Chapter VI: The Church Outside of the Roman Empire.185 (3)

§ 74.2. =Periods in the Church History of the German-Roman
Middle Ages.=--The first regular period is marked by the end of
the Carolingian age, which may be regarded as completed by the
dying out of the German Carolingians in A.D. 911. The movement
in all the chief departments of the church was hitherto regular
and unbroken: before Charlemagne an ascending one, during his
reign reaching the summit, and after his death declining. It is
the =universal German= period of history. The fundamental idea
of the Carolingian dynasty, which survived even its weakest
representatives, was no other than the combination of all
German, Roman and Slavic nationalities under the sceptre of
one German empire. The last German Carolingian carried this
idea with him to the grave. The powerful impulse present even in
the 9th century toward national separation and the dismemberment
of the Carolingian empire into independent Germanic, Romanic and
Slavic nations has since asserted its irresistible power. But
with the Carolingian empire the Carolingian epoch of civilization
also came to an end. And even the glory of the papacy, whose
intrigues had undermined the empire, because it had thus snapped
the branch on which it sat, now sank into the lowest depths of
weakness and corruption. When we take a general survey of the
beginning of the 10th century, we find on all sides, in church
and state, in secular and spiritual governments, in science,
culture and art, the creations of Charlemagne overthrown, and
a _seculum obscurum_ introduced from which amid great oppression
and savagery, emerge the conditions, earnests and germs of a new
golden age.--A second period is marked out, in quite a different
fashion, by the age of Pope Boniface VIII. or the beginning of
the 14th century. Up to this time =Germany= stood distinctly in
the foreground both of the history of the world and of the church;
but the unhappy conflict of Boniface with Philip the Fair of
France placed the papacy at the mercy of French policy, and so
henceforth in all the movements of Church history =France= stands
in the front. The pontificate of Boniface forms a turning point
also for the historical development within the church itself. The
most vast and influential products of mediæval ecclesiasticism
are the papacy, monasticism and scholasticism. The period before
Boniface is characterized by the growth and flourishing of these;
the period after Boniface by their decay and deterioration.
The reformatory current, too, which permeated the whole of
the Middle Ages, has in each of these two periods its own
distinctive character. Before Boniface those representatives of
the dominant ecclesiastical system were themselves inspired by a
powerful reformatory spirit working its way up from the great and
widespread depravation of the 10th century, accompanied, however,
by a hierarchical lust of power far beyond the limits justifiable
on evangelical principles. The evangelical reformatory endeavours
again directed against those representatives of ecclesiasticism
are still relatively few and isolated and find but a slight echo,
while as their caricature we see alongside of them heretical
extravagances which have scarcely ever had their like in history.
Toward the end of the first period, however, this relation
begins to be reversed. The papacy, monasticism and scholasticism
becoming more and more deteriorated are the patrons of every sort
of deterioration within the church. The revolutionary heretical
movement is indeed overcome, but all the more powerfully,
generally and variedly does the evangelical reformatory movement,
though still always burdened with much that was confused and
immature, assert itself independently of and over against those
ecclesiastical principalities, without being able, however,
to exert upon them any abiding influence.--Thus our phase of
development is divided into three periods: the period from the
4th to the 9th cent. (till A.D. 911); the period from the 10th
to the 13th cent. (A.D. 911-1294); and the period of the 14th
and 15th cent. (A.D. 1294-1517).

FIRST SECTION.

HISTORY OF THE GERMAN-ROMAN CHURCH FROM THE 4TH TO
THE 9TH CENTURY (DOWN TO A.D. 911).

I. Founding, Spread, and Limitation of the German Church.[199]

§ 75. CHRISTIANITY AND THE GERMANS.

In the pre-German age Europe was for the most part inhabited by Celtic races. In Britain, Spain and Gaul, however, these were subjugated by the Roman forces and Romanized, whereas in northern, eastern and middle Europe they were oppressed, exterminated or Germanized by the Germans. In its victorious march through Europe, Christianity met with Celtic races of unmixed nationality only in Ireland and Scotland, for even among the neighbouring Britons the Celtic nationality was already blended with the Roman. Only in a very restricted field, therefore, could the church first of all develop itself according to the Celtic mode of culture. But here, with a wonderful measure of independence, missionary operations were so energetically prosecuted that for a long time it seemed as if the greater part of the opposite continent with its German population was to be its prey, until at last the Romish church would be driven out of its own home as well as out of its hopeful mission fields (§ 77).--Even in pre-Christian times a second and more powerful immigration from the East had begun to pour over Europe. The various Germanic groups of tribes now presented themselves, followed by other warlike races, Huns, Slavs, Magyars, etc., alternately driving and being driven. The Germans first came into contact with Christian elements in the second half of the 3rd century, and toward the end of the 5th a whole series of powerful German peoples are found professing the Christian faith, and each successive century far down into the Middle Ages brings always new trophies from these nations into the treasure-house of the church. It would certainly be wrong to ascribe these results to a national predisposition of the German churches and type of mind for Christianity. This cannot be altogether denied, but it did not predispose the German peoples to Christianity as it then was preached, but was first developed when this by other ways and means had found an entrance and only at the Reformation of the 16th century did it get full expression. For that predisposition was directed to the deepest and innermost sides of Christianity, for which the ecclesiastical institution of the times in its externalism had little appreciation; and the first task of the German spirit was to secure recognition of this reformatory principle.

§ 75.1. =The Predisposition of the Germans for
Christianity.=--What we have been accustomed to hear about
this subject is in part greatly exaggerated, in part sought
for where its proper germ does not lie. The German mythology
may indeed conceal many deep thoughts under the garb of legendary
poetry which have some relation to Christian truth and afford
evidence of the religious needs, the speculative gifts and the
characteristic profundity of German thought, but this scarcely
in a larger measure than in the Greek myths, philosophemes and
mysteries.[200] Much more suggestive of a predisposition to
Christianity than such bright spots in the mythological system
of the Germans are the special and distinguishing characteristics
of the life of the German people. The fidelity of the vassal to
his lord, transferred to Christ the heavenly king, constitutes
the special core of Christianity. Besides, closely connected
therewith, the love of battle and faithfulness in battle for
and with the hereditary or elected chief found a parallel in
the struggles and victories of the Christian life. Further,
the Germans’ noble love of freedom, sanctified by the Gospel,
afforded form and expression for the glorious freedom of the
children of God. And finally, the spirituality of the Germans’
worship, praised even by Tacitus, who says that they _nec
cohibere parietibus Deos, neque in ullam humani oris speciem
adsimulare, ex magnitudine cœlestium arbitrantur_, predisposed
them in favour of the worshipping of God in spirit and in truth.

§ 75.2. What is of most significance, however, for understanding
the almost unopposed =Adoption of Christianity= by so many German
races is the slight hold that their heathen religion had upon
them at that time. It is essentially characteristic of heathenism
as the religion of nature that it can flourish only on its
native soil. German paganism, however, had been uprooted by its
transplantation to European soil and had, amid the movements of
peoples during the first centuries after their migration, never
quite struck root in the new ground. In the later centuries,
when it had long enough time for doing so, _e.g._ among the
Frisians, Saxons, Danes, it offered an incomparably more resolute
resistance. Again, rapid conversion will be furthered or hindered
according as the new home is one where already from Roman times
Christian institutions existed or even had existed, or is one
where the old primitive heathenism still prevailed. Only in
the latter case could German paganism develop its full power
and strike its roots deeply and feel at home upon the new soil;
whereas in the other case, the higher culture and spiritual
power of Christianity, even where it had been vanquished by
the barbarians, disturbed the even tenour and naïvete of the
genuinely pagan course of development. The circumstance also
deserves mention, that the marriage of heathen princes with
Christian princesses frequently secured their conversion along
with that of their subjects. In the narrower circles of the home,
the family, the tribe, innumerable instances of the same sort of
thing repeatedly occurred. There is something specially Germanic,
in the prominent position which German feeling had assigned to
the wife: _Inesse quin etiam_, says Tacitus, _sanctum aliquid
et providum putant; nec aut consilia earum adspernantur, aut
responsa negligunt_.[201]

§ 75.3. =Mode of Conversion in the Church of these Times.=--Apart
from the too frequent practice of Christian rulers to secure
conversions by the sword, baptism and conversion were commonly
regarded as an _opus operatum_, and whole crowds of heathens
without any knowledge of saving truth, with no real change of
heart and mind, were received into the church by baptism. No one
can approve this. But it must be admitted that only in this way
could striking and rapid results have been reached; that indeed
in the stage of childhood, in which the Germans then were, it
had a certain measure of justification. By the history even of
its attack upon German paganism an entirely different career of
conflict and victory was marked out to Christianity than that
through which it had to pass in its conquests of Græco-Roman
paganism. In this latter case it had to confront a high form of
civilization which had outlived its powers and had lost itself
in its own perplexities, which for a thousand years had proved
in its civilization and history a παιδαγωγὸς εἰς Χριστόν.
All this was wanting to the Germans. If the Roman world might
be compared to a proselyte who in ripe, well proved and much
experienced maturity receives baptism, the conversion of the
Germans may be compared to the baptism of children.--Gregory the
Great had at first directed the missionaries to the Anglo-Saxons
(§ 77, 4) to destroy the idol temples of converted heathens. But
further reflection convinced him that it was better to transform
them into Christian churches, and now he laid it down as a maxim
in Roman Catholic missions that pagan forms of worship and places
of worship which were capable of modification to Christian uses
should be carefully preserved and respected: “_Nam duris mentibus
simul omnia abscindere impossibile esse dubium non est, quia et
is qui summum locum ascendere nititur, gradibus vel passibus,
non autem saltibus, elevatur._” It was a fateful, two-edged word,
which led Catholic missions to a brilliant outward success, but
has saturated the Catholic worship and life with a pagan leaven,
which works in it powerfully down to the present day.

§ 76. THE VICTORY OF CATHOLICISM OVER ARIANISM.[202]

The first conversions of multitudes of the German races occurred at the time when Arianism had reached its climax in the Roman empire. Internal disturbances and external pressure compelled a portion of the Goths in the second half of the fourth century to throw themselves into the arms of the East Roman empire and to purchase its protection by the adoption of Arian Christianity. The missionary zeal of the national clergy, with bishop Ulfilas at their head, though we cannot indicate particularly his methods, spread Arianism in a short time over a multitude of the German nationalities. Down to the end of the fifth century Arianism was professed by the larger portion of the German world, by Visigoths and Ostrogoths, by Vandals, Suevi and Burgundians, by the Rugians and Herulians, by the Longobards, etc. And as the early friendly relations to the Roman empire had given Arianism a foundation among those peoples, so the later hostile relations to the Roman empire now turned Catholic made them cling tenaciously to their Arian heresy. Arianism had more and more assumed the character of a national German Christianity, and it almost seemed as if the whole German world, and with it the universal history of the future, were its secure prey. But a quick end was made of these expectations by the conversion of one of its chief branches to Catholicism. The Franks had from the first pursued a policy which was directed rather to the strengthening of the future of its brother tribes, than to the accelerating of the downfall of the Roman empire. This policy led them to embrace Catholicism. Trusting to the protection of the Catholic Christians’ God and the sympathies of the whole Catholic West, the Frankish rulers took advantage of the call to suppress heresy and conquer heretics’ lands. To renounce heresy so as to find occasion for attacking the territories of heretics, was probably with them a matter of political necessity.

§ 76.1. =The Goths in the lands of the Danube.=--From the middle
of the 3rd century Christianity had found an entrance among the
Goths through Roman prisoners of war. At the Council of Nicæa
in A.D. 325 there was present a Gothic bishop Theophilus. From
A.D. 348 the scion of an imprisoned Cappadocian Christian family,
=Ulfilas=[203] by name, wrought as bishop among the Visigoths,
already attached to the Arian confession, with so much zeal and
success for the spread of Christianity that the hatred of the
pagans was roused to such a pitch that in A.D. 355 they began
a bloody persecution of the Christians. With a great part of the
Gothic Christians Ulfilas fled over the Danube, and the emperor
Constantius, who honoured him as a second Moses, assigned him
a dwelling-place in Mount Hæmus. Ulfilas continued his work for
thirty-three years with many tokens of blessing. In order that
the Goths might have access to the original fount of saving
knowledge, he translated the Holy Scriptures into their language,
for which he invented a written character of his own. He died
in A.D. 381. A short biography of the Apostle of the Goths
was written by his disciple Auxentius, bishop of Dorostorus
in Silistria, which gives an account at first hand of his life
and doctrine. But not all Gothic Christians were expatriated
with Ulfilas. Those who remained behind were a leaven which
ever continued to expand and spread. So Athanaric, king of the
Thervingians, about A.D. 370, started a new and cruel persecution
against them. Soon afterwards a rebellion broke out among the
pagan Thervingians. At the head of the malcontents was Frithigern.
He was subdued, but got aid from the emperor Valens and in
gratitude for the help given adopted the Arian religion of
the emperor. This was the first conversion in multitude among
the Goths. A second followed not long after. The Huns had rushed
down like a whirlwind in A.D. 375 and destroyed the empire of the
Ostrogoths. A part of these were obliged to join the Huns; while
another fled into the country of the Thervingians. These last
again were driven before the conquerors and crossed the Danube
under Frithigern and Alaviv, where in A.D. 376 Valens gave
them a settlement on condition that they should profess Arian
Christianity. But this friendship did not last long, and Valens
fell in A.D. 378 fighting against them. Theodosius, the restorer
of the Catholic faith in the Roman empire, made peace with them.
They retained, however, their Arian Confession, which spread
from them in a way not yet explained to the Ostrogoths and other
related tribes. Chrysostom started a Catholic mission among them,
but it was stopped at his death.

§ 76.2. =The Visigoths in Gaul and Spain.=--The death of
Theodosius in A.D. 395 and the partition of his empire gave
the signal to the Visigoths to attempt securing for themselves
more room. Alaric devastated Greece, broke in upon Italy in
search of prey and plundered Rome in A.D. 410. His successor
Athaulf descended upon southern Gaul, and Wallia founded there
a Visigoth empire with Toulouse for its capital, which under
Euric, who died in A.D. 483, reached the summit of its glory.
Euric extended his kingdom in Gaul, and in A.D. 475, conquered
the most of Spain. He sought to strengthen his government by
having one system of law and one religion, but in his projected
conversion of his subjects to Arianism, he met with unexpected
opposition, which he sought in vain to put down by a severe
persecution of the Catholics. The Roman population and the
Catholic bishops longed for a Catholic government and placed
their hopes in the Frankish king Clovis who had been converted
in A.D. 496. As saviour and avenger of the Catholic faith Clovis
completely destroyed the Visigoth power on this side the Pyrenees
in a battle at Vouglé near Poitiers in A.D. 507. In Spain,
however, the Visigoths retained their power and persisted in
their efforts to convert all to the Arian faith. Under the
violent Leovigild these efforts culminated in A.D. 585 in a
cruel persecution. His son and successor Reccared, however,
saw the vanity and danger of this policy and took the opposite
course. At the third Synod of Toledo in A.D. 589 he adopted the
Catholic faith and with the co-operation of the able metropolitan
Leander of Seville secured complete ascendency for Catholicism
throughout the empire. Under the later kings the Visigoth power
sank lower and lower amid the treacheries, murders and revolts of
internal factions, and in A.D. 711 the last king of the Visigoths,
Roderick, after a bloody fight at Xeres de la Frontera yielded to
the Saracens who had rushed down from Africa upon Spain.

§ 76.3. =The Vandals in Africa.=--Early in the 5th century
the Vandals, who were even then Arian Christians, combining
with the Alani and Suevi, made a descent from Pannonia upon
Gaul in A.D. 406 and from thence upon Spain in A.D. 409, and
made dreadful havoc of these rich and fertile lands. In A.D. 428
the Roman proconsul of Africa, Boniface, unjustly accused of
treason by the Roman government, in his straits called in the
aid of the Vandals. Their king Genseric went in A.D. 429 with
50,000 men. Boniface, however, was meanwhile reconciled with
his government and did all in his power to get the barbarians
to retire. But all in vain. Genseric conquered Africa and founded
there a powerful Vandal empire. In A.D. 455 he even made an
attack upon Rome, which was plundered by his hordes for fourteen
days. In order to prevent any sympathy being shown by Africa
for Rome he determined to secure throughout his empire uniform
profession of the Arian creed, and in prosecuting this purpose
during his fifty years’ reign exercised continual cruelties.
He died in A.D. 477. But the African Catholics were faithful to
their creed unto death and went forth to martyrdom in a spirit
worthy of their ancestors of the 2nd or 3rd centuries. His
son Hunneric allowed them only a short respite and began again
in A.D. 483 the bloody work. He died in A.D. 484. Under his
successor Guntamund [Gunthamund], who died in A.D. 496, a stop
was put to the persecution; but Thrasamund [Thrasimund], who died
in A.D. 523, again adopted bloody measures. Hilderic, who died
in A.D. 530, a man of mild and generous temper, and the son of
a Catholic mother, openly favoured the Catholics. Gelimer, a
great-grandson of Genseric, put himself at the head of the Arians
whom Hilderic’s catholic sympathies had alienated, took Hilderic
prisoner and had him executed. But before he could carry out the
intended persecution, Justinian’s general Belisarius marched into
Africa, annihilated the Vandal army in a battle near Tricameron
in A.D. 533, and overthrew the Vandal empire.[204]

§ 76.4. =The Suevi= were still heathens when they entered Spain
with the Vandals in A.D. 409. Here under their king Rechiar they
adopted the Catholic faith. But Remismund to please the Visigoths
went over to Arianism in A.D. 465 with the whole people. Carraric,
who thought he owed the cure of his son to the relics of Martin
of Tours, passed over again to Catholicism in A.D. 550. With
the co-operation of Martin, metropolitan of Braga, he converted
his people, and a Provincial Synod at Braga in A.D. 563 under
Theodimir I. completed the work. The empire of the Suevi was
destroyed by Leovigild king of the Visigoths, in A.D. 585.

§ 76.5. =The Burgundians= carried on by the irresistible advance
of Vandals, Suevi and Alani from their home on the Main and the
Neckar, where they had adopted the Catholic faith, founded an
independent kingdom in the Jura district. Here they came into
contact with the Visigoths and for the most part fell away to
Arianism. Of Gundiac’s four sons, who divided the empire among
them, only Chilperic II., the father of Clotilda, remained
Catholic. By fratricide his brother Gundobald secured complete
sovereignty. The bishop Avitus of Vienne (§ 53, 5), however,
vigorously opposed Arianism, and to secure its suppression called
a Council at Epaon in A.D. 517, the decisions of which were
recognised by Sigismund, Gundobald’s son, and were made valid
throughout the empire. But even this did not satisfy Clotilda,
the wife of the Frankish king Clovis, as an atonement for her
father’s death. Her sons, urged by their mother to prove avengers
of her father’s blood, made an end of the Burgundian empire in
A.D. 534.

§ 76.6. =The Rugians=, in combination with the Herulians,
Scyrians and Turcellingians, had founded an independent kingdom
in the Old Roman Noricum, the Lower Austria of to-day. Arianism
had been introduced among them by the Goths but without the
complete expulsion of paganism. The Romans among them attached to
Catholicism were sorely oppressed. But from A.D. 454, =Severinus=
wrought among them like a messenger from heaven to bless, help
and comfort the heavily burdened. He died in A.D. 482. Even from
the barbarians he won the deepest reverence, and over heathens
and Arians he had an almost magical power. He prophesied to the
Scyrian Odoacer his future greatness. This prince in A.D. 476
put an end to the West Roman empire and ruled ably and wisely
as king of Italy for seventeen years. He put an end too to Arian
fanaticism in Rugiland in A.D. 487 by overthrowing the empire of
the Rugians. But in A.D. 489 the Ostrogoth Theodoric came down
upon Italy, conquered Ravenna after a three years’ siege, took
Odoacer prisoner and in a wild drunken revel had him put to death
in A.D. 493.

§ 76.7. =The Ostrogoths= when they conquered Italy had already
for a long time been Arians, but were free from that fanaticism
which so often characterized German Arianism. Theodoric granted
full liberty to Catholicism, spared, protected and prized Roman
culture, in all which certainly his famous minister Cassiodorus
(§ 47, 23) had no small share. This liberal-minded tolerance was
indeed made easy to the king by the thirty-five years’ schism of
that time (§ 52, 5), which prevented any suspicions of danger to
the state from the combination of Roman and Byzantine Catholics.
And in fact, when this schism was healed in A.D. 519, Theodoric
began to interest himself more in Arianism and to give way
to such suspicions. He died in A.D. 526. The confusions that
followed his death were taken advantage of by the emperor
Justinian for the reconquest of Italy. His general Narses
annihilated the last remnants of the Ostrogoth power in A.D. 554.
The Byzantine government again rose upon the ruins of the Goths,
and in A.D. 567 established the exarchate with Ravenna as its
capital. For the time being Arianism was completely destroyed
in Italy.[205]

§ 76.8. =The Longobards in Italy.=--In A.D. 569 the Longobards
under Alboin made a descent upon Italy from the lands of the
Danube, and conquered what has been called Lombardy after them,
with its capital Ticinum, now Pavia. His successors extended
their conquests farther south, till at last only the farthest
point of Italy, the duchies of Naples, Rome and Perugia, Ravenna
with its subject cities and Venice, acknowledged Byzantine rule.
Excited by desire of plunder and political jealousy, the Arian
Longobards warred incessantly for twenty years with Roman
culture and Roman Catholicism. But after this first outburst of
persecution had been stilled, religious indolence won the upper
hand and the Arian clergy were not roused from their indifference
to spiritual things by the growing zeal for conversions which
characterized the Catholic bishops. Pope Gregory the Great,
A.D. 590-604, devoted himself unweariedly to the task, and was
powerfully supported by a Bavarian princess, the zealous Catholic
queen Theodelinde. The Longobards were so enamoured of this
fair and amiable queen that, when her first husband Anthari was
murdered in A.D. 590, one year after their marriage, they allowed
her to choose for herself one of the dukes to be her husband and
their king. Her choice fell on Agilulf, who indeed himself still
continued an Arian, but did not prevent the spread of Catholicism
among his people. Their daughter Gundiberge, married successively
to two Longobard kings, Ariowald († A.D. 636) and Rothari
(† A.D. 652) was an equally zealous protectress of the Catholic
church; and with Rothari’s successor Aribert, brother’s son of
Theodelinde, who died in A.D. 663, begins the series of Catholic
rulers of the Longobards.--Continuation, § 82, 1.

§ 76.9. =The Franks in Gaul.=--When the West Roman empire was
overthrown by Odoacer in A.D. 476, the Roman authority was still
for a long time maintained in Gaul by the proconsul Syagrius.
But the Merovingian Clovis, A.D. 481-511, put an end to it by
the battle of Soissons in A.D. 486. In A.D. 493 he married the
Burgundian princess Clotilda, and she, a zealous Catholic, used
every effort to convert her pagan husband. The national pride
of the Frank resisted long, but she got permission to have her
firstborn son baptized. The boy, however, died in his baptismal
robes, and Clovis regarded this as a punishment from his gods.
Nevertheless on the birth of his second son he was unable to
resist the entreaties of his beloved wife. He too sickened after
his baptism; but when contrary to expectation he recovered amid
the fervent prayers of the mother, the heathen father confessed
that prayer to the Christian’s God is more powerful than Woden’s
vengeance. He remembered this when threatened in A.D. 496 at
Tolbiac with loss of the battle, of his life and of his empire
in the war with the Alemanni. Prayer to the national gods had
proved fruitless. He now turned in prayer to the God of the
Christians, promising to own allegiance to Him, if He should
get the victory. The fortune of battle soon turned. The army and
kingdom of the Alemanni were destroyed. At his baptism at Rheims
on Christmas Eve, A.D. 496, Archbishop Remigius addressed him
thus: “Bend thy neck, proud Sigamber; adore what thou hast burnt,
burn what thou hast adored!” The later tradition, first reported
by Hincmar of Rheims in the 9th century, relates that when the
church officer with the anointing oil could not get forward
because of the crowd, in answer to Remigius’ prayer a white dove
brought an oil flask from heaven, out of which all the kings of
the Franks from that day have been anointed. The conversion of
Clovis, soon followed by that of the nobles and the people, seems
really to have been a matter of conviction and genuine according
to the measure of his knowledge of God. He made a bargain with
the Christian’s God and fulfilled the obligations under which
he had placed himself. Of an inner change of heart we can indeed
find no trace. There was, however, no mention of that in his
bargain. Just after his conversion he commits the most atrocious
acts of faithlessness, treachery and secret murder. The Catholic
clergy of the whole West nevertheless celebrated in him a second
Constantine, called of God as avenger upon heathenism and Arian
heresy, and asked of him nothing more, seeing in this the task
which providence had assigned him. The conversion of Clovis was
indeed in every respect an occurrence of the greatest moment.
The rude Arianism of the Germans, incapable of culture, received
here its deathblow. The civilization and remnants of culture of
the ancient world found in the Catholic church its only suitable
vehicle for introduction into the German world; and now the
Franks were at the head of it and laid the foundation of a new
universal empire which would for centuries form the central
point of universal history. On the work of Friddin [Fridolin]
and Columbanus in the land of the Franks, see § 77, 7.

§ 77. VICTORY OF THE ROMISH OVER THE OLD BRITISH CHURCH.[206]

According to an ancient but more than doubtful tradition a British king Lucius about the middle of the 2nd century is said to have asked Christian missionaries of the Roman bishop Eleutherus and by them to have been converted along with his people. This, however, is certain, that at the end of the 3rd century (§ 22, 6) Christianity had taken root in Roman Britain, probably through intercourse with the Romans. Down to the Anglo-Saxon invasion in A.D. 449, the British church certainly kept up regular communication with that of the continent, especially with Gaul. From that time, being driven back into North and South Wales, it was completely isolated from the continental church; but all the more successfully it spread itself out among its neighbours in the allied tribes of Ireland and Scotland, among the former through Patrick, the Apostle of the Irish, among the latter by Columba, the Apostle of the Scots, and followed a thoroughly independent course of development. When one hundred and fifty years later, in A.D. 596 the long interrupted intercourse with Rome was again renewed by a Romish mission to the Anglo-Saxons, several divergences from Roman practice were discovered among the Britons in respect of worship, constitution and discipline. Rome insisted that these should be corrected, but the Britons insisted on retaining them and repudiated the pretensions of the Romish hierarchy. The keen struggle which therefore arose, beginning amid circumstances that promised a brilliant success to the British church, ended with complete submission to Rome. The battle-field was then transferred to Germany, and there too in spite of the resolute resistance of their apostles the contest concluded with the same result (§ 78). The struggle was not merely one of highly tragic interest but of incomparable importance for the history of Europe. For had the result been, as for a time it seemed likely that it would be, in favour of the old British church, not only England but also all Germany would have taken up a decidedly anti-papal attitude, and not only the ecclesiastical but also the political history of the Middle Ages would have most likely been led into an altogether different course.

§ 77.1. =The Conversion of the Irish.=--Among the Celtic
inhabitants of the island of Ireland there were some individual
Christians from the beginning of the 5th century. The mission
of a Roman deacon Palladius in A.D. 431 was without result. But
in the following year, A.D. 432, the true apostle of the Irish,
=Patrick=, with twenty-four companions, stept upon the shore of
the island. The only reliable source of information about his
life and work is an autobiography which he left behind him,
_Confessiones_. According to it he was grandson of a presbyter
and son of a deacon residing at Banava, probably in Britain, not
likely in Gaul. In his sixteenth year he was taken to Ireland by
Irish pirates and sold to an Irish chief whose flocks he tended
for six years. After his escape by flight the love of Christ
which glowed within his heart gave him no rest and his dreams
urged him to bring the glorious liberty of the children of God
to those who so long kept him bound under hard slavery. Familiar
with the language and the customs of the country, he gathered the
people by beat of drum into an open field and told them of the
sufferings of Christ for man’s salvation. The Druids, priests
of the Celts, withstood him vigorously, but his attractive and
awe-inspiring personality gained the victory over them. Without
a drop of martyr’s blood Ireland was converted in a few years,
and was thickly strewn with churches and monasteries. Patrick
himself had his residence at Macha, round which the town of
Armagh, afterwards the ecclesiastical metropolis, sprang up. He
died about A.D. 465, and left the island church in a flourishing
condition. The numerous monasteries, in which calm piety
flourished along with diligent study of Scripture and from which
many teachers and missionaries went forth, won for the land the
name of _Insula Sanctorum_. Only after the robber raids of the
Danes in the 9th century did the glory of the Irish monasteries
begin to fade.[207]

§ 77.2. =The Mission to Scotland.=--A Briton, Ninian, educated
at Rome, wrought, about A.D. 430, among the Celtic =Picts= and
=Scots= in Scotland or Caledonia. But those converted by him fell
back into paganism after his death. The true Apostle of Scotland
was the Irishman =Columba=. In A.D. 563 he settled with twelve
disciples on the small Hebridean island Hy. Its common name,
Iona, seems to have originated by a clerical error from Ioua,
and was then regarded as the Hebrew equivalent of Columba, a dove.
Icolmkill means Columba’s cell. Here he founded a monastery and
a church, and converted from this centre all Caledonia. Although
to the last only a presbyter and abbot of this monastery, he had
all the authority of an apostle over the Scottish church and its
bishops, a position that was maintained by successive abbots of
Iona. He died in A.D. 597. The numerous monasteries founded by
him vied with the Irish in learning, piety and missionary zeal.
The original monastery of Iona flourished in a superlative
degree.[208]

§ 77.3. =The Peculiarities of the Celtic Church.=--In the
Anglo-Saxon struggle the following were the main points at issue.

1. On the part of Rome it was demanded that they should submit
to the archiepiscopal jurisdiction instituted by the pope,
which the British refused as an unrighteous assumption.

2. The British had an =Easter Canon= different from that
of the Romish church. They were indeed nothing else than
Quartodecimans, although they like these in ignorance
referred to the Johannine tradition (§ 34, 2), but celebrated
their Easter always on a Sunday, the settling of which they
decided according to an 84 years’ cycle of the moon, after
Rome had adopted a cycle of 19 years (§ 56, 3).

3. The Celtic clergy had also a different =Tonsure= from the
Roman _Tonsura Petri_ which seems to have been the Greek
_Tonsura Pauli_ (§ 45, 1), although the zealous advocate of
the Roman customs, Ceolfrid, abbot of Jarrow, in a letter
to Naitan, king of the Picts, derives it from Simon Magus.

4. Besides this there was also the question of the Marriage
of Priests, which indeed the popish Anglo-Saxon Archbishop
Augustine declared himself at first willing to allow to the
British, which, however, was subsequently so passionately
denounced by Boniface as _fornicatio_ and _adulterium_.

5. If, further, according to Bede’s statement, besides their
divergent views about Easter, the British _et alia plurima
imitati ecclesiasticæ contraria faciebant_, this certainly
cannot be understood of doctrinal divergences, but
only of different forms of constitution and worship,
or ecclesiastical habits and customs, as might be well
expected in churches that had been completely separated
since A.D. 449. We need only think, _e.g._, of the progress
made by the idea of the papal primacy (§ 46, 7-10), the
consolidation and reconstruction of monasticism under
Benedict (§ 85), the codification of Roman canon law by
Dionysius Exiguus (§ 43, 3), the modification of the idea
of penance since Leo the Great (§ 61, 1) and the development
of the doctrine of the mass down to Gregory the Great
(§ 58, 3; 59, 6). The most considerable peculiarity of
constitution in the Celtic church seems to have been that
above referred to in placing the abbots of the principal
monasteries at the head of the hierarchy. Only in one
passage (Bede, III. 19) is there mention of ecclesiastical
doctrine: In A.D. 640 Pope John IV. addressed a conciliatory
letter to the Scots in which he warns them against the
Pelagian heresy, “_quam apud eos revivescere didicerat_.”

When then we turn our attention to the Celtic church planted on
the continent at a later period, it is specially Columbanus’ view
of Easter that is regarded in France as heretical. Often and loud
as Boniface lifted up his voice against the horrible heresies
of British, Irish and Scotch intruders, it is found at last that
these consist in the same or similar divergences as those of the
Anglo-Saxons. Not insisting upon the law of celibacy, opposition
to the Roman primacy, the Romish tradition and the Romish canon
law, especially the ever-increasing strictness of the Roman
marriage laws (§ 61, 2), more simple modes of administering the
sacraments and conducting public worship, even in unconsecrated
places in forests and fields,--these and such like were the
heresies complained of.--As concerns the _pro_ and _con._ of
the evangelical purity of the ancient British Christianity, so
highly praised by Ebrard, one occupying an impartial historical
standpoint is justified in expecting that as all the good
development so also all the bad development which had taken
firm root in the common thought and feeling of the church down
to the middle of the 5th century, would not have been uprooted
from the church of Patrick and Columba, so also in the 7th
century it would be still prevalent there. And this expectation
is in general confirmed, so far as our information goes about
all which was not expressly imported from Rome into the British
church. If we deduct the by no means insignificant amount of
unevangelical corruption which was first introduced into the
Romish church during the period between Leo the Great and Gregory
the Great, A.D. 440-604, partly by exaggerating and adorning
elements previously there, partly by bringing in wholly new
elements of ecclesiastical credulity, superstition and mistaken
faith, there still remains for the Celtic church standing outside
of this process of deterioration a relatively purer doctrine. Yet
the Christianity that remains is by no means free of mixture from
unevangelical elements as Jonas of Bobbio himself shows in his
biography of his teacher Columbanus. But the more embittered the
conflict between the British and the Romish churches became over
matters of constitution and worship, the more did differences
in faith and life, which had been overlooked at first, assume
serious proportions, and supported by a careful study of
Scripture, led to greater evangelical freedom and purity on
the side of the British. This is thoroughly confirmed by Ebrard’s
numerous quotations from the literature of that period.[209]

§ 77.4. =The Romish Mission to the Anglo-Saxons.=--To protect
himself against the robber raids of the Picts and Scots, the
British king Vortigern sought the aid of the Germans inhabiting
the opposite shores. Two princes of the Jutes, Hengist and Horsa,
driven from their home, led a horde of Angles and Saxons over
to Britain in A.D. 449. New hordes kept following those that had
gone before and after a hundred years the British were driven
back into the western parts of the island. The incomers founded
seven kingdoms; at the head of all stood the prince of one of
the divisions who was called principal king, the Bretwalda. The
Anglo-Saxons were heathens and the bitter feelings that prevailed
between them and the ancient Britons prevented the latter
from carrying on missionary operations among the former. The
opportunity which the British missed was seized upon by Rome.
The sight of Anglo-Saxon youths exposed as slaves in the Roman
market inspired a pious monk, afterwards Pope Gregory I., with
a desire to evangelize a people of such noble bodily appearance.
He wished himself to take the work in hand, but was hindered
by the call to the chair of Peter. He now bought Anglo-Saxon
youths in order to train them as missionaries to their
fellow-countrymen. But when soon thereafter the Bretwalda
Ethelbert of Kent married the Frankish princess Bertha, Gregory
sent the Roman abbot =Augustine= to England with forty monks in
A.D. 596. Ethelbert gave them a residence and support in his own
capital Dorovernum, now Canterbury. At Pentecost the following
year he received baptism and 10,000 of his subjects followed his
example. Augustine asked from Gregory further instructions about
relics, books, etc. The pope sent him what he sought and besides
the pallium with archiepiscopal rights over the whole Saxon and
British church. Augustine now demanded of the Britons submission
to his archiepiscopal authority and that they should work
together with him for the conversion of the Saxons. But the
British would do nothing of the sort. A personal interview with
their chiefs under Augustine’s oak in A.D. 603 was without result.
At a second conference everything was spoilt by Augustine’s
prelatic pride in refusing to stand up on the arrival of the
Britons. Inclined to compliance the Britons had just proposed
this at the suggestion of a member as a sign. Augustine died
in A.D. 605. The pope nominated as his successor his previous
assistant Laurentius. Ethelbert’s heathen son and successor,
Eadbald, oppressed the missionaries so much that they decided
to withdraw from the field, in A.D. 616. Only Laurentius delayed
his retreat in order to make a final attempt at the conversion of
Eadbald. He was successful. Eadbald was baptized; the fugitives
returned to their former posts. In the kingdom of Essex Augustine
had already established Christianity, but a change of government
had again restored paganism. The gospel, however, soon afterwards
got entrance into Northumbria, the most powerful of the seven
kingdoms. King Edwin, the founder of Edinburgh, won the hand of
the Kentish princess Ethelberga, daughter of Bertha. With her,
as spiritual adviser of the young queen, went the monk Paulinus,
A.D. 625. These two persuaded the king and he again persuaded
his nobles and the priests to embrace Christianity. At a popular
assembly Paulinus proved the truth of Christianity, and the
chief priest Coisi, setting at defiance the gods of his fathers,
flung with his own hand a spear into the nearest idol temple.
The people thought him mad and looked for Woden’s vengeance.
When it came not, they obeyed the command of Coisi and burnt
down the temple, A.D. 627. Paulinus was made bishop of Eboracum,
now York, which pope Honorius on sending a pallium raised to
a second metropolitanate. Edwin, however, fell in battle in
A.D. 633 fighting against Penda, the pagan king of Mercia;
Paulinus had to flee and the church of Northumbria was almost
entirely rooted up.[210]

§ 77.5. =Celtic Missions among the Anglo-Saxons.=--The saviour
of Northumbria was Oswald, A.D. 635-642, the son of a former
king who had been driven out by Edwin. He had found refuge as
a fugitive in the monastery of Hy and was there converted to
Christianity. To restore the church in Northumbria the monks
sent him one of their number, the amiable Aidan. Oswald acted as
his interpreter until he acquired the Saxon language. His success
was unexampled. Oswald founded a religious establishment for him
on the island of Lindisfarne, and supported by new missionaries
from Hy, Aidan converted the whole of the northern lands to
Christianity. Oswald fell in battle against Penda. He was
succeeded as king and also as Bretwalda by his brother Oswy.
Irish missionaries joined the missionary monks of Hy, rivalling
them in their exertions, and by A.D. 660 all the kingdoms of
the Heptarchy had been converted to Christianity, and down to
this date all, with the exception of Kent, which alone still
adhered to the Romish church, belonged to the ancient British
communion.[211]

§ 77.6. =The Celtic Element Driven out of the Anglo-Saxon
Church.=--Oswy perceived the political danger attending the
continuance of such ecclesiastical disputes. He succeeded in
convincing also his neighbour kings of the need of ecclesiastical
uniformity. The only question was as to which of the two should
be recognised. The choice fell upon the Romish. Oswy himself
most decidedly preferred it. His wife Eanfled, Edwin’s daughter,
was a zealous partisan of the Romish church, and on her side
stood a man of extraordinary power, prudence and persistence, the
abbot Wilfrid, a native Northumbrian, trained in the monastery of
Lindisfarne. He had, however, visited Rome, and since then used
all his eloquence and skill in intrigue in order to lay all
England at the feet of the pope. The queen and the abbot wrought
together upon the Bretwalda, and he in his turn upon the other
princes. To these personal influences were added others of a
more general kind: the preference for things foreign over those
of home growth, the brilliancy and preponderating weight of the
Romish church, and above all, the gulf, not yet by any means
bridged over, between the Saxons and the British. When secret
negociations toward the desired end had been carried out, Oswy
called a general Synod at the nunnery of Streoneshalch, now
Whitby, _Synodus Pharensis_, A.D. 664. Here all the civil and
ecclesiastical notabilities of the Heptarchy were assembled.
The chief speaker on the Roman side was Wilfrid, on the Celtic
side bishop Colman of Lindisfarne. The observance of Easter was
the first subject of discussion. Wilfrid referred to the Apostle
Peter, to whom the Lord said: Thou art Peter, etc. Then Oswy
asked Colman whether it was true that the Lord had said so to
Peter. Colman could not deny it, and Oswy declared that he would
follow him who had the power to open for them the gates of heaven.
And so the question was settled. Oswy as Bretwalda carried out
with energy the decisions of the Council, and within a few weeks
the scissors had completed the conversion of the whole Heptarchy
to the Roman tonsure and the Roman faith.[212]

§ 77.7. =Spread and Overthrow of the British Church on the
Continent.=--The first Celtic missionary who crossed the channel
was the Irishman =Fridolin=, about A.D. 500. With several
companions he settled near Poitiers in Aquitaine which was
then under the Visigoths, converted the Arian bishop of that
place together with his congregation to trinitarian orthodoxy,
and, under the protection of Clovis, who had meanwhile, A.D. 507,
overthrown the Visigoth power in Gaul, founded churches and
monasteries. Afterwards he wrought among the heathen Alemanni in
Switzerland (§ 78, 1). We have fuller and more reliable accounts
of Columba the younger, usually called =Columbanus=, an Irishman
by birth, who, in A.D. 590, with twelve zealous companions, went
forth from the British monastery of Bangor in Co. Down, Ireland,
and settled among the Vosges mountains. Here they founded the
monastery of Luxovium, now Luxeuil, as centre with many others
affiliated to it. They cultivated the wilderness and wrought
laboriously in restoring church discipline and order in a region
that had been long spiritually neglected. But their strict
adherence to the British mode of observing Easter caused offence.
The severe moral discipline which they enjoined was galling to
the careless Burgundian clergy, and the aged Brunehilda swore
to compass their death and destruction, because of the influence
adverse to her authority which they exercised upon her grandson,
the young king Theodoric II. Thus it happened that in A.D. 610,
after twenty years’ labours, they were driven away. They turned
then to Switzerland (§ 78, 1). But when persecuted here also,
Columbanus with his followers migrated to Italy, about A.D. 612,
where, under Agilulf’s protection (§ 76, 8), he founded the
celebrated monastery of Bobbio and contended against Arianism.
The _Regula Columbani_ extant in several MSS. constitutes a
written guide to Christian piety and breathes a free evangelical
spirit, while the annexed _Regula cœnobialis fratrum de Hibernia_,
also ascribed to him, bears a rigoristic ascetic character,
enjoining frequent flagellations. Columbanus died in A.D. 615.
The monks of his order joined the Benedictines in the 9th century.
On his personal relation to the Romish chair during his residence
in Gaul and Italy we get some information from three of his
epistles still extant. In the first he asks Gregory the Great
for an explanation of the Gallic observance of Easter, and in
the second he asks Boniface IV. to confirm his old British mode
of reckoning Easter. In both he recognises the pope as occupier
of the chair of Peter, and in the second greets him as head of
all the churches of Europe and describes the Roman church as the
chief seat of the orthodox faith. In the third, on the other hand,
he demands of the pope in firm terms an account of his own faith
and that of the Roman church. He did so in consequence of a
report having reached him, probably through the mention by the
5th œcum. Council (§ 52, 6) of a schism between Rome and Northern
Italy, that the Roman chair had fallen into the heresies of
Eutyches and Nestorius.--The ablest of Columbanus’ followers
was Gallus or St. Gall. He remained in Switzerland and had his
faithfulness rewarded by rich success. After Columbanus had been
expelled from France traces of Celtic ecclesiastical institutions
may indeed for a considerable time have lingered on among his
Frankish scholars and friends animated by the missionary zeal
of their master. For from their midst as it would seem proceeded
most of those Frankish missionaries who carried the gospel in the
7th century to the German lands (§ 78). But from the time of the
overthrow of the old Celtic ecclesiastical system at the Synod of
Streoneshalch in A.D. 664, whole troops of its adherents, British,
Irish, Scotch and Anglo-Saxons, crossed the channel to convert
Germany. With very few exceptions, only the names of these men,
and for the most part not even these, have come down to us. But
their zeal and success are witnessed to by the fact that even in
the beginning of the 8th century throughout all the district of
the Rhine, as well as Hesse, Thuringia, Bavaria and Alemannia
we find a network of flourishing churches bearing the impress
of Celtic institutions. And the overthrow of this great and
promising ecclesiastical system, partly by peaceful, partly by
violent transportation into the Romish church, was the work of
the Anglo-Saxon Winfrid, whom the Romanists, quite rightly from
their point of view, honour, under the name of Boniface, as the
Apostle of Germany (§ 78, 4-8).[213]