Chapter LXII: Section 4: The Church of Germany

[Sidenote: Conversion of Germany by French]

The large tract of country which is now comprehended under the name of Germany was won to the Church by a long series of missionary labours. In the beginning of the seventh century Frankish missionaries laid the foundations of a Church in Bavaria and on the banks of {128} the Danube, thus paving the way for the conversion of Southern Germany. [Sidenote: and British missionaries,] Central Germany, then called Franconia, was the scene of the labours of Kilian, an Irish missionary (A.D. 630-A.D. 689), whilst the English Bishops Wilfrith (A.D. 677) and Willebrord (A.D. 692-A.D. 741), preached with much success to the Frieslanders in the Northwest of Germany, now included in Holland. [Sidenote: Labours of St. Boniface] It is, however, to a Devonshire clergyman, Winfrith, better known as St. Boniface (A.D. 715-A.D. 755), that the title of Apostle of Germany is generally given, not only on account of his unwearied missionary labours in still heathen districts, but also on account of his success in organizing and consolidating the different branches of the German Church. He became Archbishop of Mentz, and Metropolitan, and at last suffered martyrdom at the hands of some heathen Frieslanders at the age of seventy-five.

The Emperor Charlemagne endeavoured to compel the rude Saxons in the neighbourhood of the Baltic to embrace the Christian faith; but eventually he was induced to trust less to the force of arms for their conversion, and more to the missionary work of the Church. [Sidenote: and of Willehad.] Amongst the prominent members of this Saxon mission, we find another English priest, Willehad, a native of Northumbria, afterwards Bishop of Bremen, who died A.D. 789.

The first attempts to plant the Church in Moravia were made by German missionaries in the ninth century. [Sidenote: Eastern missionaries in Moravia] These do not appear, however, to have been very successful, and about A.D. 860, two Greek monks, Cyril and Methodius, entered upon the same sphere of labour. Methodius was afterwards consecrated Metropolitan of Pannonia {129} and Moravia by the Pope; but there was considerable jealousy on the part of the Latinized Germans towards their Eastern fellow-labourers, and eventually the Moravian Church was subjected to the Bishops of Bohemia.

[Sidenote: and Bohemia.]

The first Christian Duke of Bohemia was converted about A.D. 871, whilst staying at the Moravian court, probably by Methodius; but the Church made very slow progress in Bohemia until after the conquest of that country by Otho the Great (A.D. 950), and the foundation of the Bishopric of Prague by King Boleslav the Pious (A.D. 967-A.D. 999). In Bohemia, as well as in Moravia, the influence of the Greek missionaries made itself felt in the impress it left upon the ritual and usages of the two Churches, especially in the fact that the native Sclavonic language was used in Divine Worship; but in the end German influences prevailed in both countries, and the national "use" gradually made way for the Latinized ritual common in Germany.

[Sidenote: Conversion of North Prussia,]

Until towards the middle of the tenth century, the Church made but very small progress in the northern portion of what is now the kingdom of Prussia. These regions were then occupied by a Sclavonic race called Wends, who yielded an unwilling submission to the Western emperors, and disliked Christianity as being the religion of their conquerors. Between A.D. 964 and A.D. 968, several bishoprics were founded in this country by Otho the Great, and amongst them the metropolitan see of Magdeburg. A revolt of the Wends frustrated for the time the success of the emperor's plans, but in the next century Gottschalk, who became king of the Wends A.D. 1047, and was himself a Christian, did all in his {130} power to aid the missionary work of the Church among his people. He was martyred by his subjects, A.D. 1066, and heathenism triumphed once more. During the twelfth century, the Wendish kingdom was dissolved, and its territories divided amongst different German princes, after which the Church gradually regained and extended its hold on the country. The northern Wends, who obstinately adhered to their Pagan superstitions, were at last converted chiefly by the labours of St. Vicelin, who became Bishop of Oldenburg, A.D. 1148.

[Sidenote: of Pomerania,]

The conversion of Pomerania was first attempted by the Poles, who, on obtaining possession of the country at the end of the tenth century, founded a bishopric at Colberg, A.D. 1000. It was not, however, until their more complete subjection to Poland about a hundred years later, that any marked result was obtained. Otho, Bishop of Bamberg, who placed himself at the head of the Pomeranian mission A.D. 1124, was at last enabled to overcome the fierce opposition which the heathen natives offered to the work of the Church, and by A.D. 1128 Christianity had gained a firm footing amongst them.

[Sidenote: of Prussia Proper.]

From Pomerania the Church extended itself eastward to Prussia Proper, about A.D. 1210. Here, too, Christianity was very distasteful to the natives, partly as being the religion of their enemies the Poles. About A.D. 1230, the "Order of Teutonic Knights" was instituted for the purpose of subjugating Prussia; and, after a depopulating warfare of fifty years' duration, the remaining inhabitants embraced Christianity. Before the end of the thirteenth century, the German element had quite superseded the Sclavonic in Prussia, as well as in Pomerania, and in what had formerly been the kingdom of the Wends.

{131}

[Sidenote: Extent of Roman influence in Germany.]

The Church in Germany, taken as a whole, was very much under Roman influence, partly, perhaps, on account of the early connexion between the emperors of the West and the see of Rome, and partly from the constant state of civil warfare into which Germany was plunged from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. In these contests the near neighbourhood of the Popes to the Italian possessions of the Western Empire gave them a hold on the affairs of Germany which they were not slow to use, and the turbulent German nobles were disinclined to resent an interference which was so often exerted in their behalf against an unpopular sovereign. The temporal power of the Popes was, however, much weakened by the great Schism; and though the Church of Germany acknowledged the true Pope, there was, amongst its members, a very widespread sense of the urgent need of some searching reformation. To this feeling may be traced, not only the unhappily disappointed expectations with which so many persons looked to the Councils of Constance and Basle, but also the unsound and exaggerated teaching of such men as John Huss and Jerome of Prague.