Chapter VI: The Church Outside of the Roman Empire.185 (4)

§ 77.8. =Overthrow of the Old British System in the Iro-Scottish
Church.=--After the British Church had lost, in A.D. 664, all
support in the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, it could not long maintain
itself in its own original Celtic home. The Scottish kings
on political grounds, in order to avoid giving their Saxon
neighbours an opportunity of gratifying the love of conquest
under the pretext of zeal for the faith, were obliged to
assimilate their church organization with that of the Southerns.
The learned Abbot Adamnan of Hy, when, in A.D. 684, by order
of his king, he visited the Northumbrian court, professed to
be there convinced of the correctness of the Romish observance
of Easter. But when his monks stoutly resisted, he left the
monastery and went on a missionary tour to Ireland where he
urged his views so successfully that in A.D. 701 the most of the
Irish adopted the Roman reckoning. Some years later, in A.D. 710,
Naitan II., the powerful king of the Picts, asked instructions
from Abbot Ceolfrid about the superiority of the Romish practice
regarding Easter and the tonsure, forced his whole people to
adopt the Romish doctrine and banished the obstinate priests.
Finally, the Anglo-Saxon Egbert, educated in Ireland, but
subsequently won over to the Romish church, induced by visions
and tempests to abandon his projected mission to the heathen
Frisians (§ 78, 3), and to devote himself to what was regarded
as the more arduous task of the conversion of the schismatical
monks of Hy, succeeded in A.D. 716 in so far overcoming their
obstinacy that they at least gave up their divergent tonsure and
Easter reckoning. Thereafter the Romanists were satisfied with
the gradual Romanizing of the whole Celtic regions in the west
and north. In worship, constitution and discipline all remained
for a long time as it had been of old. The Roman law of celibacy
could not win its way. Public worship was conducted and the
sacraments dispensed in the language of the people and in the
simple forms of primitive times. Canon law was almost everywhere
made subordinate to the customs of the national church. Indeed,
when in A.D. 843, the kingdom of the Picts, where the papacy
had made most progress, went by inheritance to the Scottish
king Kenneth, he restored even there the old ecclesiastical
institutions of their fathers. Malcolm III., who died in
A.D. 1093, was the first of the Scottish kings to begin the
complete, thorough and lasting Romanizing of the whole country.
His marriage with the English princess Margaret, a zealous
supporter of the papacy, marks the beginning of that policy
which was carried out and completed by their son David, who
died in A.D. 1152. In Ireland the English conquest of A.D. 1171
under Henry III. prepared the way for the complete Romanizing
of the island. Still in both Scotland and Ireland down to the
14th century many of the old Celtic priests survived. To them was
given the Celtic name Kele-de, _servus_ or _vir Dei_, Latinized
as Colidei, and in modern form, Culdees. They were secular
priests who, bound by a strict rule, in companies generally of
twelve with a prior over them, like a Catholic canon (§ 84, 1),
devoted themselves to a common spiritual life and activity,
maintaining an existence in many places down to the end of
the 8th century. The origin of the rule under which they lived
is still very obscure. It allowed them to marry but enforced
abstinence from marital intercourse during the period of their
service, and required of them, besides the charge of the public
services, special attention to the poor. In Scotland particularly
their societies soon became so numerous that almost the whole
secular clergy went over to them. By the forcible introduction
of regular canons they were crushed more and more down to the
11th century, or where they still existed, they were deprived
of the right of pastoral supervision and administration of the
sacraments and reduced to subordinate positions, such as that
of choir singers.--The usual application of the name of Culdees
to all, even earlier representatives of the Celtic church, is
quite unjustifiable.[214]

§ 78. THE CONVERSION AND ROMANIZING OF GERMANY.[215]

In the Roman period the regions of the Rhine and the Danube had become Christian countries, but the rush of the migration of the peoples had partly destroyed the Christian foundations, partly overlaid them with heathen superstitions. By the end of the 6th century a great part of Germany was already under the dominion of the Franks, and, to distinguish it from the country of the West Franks or Neustria, was called Austrasia or the land of the East Franks. South-western and South-eastern Germany (Alemannia, Bavaria, Thuringia) was governed by native dukes under the often disputed over-lordship of the Franks. North-western Germany (embracing the Frisians and the Saxons) still enjoyed undisputed national independence. The first serious attempt to introduce or restore Christianity in Austrasia began about the end of the 6th century. The missionaries who took the work in hand went, partly from Neustria, partly from this side of the Channel. The Irish and Scottish monasteries were overflowing. Those dwelling in them had an unconquerable passion for travel and in their hearts an eager longing to spread Christ’s kingdom by preaching the gospel. This impulse was greatly strengthened by the overthrow of their national prestige (§ 77, 6). They were thus out of sympathy with their native land, and were encouraged to hope that they might win on the opposite continent what they had lost at home. Crowds of monks from Iro-Scottish monasteries crossed over into the heathen provinces of Germany. But Romish Christian Anglo-Saxons, no less fond of travel, impelled by the same missionary fervour and no slight zeal for their own communion, followed in their steps. Thus in the 8th century on German soil the struggle was renewed which at home had been already fought out, to end again as before in the defeat of the Celtic claims. In almost all German countries we find traces of Irish or Scottish missionaries and married priests, reproachfully styled adulterers. What mainly secured for the Anglo-Saxons the victory over them was the practical talent for organization shown by the former, and their attachment to the imposing spiritual power of the papal see. To them alone is Germany indebted for her incorporation into the Roman ecclesiastical union; for even the Frankish missionaries for the most part had no connection with Rome.--Most rapid and successful progress was made by the mission where there had previously been Christian institutions, _e.g._ in the provinces of the Rhine and the Danube. The work was more difficult on the east of the Scheldt in Friesland, Hesse, Thuringia and Saxony, where paganism had reigned undisturbed. Mission work was at once furthered and hindered by the selfish patronage of the Frankish rulers. Paganism and national liberty, the yoke of Christ and the yoke of the Franks, seemed inseparably conjoined. The one stood and fell with the other. The sword of the Franks was to make the way for the cross of Christ, and the result of preaching was to afford an introduction to political subjection. The missionaries submitted regretfully to this amalgamation of religious and political interests, but it was generally unavoidable.

§ 78.1. =South-Western Germany.=--Here were located the
powerful race of the =Alemanni=. Of the Christian institutions
of the Roman period only some shadowy remnants were now to be
seen. The diet of Tolbiac in A.D. 496 which gave the Franks a
Christian king, first secured an entrance among the Alemanni
to Christianity. Yet progress was slow, for the Franks did
not resort to force. The revision of Alemannian jurisprudence,
concluded by Dagobert I. about A.D. 630, assumed indeed that the
country was wholly Christian, but it only anticipated what the
country was destined to become. =Fridolin= (§ 77, 7), founder
of the monastery of Seckingen on an island of the Rhine above
Basel, is called the first Apostle of the Alemanni, A.D. 510.
The reports that have reached us of his work are highly legendary
and unreliable. After =Columbanus= in A.D. 610 had been compelled
along with his companions to leave the Frankish territory
(§ 77, 7), he chose Alemannian Switzerland as the field of their
operations. They settled first of all at Tuggen on the Zurich
lake. The fiery zeal with which they destroyed heathen idols,
roused the wrath of the inhabitants, who maltreated them and
drove them away. They next wrought for three years at Bregentz
where they converted many pagans. The main instrument in this
work was =Gallus= who had gained thorough mastery of the language
of the people. Driven from this place also, Columbanus and
his followers settled in Italy. Only =Gallus=, who was ill at
the time, remained behind. He felt obliged, in spite of all
unfavourable circumstances, to carry on the work that had been
begun. In a wild forest dale by the stream Steinach, where he
was held firm by a thorn bush while on his knees praying, he
built a cell, from which arose in later times the famous abbey of
St. Gall. He died, after an eminently useful and successful life
in his 95th year in A.D. 646. He does not seem to have been so
persistent as Columbanus in maintaining the peculiarities of the
British church. His disciple =Magnoald= continued his work and
founded the monastery of Füssen on the Upper Lech in Swabia. At
the same time there wrought at Breisgau the hermit =Trudpert=, an
Irishman, who laid the foundation of the future abbey of Trudpert
at the foot of the Black Forest, and was murdered in A.D. 643
by a servant given up to him for forced labour. Somewhat later
we meet with =Pirminius=, a Frankish cleric, on the Lake of
Constance, where, under the protection of the Frankish ruler
Charles Martel, he founded the monastery of Reichenau in A.D. 724.
A national rising of the Alemanni against the Franks drove him
away after three years; but the monastery remained uninjured. He
then proceeded down the Rhine and founded several monasteries,
the last at Hornbach in the diocese of Metz, where he died in
A.D. 753.

§ 78.2. =South-Eastern Germany.=--After the successful labours
of Severinus (§ 76, 6) the history of the Danubian provinces
is shrouded in thick darkness. A hundred years later we find
there the powerful nation of the Boyars, now Bavarians, with
native dukes descended from Agilulf. Only scanty remnants of
Christianity were to be seen. In A.D. 615 the Frankish abbot
=Eustasius= of Luxeuil, the successor of Columbanus, appears
prosecuting the missionary labours, and struggling against the
so-called heresies of Bonosus and Photinus, remnants probably
of Gothic Arianism. About the middle of the 7th century, at the
court of the Duke of Bavaria, Theodo I., at Regensburg, =Emmeran=,
bishop of Poitiers, laboured for three years. Suddenly he
left the country and made a pilgrimage to Italy. Being charged
with the seduction of the Princess Ota, he was on his journey
in A.D. 652, according to others in A.D. 715, overtaken by her
brother and cruelly murdered. Ota is said at the advice of the
saint himself to have named him as her seducer, in order to
screen the actual seducer from vengeance. The true Apostle of
Bavaria was bishop =Rupert= of Worms. In A.D. 696 he baptized
the Duke Theodo II. with his household, founded many churches
and monasteries, and almost completed the Christianizing of
the country. The centre of his operations was the bishopric of
Salzburg, founded by him. About A.D. 716 he returned to Worms
and died there in A.D. 717. An old tradition describes him as
a Scot, whether in respect of his descent or of his undoubtedly
ecclesiastical tendencies, is uncertain. We find at least no
trace of his having had any connection with Rome. Soon after
him a Frankish itinerant bishop called =Corbinianus= made his
appearance in Bavaria, and was the founder of the episcopal see
at Freisingen, A.D. 724. He was a man of imperious temper and
unbending stubbornness, who exercised discipline with reckless
strictness, rooted out the remnants of pagan superstition, and
founded many churches and monasteries. He died in A.D. 730.--That
the Frankish missionaries were still more or less influenced by
the old British traditions is shown by the fact that Boniface
found the Bavarian church free from Rome. Duke Theodo II. soon
after Rupert’s departure on a pilgrimage to Rome had indeed
entered into relations with Gregory II., in consequence of which
three Roman clerics made their appearance in Bavaria. But the
organization of the Bavarian church committed to them by the
pope could not be carried out on account of political troubles.
Boniface was the first who succeeded in some measure in
doing this.--The Apostle of the neighbouring Thuringians was
an Irishman =Kilian= or Kyllena, who, toward the end of the
7th century, along with twelve companions, entered the province
of Würzburg. These faithful men found the reward of their labours
in the crown of martyrdom. But crowds of their zealous believing
fellow-countrymen followed them, and continued with rich success
the work which they had begun, until, after a hard struggle, they
were obliged to resign the field to Boniface.

§ 78.3. =North-Western Germany.=--In the Middle Rhine provinces
Christian episcopal dioceses had been maintained, but in a feeble
condition and overrun with crowds of heathen people. About the
middle of the 6th century a Frank called =Goar= settled as a
hermit within the bounds of the diocese of Treves, converted
many of the surrounding heathens and put to shame the envious
suspicions of the clergy of Treves, his holiness being attested
according to later legends by many extraordinary miracles. The
beautiful town of St. Goar has grown up round the spot where he
built his cell and church. After him in the same region wrought
a Longobard =Wulflaich= who as a stylite (§ 44, 6), in spite
of the northern climate, preached down to the heathens from
his pillar. But the neighbouring bishops disliked his senseless
asceticism and had the pillar thrown down.--After the Frankish
king Dagobert I. conquered the south of the Netherlands in
A.D. 630, an accomplished Frankish priest, =Amandus=, appeared
at Rome preaching the gospel among the Frisians settled there.
The command given by him for the compulsory baptism of all the
pagans only intensified the hatred against him and his sacred
message. Insulted, maltreated and repeatedly thrown into the
Scheld, he left the country to missionarize among the Basques
of the Pyrenees and then among the Slavs of the Danube. But at
a later period he returned to Ghent, and gained great influence
after having succeeded in converting a rich Frisian called
Bavo, with whose help he built two monasteries. In A.D. 647
he was chosen bishop of Maestricht, but retired in A.D. 649,
notwithstanding the dissuasion of Pope Martin I., on account of
the opposition of his clergy, and then founded the monastery of
Elno, afterwards called St. Amand, near Tournay, where he died
in A.D. 648. During the same period wrought =Eligius=, formerly a
skilful goldsmith at the court of Dagobert, from A.D. 641 bishop
of Noyon, where he died in A.D. 658. He took numerous missionary
journeys for the conversion of the Frisians extending as far
as the Scheld. From this side of the Channel too wistful eyes
had looked over to the Frisian coasts. A Briton said to have
been converted to Romanism by Augustine the Apostle of the
Anglo-Saxons, =Livinus=, appeared as a missionary on the Scheld
about A.D. 650, but was slain by the heathens soon after his
arrival. The celebrated supporter of Romish claims, =Wilfrid=
(§ 77, 6), first preached the gospel to the Frisians living
north of the Scheld. He had been elected archbishop of York, but,
expelled from his bishopric (§ 88, 3), he went to seek protection
at Rome and was cast by a storm on the Frisian shores, which was
fortunate for him as hired assassins waited for him in France.
He spent the winter of A.D. 677-678 in Friesland, preached daily,
baptized Duke Aldgild and “thousands” of the people. But in
the following spring he took his departure. Aldgild’s successor
Radbod († A.D. 719), who passed his whole life in war with Pippin
of Heristal († A.D. 714) and Charles Martel, hated and persecuted
Christianity as the religion of the Franks, and the seed sown
by Wilfrid perished. Pippin’s victory at Dorstadt in A.D. 689
compelled him for a time to show greater toleration. Then
immediately a Frankish mission was started under bishop =Wulfram=
of Sens, a pupil of the monastery of Fontanelle founded by
Columbanus. According to an interesting tradition, which, however,
does not stand the test of criticism, Radbod was himself just
about to receive baptism, but drew back from the baptismal font,
because he would rather go with his glorious forefathers to hell
than enter the Christian heaven with a crowd of miserable people.
It is probably only a legend designed in the interest of the
doctrine of predestination.--The true Apostle of the Frisians was
the Anglo-Saxon =Wilibrord= who, in company with twelve followers,
undertook the work in A.D. 690. Born in Northumbria about
A.D. 658, he received his first training under Wilfrid at the
monastery of Ripon and then in an Irish monastery under the
direction of Egbert, whose debt to the Frisians (§ 77, 8) he
now undertook to pay. Pippin gave protection and aid to the
missionaries, and Wilibrord travelled to Rome that he might get
there support for his life work. He returned armed with papal
approbation and supplied with relics. But meanwhile a party of
his followers, probably dissatisfied with his control, sent one
of their number called Suidbert to England, where he received
episcopal consecration. Wilibrord’s party, however, kept the
upper hand. Suidbert went to the Bructeri on the Upper Ems, and,
when driven thence by the Saxons, to the Rhine, where he built a
monastery on an island of the Rhine given him by Pippin, and died
there in A.D. 715.--After many years’ successful labour Wilibrord,
at Pippin’s command, went a second time to Rome in A.D. 696, to
be there consecrated a bishop. Sergius I. gave him consecration
under the name of Clement, distinguishing him in this way as
an eminent man, and Pippin gave him the castle of Utrecht as
an episcopal residence. From this centre his missionary labours
stretched out over Radbod’s realm and even across the Danish
frontier. During a visit to the island of Heligoland he ventured
to baptize three men in a holy well. Radbod would have the
blasphemers together to sacrifice to the gods; thrice he enquired
at the sacred lot, but it answered regularly in favour of the
missionaries. But, in consequence of the complete defeat which
Charles Martel suffered at the hands of Radbod at Cologne, in
A.D. 715, the Frisian mission was stopped and only after Radbod’s
death in A.D. 719 could Wilibrord commence operations again from
the monastery of Echternach, to which he had meanwhile withdrawn.
When he died at the age of eighty-one in A.D. 739, the conversion
at least of South Friesland was almost completed. We hear nothing
of conflicts and disputes with Celtic missionaries all through
his fifty years of missionary labour, in consequence, no doubt,
of his mild and peaceful temper, which led him to attend rather
to the Christianizing of the heathen than to the Romanizing
of those who were already Christian.--In consequence of
jurisdictional claims of the Cologne see, the episcopate of
Utrecht remained vacant for a long time after Wilibrord’s death.
The mission among the heathens was meanwhile conducted with zeal
and success by =Gregory=, a Frankish nobleman of the Merovingian
family and a favourite pupil of Boniface, who as abbot of the
monastery of Utrecht presided over its famous seminary. Willehad,
the Anglo-Saxon, was held in high repute by his scholars and
was made bishop of Bremen by Charlemagne. The conversion of the
northern Frisians was completed by =Liudger=, a native Frisian,
afterwards bishop of Münster.

§ 78.4. =The Missionary Work of Boniface.=--The Anglo-Saxon
=Winfrid= or =Boniface=,[216] born at Kirton in Wessex
about A.D. 680 had at an early age, on account of his piety,
ecclesiastical tastes and practical talent, gained an honourable
position in the church of his native land. But he was driven by
an irresistible impulse to devote himself to the heathen tribes
of Germany. In A.D. 716 he landed in Friesland. Although Radbod,
then at war with Charles Martel, considering that he had no
connection with the Franks, put no hindrances in his way, he
had not such success as encouraged him to continue, and so before
winter he returned home. But his missionary ardour gave him no
rest; even his election as abbot of his monastery of Nutscall was
not sufficient to hold him back. And so in the spring of A.D. 718
he crossed the Channel a second time, but went first of all to
Rome, where Gregory II., A.D. 715-731, supplied him with relics
and papal authority for the German mission. The task to which
he now applied himself was directed less to the uprooting of
paganism than to the overthrow of that Celtic heresy which had
on many sides struck its roots deeply in German soil. He next
attempted to gain a footing in Thuringia. But he could neither
induce the “adulterous” priests to submit to Rome, nor seduce
their people from allegiance to them. News of Radbod’s death
in A.D. 719 moved him to make a journey into Friesland, where
he aided Wilibrord for three years in converting the heathens.
Wilibrord wished him to remain in Friesland as his coadjutor,
and to be his future successor in the bishopric of Utrecht. But
this reminded him of his own special task. He tore himself away
and returned to Upper Hesse in A.D. 722. Here he won to Roman
Christianity two Christian chiefs Dettic and Deorulf, erected
with their help the monastery of Amanaburg (Arnöneburg, not
far from the Ohm or _Amana_), and baptized, as his biographer
Willibald assures us, in a short time “many thousands” of the
heathens. He reported his success to the pope who called him to
Rome in A.D. 723, where, after exacting of him a solemn vow of
fealty to the papal chair, he consecrated him Apostolic bishop
or Primate of all Germany, and gave him a _Codex canonum_ and
commendatory letters to Charles Martel and the German clergy,
as well as to the people and princes of Thuringia, Hesse, and
even heathen Saxony. He next secured at the court of Charles
Martel a letter of protection and introduction from that powerful
prince, and then again betook himself to Hesse. The cutting
down of the old sacred oak of Thor at Geismar near Fritzlar
in A.D. 724, against which he raised the axe with his own hand
amid the breathless horror of the heathen multitudes, building
a Christian chapel with its timber, marked the downfall of
heathenism in the heart of Germany. In the following year,
A.D. 725, he extended his operations into Thuringia, where
Celtic institutions were still more widely spread than in Hesse.
This extension of his field of labour required a corresponding
increase of his staff. He applied to his English friends, of whom
bishop Daniel of Winchester was the most distinguished. His call
was responded to year after year by Anglo-Saxon priests, monks
and nuns. All England was roused to enthusiasm for the work of
its apostle and supported him with advice and practical aid,
with prayers and intercessions, with gifts and presents for his
personal and ecclesiastical necessities. Thus there soon arose
two spiritual armies over against one another; both fought with
equal enthusiasm for what seemed to them most high and holy.
But the Anglo-Saxon invader gained ground always more and more,
though indeed amid much want, weariness and care, and the Celtic
church gradually disappeared before advancing Romanism. Meanwhile
Gregory II. had died. His successor Gregory III., A.D. 731-741,
to whom Boniface had immediately submitted a report, answered by
sending him the archiepiscopal pallium with a commission as papal
legate in the German lands to found bishoprics and consecrate
bishops. His work in Thuringia, after ten years’ struggles and
contests, was so far successful that he could look around for
other fields of labour. He chose now, however, not heathen Saxony
but the already Christianized Bavaria, which, as still free from
Rome and strongly infected with the British heresy, seemed to
afford a more attractive field for his missionary zeal. He made
a hasty tour of inspection through the country in A.D. 735-736.
The most important result of this journey was the accession
of a fiery young Bavarian named Sturm, supposed to be next in
succession to Odilo the heir of the throne, whom Boniface took
with him to educate at the seminary at Fritzlar. In the following
year he undertook a third journey to Rome, undoubtedly to consult
with the pope about the further organization of the German
church and the best mode of its accomplishment. He had the most
flattering reception and stayed almost a whole year in Rome.
The pope sent him away in A.D. 738 with apostolic letters to
the clergy, people and nobles of Middle Germany, and also to
some distinguished Bavarian and Alemannian bishops, in which
those addressed were urged to assist his legate by their ready
and hearty obedience in bringing about a much-needed organization
of the churches in their several provinces.[217]

§ 78.5. =The Organization Effected by Boniface.=--The attention
of Boniface was directed first of all to Bavaria, and duke Odilo
reigning there since A.D. 737 anticipated it by an invitation.
Arriving in Bavaria he divided the whole Bavarian church into
four dioceses. Bivilo of Passau had before this been consecrated
as bishop in Rome. Erembert of Freisingen received consecration
at the hand of the legate. The bishops of Regensburg and Salzburg,
however, down to the close of their lives, asserted themselves
as opposition bishops over against those appointed by Boniface.
Odilo, too, withdrew from him his favour, and entrusted not
to him but to Pirminian the Alemannian Apostle, who sided with
the Celtic church, the organization and oversight of several
newly-founded Bavarian monasteries. Thus the results of the papal
legate’s visit to Bavaria were of a very doubtful kind, and he
had not even made a beginning of Romanizing Alemannia. In the
meantime, however, an incident occurred which gave him in a short
time the highest measure of influence and success. Charles Martel
died in A.D. 741 and his sons succeeded him, Carloman in Austrasia
and Pepin the Short in Neustria. Charles Martel had indeed on
Gregory’s recommendation given Boniface a letter of protection
that he might carry on his work in Hesse and Thuringia, but
he had never gone further, so that Boniface often complained
bitterly to his English friends of the indolent, even hostile
attitude of the Frankish prince. But he could not wish a better
coadjutor than Carloman, who was really rather more a monk than
a prince. And so Boniface no longer delayed the organization of
the Hessian and Thuringian churches, for in the course of the
year 741 he founded four bishoprics there. It was a matter of
still greater consequence that Carloman and then also Pepin aided
him in the reorganization of the Frankish national church on
both sides of the Vosges mountains, where partly on account of
sympathy with the British church system, partly on account of the
wild spirit engendered by a life of war and the chase, the clergy
had not hitherto submitted to the influence of the papal emissary.
In order that the estates of the realm might be advised by “the
envoy of St. Peter” and the clergy of the empire about what was
necessary for the Austrasian church, Carloman, at the close of
an imperial diet, at a place unknown, called the first Austrasian
Synod, _Concilium Germanicum_, in A.D. 742, and gave to its
decrees the authority of imperial laws. Boniface was recognised
as Archbishop and Primate of the whole Austrasian church; it was
forbidden that the higher or lower clergy should have anything
to do with arms, hunting and war, that all “false and adulterous”
priests should be expelled; that the admission of “strange”
clerics should be dependent on examination before a Synod to
be held annually; that in all monasteries the Benedictine rule
(§ 85, 1) should be enforced; and that it be made the duty of
counts to support the bishops in maintaining church discipline
and stamping out all remnants of paganism. In the next year,
A.D. 743, Carloman summoned the Second Austrasian Synod at
Liptinä, now Lestines, near Cambray, which confirmed the decrees
of the first and enlarged their scope, especially in regard to
the rooting out of pagan superstition and enforcing strictly the
Romish prohibition of marriage between those naturally (§ 61, 2)
and spiritually (§ 58, 1) related. Thus upon the whole the
legal reorganization of the church of Austrasia might have
been regarded as complete, even though its actual enforcement
required yet many severe struggles. In A.D. 744 Boniface laid
the foundation of the famous monastery of Fulda which for
many centuries was a chief resort and principal school of
the Benedictine monks of Germany. Its first abbot was young
Sturm.--After the close of the Austrasian Synod Boniface began
to treat with Pepin about the reorganization of the church in
Neustria. Pepin called a Neustrian provincial Synod at Soissons
in A.D. 744. Its decrees in regard to discipline were in essential
agreement with those of the two Austrasian Synods. Besides it was
resolved to erect three metropolitan sees. Two of the prelates
designate, however, refused to accept the pallium offered by pope
Zacharias, A.D. 741-752, ostensibly on the plea that the payment
of the fee demanded would render them guilty of simony. Their
refusal, however, was perhaps mainly due to Pepin’s discovery
that the political unity of Neustria required a Primate at Rheims
rather than three metropolitans (§ 83). At a national Synod,
place of meeting unknown, held in A.D. 745, called by the two
princes acting together, at Boniface’s request the bishop Gewilib
of Mainz, a rude warrior guilty of secret murders, was deposed.
It was now the wish of Boniface that he should receive the vacant
episcopal chair of Cologne, which was destined to be raised
into a metropolitan see. Yet, through the machinations of his
opponents, the vacancy at Cologne was otherwise filled, and
Boniface was at last obliged to be satisfied with the less
important bishopric of Mainz. At a second national Council
of A.D. 748 held probably at Düren he succeeded in getting
a considerable number of Austrasian and Neustrian bishops to
subscribe a declaration of absolute submission to the pope
in which they fully acknowledged the papal supremacy over the
Frankish church. Pepin, who now, after the retirement of his
brother Carloman from the government in A.D. 747, in order to
spend the rest of his days in the monastery of Monte Cassino,
was sole ruler of both kingdoms, obtained the express approval
of pope Zacharias in A.D. 752 in making an end of the puppet
show of a sham Merovingian royalty (§ 82, 1). But it is quite
a mistake to say that Boniface was the intermediary in this
matter between the pope and the mayor of the palace. His letters
rather show, from the disfavour in which he at that time stood
at the court of Pepin, that the negociations were carried on
directly with the pope without his knowledge.[218]

§ 78.6. =Heresies Confronted by Boniface.=--Among the numerous
heresies with which Boniface had to deal the most important were
those of the Frankish Adalbert, the Scotchman Clement, and the
Irishman Virgilius. Adalbert wrought on the left bank of the
Rhine far into the interior of Neustria; Clement among the East
Franks. In the summer of A.D. 743 Carloman had at Boniface’s
urgent request cast both into prison, and at the Neustrian Synod
of Soissons in A.D. 744 Boniface secured Adalbert’s condemnation.
Yet soon after we find both at liberty. Boniface now accused them
before the pope Zacharias, and they were condemned unheard at
a Lateran Council in A.D. 745. The legate’s written accusation
charged the Frankish =Adalbert= with the vilest hypocrisy and
blasphemy: He boasted that an angel had brought him relics
of extraordinary miracle-working power, by which he could do
anything that God could; he placed himself on an equality with
the apostles; he introduced unlearned and uncanonically ordained
bishops; he forbade pilgrimages to Rome, and the consecration
of churches and chapels in the names of apostles and martyrs,
but had no objection to their consecration in his own name; he
neglected divine service in consecrated places and assembled the
people for worship in woods and fields and wheresoever it seemed
good to him; he let his own hair and nails be venerated as relics;
he absolved those who came to him in confession with the words:
I know all your sins, for nothing is hidden from me, confession
is unnecessary, go in peace, your sins are forgiven you, etc.;
in this way he won great influence especially over women and
peasants, who honoured him as a great apostle and miracle-worker.
Three documents supported the report of Boniface; viz., a
biography of Adalbert composed by one of his admirers, according
to which his mother in the “ever blessed” hour of his birth had
in vision seen an ox go forth out her right side; also, a letter
said to have fallen from heaven to Jerusalem which guaranteed his
divine mission; and finally, a prayer composed by him which while
generally breathing a spirit of deep humility and firm faith,
went on to invoke a rarely-named angel. If we strike out from
these charges those which evidently rest upon misunderstanding
and legendary or malevolent exaggeration, we have before us a
man who in opposition to the prevailing worship of saints and
relics maintained that the relics set up for veneration were no
more worthy of it than his own hair and nails would be, who also
disputed the advantage of pilgrimages, denied the necessity of
auricular confession, insisted upon the universal priesthood of
believers in opposition to Romish hierarchical claims, and the
evangelical worship of God in spirit and in truth in opposition
to the Romish overestimation of consecrated places; but in
doing so perhaps, more certainly in mystic-theosophic enthusiasm
than in conscious deceitfulness, he may have boasted of divine
revelations and the possession of miracle-working power.--The
figure of the Scotchman =Clement= comes out yet more distinctly
in the charge formulated against him. He is simply an adherent
of the pure and unadulterated ecclesiastical system of the old
British church. He treats with contempt the Canon law, and does
not regard himself as bound by the decrees of Synods or the
authority of the Latin Fathers; he claims to be a bishop and
still lives in “adulterous” wedlock; he affirms that a man
may marry the widow of his deceased brother; he teaches with
reference to Christ’s descent into hell that even those who
died in heathenism may yet be redeemed, and “_affirmat multa
alia horribilia de prædestinatione Dei contraria fidei cath_.”
The pope committed to his legate the execution of the Synod’s
condemnatory judgment. But still in A.D. 747 Boniface again
complains that the undiminished reputation of both heretics at
all points stands in his way. Soon after this, however, Carloman,
after Adalbert had submitted in a disputation with Boniface, sent
him into confinement in the monastery of Fulda, from which he
made his escape, and after long wanderings was at last killed
by the swineherds. No information has reached us as to the end
of Clement.--The Irishman =Virgilius= was from A.D. 744 bishop
of Salzburg, and, as before at the court of Pepin, so now at his
recommendation at the court of the Bavarian duke Odilo, he stood
in high favour. After a long and determined refusal he at last
agreed to submit to the Romish choice of bishops. A priest of
his diocese unskilled in Latin had baptized _in nomine patria
et filia et speritus sancti_, Boniface pronounced such baptism
invalid. Virgilius thought otherwise and appealed to the pope
who was obliged to admit that he was right. But now Boniface
complained of him as a heretic because he taught: _Quod alius
mundus et alii homines sub terra sint_, and this time the pope
took the side of his legate, because upon the accepted notion
of the orbicular form of the earth, the doctrine of antipodes
(already regarded by Lactantius and Augustine as of dangerous
tendency) amounted to a denial of the unity of the human
race and the universality of redemption, whereas the Irishman
belonging to a seafaring race probably considered the earth to
be globular. The pope, in A.D. 748, ordered his deposition and
removal from the clerical order, which Boniface, however, was
not able to accomplish.[219]

§ 78.7. =The End of Boniface.=--On the one hand, distrusted,
and set aside by Pepin and the new pope Stephen II., A.D. 752-757,
from his position as legate (§ 82, 1), and also, on the other
hand, feeling himself overborne in his old age by the burden of
his episcopal and archiepiscopal cares, sorrows and conflicts,
Boniface had his favourite pupil, the energetic Lullus, already
recognised by pope Zacharias, elected as his successor, and
with Pepin’s consent transferred to him at once the independent
administration of the episcopal diocese of Mainz. He now
determined to devote his last as he had his first energies
undividedly to his archiepiscopal diocese embracing the Frisian
church, which still needed firm episcopal control and was now
threatened with a pagan reaction. After Wilibrord’s death in
A.D. 739, Cologne, resting its pretensions on an ancient deed
of gift by Dagobert, claimed jurisdiction over the Frisian church.
Boniface indeed at Carloman’s orders had ordained a new bishop
to the Utrecht chair, in A.D. 741, probably the Anglo-Saxon
Eoban. Yet this new bishop never came into actual, at least not
into undisputed possession. In one of his last letters Boniface
earnestly but in vain implores pope Stephen II. to disallow the
unjust pretensions of Cologne. Charlemagne first settled the
dispute by requiring Alberich, Gregory’s successor in the Utrecht
see, to receive consecration at the hands of the Cologne prelate.
With a stately retinue of fifty-two followers clerical or lay,
and with a foreboding presentiment carrying with him a winding
sheet, Boniface sailed down the Rhine in the spring of A.D. 754.
Whether he had now in view a reorganization of the existing
Frisian church and how far he succeeded, we have no means of
knowing. On the other hand his biographers in their legendary
exaggeration cannot sufficiently extol the wonderful success
of his missionary preaching. Wherever he appeared throughout
the land he baptized thousands of heathens. At last he had
pitched his tent in the neighbourhood of what is now Dokkum,
and there, on June 5th, A.D. 755, a number of neophytes received
confirmation. But a wild troop of heathen apostates rushed down
on them before the break of day. The guard desired to offer armed
resistance, but Boniface refused to shed blood, and, according
to the report of an old woman, received his deathblow holding the
gospel over his head. His companions were also cut down around
him. Utrecht, Mainz and Fulda quarrelled over his bones. Signs
and wonders at last decided in favour of Fulda, which he had
himself fixed upon as their resting place.--By order of Lullus,
a priest of Mainz called Wilibald wrote his life about A.D. 760.
Another life by an anonymous author in Utrecht appeared about
A.D. 790; and yet another by the Regensburg monk Othlo about
A.D. 1060. His literary remains consist of Epistles, Sermons,
and Penitentials of doubtful authenticity.

§ 78.8. =An Estimate of Boniface.=--In opposition to the current
Roman Catholic apotheosis of Boniface which assigns to him as the
true Apostle of the Germans the highest place of honour in the
firmament of German saints and cannot find the least shadow or
defect in all his life, struggles and doings, ultra-protestant
estimates have run to the very contrary extreme. Ebrard has
carried this to the utmost length. He refuses to credit him with
zeal, any hearty regard, any real capacity for proper mission
work among the heathens. Alongside of Wilibrord he was only a
despicable Romish spy; in Hesse and Thuringia only the brutal
destroyer of the Culdee church that flourished there, and in the
Frankish empire only the inconscionable agent of Rome who allied
himself to the Rome-favouring dynasty of Pepin in order to secure
the overthrow of the Culdee-favouring Merovingians, purchasing
thus Frankish aid in subjecting the German and Frankish churches
to the hierarchical tyranny of Rome. He can find in him no
trace of intellectual or spiritual greatness. On the contrary
fanaticism, hatred and a persecuting spirit, intrigue and
dishonesty, servility, dissimulation, hypocrisy, lying and
double dealing are there in abundance. His world-wide fame
is accounted for by this, that he is the accursed founder of
all mischief which has arisen upon Germany from its connection
with the papal chair.--It is true that Boniface stopped the
course of the national and independent development of the German
church that had begun and put it on the track of Roman Catholic
development and mal-development. But even had Boniface never
crossed the Channel this fate could scarcely have been averted.
It is further true that Boniface was far more eager in uprooting
heretical “Celtism” and bringing Frankish and Bavarian Christians
under the Romish yoke than in converting heathen Saxons to
Christianity. But he was thus eager because that seemed to him
in the first instance more necessary and important than aiming
at new conversions. It is a crying injustice to deny that he
showed any zeal, any energy, or that he had any success in the
conversion of the heathen in Friesland, Hesse and Thuringia. All
his thoughts, labours and endeavours are dominated by a steadfast
conviction that the pope is the head and representative of
the church in which alone salvation can be found. But yet with
him the church laws which emanate from the Holy Spirit stand
superior to the pope. Hence the right of final decision on all
ecclesiastical questions belongs indeed to the pope, but only
_secundum canones_. The expression ascribed to Boniface in
Gratian’s Decretal: _Papa a nemine judicetur nisi devius a
fide_ is never met with in any of his extant writings, but
it thoroughly well characterizes his position. Thus alongside
of the most abject submission to the chair of Peter, we see
how firmly he speaks to pope Zacharias in connection with
the Neustrian pallium affair about the Simoniacal greed of
the officials, and on another occasion declares his profound
indignation at the immoral, superstitious and blasphemous
proceedings, fit to be compared to the old pagan Saturnalia,
which, went on in Rome openly before the eyes of the pope
unchecked and unpunished. He also showed brave resistance
when papal dispensations infringed his ordinances founded
upon the canon law, and protested vigorously, when Stephen II.,
in A.D. 754, disregarding the archiepiscopal authority gave
episcopal consecration to Chrodegang of Metz. But Boniface never
mixed himself up with the political intrigues of the popes, nor
did he ever intermeddle in the political manœuvres between Pepin
and the Merovingians, between the Frankish empire and its German
vassals. An inventive genius, great and profound thoughts, a
liberal and comprehensive view of matters, we certainly often
miss in him. All his thoughts, feelings and desires were bound
within the narrow limits of Romish ecclesiasticism. His piety
was deep, earnest and sincere, but is quite of the legalistic
and hard external kind that characterizes Roman Catholicism.
With the most painful conscientiousness he holds by Rome’s
ecclesiastical institutions; any resistance to these is abhorrent
to him and he persecutes heresies as cursed and soul-destroying.
He clearly understands the absurdity of prohibiting marriage
between those who are related only in baptism and at confirmation.
For he sees that on this principle all marriages between Christian
people as recipients of baptism must be forbidden since by
baptism they have all become sons and daughters of Christ and His
church, and so are spiritually brothers and sisters. But then he
willingly sacrifices his understanding, and continues to denounce
all marriages between those spiritually related as fearful sin
and horrible incest. Very characteristic too are many of his
questions to the popes as to what should be held on this point
and that, mostly about very trivial and indifferent matters of
common life. Thus he lets himself be informed that raw bacon
should only be eaten smoked, but that the eating of the flesh of
horses, hares, beavers, jackdaws, ravens and storks is absolutely
forbidden, “_immundum enim est et execrabile_.”[220]

§ 78.9. =The Conversion of the Saxons.=--The first missionary
attempts among the Saxons, who had forced their way from the
north-west of Germany down to the neighbourhood of the Rhine,
were made by two Anglo-Saxon monks, who were both called Ewald,
the black or the white Ewald. A Saxon peasant received them
hospitably, but so soon as he discovered their object, fell
upon them with his household servants and slew them, A.D. 691.
Boniface had many pious wishes about his heathen kinsfolk but
did nothing for their conversion. The most that he did was
to found the monastery of Fulda on the Saxon frontier as the
rallying point for a future clerical raid upon Saxon paganism.
For thirty years, however, this remained but a pious wish, till
at last the sword of the most powerful of the Frankish kings
took up the mission. The subjugation of the powerful as well as
hostile Saxon people was with Charlemagne a political necessity.
But lasting subjugation was impossible without conversion and
conversion was impossible without subjugation; for the Saxons
hated the religion of the Franks no less heartily than they did
the Franks themselves. Alcuin with true magnanimity exerted all
his influence with his royal friend against any use of force in
conversion, but political necessity overcame the counsel of the
much trusted friend. The Saxon war lasted for thirty-three years,
A.D. 772-804. In the very first campaign the strongest Saxon
fortress Eresburg was stormed and their most revered idol, the
Erminsul, was destroyed. Frankish priests followed the Frankish
arms and Christianized immediately the conquered districts. But
as soon as Charlemagne’s army was engaged elsewhere, the Saxons
proceeded to destroy again all Christian foundations. In the
imperial diet at Paderborn in A.D. 777 they were obliged to
swear that life and property would be forfeited by a new apostasy.
But the most powerful of the Saxon princes, Wittekind, who had
not appeared at the diet, organized a new revolt. The Frankish
army sustained a fearful defeat at Mount Sunthal, all Christian
priests were murdered, all churches were destroyed. Charlemagne
took a dreadful revenge. At Verden he beheaded in one day 4,500
Saxons. After a new rebellion, a second diet at Paderborn in
A.D. 785 prescribed for them horribly bloody laws. The least
resistance against the precepts of the church was punished with
death. Wittekind and Albion, the two most famous Saxon chiefs,
acknowledged the vanity of further resistance. They were baptized
in A.D. 785 and continued thenceforward faithful to the king
and the church. But the rebellions of the rest of the Saxons
were still continued. In A.D. 804 Charlemagne drove 10,000 Saxon
families from their homes on the Elbe, and gave the country to
the Obohites [Obotrites] that were subject to him. Now for the
first time was a lasting peace secured. Charlemagne had founded
eight bishoprics in Saxony, and under these bishops’ care
throughout this blood-deluged country, no longer disturbed,
a Christianity was developed as truly hearty and fresh as in
any other part of Germany. One witness to this among others is
afforded by the popular epic the Heliand (§ 89, 3).[221]

§ 79. THE SLAVS IN GERMAN COUNTRIES.[222]

The sudden rush of the wild hordes of the Huns in the 5th century drove the Slavs to the south of the Danube and to the west of the Vistula. Again in the 6th century Slavic tribes forced their way westward under pressure from the Mongolian Avars who took possession of Dacia, Pannonia and Dalmatia. For the conversion of the Slavs in north-eastern Germany nothing was done; but much was attempted on behalf of the conversion of the southern Slavs and the Avars, who were specially under the care of the see of Salzburg.

§ 79.1. =The Carantanians and Avars.=--The Carantanian prince
Boruth, in what is now called Carinthia, in A.D. 748 asked the
help of the Bavarian duke Thassilo II. against the oppression
of the Avars. His nephew Chatimar, who had received a Christian
training in Bavaria, when in A.D. 753 he succeeded to the throne,
introduced Christianity into his country. After the overthrow
of Thassilo in A.D. 788, Carinthia came under Frankish rule, and
Charlemagne extended his conquests over the Avars and Moravians.
Bishop Arno of Salzburg, to whom metropolitan rights had been
accorded, conducted a regular mission by Charlemagne’s orders
for the conversion of these peoples. In A.D. 796, Tudun, the
prince of the Avars, with a great band of his followers, received
baptism, and vowed in A.D. 797 to turn the whole nation of the
Avars to Christianity, and asked for Christian teachers. In
the 9th century, however, the name of the Avars passed away
from history.

§ 79.2. =The Moravian Church.=--In A.D. 855 Rastislaw, Grand
Duke of Moravia, freed his country from the Frankish yoke and
deprived the German bishops of all their influence. He asked
Slavic missionaries from the Byzantine emperor. The brothers
=Cyril= and =Methodius= (§ 73, 2, 3) who had already approved
themselves as apostles of the Slavs, answered the call in
A.D. 863. They introduced a liturgy and public worship in the
language of the Slavs, and by preaching in the Slavic tongue
they won their way to the hearts of the heathen people. But in
spite of this encouraging success they found themselves, amid
the political convulsions of the age, in a difficult position.
Only by attachment to the pope could they reasonably expect
to hold their ground. They accepted therefore an invitation
of Nicholas I. in A.D. 867, but on their arrival in Rome they
found that Hadrian II. had succeeded to the papal chair. Cyril
remained in Rome and soon died, A.D. 869. =Methodius= swore
fealty to the pope and was sent away as archbishop of Moravia.
But now all the more were the German bishops hostile to him.
They suspected his fidelity to the pope, charged him with heresy
and inveighed against the Slavic liturgy which he had introduced.
John VIII., rendered suspicious of him by these means, called
upon him in strong terms in A.D. 879 to make answer for himself
at Rome. Methodius obeyed and succeeded in completely vindicating
himself. The pope confirmed him in his archiepiscopal rank and
expressly permitted him to use the Slavic liturgy, enjoining,
however, that by way of distinction the gospel should first be
read in Latin and then rendered in a Slavic translation. The
intrigues of the German clergy, however, continued and embittered
the last days of the good and brave apostle of the Slavs. He
died in A.D. 885. A general persecution now broke out against
the Slavic priests and the metropolitan chair of Moravia remained
vacant for fourteen years. John IX. restored it in A.D. 899. But
in A.D. 908 the Moravian kingdom was overthrown. The Bohemians
and Magyars shared the spoil between them.

§ 79.3. =The Beginnings of Christianity in Bohemia.=--On New
Year’s day of A.D. 845 fourteen Bohemian lords appeared at
Regensburg at the court of Louis of Germany and asked for
baptism along with their followers. Of the motives and of
the consequences of this step we know nothing. When Rastislaw
raised the Moravian empire to such a height of glory the
Bohemians connected themselves closely with Moravia. Rastislaw’s
successor Swatopluc married a daughter of the Bohemian
prince Borsivoi in A.D. 871. After that Methodius extended
his missionary labours into Bohemia. Borsivoi himself and his
wife, Ludmilla, were baptized by Methodius in A.D. 871. The sons
of Borsivoi, also, Spitihnew, who died in A.D. 912 and Wratislaw,
who died in A.D. 926, with the active support of their mother
furthered the interests of the church in Bohemia.

§ 80. THE SCANDINAVIAN NATIONS.[223]