Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 13.djvu/661

MISSIONS. 589 MISSIONS. luniba from Ireland to lona, which became a won- derful centre of C'lirislian eullnre and of mis- sionary zeal in bolialf of .Scotland, North Britain, and Central Europe. As to the East, the line of foreign missionary advance was among the Tatars and in China, and wa.s carried on by Xestorians in relations with the Churcli in Jleso- potamia. At the very end of the sixth century the bef^inning of a missionary policy in the Church as an organization appeared in the dis- patch of Augustine and his helpers from Rome to England, where the Saxon invasion had nearly crushed out Christianity. Augustine's mission from the Pope was to evangelize the pagans and to win the assent of the English Christians to Roman ecclesiastical control. The method of operation of these independent missions was an adaptation of the monastic system w-hicli found vogue in the East in the third eenturj-. A band of Christians under a leader would form a settle- ment in a wild and savage region, where they labored for their own support. By kindness some of the barbarians would be drawn to settle near the monastery. After the favor of emperors be- gan to give the Church numerical [jreponderanee. power, and wealth, these gains led to spiritual loss, and missions were left to the chance ability of simple-minded believers in remote regions. At the beginning of the seventh century Christianity was still an Oriental religion. In Europe its northern bounds were, in general, marked by the Danube and the Alps, although during the cen- tury iiii-.sionaries made inefl'ectual attempts at a lodgment in Denmark, and Columban, going forth from lona with his associates, began a fiery and successful propaganda among the barbarians of Central Europe. The narrow limits of European Christendom at this time should be borne in mind if we would realize the full mean- ing to the Christian Church of the Mohammedan irruption. The Eastern Church had one mo- mentous mission to its credit in the ninth cen- tury in its dispatch of Cyril and Methodius to endow the Slav races with knowledge of .Jesus Christ and with a translation of the Scriptures. In the far East the Nestorians also continued their operations until the Tatars finally cast in their lot with Islam, and Tamerlane in the four- teenth century destroyed the last vestiges of the Central Asian (^hurch. But with regard to the t'hurcb in general, from the end of the seventh century onward for nine hundred years the only Christian foreign missions were remote from the touch of the ilohammedan power, and belonged to the Vestern or Latin section of the Church. TI. THE MIDDLE PERIOD. ( 1 ) In Germ. y. The wanderings of the Ger- manic nations and the inroads of the Huns had destroyed along the Rhine and the Danube the flourishing Christian communities of the fifth century. It was only after the rise of the Frankish State that efTorts were made to restore the former condition of Christianity and to .spread its influence over all Central and North- ern Europe. From the conversion of the Rava- rians to that of the Saxons (.500 800) stretches a period filled with spiritual heroism on the one side and with tenacious resistance on the other. The missionaries are mostly Irishmen in the first half of the period, Anglo-Saxons in the other. The memory of the famous Saint Severin (died 4S2) worked favorably in Bavaria; early in the sixth century the royal family of the .Agi lulfings was Catholic. Irish missionaries worked in the land throughout the seventh and eighth I'cnturies. The Frankfort saints Kutpert, Em- meran, and Corhiniau continued and perfected their labors. The Irishman Saint tiall (Callech) was the ajiostle of Swabia and Helvetia; from his monastery by Lake Constance went out the mis- sionaries of these lands. At the same time his superior and long-time companion, Columban (died 015), converted the CJerman Lombards of Italy to the Catholic faith. Southern (ierniany owes the knowledge of the Christian faith to other Irish missionaries. Saint Fridolin, once abbot at Poitiers and then founder of the island abbey of Siiekingen ; Saint Trindpert, founder of the abbey of that name in the Breisgau ; Saint Pirmin (died 753), founder of Keichcnau. Murbach, and Hornbach. The Irishman Saint Kilian (died 689), with his companions C'oloman and Totnan, evangelized Thuringia, and founded the See of Wiirzburg. C'ontempoianeously, Saint Willibrord came from the monastic schools of Ireland, to preach the faith to the fierce Fri- sians, and to found the An-hbishopric of Utrecht, with the authorization of Pope Sergius I. (695). Before A'illibrord, there had worked along the Rhine and the Moselle the holy man Goar in the sixth century, and among the Frisians Saint Amand of Maestricht (6G0) and the goldsmith Saint Eloi (Eligius) of Noyon (659). All of these men came under the intlvience of the Columban monastery of Luxeuil, and were filled with missionary zeal. The real apostle and founder of German Chris- tendoiu is the Anglo-Saxon Wynfrith, or Boni- face. In 716 he attempted to evangelize the Frisians. In 719 he received at Rome from Gregory II. (715-731) the authority to preach among the degenerate Cliristians and the pagan inhabitants of Germany. In turn he labored throughout Bavaria, Hesse, and Thuringia. and along the Rhine, founded the oldest and principal sees of those regions, established monasteries like Fulda, and gathered about himself some of the noblest spirits of the age. The Carolingians were always friendlv and helpful. In union with them he held, between 740 and 750, four national synods that laid the basis of (Jerman medisval Christian life. He sulTered martyrdom .June 5, 755 (754 ?), at the hands of heathen Germans, near Dockum in West Friesland. whither he had gone with fifty-two companions to confirm some newly baptized converts. The solid mass of Saxon paganism had been attacked by (he two Eualds, surnamed the Black and the White, like Willi- brord, disciples of the Irish monastic .schools. They .sealed their ho|)cs with their blond in 695. The long wars of the Carolingians with the Saxons soon took on a religions character. Com- pulsory baptism and swift apostasy were the rule throughout the eighth century. . cruel slaughter of 4.500 Saxons at Verden in 7S'2 stains the fair fame of Charlemagne. The con- quered Saxons were exiled, transplanted, op- pressed by laws of Draconian severity: in 7S.5 the dauntless chiefs. Witikind and Alboin. finally yielded, and by 804 the land was entirelv Christianized, ilissionaries soon overran Sax- ony, and by their virtue, beneficence, organizing skill, and their monasteries, soon established the Christian faith on a firm basis. The Abbey of Corvei (822) was soon the centre of their activ- itv.