Part 16 (2/2)

[Sidenote: and Sweden.]

In Sweden, too, the Church made but slow progress after the death of Anskar, until, in the beginning of the eleventh century, the King Olaf Skotkonung, having been himself baptized about A.D. 1008, invited to Sweden certain English clergymen, who laboured there with great success. The first bishopric in Sweden was placed at Skara in West Gothland, and filled by Turgot, an Englishman.

[Sidenote: Conversion of Norway, by English missionaries.]

The knowledge of the Gospel was first brought, in the tenth century, into Norway from England by Hacon, who is said to have been educated at the court of Athelstan, and who endeavoured, with the aid of English priests, to bring about the conversion of his subjects. Hacon was, however, induced, by the bitter opposition of his countrymen, to yield a weak compliance to their idolatrous practices, and the Church languished and almost died out until the reign of Olaf Trygovason (A.D.

993-A.D. 1000), who had been baptized in the Scilly Isles during a piratical expedition. The labours of the English missionaries were finally successful in the reign of Olaf the Holy (A.D. 1017-A.D. 1033), who was earnest in his efforts to further the work of the Church. It may be remarked that Norwegian Bishops were usually consecrated either in England or France, {135} though all the Scandinavian Churches were still professedly dependent on the Archbishopric of Hamburg.

[Sidenote: Conversion of Iceland,]

In Iceland some traces of early Christianity, probably the result of the labours of Irish missionaries, were still remaining when it was colonized by Norwegian settlers in the ninth century; and towards the end of the tenth century successive attempts were made by a Saxon Bishop and by missionaries from Norway, to revive and deepen these impressions. The opposition of the heathen colonists was, however, of so determined a character, that it was only by the gradual conversion of the mother country, and the labours of new bands of missionaries, chiefly English and Irish, that Paganism was by degrees overcome.

[Sidenote: Greenland,]

From Iceland the Church made its way to Greenland, another Norwegian colony, which was converted mainly by the instrumentality of an Icelandic missionary, in the first half of the eleventh century; but this ancient Church died out in the fifteenth century. About the same time Christianity spread through the Norwegians to the Orkney, Shetland, and Faroe Islands.

[Sidenote: and Lapland.]

The Church was first planted amongst the Lapps by Swedish missionaries in the thirteenth century, but it was not until the sixteenth and two following centuries that Christianity became the religion of the country.

Section 8. _The Churches now comprehended in European Turkey and Greece._

We look in vain in the history of the Church in Eastern Europe for the missionary activity which {136} bears so prominent a place in the annals of Western Christendom. [Sidenote: Lack of missionary zeal in the East.] The minds of Eastern Christians were still much occupied by continued contests between the Catholic Faith and developments of already condemned heresies, and to these succeeded the scarcely less absorbing controversy about Image-breaking. Nor was there in the East the same pressing contact with Paganism, which made it in the West a political necessity no less than a religious duty at once to christianize and civilize the ever advancing hordes of heathen barbarians. [Sidenote: Conversion of Bulgaria.] The evangelization of Bulgaria was, however, begun early in the ninth century, by the carrying off of the Bishop of Adrianople and many of his flock, in a victorious inroad of the Bulgarians, A.D. 811. Half a century later the Bulgarian King Bogoris, influenced by his sister, who had been brought up a Christian at Constantinople, put himself and his country under the tuition of the Greek patriarch Photius. Soon after, becoming weary of his Eastern instructors, he applied for aid to the Western Church, and, in A.D. 867, the Pope Nicholas I. despatched two Italian Bishops and other missionaries to Bulgaria. [Sidenote: Collision between Greek and Roman missionaries.] This interference of the Roman Church, in an already occupied field of missionary labour, added considerably to the jealousy between East and West, and helped to bring about the eventual and lamentable schism. Bogoris soon after returned to his allegiance to Photius, insisted on the withdrawal of the Roman Mission, and obtained a Greek Archbishop of Bulgaria from Constantinople.

[Sidenote: Peculiar position of the Eastern Church.]

The state of external isolation in which the Church of the Eastern Empire was placed by the {137} Schism of A.D. 1054, had a tendency to increase its exaggerated spirit of conservatism, which was also encouraged by the indolent unenterprizing temper of the Greeks of the later empire, whose blood had not been quickened by the same admixture of races as had given new life to the worn out nations of the West.

[Sidenote: Effects of the Crusades.] Under these circ.u.mstances the crusades were hardly less a cause of terror to the Greeks than were the advances of the Turks themselves, and tended to widen rather than to heal the unhappy breach between the Latin and Greek Churches.

[Sidenote: Unjustifiable proceedings of the Latins.] The foundation of a Latin Patriarchate at Jerusalem, after the taking of that city in A.D. 1099, could not but be accounted an usurpation on the part of the Pope, which was, however, far surpa.s.sed in injustice by the erection of a Latin empire and a Latin Patriarchate in Constantinople itself, A.D.

1204. During the time that this oppressive arrangement lasted (i.e.

till A.D. 1261) the rightful Patriarch took refuge at the court which the Eastern emperors held at Nicaea in Asia Minor, and the fugitives there clung to their national Church, and her rightful independence.

[Sidenote: Attempts at reunion.] The Emperor Michael Palaeologus, after driving out the Latins from Constantinople, endeavoured once more to effect a reunion between East and West, partly from political and partly from personal motives, and a formal act of union was signed, A.D. 1274. Neither the Greek Clergy nor the Greek people would, however, consent to give up their own national religious customs, nor to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope; and this shadow of union died out with the death of the Emperor, its originator. [Sidenote: Invasion of the Turks.] In the fourteenth century {138} the Turks were treacherously invited over to Europe as allies of the usurper, John Cantacuzenus (A.D. 1347-A.D. 1353), and so firm a footing did they gain, that the rightful Emperor, John Palaeologus (A.D. 1341-A.D.

1391), found himself obliged to appeal to Rome for aid, promising in return to reconcile the Greek Church to the Roman communion. The affairs of Western Europe, were, however too unsettled to admit of such aid being afforded, and the Emperor was obliged to give up all his possessions to the Turks, except Constantinople, Thessalonica, part of the Morea, and a few islands. Another appeal was made, with the same results, by his son, Manuel Palaeologus (A.D. 1391-A.D. 1425).

[Sidenote: New attempts at reunion.] John VII. (A.D. 1425-A.D. 1448) opened fresh negociations with the West, and he and the Patriarch of Constantinople, together with twenty-one other Eastern Bishops, appeared (A.D. 1438) at the Council of Ferrara (afterwards transferred to Florence). At this council a decree of union was once more signed by the Greeks, on condition of their receiving aid against the Turks (A.D. 1439). This fresh attempt at union was repudiated by the Eastern Church at large, but a troop of French and Italian crusaders started for the East. Constantinople was, however, doomed, and the good and brave Constantine Palaeologus (A.D. 1448-A.D. 1433) was the last, as he was one of the best, of the Greek emperors. [Sidenote: Fall of Constantinople] The city fell, after an obstinate defence, on the 29th May, A.D. 1453, and Constantine was among the slain. The Turks pillaged and slaughtered indiscriminately, and turned into a mosque the beautiful Church of St. Sophia, built by the Emperor Justinian in honour of the ”Holy Wisdom” of G.o.d.

{139}

[Sidenote: and the Greek Empire.]

All the Greek Empire had now fallen into the hands of the Turks, except the small mountainous district of Albania, which held out until the death of George Castriota (dreaded by the Turks under the name of Scanderbeg), A.D. 1467. The rocky strip of land known as Montenegro has been enabled to maintain an unbroken independence.

[Sidenote: State of the Church of Greece under Turkish rule.]

The Church of Greece was now no longer the dominant and recognized religion of the country, but it was not extinguished. The numerous mountain monasteries, inaccessible from their construction and position, were the chief strongholds of the Christian Faith; and so, ”cast down, but not destroyed,” the Church in Greece struggled on, until, after nearly three centuries of Turkish rule, Greece itself once more became a Christian kingdom.

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