PROGRESS OF THE CHURCH IN GERMANY
[Sidenote: The Lombards in Italy.]
The acceptance of Christianity and of Catholicism by the barbarian
tribes which conquered Europe was a slow process. The conversion of
the Lombards, for example, whom we have seen as Arians, sometimes
tolerant, sometimes persecuting, was gradual. The Church always held
its own, in faith though not in possessions, in Italy; and from the
pontificate of Gregory the Great the moral force of the Catholic
Society began to win the Lombards to its fold. It was proved again and
again that heresy was not a unifying power. The Catholic Church held
together its disciples in the Catholic creed. It is possible that
Agilulf, the husband of the famous Catholic queen Theodelind, himself
became a Catholic before he died. Paul the Deacon says that he "both
held the Catholic faith and bestowed many possessions on the Church of
Christ, and restored the bishops, who were in a depressed and abject
condition, to the honour of their wonted dignity." Whatever may be the
meaning of this, it certainly expresses the fact that before the middle
of the seventh century the Lombards were passing almost insensibly into
the Catholic fold, and Italy had practically become united in one faith
though far from united in one government.
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[Sidenote: The Church in the Frankish kingdoms.]
With Germany it was different. As the Merwing kingdoms decayed, the
Eastern one, Austrasia, with its capital, Metz, was but a poor bulwark
against heathen tribes on its borders, which were yet, it might seem at
times, little more barbarous than itself. The kingdom of Austrasia
stretched eastwards from Rheims "spreading across the Rhine an unknown
distance into Germany, claiming the allegiance of Thuringians, Alamanni
and Bavarians, fitfully controlling the restless Saxons, touching with
warlike weapons and sometimes vainly striving with the terrible Avars."
[1] Kings of the Bavarian line came to rule in Northern Italy, but
Bavaria was little touched by Christian faith. At last when the
descendants of Arnulf[2] came as kings over a now again united Frankish
monarchy, when Charles Martel made one power of Austrasia, Neustria,
and Burgundy, the time for a new advance seemed to have come.
Theodelind, the Catholic queen of the Lombards, was herself of Bavarian
birth, but a century after her time the people of her native land, it
seems, were still heathen. They were apart from the Roman civilisation
and the Catholic tradition: conversion, to touch them, must be a direct
and aggressive movement.
At the end of the seventh century S. Rupert began the work. He settled
his episcopal throne at Salzburg. He was followed by Emmeran, and by
Corbinian. Slowly the work proceeded, hindered by violence on the part
of dukes and saints, favoured by popes and making a beginning for Roman
missionary interest in the distant borders of the Empire under the
Germans.
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But it was not to these Frankish missionaries, or to Roman envoys, that
the most important work was due. It was due to an outburst of
converting zeal on the part of the newly converted race who had made
Britain the land of the English.
[Sidenote: Saint Boniface.]
Of all the great missionaries of the eighth century perhaps the
greatest was Winfrith of Crediton, an Englishman who became the father
of German Christianity and the precursor of the great religious and
intellectual movement of the days of Charles the Great. He followed
the Northumbrian Willibrord who for twenty-six years had laboured in
Frisia, and supported by the commission of Gregory II. he set forth in
719 to preach to the fierce heathens of Germany. He was instructed to
use the Roman rite and to report to Rome any difficulties he might
encounter. He began to labour in Thuringia, a land where Irish
missionaries had already been at work, and where he recalled the
Christians from evil ways into which they had lapsed. He passed on
through Neustria and thence to Frisia, where for three years he
"laboured much in Christ, converting not a few, destroying the heathen
shrines and building Christian oratories," aiding the venerable
Willibrord in the work he had so long carried on. But he felt the call
to labour in lands as yet untouched, and so he determined to go to the
Germans. As he passed up the Rhine he drew to him the boy Gregory
afterwards famous as abbat of Utrecht, and at last he settled in the
forests of Hessen and built a monastery at Amöneburg. From his old
friends in England he received sound advice as to the treatment of
heathen customs and the gentle methods of conversion which befit the
gospel of {137} Christ. [Sidenote: His mission from Rome, 723.] From
Rome he received affectionate support; and in 722 he was summoned to
receive a new mission from the pope himself. On S. Andrew's Day,
723,[3] after a solemn profession of faith in the Holy Trinity and of
obedience to the Roman See--the first ever taken by one outside the
Roman patriarchate--he was consecrated bishop. He set out with letters
from the pope to Christians of Thuringia and to the duke Charles.
Charles Martel accepted the trust and gave to Winfrith (who had assumed
the name of Boniface) the pledge of his protection. The missionary's
first act on his return to Hessen was to destroy the ancient oak at
Geismar, the object of devotion to the worshippers of the Germanic
gods; and the act was followed by many conversions of those who saw
that heathenism could not resent the attack upon its sacred things.
Still there were difficulties. Those who had learned from the old
Celtic mission were not ready to accept the Roman customs. Gregory II.
wrote in 724, exhorting him to perseverance: "Let not threats alarm
thee, nor terrors cast thee down, but stayed in confidence on God
proclaim the word of truth." The work grew: monasteries and churches
arose: many English helpers came over: the favour of Charles Martel was
a protection. As the Benedictines opened out new lands, ploughed,
built, studied, taught, religion and education spread before him.
[Sidenote: Boniface archbishop, 732.] In 732 Boniface was made
archbishop, received a pallium from Rome, and was encouraged by the new
pope Gregory III. to organise the Church which he had founded and {138}
to spread forth his arms into the land of the Bavarians. There
Christianity had already made some way under Frankish missionaries: it
needed organisation from the hand of a master. He "exercised himself
diligently," says his biographer Willibald, "in preaching, and went
round inspecting many churches." In 738 he paid his last visit to
Rome, where he stayed nearly a year and was treated with extraordinary
respect and affection. On his return he divided Bavaria into the four
dioceses of Salzburg, Regensburg, Freising, and Passau, and later on he
founded other sees also, including Würzburg. It was his next aim to do
something to reform the lax morals of the Frankish Church, which had
sunk to a low ebb under the Merwings. The Austrasian Synod, which
bears in some respects a close resemblance to the almost contemporary
English Synod of Clovesho (747), of 742 dealt boldly with these
matters. Other councils followed in which Boniface took a leading
part, and which made a striking reformation. [Sidenote: His missionary
work and martyrdom.] His equally important work was to complete the
conquest of the general spirit of Western Christendom, which looked to
Rome for leadership, over the Celtic missionaries, noble missionaries
and martyrs who yet lacked the instinct of cohesion and solidarity. A
long series of letters, to the popes, to bishops, princes and persons
of importance, shows the breadth of his interests and the nature of his
activity. To "four peoples," he says, he had preached the gospel, the
Hessians, Thuringians, Franks and Bavarians, not to all for the first
time but as a reformer and one who removed heathen influences from the
Church. As Archbishop of Mainz he was untiring even in advanced age:
in politics as well as in {139} religion he was a leader of men. It
was he who anointed Pippin at Soissons in 751 and thus gave the
Church's sanction to the new Karling line. He determined to end his
days as a missionary to the heathen. In 755 he went with a band of
priests and monks once more to the wild Frisians, and at Dokkum by the
northern sea he met his death at the hands of the heathen whom he came
to win to Christ. The day, ever remembered, was June 5, 755.
Boniface was truly attached to the popes, truly respectful to the Roman
See: but he preserved his independence. His attitude towards the
secular power was precisely similar. He was a great churchman, a great
statesman, a great missionary; but his religious and political opinions
cannot be tied down to the limits of some strict theory. His was a
wide, genial nature, in things spiritual and in things temporal
genuine, sincere; a true Saint, a true Apostle. Through the lives and
sacrifices of such men it was that the Church came to exercise so
profound an influence over the politics of the Middle Age.
[Sidenote: The Emperors and missions.]
The work which S. Boniface began was continued by weapons other than
his own. When the Empire of the Romans was revived (as we shall tell
in the next chapter) by the chiefs of the Arnulf house, when a Catholic
Caesar was again acclaimed in the Roman churches, the ideas on which
the new monarchy was to rest were decisively Christian and Catholic.
Charles the son of Pippin was a student of theology, among many other
things. He believed firmly that it was a real kingdom of God which he
was called to form and govern upon earth. The spirit which inspired
the followers of {140} Muhammad inspired him too. He was determined
not to leave to priests and popes the propagation of the faith which he
believed.
[Sidenote: Charles and the Saxons.]
For thirty-two years Charles the Great, as his people came to call him,
was engaged in a war which claimed to be waged for the spread of the
Christian faith. Charles was before all things in belief (though not
always in life) a Christian, and it was intolerable to him that within
the German lands should remain a large and powerful body of heathens.
In 772 he marched into the land of the Angarii and destroyed the
Irminsul, a column which was representative of the power which the
Saxons worshipped. It was destroyed, and the army after its victories
returned in triumph. In 774 the Saxons turned the tables and burnt the
abbey of Fritzlar which had been founded by S. Boniface. In 775
Charles resolved to avenge this loss, but made little progress. In 776
he was more successful, and a great multitude of Saxons submitted and
were baptized. In 777 there was another great baptism, but, says the
chronicler, the Saxons were perfidious. In 778 when Charles was in
Spain the Saxons devastated a vast tract of land, and even for a time
stole the body of S. Boniface from its tomb at Fulda. Charles crushed
the resistance, and from 780 he set himself to organise the Church in
the Saxon lands, issuing severe edicts which practically enforced
Christianity on the conquered Saxons with the penalty of death for the
performance of pagan rites, and even for eating meat in Lent. A law
was also decreed that all men should give a tenth of their substance
and work to the churches and priests. Still the conquest was not {141}
durable, for a terrible insurrection in 782 slew a whole army of the
Germans and massacred priests and monks wherever they could be found.
Then came years of carnage: once Charles--it is said--caused 4,500
Saxons to be beheaded in one day. In 793 there was a new outbreak.
The Saxons "as a dog returneth to his vomit so returned they to the
paganism they had renounced, again deserting Christian faith and lying
not less to God than to their lord the king." Churches were destroyed,
bishops and priests slain, and the land was again defiled with blood.
They allied with the Avars, and Charles was thus beset with heathen
foes in Hungary and in North Germany at once. He tried every measure
of devastation and exile; but it seems that by 797 he had come more
clearly to see the Christian way. "Let but the same pains be taken,"
he wrote--or the English scholar Alcuin wrote for him--"to preach the
easy yoke and light burden of Christ to the obstinate people of the
Saxons as are taken to collect the tithes from them or to punish the
least transgression of the laws imposed on them, and perhaps they would
be found no longer to repel baptism with abhorrence." But he was far
from always acting up to this view, and he even allied with heathen
Slavs to accomplish the subjugation of his enemies. As he conquered he
mapped out the land in bishoprics and planted monasteries at important
points: he took Saxon boys to his court and sent them back trained,
often as ecclesiastics, to teach and rule. Among such was Ebbo,
afterwards Archbishop of Rheims, the "Apostle of Denmark." From abroad
too came other missionaries, and notable among them was another
Englishman, Willehad of {142} Northumbria, who became in 788 the first
bishop of Bremen. At last Christianity was, at least nominally, in
possession from the Rhine to the Elbe, and in the words of Einhard
"thus they were brought to accept the terms of the king, and thus they
gave up their demon worship, renounced their national religious
customs, embraced the Christian faith, received the divine sacraments,
and were united with the Franks, forming one people."
Under Charles the organisation of the German Church, begun by Boniface,
received a great extension. It was possible, after his death, to
regard Germany as Christian and as organised in its religion on the
lines of all the Western Churches.
[1] Hodgkin, _Italy and her Invaders_, v. 203.
[2] See p. 1-14.
[3] This seems to me the most probable date. Cf. Hauck,
_Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands_, i. 448.
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