I. The Spread of Christianity.

§ 93. MISSIONARY ENTERPRISES.

During this period the Christianizing of Europe was well nigh

finished. Only Lapland and Lithuania were reserved for the following

period. The method used in conversion was still the same. Besides

missionaries, warriors also extended the faith. Monasteries and

castles were the centres of the newly founded Christianity. Political

considerations and Christian princesses converted pagan princes;

their subjects followed either under violent pressure or with quiet

resignation, carrying with them, however, under the cover of a

Christian profession, much of their old heathen superstition. It

was the policy of the German emperors to make every effort to unite

the converted races under the German metropolitans, and to establish

this union. Thus the metropolitanate of Hamburg-Bremen was founded for

the Scandinavians and those of the Baltic provinces, that of Magdeburg

for the Poles and the Northern Slavs, that of Mainz for the Bohemians,

that of Passau and Salzburg for the Hungarians. But it was Rome’s

desire to emancipate them from the German clergy and the German state,

and to set them up as independent metropolitanates of a great family

of Christian nationalities recognising the pope as their spiritual

father (§ 82, 9). The Western church did now indeed make a beginning

of missionary enterprise, which extended in its range beyond Europe

to the Mongols of Asia and the Saracens of Africa, but throughout

this period it remained without any, or at least without any important,

result.

§ 93.1. =The Scandinavian Mission Field.=--The work of Ansgar

and Rimbert (§ 80) had extended only to the frontier provinces

of Jutland and to the trading ports of Sweden, and even the

churches founded there had in the meantime become almost extinct.

A renewal of the mission could not be thought of, owing to the

robber raids of =Normans= or =Vikings=, who during the ninth

and tenth centuries had devastated all the coasts. But it was

just those Viking raids that in another way opened a door again

for the entrance of missionaries into those lands. Many of the

home-going Vikings, who had been resident for a while abroad,

had there been converted to the Christian faith, and carried

back the knowledge of it to their homes. In France the Norwegians

under Rollo founded Normandy in A.D. 912. In the tenth century

the entire northern half of England fell into the hands of the

Danes, and finally, in A.D. 1013, the Danish King Sweyn conquered

the whole country. Both in France and in England the incomers

adopted the profession of Christianity, and this, owing to the

close connection maintained with their earlier homes, led to the

conversion of Norway and Denmark.

§ 93.2. In =Denmark=, Gorm the Old, the founder of the regular

Danish monarchy, makes his appearance toward the end of the

ninth century as the bitter foe of Christianity. He destroyed

all Christian institutions, drove away all the priests, and

ravaged the neighbouring German coasts. Then, in A.D. 934, the

German king Henry I. undertook a war against Denmark, and obliged

Gorm to pay tribute and to grant toleration to the Christian

faith. Archbishop Unni of Bremen then immediately began again

the mission work. With a great part of his clergy he entered

Danish territory, restored the churches of Jutland, and died in

Sweden in A.D. 936. Gorm’s son, Harald Blaatand, being defeated

in battle by Otto I. in A.D. 965, submitted to baptism. But his

son Sweyn Gabelbart, although he too had been baptized, headed

the reactionary heathen party. Harald fell in battle against

him in A.D. 986, and Sweyn now began his career as a bitter

persecutor of the Christians. Eric of Sweden, however, formerly

a heathen and an enemy of Christianity, drove him out in A.D. 980,

and at the entreaty of a German embassage tolerated the Christian

religion. After Eric’s death in A.D. 998, Sweyn returned. In

exile his opinions had changed, and now he as actively befriended

the Christians as before he had persecuted them. In A.D. 1013

he conquered all England, and died there in A.D. 1014. His son

Canute the Great, who died in A.D. 1036, united both kingdoms

under his sceptre, and made every effort to find in the profession

of a common Christian faith a bond of union between the two

countries over which he ruled. In place of the German mission

issuing from Bremen, he set on foot an English mission that had

great success. In A.D. 1026 by means of a pilgrimage to Rome,

prompted also by far-reaching political views, he joined the

Danish church in the closest bonds with the ecclesiastical centre

of Western Christendom. Denmark from this time onwards ranks as

a thoroughly Christianized land.

§ 93.3. In =Sweden=, too, Archbishop Unni of Bremen resumed

mission work and died there in A.D. 936. From this time the

German mission was prosecuted uninterruptedly. It was, however,

only in the beginning of the eleventh century, when English

missionaries came to Sweden from Norway with Sigurd at their

head, that real progress was made. By them the king Olaf

Skötkonung, who died in A.D. 1024, was baptized. Olaf and

his successor used every effort to further the interests of

the mission, which had made considerable progress in Gothland,

while in Swealand, with its national pagan sanctuary of Upsala,

heathenism still continued dominant. King Inge, when he refused

in A.D. 1080 to renounce Christianity, was pursued with stones

by a crowd of people at Upsala. His son-in-law Blot-Sweyn led

the pagan reaction, and sorely persecuted those who professed

the Christian faith. After reigning for three years, he was

slain, and Inge restored Christianity in all parts. It was,

however, only under St. Eric, who died in A.D. 1160, that the

Christian faith became dominant in Upper Sweden.[263]

§ 93.4. =The Norwegians= had, at a very early period, by means

of the adventurous raids of their seafaring youth, by means of

Christian prisoners, and also by means of intercourse with the

Norse colonies in England and Normandy, gained some knowledge

of Christianity. The first Christian king of Norway was Haco

the Good (A.D. 934-961), who had received a Christian education

at the English court. Only after he had won the fervent love

of his people by his able government, did he venture to ask for

the legal establishment of the Christian religion. The people,

however, compelled him to take part in heathen sacrifices;

and when he made the sign of the cross over the sacrificial

cup before he drank of it, they were appeased only by his

associating the action with Thor’s hammer. Haco could never

forgive himself this weakness and died broken-hearted, regarding

himself as unworthy even of Christian burial. Olaf Trygvesen

(A.D. 995-1000), at first the ideal of a Norse Viking, then

of a Norse king, was baptized during his last visit to England,

and used all the powerful influences at his command, the charm

and fascination of his personality, flattery, favour, craft,

intimidation and cruelty, to secure the forcible introduction

of Christianity. No foreigner was ever allowed to quit Norway

without being persuaded or compelled by him to receive baptism.

Those who refused, whether natives or foreigners, suffered

severe imprisonment and in many cases were put to death. He fell

in battle with the Danes. Olaf Haraldson the Fat, subsequently

known as St. Olaf (A.D. 1014-1030), followed in Trygvesen’s steps.

Without his predecessor’s fascinating manners and magnanimity,

but prosecuting his ecclesiastical and political ends with

greater recklessness, severity, and cruelty, he soon forfeited

the love of his subjects. The alienated chiefs conspired with

the Danish Canute; the whole country rose against him; he himself

fell in battle, and Norway became a Danish province. The crushing

yoke of the Danes, however, caused a sudden rebound of public

feeling in regard to Olaf. The king, who was before universally

hated, was now looked on as the martyr of national liberty and

independence. Innumerable miracles were wrought by his bones,

and even so early as A.D. 1031 the country unanimously proclaimed

him a national saint. The enthusiasm over the veneration of the

new saint increased from day to day, and with it the enthusiasm

for the emancipation of their native country. Borne along by

the mighty agitation, Olaf’s son, Magnus the Good, drove out the

Danes in A.D. 1035. Olaf’s canonization, though originating in

purely political schemes, had put the final stamp of Christianity

upon the land. The German national privileges, however, were

insisted upon in Norway over against the canon law down to the

13th century.[264]

§ 93.5. =In the North-Western Group of Islands=, the Hebrides,

the Orkneys, Shetlands, and Faröe Isles, the sparse Celtic

population professing Christianity was, during the ninth century,

expelled by the pagan Norse Vikings, and among these Christianity

was first introduced by the two Norwegian Olafs. The first

missionary attempt in =Iceland= was made in A.D. 981 by the

Icelander Thorwald, who having been baptized in Saxony by a

Bishop (?) Frederick, persuaded this ecclesiastic to accompany

him to Iceland, that they might there work together for the

conversion of his heathen fellow countrymen. During a five years’

ministry several individuals were won, but by a decision of the

National Council the missionaries were forced to leave the island

in A.D. 958. Olaf Trygvesen did not readily allow an Icelander

visiting Norway to return without having been baptized, and twice

he sent formal expeditions for the conversion of Iceland. The

first, sent out in A.D. 996, with Stefnin, a native of Iceland,

at its head, had little success. The second, A.D. 997-999, was

led by Olaf’s court chaplain Dankbrand, a Saxon. This man, at

once warrior and priest, who when his sermons failed shrank not

from buckling on the sword, converted many of the most powerful

chiefs. In A.D. 1000 the Icelandic State was saved at the

last hour from a civil war between pagans and Christians which

threatened its very existence, by the adoption of a compromise,

according to which all Icelanders were baptized and only

Christian worship was publicly recognised, but idol worship

in the homes, exposure of children, and eating of horses’ flesh

was tolerated. But in A.D. 1016, as the result of an embassage

of the Norwegian king Olaf Haraldson, even these last vestiges

of paganism were wiped out.--=Greenland=, too, which had been

discovered by a distinguished Icelander, Eric the Red, and had

then been colonized in A.D. 985, owed its Christianity to Olaf

Trygvesen, who in A.D. 1000 sent the son of the discoverer,

Leif the Fortunate, with an expedition for its conversion. The

inhabitants accepted baptism without resistance. The church

continued to flourish there uninterruptedly for 400 years, and

the coast districts became rich through agriculture and trade.

But when in A.D. 1408 the newly elected bishop Andrew wished

to take possession of his see, he found the country surrounded

by enormous masses of ice, and could not effect a landing.

This catastrophe, and the subsequent incursions of the Eskimos,

seem to have led to the overthrow of the colony.--Continuation,

§ 167, 9.--Leif discovered on his expeditions a rich fertile

land in the West, which on account of the vines growing wild

there he called =Vineland=, and this region was subsequently

colonized from Iceland. In the twelfth century, in order to

confirm the colonists in the faith, a Greenland bishop Eric

undertook a journey to that country. It lay on the east coast

of North America, and is probably to be identified with the

present Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

§ 93.6. =The Slavo-Magyar Mission-field.=--Even in the previous

period a beginning had been made of the Christianizing of

=Bohemia= (§ 79, 3). After Wratislaw’s death his heathen widow

Drahomira administered the government in the name of her younger

son Boleslaw. Ludmilla, with the help of the clergy and the

Germans, wished to promote St. Wenzeslaw, the elder son, educated

by her, but she was strangled by order of Drahomira in A.D. 927.

Wenzeslaw, too, fell by the hand of his brother. Boleslaw now

thought completely to root out Christianity, but was obliged,

in consequence of the victory of Otho [Otto] I. in A.D. 950,

to agree to the restoration of the church. His son Boleslas

[Boleslaw] II., A.D. 967-999, contributed to its establishment

by founding the bishopric of Prague. The pope seized the

opportunity on the occasion of this founding of the bishopric

to introduce the Roman ritual (A.D. 973).[265]

§ 93.7. From Bohemia the Christian faith was carried to the

=Poles=. In A.D. 966 the Duke Micislas was persuaded by his

wife Dubrawka, a Bohemian princess, daughter of Boleslaw I.,

to receive baptism. His subjects were induced to follow his

example, and the bishopric of Posen was founded. The church

obtained a firm footing under his son, the powerful Boleslaw

Chrobry, A.D. 992-1025, who with the consent of Otto III. freed

the Polish church from the metropolitanate of Magdeburg, and

gave it an archiepiscopal see of its own at Gnesen (A.D. 1000).

He also separated the Poles from German imperial federation and

had himself crowned king shortly before his death in A.D. 1025.

A state of anarchy, which lasted for a year and threatened the

overthrow of Christianity in the land, was put an end to by his

grandson Casimir in A.D. 1039. Casimir’s grandson Boleslaw II.

gave to the Poles a national saint by the murder in A.D. 1079

of Bishop Stanislas [Stanislaus] of Cracow, which led to his

excommunication and exile.

§ 93.8. Christianity was introduced into =Hungary= from

Constantinople. A Hungarian prince Gylas received baptism

there about A.D. 950, and returned home with a monk Hierotheus,

consecrated bishop of the Hungarians. Connection with the Eastern

church, however, was soon broken off, and an alliance formed

with the Western church. After Henry I. in A.D. 933 defeated the

Hungarians at Keuschberg, and still more decidedly after Otto I.

in A.D. 955 had completely humbled them by the terrible slaughter

at Lechfelde, German influence won the upper hand. The missionary

labours of Bishop Piligrim of Passau, as well as the introduction

of Christian foreigners, especially Germans, soon gave to

Christianity a preponderance throughout the country over paganism.

The mission was directly favoured by the Duke Geysa, A.D. 972-997,

and his vigorous wife Sarolta, a daughter of the above-named

Gylas. The Christianizing of Hungary was completed by Geysa’s

son St. Stephen, A.D. 997-1038, who upon his marriage with

Gisela, the sister of the Emperor Henry II., was baptized,

a pagan reaction was put down, a constitution and laws were

given to the country, an archbishopric was founded at Gran

with ten suffragan bishops, the crown was put upon his head

in A.D. 1000 by Pope Sylvester II., and Hungary was enrolled

as an important member of the federation of European Christian

States. Under his successors indeed paganism once more rose in

a formidable revolt, but was finally stamped out. St. Ladislaw

[Ladislaus], A.D. 1077-1095, rooted out its last vestiges.

§ 93.9. Among the numerous =Wendish Races= in Northern and

North-Eastern Germany the chief tribes were the Obotrites in

what is now Holstein and Mecklenburg, the Lutitians or Wilzians,

between the Elbe and the Oder, the Pomeranians, from the Oder to

the Vistula, and the Sorbi, farther south in Saxony and Lusatia.

Henry I., A.D. 919-936, and his son Otto I., A.D. 936-973, in

several campaigns subjected them to the German yoke, and the

latter founded among them in A.D. 968 the archbishopric of

Magdeburg besides several bishoprics. The passion for national

freedom, as well as the proud contempt, illtreatment, and

oppression of the German margraves, rendered Christianity

peculiarly hateful to the Wends, and it was only after their

freedom and nationality had been completely destroyed and the

Slavic population had been outnumbered by German or Germanized

colonists, that the Church obtained a firm footing in their

land. A revolt of the =Obotrites= under Mistewoi in A.D. 983,

who with the German yoke abjured also the Christian faith, led

to the destruction of all Christian institutions. His grandson

Gottschalk, educated as a Christian in a German monastery, but

roused to fury by the murder of his father Udo, escaped from

the monastery in A.D. 1032, renounced Christianity, and set on

foot a terrible persecution of Christians and Germans. But he

soon bitterly repented this outburst of senseless rage. Taken

prisoner by the Germans, he escaped and took refuge in Denmark,

but subsequently he returned and founded in A.D. 1045 a great

Wendish empire which extended from the North Sea to the Oder. He

now enthusiastically applied all his energy to the establishment

of the church in his land upon a national basis, for which

purpose Adalbert of Bremen sent him missionaries. He was himself

frequently their interpreter and expositor. He was eminently

successful, but the national party hated him as the friend of

the Saxons and the church. He fell by the sword of the assassin

in A.D. 1066, and thereupon began a terrible persecution of the

Christians. His son Henry having been set aside, the powerful

Ranian chief Cruco from the island of Rügen, a fanatical enemy

of Christianity, was chosen ruler. At the instigation of Henry

he was murdered in his own house in A.D. 1115. Henry died in

A.D. 1127. A Danish prince Canute bought the Wendish crown from

Lothair duke of Saxony, but was murdered in A.D. 1131. This

brought the Wendish empire to an end. The Obotrite chief Niklot,

who died in A.D. 1161, held his ground only in the territory of

the Obotrites. His son Pribizlaw, the ancestor of the present

ruling family of Mecklenburg, by adopting Christianity in

A.D. 1164, saved to himself a part of the inheritance of his

fathers as a vassal under the Saxon princes. All the rest

of the land was divided by Henry the Lion among his German

warriors, and the depopulated districts were peopled with

German colonists.--In A.D. 1157 Albert the Bear, the founder

of the Margravate of Brandenburg, overthrew the dominion of

the =Lutitians= after protracted struggles and endless revolts.

He, too, drafted numerous German colonists into the devastated

regions.--The Christianizing of the =Sorbi= was an easier task.

After their first defeat by Henry I. in A.D. 922 and 927, they

were never again able to regain their old freedom. Alongside

of the mission of the sword among the Wends there was always

carried on, more or less vigorously, the mission of the Cross.

Among the Sorbi bishop Benno of Meissen, who died in A.D. 1107,

wrought with special vigour, and among the Obotrites the greatest

zeal was displayed by St. Vicelinus. He died bishop of Oldenburg

in A.D. 1154.

§ 93.10. =Pomerania= submitted in A.D. 1121 to the duke of

Poland, Boleslaw III., and he compelled them solemnly to promise

that they would adopt the Christian faith. The work of conversion,

however, appeared to be so unpromising that Boleslaw found none

among all his clergy willing to undertake the task. At last

in A.D. 1122, a Spanish monk Bernard offered himself. But the

Pomeranians drove him away as a beggar who looked only to his

own gain, for they thought, if the Christians’ God be really the

Lord of heaven and earth He would have sent them a servant in

keeping with His glorious majesty. Boleslaw was then convinced

that only a man who had strong faith and a martyr’s spirit,

united with an imposing figure, rank, and wealth, was fit for

the work, and these qualifications he found in bishop Otto

of Bamberg. Otto accepted the call, and during two missionary

journeys in A.D. 1124-1128 founded the Pomeranian church.

Following Bernard’s advice, he went through Pomerania on both

occasions with all the pomp of episcopal dignity, with a great

retinue and abundant stores of provisions, money, ecclesiastical

ornaments, and presents of all kinds. He had unparalleled success,

yet he was repeatedly well nigh obtaining the crown of martyrdom

which he longed for. The whole Middle Ages furnishes scarcely

an equally noble, pure, and successful example of missionary

enterprise. None of all the missionaries of that age presents so

harmonious a picture of firmness without obstinacy, earnestness

without harshness, gentleness without weakness, enthusiasm

without fanaticism. And never have the German and Slavic

nationalities so nobly, successfully, and faithfully practised

mutual forbearance as did the Pomeranians and their apostle.--The

last stronghold of Wendish paganism was the island of =Rügen=.

It fell when in A.D. 1168 the Danish king Waldemar I. with the

Christian Pomeranian and Obotrite chiefs conquered the island

and destroyed its heathen sanctuaries.

§ 93.11. =Mission Work among the Finns and Lithuanians.=--St. Eric

of Sweden in A.D. 1157 introduced Christianity into Finland by

conquest and compulsion. Bishop Henry of Upsala, the apostle of

the Finns, who accompanied him, suffered a martyr’s death in the

following year. The Finns detested Christianity as heartily as

they did the rule of the conquering Swedes, who introduced it,

and it was only after the third campaign which Thorkel Canutson

undertook in A.D. 1293 against Finland, that the Swedish rule

and the Christian faith were established, and under a vigorous

yet moderate and wise government the Finns were reconciled to

both.--=Lapland= came under the rule of Sweden in A.D. 1279, and

thereafter Christianity gradually found entrance. In A.D. 1335

bishop Hemming of Upsala consecrated the first church at Tornea.

§ 93.12. =Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland= were inhabited by

peoples belonging to the Finnic stem. Yet even in early times

people from the south and east belonging to the Lithuanian stem

had settled in Livonia and Courland, Letts and Lettgalls in

Livonia, and Semgalls and Wends in Courland. The first attempts

to introduce Christianity into these regions were made by Swedes

and Danes, and even under the Danish king Sweyn III., Eric’s son,

about A.D. 1048 a church was erected in Courland by Christian

merchants, and in Esthonia the Danes not long after built the

fortress of Lindanissa. The elevation of the bishopric of Lund

into a metropolitanate in A.D. 1098 was projected with a regard

to these lands. In A.D. 1171 Pope Alexander III. sent a monk,

Fulco, to Lund to convert the heathen and to be bishop of Finland

and Esthonia, but he seems never to have entered on his duties or

his dignity. Abiding results were first won by German preaching

and the German sword. In the middle of the 12th century merchants

of Bremen and Lübeck carried on traffic with towns on the banks

of the Dwina. A pious priest from the monastery of Segeberg in

Holstein, called Meinhart, undertook in their company under the

auspices of the archbishop of Bremen, Hartwig II., a missionary

journey to those regions in A.D. 1184. He built a church at

Üxküll on the Dwina, was recognised as bishop of the place

in A.D. 1186, but died in A.D. 1196. His assistant Dietrich

carried on the work of the mission in the district from Freiden

down to Esthonia. Meinhart’s successor in the bishopric was the

Cistercian abbot, Berthold of Loccum in Hanover. Having been

driven away soon after his arrival, he returned with an army

of German crusaders, and was killed in battle in A.D. 1198.

His successor was a canon of Bremen, Albert of Buxhöwden. He

transferred the bishop’s seat to Riga, which was built by him

in A.D. 1201, founded in A.D. 1202, for the protection of the

mission, the Order of the Brethren of the Sword (§ 98, 13),

amid constant battles with Russians, Esthonians, Courlanders

and Lithuanians erected new bishoprics in Esthonia (Dorpat),

Oesel, and Semgallen, and effected the Christianization of

nearly all these lands. He died in A.D. 1229. After A.D. 1219

the Danes, whom Albert had called in to his aid, vied with him

in the conquest and conversion of the Esthonians. Waldemar II.

founded Revel in A.D. 1219, made it an episcopal see, and did

all in his power to restrict the advances of the Germans. In

this he did not succeed. The Danes, indeed, were obliged to

quit Esthonia in A.D. 1257. After Albert’s death, however, the

difficulties of the situation became so great that Volquin, the

Master of the Order of the Sword, could see no hope of success

save in the union of his order with that of the Teutonic Knights,

shortly before established in Prussia. The union, retarded

by Danish intrigues, was not effected until A.D. 1237, when

a fearful slaughter of Germans by the Lithuanians had endangered

not only the existence of the Order of the Sword but even the

church of Livonia. Then, too, for the first time was Courland

finally subdued and converted. It had, indeed, nominally adopted

Christianity in A.D. 1230, but had soon after relapsed into

paganism. Finally in A.D. 1255 Riga was raised to the rank of

a metropolitanate, and Suerbeer, formerly archbishop of Armagh

in Ireland, was appointed by Innocent IV. archbishop of Prussia,

Livonia, and Esthonia, with his residence at Riga.

§ 93.13. The Old Prussians and Lithuanians also belonged to

the Lettish stem. Adalbert, bishop of Prague, first brought the

message of salvation to the =Prussians= between the Vistula and

Memel, but on the very first entrance into Sameland [Samland]

in A.D. 997 he won the martyr’s crown. This, too, was the fate

twelve years later of the zealous Saxon monk Bruno and eighteen

companions on the Lithuanian coast. Two hundred years passed

before another missionary was seen in Prussia. The first was

the Abbot Gothfried from the Polish monastery of Lukina; but in

his case also an end was soon put to his hopefully begun work, as

well as to that of his companion Philip, both suffering martyrdom

in A.D. 1207. More successful and enduring was the mission work

three years later of the Cistercian monk Christian from the

Pomeranian monastery of Oliva, in A.D. 1209, the real apostle of

the Prussians. He was raised to the rank of bishop in A.D. 1215,

and died in A.D. 1245. On the model of the Livonian Order of

the Brethren of the Sword he founded in A.D. 1225 the Order of

the Knights of Dobrin (_Milites Christi_). In the very first

year of their existence, however, they were reduced to the number

of five men. In union with Conrad, Duke of Moravia, whose land

had suffered fearfully from the inroads of the pagan Prussians,

Christian then called in the aid of the Teutonic Knights, whose

order had won great renown in Germany. A branch of this order

had settled in A.D. 1228 in Culm, and so laid the foundation of

the establishment of the order in Prussia. With the appearance

of this order began a sixty years’ bloody conflict directed to

the overthrow of Prussian paganism, which can be said to have

been effected only in A.D. 1283, when the greater part of the

Prussians had been slain after innumerable conflicts with the

order and with crusaders from Germany, Poland, Bohemia, etc.

Among the crowds of preachers of the gospel, mostly Dominicans,

besides Bishop Christian and the noble papal legate William,

bishop of Modena, the Polish Dominican Hyacinth, who died

in A.D. 1257, a vigorous preacher of faith and repentance,

deserves special mention. So early as A.D. 1243, William of

Modena had sketched an ecclesiastical organization for the

country, which divided Prussia into four dioceses, which were

placed in A.D. 1255 under the metropolitanate of Riga.

§ 93.14. The introduction of Christianity into =Lithuania= was

longest delayed. After Ringold had founded in A.D. 1230 a Grand

Duchy of Lithuania, his son Mindowe endeavoured to enlarge his

dominions by conquest. The army of the Prussian-Livonian Order,

however, so humbled him that he sued for peace and was compelled

to receive baptism in A.D. 1252. But no sooner had he in some

measure regained strength than he threw off the hypocritical

mask, and in A.D. 1260 appeared as the foe of his Christian

neighbours. His son Wolstinik, who had remained true to the

Christian faith, dying in A.D. 1266, reigned too short a time

to secure an influence over his people. With him every trace

of Christianity disappeared from Lithuania. Christians were

again tolerated in his territories by the Grand Duke Gedimin

(A.D. 1315-1340). Romish Dominicans and Russian priests vied

with one another under his successor Olgerd in endeavours to

convert the inhabitants. Olgerd himself was baptized according

to the Greek rite, but apostatised. His son Jagello, born

of a Christian mother, and married to the young Polish queen

Hedwig, whose hand and crown seemed not too dearly purchased by

submitting to baptism and undertaking to introduce Christianity

among his people, made at last an end to heathenism in Lithuania

in A.D. 1386. His subjects, each of whom received a woollen coat

as a christening gift, flocked in crowds to receive baptism. The

bishop’s residence was fixed at Wilna.

§ 93.15. =The Mongolian Mission Field.=--From the time of

Genghis Khan, who died in A.D. 1227, the princes of the =Mongols=,

in consistency with their principles as deists with little trace

of religion, showed themselves equally tolerant and favourable

to Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. The Nestorians were very

numerous in this empire, but also very much deteriorated. In

A.D. 1240-1241 the Mongols, pressing westward with irresistible

force, threatened to overflow and devastate all Europe. Russia

and Poland, Silesia, Moravia, and Hungary had been already

dreadfully wasted by them, when suddenly and unexpectedly

the savage hordes withdrew. Innocent IV. sent an embassage of

Dominicans under Nicolas Ascelinus to the Commander Batschu

in Persia, and an embassage of Franciscans under John of

Piano-Carpini to the Grand Khan Oktaï, Genghis Khan’s successor,

to his capital Karakorum, with a view to their conversion and

to dissuade them from repeating their inroads. Both missions

were unsuccessful. Certain adventurers pretending to be bearers

of a message from Mongolia, told Louis IX. of France fabulous

stories of the readiness of the Grand Khan Gajuk and his princes

to receive Christianity, and their intention to conquer the Holy

Land for the Christians. He accordingly sent out two missions to

the Mongols. The first, in A.D. 1249 was utterly unsuccessful,

for the Mongols regarded the presents given as a regular tribute

and as a symbol of voluntary submission. The second mission in

A.D. 1253, to the Grand Khan Mangu, although under a brave and

accomplished leader, William of Ruysbroek, yielded no fruit;

for Mangu, instead of allowing free entrance into the land for

the preaching of the gospel, at the close of a disputation with

Mohammedans and Buddhists sent the missionaries back to Louis

with the threatening demand to tender his submission. After

Mangu’s death in A.D. 1257, the Mongolian empire was divided

into Eastern and Western, corresponding to China and Persia.

The former was governed by Kublai Khan, the latter by Hulagu

Khan.--Kublai Khan, the Emperor of =China=, a genuine type of

the religious mongrelism of the Mongolians, showed himself very

favourable to Christians, but also patronised the Mohammedans,

and in A.D. 1260 gave a hierarchical constitution and consolidated

form to Buddhism by the establishment of the first Dalai Lama. The

travels of two Venetians of the family of Polo led to the founding

of a Latin Christian mission in China. They returned from their

Mongolian travels in A.D. 1269. Gregory X. in A.D. 1272 sent

two Dominicans to Mongolia along with the two brothers, and the

son of one of them, Marco Polo, then seventeen years old. The

latter won the unreserved confidence of the Grand Khan, and was

entrusted by him with an honourable post in the government. On

his return in A.D. 1295 he published an account of his travels,

which made an enormous sensation, and afforded for the first time

to Western Europe a proper conception of the condition of Eastern

Asia.[266] A regular Christian missionary enterprise, however,

was first undertaken by the Franciscan Joh. de Monte-Corvino,

A.D. 1291-1328, one of the noblest, most intelligent, and most

faithful of the missionaries of the Middle Ages. After he had

succeeded in overcoming the intrigues of the numerous Nestorians,

he won the high esteem of the Grand Khan. In the royal city of

Cembalu or Pekin he built two churches, baptized about 6,000

Mongols, and translated the Psalter and the New Testament

into Mongolian. He wrought absolutely alone till A.D. 1303.

Afterwards, however, other brethren of his order came repeatedly

to his aid. Clement V. appointed him archbishop of Cembalu in

A.D. 1307. Every year saw new churches established. But internal

disturbances, under Kublai’s successor, weakened the power of

the Mongolian dynasty, so that in A.D. 1370 it was overthrown

by the national Ming dynasty. By the new rulers the Christian

missionaries were driven out along with the Mongols, and thus

all that they had done was utterly destroyed.--The ruler of

=Persia=, Hulagu Khan, son of a Christian mother and married

to a Christian wife, put an end in A.D. 1258 to the khalifate

of Bagdad, but was so pressed by the sultan of Egypt, that

he entered on a long series of negotiations with the popes

and the kings of France and England, who gave him the most

encouraging promises of joining their forces with his against

the Saracens. His successors, of whom several even formally

embraced Christianity, continued these negotiations, but obtained

nothing more than empty promises and protestations of friendship.

The time of the crusades was over, and the popes, even the most

powerful of them, were not able to reawaken the crusading spirit.

The Persian khans, vacillating between Christianity and Islam,

became more and more powerless, until at last, in A.D. 1387,

Tamerlane (Timur) undertook to found on the ruins of the old

government a new universal Mongolian empire under the standard

of the Crescent. But with his death in A.D. 1405 the dominion

of the Mongols in Persia was overthrown, and fell into the hands

of the Turkomans. Henceforth amid all changes of dynasties Islam

continued the dominant religion.

§ 93.16. =The Mission Field of Islam.=--The crusader princes

and soldiers wished only to wrest the Holy Land from the infidels,

but, with the exception perhaps of Louis IX., had no idea of

bringing to them the blessings of the gospel. And most of the

crusaders, by their licentiousness, covetousness, cruelty,

faithlessness, and dissensions among themselves, did much to

cause the Saracens to scorn the Christian faith as represented

by their lives and example. It was not until the 13th century

that the two newly founded mendicant orders of Franciscans

and Dominicans began an energetic but fruitless mission among

the Moslems of Africa, Sicily, and Spain. St. Francis himself

started this work in A.D. 1219, when during the siege of Damietta

by the crusaders he entered the camp of the Sultan Camel and

bade him kindle a fire and cause that he himself with one of

the Moslem priests should be cast into it. When the imam present

shrank away at these words, Francis offered to go alone into

the fire if the sultan would promise to accept Christianity

along with his people should he pass out of the fire uninjured.

The sultan refused to promise and sent the saint away unhurt

with presents, which, however, he returned. Afterwards several

Franciscan missions were sent to the Moslems, but resulted

only in giving a crowd of martyrs to the order. The Dominicans,

too, at a very early period took part in the mission to the

Mohammedans, but were also unsuccessful. The Dominican general

Raimund de Pennaforti [Pennaforte], who died in A.D. 1273,

devoted himself with special zeal to this task. For the training

of the brethren of his order in the oriental languages he founded

institutions at Tunis and Murcia. The most important of all these

missionary enterprises was that of the talented Raimund Lullus

of Majorca, who after his own conversion from a worldly life and

after careful study of the language, made three voyages to North

Africa and sought in disputations with the Saracen scholars to

convince them of the truth of Christianity. But his _Ars Magna_

(§ 103, 7), which with great ingenuity and enormous labour he had

wrought out mainly for this purpose, had no effect. Imprisonment

and ill-treatment were on all occasions his only reward. He died

in A.D. 1315 in consequence of the ill-usage which he had been

subjected.

§ 94. THE CRUSADES.[267]

The Arabian rulers had for their own interest protected the Christian

pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre. But even under the rule of the Fatimide

dynasty, early in the 10th century, the oppression of pilgrims began.

Khalif Hakim, in order that he might blot out the disgrace of being

born of a Christian mother, committed ruthless cruelties upon resident

Christians as well as upon the pilgrims, and prohibited under severe

penalties all meetings for Christian worship. Under the barbarous

Seljuk dynasty, which held sway in Palestine from about A.D. 1070,

the oppression reached its height. The West became all the more

concerned about this, since during the 10th century the idea that

the end of the world was approaching had given a new impulse to

pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Pope Sylvester II. had in A.D. 999

_ex persona devastatæ Hierosolymæ_ summoned Christendom to help in

this emergency. Gregory VII. seized anew upon the idea of wresting

the Holy Land from the infidels. He had even resolved himself to

lead a Christian army, but the outbreak of contentions with Henry IV.

hindered the execution of this plan. Meanwhile complaints by returning

pilgrims of intolerable ill-usage increased. An urgent appeal from

the Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus gave the spark that lit the

combustible material that had been gathered throughout the West. The

imperial ambassadors accompanied Pope Urban II. to the Council of

Clermont in A.D. 1095, where the pope himself, in a spirited speech,

called for a holy war under the standard of the cross. The shout

was raised as from one mouth, “It is God’s will.” On that very day

thousands enlisted, with Adhemar, bishop of Puy, papal legate, at

their head, and had the red cross marked on their right shoulders.

The bishops returning home preached the crusade as they went, and in

a few weeks a glowing enthusiasm had spread throughout France down

to the provinces of the Rhine. Then began a movement which, soon

extending over all the West, like a second migration of nations,

lasted for two centuries. The crusades cost Europe between five and

six millions of men, and yet in the end that which had been striven

after was not attained. Its consequences, however, to Europe itself

were all the more important. In all departments of life, ecclesiastical

and political, moral and intellectual, civil and industrial, new

views, needs, developments, and tendencies were introduced. Mediæval

culture now reached the highest point of its attainment, and its

failure to transcend the past opened the way for the conditions

of modern society. And while on the other hand they afforded new

and extravagantly abundant nourishment for clerical and popular

superstition, in all directions, but specially in giving opportunity

to roguish traffic in relics (§ 104, 8; 115, 9), on the other hand

they had no small share in producing religious indifference and

frivolous free-thinking (§ 96, 19), as well as the terribly dangerous

growth of mediæval sects, which threatened the overthrow of church

and State, religion and morality (§ 108, 1, 4; 116, 5). The former

was chiefly the result of the sad conclusion of an undertaking of

unexampled magnitude, entered upon with the most glowing enthusiasm

for Christianity and the church; the latter was in great measure

occasioned by intercourse with sectaries of a like kind in the East

(§ 71).

§ 94.1. =The First Crusade, A.D. 1096.=--In the spring of

A.D. 1096 vast crowds of people gathered together, impatient

of the delays of the princes, and put themselves under the

leadership of Walter the Penniless. They were soon followed by

Peter of Amiens with 40,000 men. A legend, unworthy of belief,

credits him with the origin of the whole movement. According

to this story, the hermit returning from a pilgrimage described

to the holy father in vivid colours the sufferings of their

Christian brethren, and related how that Christ Himself had

appeared to him in a dream, giving him the command for the

pope to summon all Christendom to rescue the Holy Sepulchre.

The legend proceeds to say that, by order of the pope, Peter

the Hermit then went through all Italy and France, arousing

the enthusiasm of the people. The hordes led by him, however,

after committing deeds of horrid violence on every side, while

no farther than Bulgaria, were reduced to about one half,

and the remnant, after Peter had already left them because of

their insubordination, was annihilated by the Turks at Nicæa.

Successive new crusades, the last of them an undisciplined mob

of 200,000 men, were cut down in Hungary or on the Hungarian

frontier. In August a regular crusading army, 80,000 strong,

under the leadership of Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine,

passing through Germany and Hungary, reached Constantinople.

There several French and Norman princes joined the army, till its

strength was increased to 600,000. After considerable squabbling

with the Byzantine government, they passed over into Asia. With

great labour and heavy loss Nicæa, Edessa, and Antioch were

taken. At last, on 15th July, 1099, amid shouts of, It is God’s

will, they stormed the walls of Jerusalem; lighted by torches

and wading in blood, they entered with singing of psalms into

the Church of the Resurrection. Godfrey was elected king. With

pious humility he declined to wear a king’s crown where Christ

had worn a crown of thorns. He died a year after, and his brother

Baldwin was crowned at Bethlehem. By numerous impropriations

crowds of greater and lesser vassals were gathered about the

throne. In Jerusalem itself a Latin patriarchate was erected,

and under it were placed four archbishoprics, with a corresponding

number of bishoprics. The story of these proceedings enkindled

new enthusiasm in the West. In A.D. 1101 three new crusades

of 260,000 men were fitted out in Germany, under Welf, duke

of Bavaria, and in Italy and in France. They marched against

Bagdad, in order to strike terror into the hearts of Moslems by

the terrible onslaught; the undisciplined horde, however, did

not reach its destination, but found a grave in Asia Minor.

§ 94.2. =The Second Crusade, A.D. 1147.=--The fall of Edessa in

A.D. 1146, as the frontier fortress of the kingdom, summoned the

West to a new effort. Pope Eugenius III. called the nations to

arms. Bernard of Clairvaux, the prophet of the age, preached

the crusade, and prophesied victory. =Louis VII. of France= took

the sign of the cross, in order to atone for the crime of having

burnt a church filled with men; and =Conrad III. of Germany=,

moved by the preaching of Bernard, with some hesitation followed

his example. But their stately army fell before the sword of the

Saracens, the malice of the Greeks, and internal disorders caused

by famine, disease, and hardships. Damascus remained unconquered,

and the princes returned humbled with the miserable remnant of

their army.

§ 94.3. =The Third Crusade, A.D. 1189.=--The kingdom of

Jerusalem before a century had past was in utter decay. Greeks

or Syrians and Latins had a deadly hatred for one another:

the vassals intrigued against each other and against the crown.

Licentiousness, luxury, and recklessness prevailed among the

people; the clergy and the nobles of the kingdom, but especially

the so called Pulleni,[268] descendants of the crusaders born in

the Holy Land itself, were a miserable, cowardly and treacherous

race. The pretenders to the crown also continued their intrigues

and cabals. Such being the corrupt condition of affairs, it was

an easy thing for the Sultan Saladin, the Moslem knight “without

fear and without reproach,” who had overthrown the Fatimide

dynasty in Egypt, to bring down upon the Christian rule in

Syria, after the bloody battle of Tiberias, the same fate.

Jerusalem fell into his hands in October, A.D. 1187. When this

terrible piece of news reached the West, the Christian powers

were summoned by Gregory VIII. to combine their forces in order

to make one more vigorous effort, Philip Augustus of France and

Henry II. of England forgot for a moment their mutual jealousies,

and took the cross from the hands of Archbishop William of Tyre,

the historian of the crusade. Next the =Emperor Frederick I.=

joined them, with all the heroic valour of youth, though in

years and experience an old man. He entered on the undertaking

with an energy, considerateness, and circumspection which

seemed to deserve glorious success. After piloting his way

through Byzantine intrigues and the indescribable fatigues of

a waterless desert, he led his soldiers against the well-equipped

army of the sultan at Iconium, which he utterly routed, and took

the city. But in A.D. 1190 the heroic warrior was drowned in an

attempt to ford the river Calycadnus. A great part of his army

was now scattered, and the remnant was led by his son Frederick

of Swabia against Ptolemais. At that point soon after landed

=Philip Augustus= and =Richard Cœur de Lion= of England, who

after his father’s death put himself at the head of an English

crusading army and had conquered Cyprus on the way. Ptolemais

(Acre) was taken in A.D. 1191. But the jealousies of the princes

interfered with their success. Frederick had already fallen, and

Philip Augustus under pretence of sickness returned to France;

Richard gained a brilliant victory over Saladin, took Joppa and

Ascalon, and was on the eve of marching against Jerusalem when

news reached him that his brother John had assumed the throne of

England, and that Philip Augustus also was entertaining schemes

of conquest. Once again Richard won a great victory before Joppa,

and Saladin, admiring his unexampled bravery, concluded with him

now, in A.D. 1192, a three years’ truce, giving most favourable

terms to the pilgrims. The strip along the coast from Joppa

to Acre continued under the rule of Richard’s nephew, Henry

of Champagne. But Richard was seized on his return journey and

cast into prison by Leopold of Austria, whose standard he had

grossly insulted before Ptolemais, and for two years he remained

a prisoner. After his release he was prevented from thinking of

a renewal of the crusade by a war with France, in which he met

his death in A.D. 1199.[269]

§ 94.4. =The Fourth Crusade, A.D. 1217.=--Innocent III. summoned

Christendom anew to a holy war. The kings, engaged in their own

affairs, gave no heed to the call. But the violent penitential

preacher, Fulco of Neuilly, prevailed upon the French nobles to

collect a considerable crusading army, which, however, instead

of proceeding against the Saracens, was used by the Venetian

Doge, Dandolo, in payment of transport, for conquering Zaras

in Dalmatia, and then by a Byzantine prince for a campaign

against Constantinople, where Baldwin of Flanders founded

a =Latin Empire=, A.D. 1204-1261. The pope put the doge and

the crusaders under excommunication on account of the taking

of Zaras, and the campaign against Constantinople was most

decidedly disapproved. Their unexpected success, however, turned

away his anger. He boasted that at last Israel, after destroying

the golden calves at Dan and Bethel, was again united to Judah,

and in Rome bestowed the pallium upon the first Latin patriarch

of Constantinople.--The =Children’s Crusade=, which in A.D. 1212

snatched from their parents in France and Germany 30,000 boys

and girls, had a most tragic end. Many died before passing

from Europe of famine and fatigue; the rest fell into the hands

of unprincipled men, who sold them as slaves in Egypt.--King

=Andrew II. of Hungary=, urged by Honorius III., led a new

crusading army to the Holy Land in A.D. 1217, and won some

successes; but finding himself betrayed and deserted by the

Palestinian barons, he returned home in the following year. But

the Germans under Leopold VII. of Austria, who had accompanied

him remained, and, supported by a Cologne and Dutch fleet,

undertook in A.D. 1218, along with the titular king John of

Jerusalem, a crusade =against Egypt=. Damietta was taken, but

the overflow of the Nile reservoirs placed them in such peril

that they owed their escape in A.D. 1221 only to the generosity

of the Sultan Camel.

§ 94.5. =The Fifth Crusade, A.D. 1228.=--The Emperor Frederick II.

had promised to undertake a crusade, but continued to make so many

excuses for delay that Gregory IX. (§ 96, 19) at last thundered

against him the long threatened excommunication. Frederick now

brought out a comparatively small crusading force. The Sultan

Camel of Egypt, engaged in war with his nephew, and fearing that

Frederick might attach himself to the enemy, freely granted him

a large tract of the Holy Land. At the Holy Sepulchre Frederick

placed the crown of Jerusalem, the inheritance of his new wife

Iolanthe, with his own hands on his head, since no bishop would

perform the coronation nor even a priest read the mass service

for the excommunicated king. He then returned home in A.D. 1229

to arrange his differences with the pope. The crusading armies

which Theobald, king of Navarre, in A.D. 1239, and Richard

Earl of Cornwall, in A.D. 1240, led against Palestine, owing

to disunion among themselves and quarrels among the Syrian

Christians, could accomplish nothing.

§ 94.6. =The Sixth, A.D. 1248, and Seventh, A.D. 1270,

Crusades.=--The zeal for crusading had by this time considerably

cooled. =St. Louis of France=, however, the ninth of that name,

had during a serious illness in A.D. 1244, taken the cross. At

this time Jerusalem had been conquered and subjected to the most

dreadful horrors at the hands of the Chowaresmians, driven from

their home by the Mongols, and now in the pay of Egyptian sultan

Ayoub. Down to A.D. 1247 the rule of the Christians in the Holy

Land was again restricted to Acre and some coast towns. Louis

could no longer think of delay. He started in A.D. 1248 with a

considerable force, wintered in Cyprus, and landed in Egypt in

A.D. 1249. He soon conquered Damietta, but, after his army had

been in great part destroyed by famine, disease and slaughter,

was taken prisoner at Cairo by the sultan. After the murder of

the sultan by the Mamelukes, who overthrew Saladin’s dynasty,

he fell into their hands. The king was obliged to deliver over

Damietta and to purchase his own release by payment of 800,000

byzantines. He sailed with the remnant of his army to Acre

in A.D. 1250, whence his mother’s death called him home in

A.D. 1254. But as his vow had not yet been fully paid, he sailed

in A.D. 1270 with a new crusading force to Tunis in order to

carry on operations from that centre. But the half of his army

was cut off by a pestilence, and he himself was carried away

in that same year. All subsequent endeavours of the popes to

reawaken an interest in the crusades were unavailing. Acre or

Ptolemais, the last stronghold of the Christians in the Holy

Land, fell in A.D. 1291.

§ 95. ISLAM AND THE JEWS IN EUROPE.

The Saracens (§ 81, 2) were overthrown in the 11th century by

the Normans. The reign of Islam in Spain too (§ 81, 1) came to an

end. The frequent change of dynasties, as well as the splitting up

of the empire into small principalities, weakened the power of the

Moors; the growth of luxurious habits in the rich and fertile districts

robbed them of martial energy and prowess. The Christian power also

was indeed considerably split up and disturbed by many internal feuds,

but the national and religious enthusiasm with which it was every

day being more and more inspired, made it invincible. Rodrigo Diaz,

the Castilian hero, called by the Moors the Cid, _i.e._ Lord, by the

Christians Campeador, _i.e._ champion, who died in A.D. 1099, was the

most perfect representative of Spanish Christian knighthood, although

he dealt with the infidels in a manner neither Christian nor knightly.

Also the Almoravides of Morocco, whose aid was called in in A.D. 1086,

and the Almohades, who had driven out these from Barbary in A.D. 1146,

were not able to stop the progress of the Christian arms. On the

other hand, neither the unceasing persecutions of the civil power,

nor innumerable atrocities committed on Jews by infuriated mobs, nor

even Christian theologians’ zeal for the instruction and conversion

of the Israelites, succeeded in destroying Judaism in Europe.

§ 95.1. =Islam in Sicily.=--The robber raids upon Italy

perpetrated by the Sicilian Saracens were put an end to by the

Normans who settled there in A.D. 1017. Robert Guiscard destroyed

the remnant of Greek rule in southern Italy, conquered the small

Longobard duchies there, and founded a Norman duchy of Apulia and

Calabria in A.D. 1059. His brother Roger, who died in A.D. 1101,

after a thirty years’ struggle drove the Saracens completely

out of Sicily, and ruled over it as a vassal of his brother

under the title of Count of Sicily. His son Roger II., who

died in A.D. 1154, united the government of Sicily and of

Apulia and Calabria, had himself crowned in A.D. 1130 king

of Sicily and Italy, and finally in A.D. 1139 conquered also

Naples. In consequence of the marriage of his daughter Constance

with Henry VI. the whole kingdom passed over in A.D. 1194 to

the Hohenstaufens, from whom it passed in A.D. 1266 to Charles

of Anjou; and from him finally, in consequence of the Sicilian

Vespers in A.D. 1282, the island of Sicily passed to Peter

of Arragon, the son-in-law of Manfred, the last king of the

Hohenstaufen line. The Normans and the Hohenstaufens granted

to the subject Saracens for the most part full religious liberty,

the Emperor Frederick recruiting from among them his bodyguard,

and they supplied the bravest soldiers for the Italian Ghibelline

war. For this purpose he was constantly drafting new detachments

from the African coast, as Manfred also had done. The endeavours

made by monks of the mendicant orders for the conversion of the

Saracens proved quite fruitless. It was only under the Spanish

rule that conversions were made by force, or persecution and

annihilation followed persistent refusal.

§ 95.2. =Islam in Spain.=--The times of Abderrhaman III.,

A.D. 912-961, and Hacem II., A.D. 961-976, were the most

brilliant and fortunate of the =Ommaiadean= khalifate. After

the death of the latter the chamberlain Almansor, who died in

A.D. 1002, reigned in the name of Khalif Hescham II., who was

little more than a puppet of the seraglio, and his rule was

glorious, powerful and wise. But interminable civil contentions

were the result of this disarrangement of government, and in

A.D. 1031, in consequence of a popular tumult, Abderrhaman IV.,

the last of the Ommaiades, took to flight, and voluntarily

resigned the crown. The khalifate was now broken up into as many

little principalities or emirships as there had been governors

before. Amid such confusions the Christian princes continued to

develop and increase their resources. Sancho the Great, king of

Navarre, A.D. 970-1035, by marriage and conquest united almost

all Christian Spain under his rule, but this was split up again

by being partitioned among his sons. Of these Ferdinand I., who

died in A.D. 1065, inherited Castile, and in A.D. 1037 added to

it Leon by conquest. With him begins the heroic age of Spanish

knighthood. His son Alfonso IV., who died in A.D. 1109, succeeded

in A.D. 1085 in taking from the Moors Toledo and a great part of

Andalusia. The powerful leader of the =Almoravides=, Jussuf from

Morocco, was now called to their aid by the Moors. On the plain

of Salacca the Christians were beaten in A.D. 1086, but soon

the victor turned his arms against his allies, and within

six years all Moslem Spain was under his government. His son

Ali, in a fearfully bloody battle at Ucles in A.D. 1107, cut

down the flower of the Castilian nobility; this marked the

summit of power reached by the Almoravides, and now their star

began slowly to pale. Alfonso I. of Arragon, A.D. 1105-1134,

conquered Saragossa in A.D. 1118, and other cities. Alfonso VII.

of Castile, A.D. 1126-1157, whose power rose so high that most

of the Christian princes in Spain acknowledged him as sovereign,

and that he had himself formally crowned emperor of Spain in

A.D. 1135, conducted a successful campaign against Andalusia, and

in A.D. 1144 forced his way down to the south coast of Granada.

Alfonso I. of Portugal, drove the Moors out of Lisbon; Raimard,

count of Barcelona, conquered Tortosa, etc. At the same time too

the government of the Almoravides was being undermined in Africa.

In A.D. 1146 Morocco fell, and with it North-western Africa,

into the hands of the =Almohades= under Abdelmoumen, while his

lieutenant Abu Amram at the same time conquered Moslem Spain and

Andalusia. Abdelmoumen’s son Jussuf himself crossed over into

Spain with an enormous force in order to extinguish the Christian

rule there, but fell in a battle at Santarem against Alfonso I.

of Portugal. His son Jacob avenged the disaster by the bloody

battle of Alarcos in A.D. 1195, where 30,000 Castilians were

left upon the field. When, notwithstanding the overthrow, the

Christians a few years later endeavoured to retrieve their loss,

Jacob’s successor Mohammed descended upon Spain with half a

million fanatical followers. The critical hour for Spain had

now arrived. The Christians had won time to come to agreement

among themselves. They fought with unexampled heroism on the

plain of Tolosa in A.D. 1212 under Alfonso VIII. of Castile.

The battlefield was strewn with more than 200,000 bodies of

the African fanatics. It was the death-knell of the rule of the

Almohad in Spain. Notwithstanding the dissensions and hostilities

that immediately broke out among the Christian princes, they

conquered within twenty-five years the whole of Andalusia. The

work of conquest was carried out mostly by Ferdinand III., the

saint of Castile, A.D. 1217-1254, and Jacob I., the conqueror

of Arragon, A.D. 1213-1276. Only in the southernmost district

of Spain a remnant of the Moslem rule survived in the kingdom

of Granada, founded in A.D. 1238 by the emir Mohammed Aben Alamar.

Here for a time the glories of Arabic culture were revived in

such a way as seemed like a magical restoration of the day of

the Ommaiades. In consequence of the marriage in A.D. 1469 of

Ferdinand of Arragon, who died in A.D. 1516, with Isabella of

Castile, these two most important Christian empires were united.

Soon afterwards the empire of Granada came to an end. On 2nd

January, A.D. 1492, after an ignominious capitulation, the

last khalif, Abu Abdilehi Boabdil, was driven out of the fair

(Granada), and a few moments later the Castilian banner waved

from the highest tower of the proud Alhambra. The pope bestowed

upon the royal pair the title of Catholic monarchs. The Moors who

refused to submit to baptism were expelled, but even the baptized,

the so-called Moriscoes, proved so dangerous an element in the

state that Philip III., in A.D. 1609, ordered them to be all

banished from his realm. They sought refuge mostly in Africa,

and there went over openly again to Mohammedanism, which they

had never at heart rejected.[270]

§ 95.3. =The Jews in Europe.=--By trade, money lending and

usury the Jews succeeded in obtaining almost sole possession

of ready money, which brought them often great influence with

the needy princes and nobles, but was also often the occasion

of sore oppression and robbery, as well as the cause of popular

hatred and violence. Whenever a country was desolated by a plague

the notion of well-poisoning by the Jews was renewed. It was told

of them that they had stolen the consecrated sacramental bread in

order to stick it through with needles, and Christian children,

that they might slaughter them at their passover festival. From

time to time this popular rage exploded, and then thousands of

Jews were ruthlessly murdered. The crusaders too often began

their feats of valour on Christian soil by the slaughter of Jews.

From the 13th century in almost all lands they were compelled

to wear an insulting badge, the so called Jews’ hat, a yellow,

funnel-shaped covering of the head, and a ring of red cloth on

the breast, etc. They were also compelled to herd together in

the cities in the so called Jewish quarter (Italian=Ghetto),

which was often surrounded by a special wall. St. Bernard and

several popes, Gregory VII., Alexander III., Innocent III.,

etc., interested themselves in them, refused to allow them to

be violently persecuted, and pointed to their position as an

incontrovertible proof of the truth of the gospel to all times.

The German emperors also took the Jews under their special

protection, for they classed them, after the example of Vespasian

and Titus, among the special servants of the imperial chamber,

(_Servi camera nostræ speciales_).[271] In England and France

they were treated as the _mancipium_ of the crown. In Spain

under the Moorish rule they had vastly increased in numbers,

culture and wealth; also under the Christian kings they enjoyed

for a long time special privileges, their own tribunals, freedom

in the possession of land, etc., and obtained great influence as

ministers of finance and administration, and also as astrologers,

physicians, apothecaries, etc.; but by their usury and merciless

greed drew forth more and more the bitter hatred of the people.

Hence in the 14th century in Spain also there arose times of sore

oppression and persecution, and attempts at conversion by force.

And finally, in A.D. 1492, Ferdinand the Catholic drove more

than 400,000 Jews out of Spain, and in the following year 100,000

out of Sicily. But even the baptized Jews, the so-called “New

Christians,” who were prohibited from removing, fell under the

suspicion of secret attachment to the old religion, and many

thousands of them became victims of the Inquisition.--Many

apologetic and polemical treatises were composed for the purpose

of discussion with the Jews and for their instruction, but

like so many other formal disputations they did not succeed in

securing any good result, for the Jewish teachers were superior

in learning, acuteness, and acquaintance with the exposition

of Old Testament Scriptures, upon which in this discussion

everything turned. But an interesting example of a Jew earnestly

striving after a knowledge of the truth and working himself up to

a full conviction of the divinity of Christianity and the church

doctrine of that age, somewhere about A.D. 1150, is presented by

the story told by himself of the conversion of Hermann afterwards

a Premonstratensian monk in the monastery of Kappenberg in

Westphalia.[272] But on the other hand there are also isolated

examples of a passing over to Judaism as the result, it would

seem, of genuine conviction. The first known example of this

kind appears in A.D. 839, in the case of a deacon Boso, who after

being circumcised received the name Eleazar, married a Jewess,

and settled in Saracen Spain, where he manifested extraordinary

zeal in making converts to his new religion. A second case of

this sort is met with in the times of the Emperor Henry II.,

in the perversion of a priest Wecelinus. The narrator of this

story gives expression to his horror in the words, _Totus

contremisco et horrentibus pilis capitis terrore concutior_.

Also the Judaising sects of the Pasagians in Lombardy during

the 11th century (§ 108, 3) and the Russian Jewish sects of the

15th century (§ 73, 5) were probably composed for the most part

of proselytes to Judaism.[273]

II.--The Hierarchy, the Clergy, and the Monks.

§ 96. THE PAPACY AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

IN THE GERMAN NATIONALITIES.[274]

The history of the papacy during this period represents it in

its deepest shame and degradation. But after this state of matters

was put an end to by the founding of the Holy Roman Empire of German

nationalities, it sprang up again from its deep debasement, and reached

the highest point of power and influence. With the German empire,

to which it owed its salvation, it now carried on a life and death

conflict; for it seemed that it was possible to escape enslavement

under the temporal power of the emperor only by putting the emperor

under its spiritual power. In the conflict with the Hohenstaufens the

struggle reached its climax. The papacy won a complete victory, but

soon found that it could as little dispense with as endure the presence

of a powerful empire. For as the destruction of the Carolingian empire

had left it at the mercy of the factions of Italian nobles at the time

when this period opens, so its victory over the German empire brought

the papacy under the still more degrading bondage of French politics,

as is seen in the beginning of the next period. It had during this

transition time its most powerful props and advisers in the orders

of Clugny and Camaldoli (§ 98, 1). It had a standing army in the

mendicant orders, and the crusaders, besides the enthusiasm, which

greatly strengthened the papal institution, did the further service

of occupying and engrossing the attention of the princes.

§ 96.1. =The Romish Pornocracy and the Emperor Otto I.,

† A.D. 973.=--Among the wild struggles of the Italian nobles

which broke out after the Emperor Arnulf’s departure (§ 82, 8),

the party of the Margrave Adalbert of Tuscany gained the

upperhand. His mistress Theodora, a well born and beautiful,

ambitious and voluptuous Roman, wife of a Roman senator, as

well as her like-minded daughters Marozia and Theodora, filled

for half a century the chair of St. Peter with their paramours,

sons and grandsons. These constituted the base and corrupt line

of popes known as the pornocracy. =Sergius III.=, A.D. 904-911,

Marozia’s paramour, starts this disgraceful series. After the

short pontificates of the two immediately following popes,

Theodora, because Ravenna was inconveniently distant for

the gratification of her lust, called John, the archbishop

of that place, to the papal chair under the title of =John X.=,

A.D. 914-928. By means of a successful crusade which he led in

person, he destroyed the remnant of Saracen robbers in Garigliano

(§ 81, 2), and crowned the Lombard king Bernard I., A.D. 916-924,

as emperor. But when he attempted to break off his disgraceful

relations with the woman who had advanced him, Marozia had him

cast into prison and smothered with a pillow. The two following

popes on whom she bestowed the tiara enjoyed it only a short time,

for in A.D. 931 she raised her own son to the papal throne in

the twentieth year of his age. His father was Pope Sergius, and

he assumed the name of =John XI.= But her other son Alberich,

who inherited the temporal kingdom from A.D. 932, restricted

this pope’s jurisdiction and that of his four successors to

the ecclesiastical domain. After Alberich’s death his son

Octavianus, an arch-profligate and blasphemer, though only in

his sixteenth year, united the papacy and the temporal power,

and called himself by the name of =John XII.= A.D. 955-963--the

first instance of a change of name on assuming the papal chair.

He would sell anything for money. He made a boy of ten years

a bishop; he consecrated a deacon in a stable; in hunting and

dice playing he would invoke the favour of Jupiter and Venus;

in his orgies he would drink the devil’s health, etc. Meantime

things had reached a terrible pass in Germany. After the death of

Louis the Child, the last of the German Carolingians, in A.D. 911,

the Frankish duke =Conrad I.=, A.D. 911-918, was elected king

of the Germans. Although vigorously supported by the superior

clergy, the Synod of Hohenaltheim in A.D. 915 threatening the

rebels with all the pains of hell, the struggle with the other

dukes prevented the founding of a united German empire. His

successor, the Saxon =Henry I.=, A.D. 919-936, was the first

to free himself from the faction of the clergy, and to grant to

the dukes independent administration of internal affairs within

their own domains. His greater son, =Otto I.=, A.D. 936-973,

by limiting the power of the dukes, by fighting and converting

heathen Danes, Wends, Bohemians and Hungarians, by decided action

in the French troubles, by gathering around him a virtuous German

clergy, who proved true to him and the empire, secured after long

continued civil wars a power and reputation such as no ruler in

the West since Charlemagne had enjoyed. Called to the help of the

Lombard nobles and the pope John XII. against the oppression and

tyranny of Berengarius [Berengar] II., he conquered the kingdom

of Italy, and was at Candlemas A.D. 962 crowned emperor by

the pope in St. Peter’s, after having really held this rank

for thirty years. Thus was the =Holy Roman Empire of German

Nationalities= founded, which continued for centuries to be

the centre around which the history of the church and the world

revolved. The new emperor confirmed to the pope all donations

of previous emperors with the addition of certain cities, without

detriment, however, to the imperial suzerainty over the patrimony

of St. Peter, and without lessening in any degree the imperial

privileges maintained by Charlemagne. The _Privilegium Ottonis_,

still preserved in the papal archives, and claiming to be an

authentic document, was till quite recently kept secret from

all impartial and capable investigators, so that the suspicion

of its spuriousness had come to be regarded as almost a

certainty. Under Leo XIII., however, permission was given to

a capable Protestant scholar, Prof. Sickel of Vienna, to make

a photographic facsimile of the document, the result of which

was that he became convinced that the document was not the

original but a contemporary official duplicate, a literally

faithful transcript on purple parchment with letters of gold

for solemn deposition in the grave of St. Peter. Its first

part describes the donations of the emperor, the second the

obligations of the pope in accordance with the _Constitutio

Romana_, § 82, 4.--But scarcely had Otto left Rome than the

pope, breaking his oath, conspired with his enemies, endeavoured

to rouse the Byzantines and heathen Hungarians against him,

and opened the gates of Rome to Adalbert the son of Berengarius

[Berengar]. Otto hastened back, deposed the pope at the synod

of Rome in A.D. 963, on charges of incest, perjury, murder,

blasphemy, etc., and made the Romans swear by the bones of

Peter never again to elect and consecrate a pope, without

having the emperor’s permission and confirmation. Soon after the

emperor’s departure, however, the newly elected pope =Leo VIII.=,

A.D. 963-965, had to betake himself to flight. John XII. returned

again to Rome, excommunicated his rival pope, and took cruel

vengeance upon the partisans of the emperor. On his death soon

afterwards, in A.D. 964, the Romans elected Benedict V. as

his successor; but he, when the emperor conquered Rome after a

stubborn resistance, was obliged to submit to humiliating terms.

Leo VIII. had in =John XIII.=, A.D. 965-972, a virtuous and

worthy successor. A new revolt of the Romans led soon after

his election to his imprisonment; but he succeeded in making

his escape in A.D. 966. Otto now for the third time crossed

the Alps, passed relentlessly severe sentences upon the guilty,

and had his son, now thirteen years of age, crowned in Rome as

Otto II., A.D. 967.

§ 96.2. =The Times of Otto II., III., A.D. 973-1002.=--After the

death of Otto I., since Otto II., A.D. 973-983, was restrained

from a Roman campaign in consequence of Cisalpine troubles,

the nobles’ faction under Crescentius, son of Pope John X.

and the younger Theodora, again won the upperhand. This party

had in A.D. 974 overthrown Pope =Benedict VI.=, A.D. 972-974,

appointed by Otto I., and cast him into prison. But their own

anti-pope Boniface VII. could not maintain his position, and

fled with the treasures of St. Peter to Constantinople. By means

of a compromise of parties =Benedict VII.=, A.D. 974-983, was

now raised to the papal chair and held possession in spite of

manifold opposition, till the arrival of the young emperor in

Italy in A.D. 980 obtained for him greater security. Otto II.

again restored the imperial prestige in Rome in A.D. 981, but

in A.D. 982 he suffered a complete defeat at the hand of the

Saracens. He died in the following year at Rome, after he had

in =John XIV.=, A.D. 983-984, secured the appointment of a pope

faithful to the empire. His son Otto III., three years old,

was at the council of state, held at Verona, by the princes

of Germany and Italy, there gathered together, elected king of

both kingdoms. During the German civil wars under the regency

of the Queen-mother Theophania, a Byzantine princess, and the

able Archbishop Willigis, of Mainz, who, through his firmness

and penetration saved the crown for the royal child Otto III.,

A.D. 983-1002, and maintained the existence and integrity of

the German empire, Rome and the papacy fell again under the

domination of the nobles, at whose head now stood the younger

Crescentius, a son of the above mentioned chief of the same

name. In A.D. 984 the anti-pope =Boniface VII.=, who had fled

to Constantinople, made his appearance in Rome, won a following

by Greek gold, got possession of John XIV. and had him cast

into prison, but was himself soon afterwards murdered. The new

pope =John XV.=, A.D. 985-996, who was thoroughly venal, was an

obedient tool of the tyranny of Crescentius, which, however, soon

became so intolerable to him, that he yearned for the restoration

of imperial rule under Otto III. At this same time great danger

threatened the imperial authority from France. Hugh Capet had,

after the death of the last Carolingian, Louis V., in A.D. 987,

taken possession for himself of the French crown. He insisted

upon John XV. deposing the archbishop Arnulf of Rheims, who had

opened the gates of Rheims to his uncle Charles of Lorraine, the

brother of Louis V.’s father. The pope, who was then dependent

upon German power, hesitated. Hugh then had Arnulf deposed at

a synod at Rheims in A.D. 921, and put in his place Gerbert,

the greatest scholar (§ 100, 2) and statesman of that age. The

council quite openly declared the whole French church to be free

from Rome, whose bishops for a hundred years had been steeped

in the most profound moral corruption, and had fallen into the

most disgraceful servitude, and Gerbert issued a confession of

faith in which celibacy and fasting were repudiated, and only

the first four œcumenical councils were acknowledged. But the

plan was shattered, not so much through the apparently fruitless

opposition of the pope as through the reaction of the high church

party of Clugny and the popular esteem in which that party was

held. Gerbert could not maintain his position, and was heartily

glad when he could shake the dust of Rheims off his feet by

accepting an honourable call of the young emperor, Otto III.,

who in A.D. 997 opened new paths for his ambition by inviting

the celebrated scholar to be with him as his classical tutor.

Hugh’s successor Robert reinstated Arnulf in the see of Rheims.

John XV. called in Otto III. to his help against the intolerable

oppression of the younger Crescentius, but died before his

arrival in A.D. 996. Otto directed the choice of his cousin

Bruno, twenty-four years of age, the first German pope, who

assumed the name of =Gregory V.=, A.D. 996-999, and by him he

was crowned emperor in Rome. Gregory was a man of an energetic,

almost obstinate character, thoroughly in sympathy with the views

of the monks of Clugny. The emperor having soon returned home,

Crescentius violated his oath and made himself again master of

Rome. Gregory fled to Pavia, where he held a synod in A.D. 997,

which thundered an anathema against the disturber of the Roman

church. Meanwhile Crescentius raised to the papal throne the

archbishop John of Piacenza, formerly Greek tutor to Otto III.,

under the title of John XVI. It was not till late in autumn

of that year that the emperor could hasten to the help of his

injured cousin. He then executed a fearfully severe sentence

upon the tyrant and his pope. The former was beheaded, and

his corpse dragged by the feet through the streets and then

hung upon a gallows; the latter, whom the soldiers had cruelly

deprived of his ears, tongue, and nose, was led through the

streets seated backward on an ass, with the tail tied in his

hands for reins.--From Pavia Gregory had issued a command to

Robert, the French king, to put away his queen Bertha, who was

related to him in the fourth degree, on pain of excommunication.

But he died a suspiciously sudden death before he could bring

down the pride of this king, which, however, his successor

accomplished.

§ 96.3. =Otto III.= now raised to the papal chair his teacher

Gerbert, whom he had previously made Archbishop of Ravenna, under

the title of =Sylvester II.=, A.D. 999-1003. Already in Ravenna

had Gerbert’s ecclesiastical policy been changed for the high

church views of his former opponents, and as pope he developed

an activity which marks him out as the worthy follower of his

predecessor and the precursor of a yet greater Gregory (VII.).

He energetically contended against simony, that special

canker of the church, and by sending the ring and staff to

his former opponent, Arnulf, made the first effort to assert

the papal claim to the exclusive investiture of bishops. But

he had previously, as tutor of Otto, by flattering his vanity,

inspired the imaginative, high-spirited youth with the ideal

of a restoration of the ancient glory of Rome and its emperors

exercising universal sway. And just with this view had Otto

raised him to the papal chair in order that he might have his

help. The pope did not venture openly to withdraw from this

understanding, for in the condition of Italy at that time in

a struggle with the emperor, the victory would be his in the

first instance, and that would be the destruction of the papal

chair. So there was nothing for it but by clever tacking in

spite of contrary winds of imperial policy, to make the ship of

the church hold on as far as possible in the high church course

and surround the emperor by a network of craft. The phantom

of a _Renovatio imperii Romani_ with the mummified form of the

Byzantine court ceremonial and the vain parade of a title was

called into being. On a pilgrimage to the grave of his saintly

friend Adalbert in Gnesen (§ 93, 13) the emperor emancipated

the Polish church from the German metropolitanate by raising

its see into an archbishopric. He also, in A.D. 1000, released

the Polish duke Boleslaw Chrobry (§ 93, 7), the most dangerous

enemy of Germany, who schemed the formation of a great Slavic

empire, from his fealty as a vassal of the German empire,

enlisting him instead as a “friend and confederate of the Roman

people” in his new fantastic universal empire. In the same

year, however, Sylvester, in the exercise of papal sovereignty,

conferred the royal crown on Stephen the saint of Hungary

(§ 93, 8), appointed the payment by him of a yearly tribute to

the papal vicar with ecclesiastical authority over his country,

and made that land ecclesiastically independent of Passau

and Salzburg by founding a separate metropolitanate at Gran.

Though Otto let himself be led in the hierarchical leading

strings by his papal friend, he yet made it abundantly evident

by bestowing upon his favourite pope eight counties of the States

of the Church, that he regarded these as merely a free gift of

imperial favour. He also lashed violently the extravagances as

well as the greed of the popes, and declared that the donation

of Constantine was a pure fabrication (§ 87, 4). The emperor,

however, had meanwhile thoroughly estranged his German subjects

and the German clergy by his un-German temperament. The German

princes denounced him as a traitor to the German empire. Soon

all Italy, even the much fondled Rome, rose in open revolt. Only

an early death A.D. 1002 saved the unhappy youth of twenty-two

years of age from the most terrible humiliation. With him, too,

the star of the pope’s fortunes went down. He died not long after

in A.D. 1003, and left in the popular mind the reputation of a

dealer in the black art, who owed his learning and the success

of his hierarchical career to a compact with the devil.