine, above the high altar. St. Olave was chosen as the patron of Norway; his fame was spread far and wide by a multitude of miracles, and pilgrims from distant countries flocked to his tomb for cure : tribute was paid to him by Norway and Sweden; and churches were dedicated to his honour, not only in the western countries, but in Russia and at Constantinople.

Canute, after becoming master of Norway, encouraged religion there as in his other dominions. By him the first Benedictine monastery in the kingdom was founded near Nidaros. Harold Hardrada, Olave'’ half-brother, a rough and irreligious man, who became king in 1047, had some differences with pope Alexander II, and with Adalbert archbishop of Bremen. The king said that he knew no archbishop in Norway except himself, and obtained ordination for bishops from England and from France; while Adalbert, declaring that he had but two masters, the pope and the emperor, paid no regard to the northern sovereign, and without his consent erected sees in his dominions. Norway, like the rest of western Christendom, submitted to the dominion of Rome.

 

ICELAND

 

Iceland became known to the Norwegians in 86O, when a Norwegian vessel was cast on its coast. In 874, the first Norwegian colonist, Ingulf, settled in the island; and in the following years many of his countrymen resorted to it, especially after the great victory of Harold the Fairhaired at Hafursfiord, in 883, by which a number of petty kings or chiefs were driven from their native land to seek a home elsewhere. The colonists were of the highest and most civilized class among the Northmen, and the state of society in the new community took a corresponding character. The land was parcelled out, and the Icelanders, renouncing the practice of piracy, betook themselves to trade exchanging the productions of their island for the corn, the wood, and other necessaries which it did not afford. A republican form of government was established, and lasted for four hundred years. It had its national and provincial assemblies; its chief was the “lawman”, elected for life, whose office it was to act as conservator of the laws; and with this magistracy the function of priest was joined. The worship of Odin was established, but it would seem that there was an entire freedom as to religion.

It is said that the colonists found in Iceland traces of an Irish mission such as service-books, bells, and pastoral crooks although the natives, having been left without any clergy, had relapsed into paganism. Some of the Norwegians themselves may also have carried with them such mixed and imperfect notions of Christianity as were to be gathered in the intercourse of their roving and adventurous life; but the knowledge of the Gospel was neither spread among the other members of the community nor transmitted to their own descendants. In 981, an Icelander named Thorwald, who had formerly been a pirate, but even then had been accustomed to spend such part of his plunder as he could spare in redeeming captives from other pirates, brought with him to the island a Saxon bishop named Frederick, by whom he had been converted. A church was built, and Frederick’s instructions were well received, although most of his proselytes refused to be baptized being ashamed, it is said, to expose themselves naked at the ceremony, and to wear the white dress which in their country was worn by children only. An influential convert, named Thorkil, before submitting to baptism, desired that it might be administered by way of experiment to his aged and infirm father-in-law; and, as the old man died soon after, Thorkil put off his own baptism for some years.  The worshippers of Odin were roused to enmity by the rough manner in which Thorwald proceeded to spread his religion. After five years he and the bishop were expelled, and took refuge in Norway, where Thorwald, meeting with one of those who had most bitterly opposed him in Iceland, killed him. Frederick, hopeless of effecting any good in company with so lawless an associate, returned to his own country, and it is supposed that Thorwald, after many years of wandering, in the course of which he had visited the Holy Land, founded a monastery in Russia or at Constantinople, and there died.

Olave Tryggvesen, partly, perhaps, from political motives was desirous of establishing the Gospel in Iceland, and, after some earlier attempts to forward its progress, sent Thangbrand, the German priest who has been already mentioned, into the island in 997. The choice of a missionary was unfortunate; Thangbrand, it is said, performed some miracles; but he proceed with his usual violence, and, after having killed one of his opponents, and two scalds who had composed scurrilous verses on him, he was expelled. Olave, on receiving from Thangbraud a report of the treatment which he had met with, was very indignant, and was about to undertake an expedition for the punishment of the Icelanders, when Gissur and Hialte, two natives of the island, obtained his consent to the employment of milder measures for the conversion of their country-men. By the promise of a sum of money (which, however, was rather a lawful fee than a bribe), they secured the cooperation of the lawman Thorgeir, who, after addressing the national assembly in an exhortation to peace and unity, proposed a new law by way of compromise. All the islanders were to be baptized, the temples were to be destroyed, and public sacrifices were to cease; but it was to be allowed to eat horseflesh, to expose children, and to offer sacrifice in private. The proposal was adopted, and Christian instruction gradually prevailed over such remnants of heathenism as the law had sanctioned. St. Olave took an interest in the Christianity of Iceland; he sent an English bishop named Bernard to labour there, and exerted himself to procure the acceptance of Grimkil’s ecclesiastical laws, and the abolition of the practice of exposing children.

Although Iceland was from time to time visited by bishops, the need of a fixed episcopate was felt, and in 1056 the see of Skalholt was erected. Isleif, a son of Gissur, who had been educated at Erfurt and had made a pilgrimage to Rome, was elected a bishop, and, in obedience to an order from the pope, was consecrated by Adalbert of Bremen. With the consent of a younger Gissur, who had succeeded his father Isleif in the bishopric of Skalholt, a second see was founded at Hollum in 1105. The bishops, being taken from the most distinguished families, and invested, like the priests of the old idolatry, with secular power, became the most important members of the community. Adam of Bremen, who draws a striking picture of the contented poverty, the piety, and the charity of the islanders, tells us that they obeyed their bishop as a king. In 1121 the first Icelandic monastery was founded, and at a later time the island contained seven cloisters for men and two for women. The Icelanders traded to all quarters; their clergy, educated in Germany, France, and England, carried back the knowledge and the civilization of foreign countries. And in this remote and ungenial island grew up a vernacular literature of annals, poems, and sagas or historical legends the oldest literature of the Scandinavians, and the only source of information as to a great part of northern history. This literature flourished for two centuries, until, on the reduction of Iceland to tribute by the Norwegians in 1261, Latin became there, as elsewhere, the language of letters.

 

GREENLAND

 

From Iceland the Gospel made its way into a yet more distant region. In 982, a Norwegian named Eric the Red, who had fled to Iceland in consequence of having killed a man, and was there sentenced to banishment on account of a feud in which he was involved, determined to seek out a coast which had some years before been seen by one Gunnbiorn. Four years later, when the time of his banishment was expired, Eric revisited Iceland, and induced many of his countrymen to accompany him to the land of his refuge, to which with a design, as is said, of attracting adventurers by the promise which it conveyed the name of Greenland was given. In 999, Leif, the son of Eric, made a voyage to Norway, where Olave Tryggvesen induced him to receive baptism; and on his return to Greenland he was accompanied by a priest. The colony flourished for centuries. In 1055 (a year before the foundation of the first Icelandic see), a bishop was consecrated for it by Adalbert of Bremen. There were thirteen churches in the eastern part of Greenland, four in the western, and three or four monasteries. Sixteen bishops in succession presided over the church of Greenland. From the year 1276 they took their title from the see of Gardar; they were subject to the archbishop of Nidaros, and were in the habit of attending synods in Norway as well as in Iceland. And even from this extremity of the earth tribute was paid to the successors of St. Peter. But from the middle of the fifteenth century Greenland was lost to the knowledge of Europeans. The ice accumulated on its shores, so as to render them inaccessible, and the seventeenth bishop destined for the church was unable to land. The pestilence known as the “Black Death” wasted the population, and it is supposed that, when thus weakened, they were overpowered by tribes of Skrallings (Esquimaux) from the continent of North America, the ancestors of the present inhabitants.

The Northmen appear to have pushed their discoveries from Greenland to the American continent. In the year 1000, Leif, the son of Eric the Red, incited by the narrative of Biorn, the son of Heriulf, as to his adventures when in search of Greenland, sailed southward, and explored several coasts, to one of which the name of Vinland (or (Vineland) was given, because one of his companions, a native of southern Germany, recognized the vine among its productions. Further explorations were afterwards made in the same direction; and settlements were for a time effected on the shores of the great western continent. A bishop named Eric is said to have accompanied an expedition to Vinland in 1121; but nothing further is known of him, and it would seem that no confidence can be placed in the conjectures or inquiries which profess to have found in America traces of a Christianity planted by the Scandinavian adventurers of the middle ages.

 

 

CHAPTER VIII.

HERESIES. A.D. 1000-1052.