Chapter VI: The Church Outside of the Roman Empire.185 (5)

The mission to the Frisians and Saxons called the attention of missionaries to the neighbouring Jutes and Danes. Wilibrord (§ 78, 3) in A.D. 696 carried the gospel across the Eider, and Charlemagne felt it necessary in order to maintain his authority over the Frisians and Saxons to extend his conquest and that of the church over the peninsula of Jutland to the sea coast. He could not, however, accomplish his design. Better prospects opened up before Louis the Pious. Threatened with expulsion through disputes about the succession, Harald the king of the Jutes sought the protection of the Franks. Consequently Ebo, archbishop of Rheims, crossed the Eider in A.D. 823 at the head of an imperial embassy and clothed with full authority from pope Paschalis I. He baptized also a number of Danes, and when, after a year’s absence, he returned home, he took with him several young Jutes to educate as teachers for their countrymen. But Harald was again hard pressed and concluded to break entirely with the national paganism. In A.D. 826 he took ship, with wife and child, accompanied by a stately retinue, and at Mainz, where Louis then held his court, received baptism with great pomp and ceremony. Soon after his return a young monk followed him from the monastery of Corbei on the Weser. =Ansgar=, the apostle of the north, had committed to him by Louis the hard and dangerous task of winning the Scandinavian nations for the church. Ansgar devoted his whole life to the accomplishment of this task, and in an incomparable manner fulfilled it, so far as indomitable perseverance, devotion and self-denial amid endless difficulties and perverse opposition could do it.

§ 80.1. =Ansgar= or Anschar, the son of a Frankish nobleman, born
A.D. 801, was educated in the monastery of Old Corbie in Picardy,
and on the founding of New Corbie in A.D. 822 was made Superior
of it. Even in very early youth he had dreams and visions which
led him to look forward to the mission field and the crown of
martyrdom. Accompanied by his noble-minded brother monk Autbert,
who would not let his beloved friend go alone, Ansgar started in
A.D. 826 on his first missionary journey. Harald had established
his authority in the maritime provinces of Jutland, but he
ventured not to push on into the interior. In this way the
missionary efforts of the two friends were restricted. On the
frontier of Schleswig, however, they founded a school, bought
and educated Danish slave youths, redeemed Christian prisoners
of war and preached throughout the country. But in the year
following Harald was driven out and fled to the province of
Rüstringen on the Weser, which Louis assigned to him for life.
Also the two missionaries were obliged to follow him. Autbert
died in the monastery of Corbie in A.D. 829, having retired
again to it when seized with illness. Soon afterwards the emperor
obtained information through ambassadors sent by the Swedish
king Bjorn, that there were many isolated Christians in their
land, some of them merchants, others prisoners of war, who had
a great desire to be visited by Christian priests. Ansgar, with
several companions, undertook this mission in A.D. 830. On the
way they were plundered by Norse pirates. His companions spoke
of returning home, but Ansgar would not be discouraged. King
Bjorn received them in a very kindly manner. A little group
of Christian prisoners gathered round them and heartily joined
in worship. A school was erected, boys were bought and adults
preached to. Several Swedes sought baptism, among them the
governor of Birka, Herigar, who built at his own cost the first
Christian church. After eighteen months Ansgar returned to the
Frankish court in order to secure a solid basis for his mission.
Louis thus perceived an opportunity of founding a bishopric for
the Scandinavian Norsemen at Hamburg on the borders of Denmark.
He appointed Ansgar bishop in A.D. 834, and assigned to him and
the mission the revenues of the rich abbey of Turholt in Flanders.
Ansgar obtained in Rome from Gregory IV. the support of a bull
which recognised him as exclusively vicar apostolic over all the
Norse. Then he built a cathedral at Hamburg, besides a monastery,
bought again Danish boys to educate for the priesthood and sent
new labourers among the Swedes, at whose head was the Frankish
monk Gauzbert. But soon misfortunes from all sides showered down
upon the poor bishop. His patron Louis died in A.D. 840, Harald
apostatized from the faith, the Swedish missionaries were driven
out by the pagans, the Norse rushed down on Hamburg and utterly
destroyed city, church, monastery, and library. Moreover Charles
the Bald took possession of the abbey of Turholt which according
to the Treaty of Verdun in A.D. 843 had fallen to Flanders, in
order to bestow it upon a favourite. Ansgar was now a homeless
beggar. His clergy, when he had no longer support for them, left
him. His mission school was broken up. His neighbour, bishop
Leuterich of Bremen, with whom he sought shelter, inspired by
despicable jealousy, turned him from his door. At last he got
shelter from a nobleman’s widow who provided for him at her
own expense a lodging at Ramslo, a country house near Hamburg.
In A.D. 846 Leuterich died. Louis of Germany now gave to the
homeless Apostle of the North a fixed habitation by appointing
Ansgar to the vacant bishopric. The bishops of Cologne and Verden
had divided between them the shattered fragments of the Hamburg
bishopric. But at last pope Nicholas I. in A.D. 834 put an end
to their selfish pretensions by uniting the two dioceses of
Hamburg and Bremen into one, and conferring upon it metropolitan
rights for the North. But meanwhile Ansgar notwithstanding all
the neediness in which he himself lived had been working away
uninterruptedly on behalf the Scandinavian mission. In =Denmark=
the king was Eric whose court Ansgar repeatedly visited as
ambassador of the German king. By Eric’s favour he had been
enabled to found a church in Schleswig and to organize a mission
stretching over the whole country. Eric did not venture himself
to pass over to Christianity, and when pagan fanaticism broke out
in open rebellion in A.D. 854, he fell in a battle against his
nephew who headed the revolt. A boy, Eric II., perhaps grandson
of the fallen Eric, mounted the throne. But the chief Jovi
reigned in his name, a bitter foe of the Christians, who drove
away all Christian priests and threatened every Christian in the
land with death. Yet in A.D. 855 Eric II. emancipated himself
from the regency of Jovi and granted toleration to the Christians.
The work of conversion was now again carried on with new zeal and
success.--All attempts, by means of new missionaries, to gather
again the fragments of the mission in =Sweden=, broken up by
Gauzbert’s expulsion, had hitherto proved vain. At last Ansgar
himself started on his journey thitherward about A.D. 850. By
rich presents and a splendid entertainment he won king Olaf’s
favour. A popular assembly determined to abide by the decision
of the sacred lot and this decided in favour of the adoption
of Christianity. From that time the Swedish mission was carried
on without check or hindrance under the direction of Erimbert,
whom Ansgar left there. Ansgar died in A.D. 865. The most dearly
cherished hope of his life, that he should be honoured with the
crown of martyrdom, was not realized; but a life so full of toil,
privation and trouble, sacrifice, patience and self-denial, was
surely nobler than a martyr’s crown.[224]

§ 80.2. =Ansgar’s Successor= in the see of Hamburg-Bremen was
=Rimbert=, his favourite scholar, his companion in almost all
his journeys, who wrote an account of his master’s life and
pronounced him a saint. He laboured according to his ability
to follow in the steps of his teacher, especially in his care
for the Scandinavian mission. But he was greatly hindered by
the wild doings of the Danish and Norse pirates. This trouble
reached its height after Rimbert’s death, and went so far
that the archbishop of Cologne on the pretext that the Hamburg
see had been extinguished was able to renew his claims upon
Bremen.--Continuation, § 93.

§ 81. CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM.[225]

From A.D. 665 the Byzantine rule in =North Africa= (§ 76, 3) was for a time narrowed and at last utterly overthrown by the Saracens from Egypt, with whom were joined the Berbers or Moors who had been converted to Islam. In A.D. 711, called in by a rebel, they also overthrew the Visigoth power in =Spain= (§ 76, 2). In less than five years the whole peninsula, as far as the mountain boundaries of the north, was in the hands of the Moors. Then they cast a covetous glance upon the fertile plains beyond the Pyrenees, but Charles Martel drove them back with fearful loss in the bloody battle of Poitiers in A.D. 732. The Franks were in this the saviours of Europe and of Christianity. In A.D. 750 the Ommaiadean dynasty at Damascus, whose lordship embraced also the Moors, were displaced by the Abbassidean, but a scion of the displaced family, Abderrhaman I., appeared in Spain and founded there an independent khalifate at Cordova in A.D. 756, which soon rose to an unexampled splendour. Also in =Sicily= the Moslem power obtained an entrance and endeavoured from that centre to maintain itself by constant raids upon the courts of Italy and Provence. The expulsion of the Moors from Spain and Sicily was first completely accomplished during the next period (§ 95).

§ 81.1. =Islam in Spain.=--The Spanish Christians under the
Ommaiade rule were called Mozarabians, _Arabi Mustaraba_, _i.e._
Arabianized Arabs as distinguished from Arabs proper or _Arabi
Araba_. They were in many places under less severe restrictions
than the Oriental Christians under Saracen rule. Many Christian
youths from the best families attended the flourishing Moorish
schools, entered enthusiastically upon the study of the Arabic
language and literature, pressed eagerly on to the service of the
Court and Government, etc. But in opposition to such abandonment
of the Christian and national conscience there was developed
the contrary extreme of extravagant rigorism in obtrusive
confessional courage and uncalled-for denunciation of the prophet.
Christian fanaticism awakened Moslem fanaticism, which vented
itself in a bloody persecution of the Christians in A.D. 850-859.
The first martyr was a monk Perfectus. When asked his opinion
about Mohammed he had pronounced him a false prophet, and was
executed. The khalif of that period, Abderrhaman II., was no
fanatic. He wished to stop the extravagant zeal of the Christians
at its source, and made the metropolitan Recafrid of Seville
issue an ecclesiastical prohibition of all blasphemy of the
prophet. But this enactment only increased the fanaticism of
the rigorists, at whose head stood the presbyter, subsequently
archbishop, Eulogius of Cordova and his friend Paulus
Alvarus (§ 90, 6). Eulogius himself, who kept hidden from
her parents a converted Moorish maiden, and was on this account
beheaded along with her in A.D. 859, was the last victim of
the persecution.--The rule of the Arabs in Spain, however, was
threatened from two sides. When Roderick’s government (§ 76, 2)
had fallen before the arms of the Saracens in A.D. 711, Pelayo,
a relation of his, with a small band of heroic followers,
maintained Christian national independence in the inaccessible
mountains of Asturia, and his son-in-law Alphonso the Catholic
in the Cantabrian mountains on the Bay of Biscay. Alphonso
subsequently united both parties, conquered Galicia and the
Castilian mountain land, erecting on all sides the standard
of the cross. His successors in innumerable battles against
the infidels enlarged their territory till it reached the
Douro. Of these Alphonso II., the Chaste, who died in A.D. 850,
specially distinguished himself by his heroic courage and his
patronage of learning. Oviedo was his capital. On the east
too the Christian rule now again made advance.--Charlemagne
in A.D. 778 conquered the country down to the Ebro. But a
rebellion of the Saxons prevented him advancing further, and
the freebooting Basques of the Pyrenees cut down his noblest
heroes. Two subsequent campaigns in A.D. 800, 801, reduced all
the country as far as the Ebro, henceforth called the Spanish
March, under the power of the Franks.[226]

§ 81.2. =Islam in Sicily.=--A Byzantine military officer
fled from punishment to Africa in A.D. 827 and returned with
10,000 Saracen troops which terribly devastated Sicily. Further
migrations followed and in a few years all Sicily was under the
rule of the Arabs, who made yearly devastating raids from thence
upon the Italian coasts, venturing even to the very gates of Rome.
In A.D. 880 they settled on the banks of the Garigliano, and put
all central Italy under tribute, until at last in A.D. 916 the
efforts of pope John X. were successful in driving them out.
Spanish-Moorish pirates landed in A.D. 889 on the coasts of
Provence, besieged the fortress of Fraxinetum, and plundered
from this centre for a hundred years the Alpine districts and
northern Italy. Their robber career in south Italy was most
serious of all. It lasted for three centuries and was first
brought to an end by the Norman invasion.--Continuation, § 95, 1.