Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 2.djvu/156

AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN salutation was "Sit nomen Domini benedictum", corresponding to our "Praise be to Jesus". When Severinus lay dying the sobs of his disciples prevented their praying; he himself began to recite the last psalm, and with the closing words of this psalm, "Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum", he passed away (482). Six years later the Romans withdrew from this region, taking the body of the saint with them, and returned to Italy. Here he was buried with suitable honour in the castle of Luculanum, near Naples.

B. The Middle Ages—During the period of migrations which followed the fall of the Roman Empire, Austria was the fighting-ground of the barbaric hordes which poured through it. Vindobona disappeared from the face of the earth; Pannonia was entirely laid waste by the Avars, a people related to the Huns. The same fate befell Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, desolated by the Slovenes, who now took possession of those provinces. The land lying on the upper Drave has since borne the name of "Pustertal" (from the Slovenic pust, "waste"). The Croats and Serbs seized the country south of the Save. The Croats are the first-born sons of the Church among the Slavs. They were converted about the year 650, by Roman priests. The Bajuvari (Bavarians), a people from the West, spread themselves over the whole of Upper Austria. St. Rupert, Bishop of Worms, baptized the Bavarian duke, Theodo, at Regensburg (Ratisbon) and became the Apostle of the Austrian Bajuvarii. He travelled and preached nearly as far as Lauriacum, settled in Salzburg, and there erected a see and founded the monastery of St. Peter (c. 700). St. Peter's is the oldest Benedictine monastery which has had a continuous existence down to our own times, Monte Cassino having been repeatedly destroyed and deserted. The Benedictine cloister for women, Nonnberg, founded by Rupert's niece Ehrentraut, is also still standing. The Bavarian Duke Tassilo founded the Benedictine monasteries of Mondsee (748) and Kremsmünster (777). The Bishops of Salzburg brought the Christian Faith and German customs to the Slavs. A quarrel broke out, however, between the Carinthians and the Patriarch of Aquileia. Charlemagne raised the Carinthian see of Salzburg to an archbishopric in 798, settled the dispute with Aquileia by making the Drave the dividing line of the two provinces, and in 803 established the border territories known as the Mark of Friuli and the East Mark.

Moravia was won to Christianity by two brothers, Methodius and Constantine, Greek monks from Thessalonica, known in history as the Apostles of the Slavs. Constantine invented the Glagolitic alphabet, translated the Bible into Slavic, and composed the liturgy in that language. But, as Salzburg and Passau had claim to the region in which the brothers worked, complaint was made against them by the German ecclesiastics. Pope Hadrian II, however, authorized the liturgy in the Slavic language. Constantine remained at Rome in a monastery and took the name of Cyril, while Methodius, after many fruitful labours as Archbishop of Pannonia and Moravia, died 6 April, 885, at Vehlehrad, on the River March. The Apostles of the Slavs are now (pursuant to a decree of Leo XIII) commemorated throughout the Catholic Church on the 5th day of July. The Latin Liturgy was reintroduced in Moravia by Swatopluk, the successor of Duke Ratislaus, and soon after his death the Magyars overthrew the empire of Great Moravia (906). When Moravia is again heard of in history (founding of the bishopric of Olmütz, 1063), it is a province of Bohemia.

Christianity was introduced into Bohemia from Moravia. Of the Slavic tribes which at the end of the fifth century controlled the interior of Bohemia and drove the Germans to the outskirts of the country, the Czechs of Prague were the most important division. In A. D. 871 their prince, Borziwoy, and his wife, Ludmilla, consented to receive baptism from St. Methodius. From this time on the history of Bohemia is an account of the struggles between two contending parties, the Christian-Germanic and the National Heathen. At the instigation of the National Heathen party the saintly Duke Wenzel (Wenceslaus) I was murdered by his brother, Boleslaw I. But even Boleslaw had to rule according to the wishes of the Christian-Germanic party, and his son Boleslaw II founded the Bishopric of Prague (973). The new see was placed under the Archbishop of Mainz, and its first bishop was the Saxon Dithmar. His successor, St. Adalbert (Wojtech), met a martyr's death (967) at the hands of the heathen Slavs of Prussia, whom he sought to bring to the truth. The Benedictine Order came into Bohemia with the founding of the monastery of Borevnov by Boleslaw II, and Boleslaw's sister, Milada, was the first abbess of St. George, the Benedictine cloister for women in Prague. Duke Bretislaw seized Gnesen and brought the body of St. Adalbert in triumph to Prague. Dabrowka, the daughter of Boleslaw I, married the Polish Duke Mieczyslaw, and the latter was baptized in 966. The son of Mieczyslaw laid the foundation of an enduring church-organization by forming the four bishoprics of Posen, Kolberg, Breslau, and Cracow, and placing them under the Archbishopric of Gnesen, which had been established in the year 1000.

The Magyars, a people from the Ural-Altai region, moved forward in 895 into the Avarian Wilderness on the Theiss. Attempts to convert them were made by the court of Byzantium as well as by St. Wolfgang, a monk of Maria Einsiedeln, by Piligrim, Bishop of Passau, who, as successor of the Bishops of Lorch, wished to be Metropolitan of all Pannonia, and by Adalbert of Prague. Thus it was brought about that the Magyar ruler Géza, great grandson of Arpad, and his wife Sarolta were favourably inclined to Christianity. The real Apostle of the Magyars, however, was Géza's great son, St. Stephen. Stephen received a Christian education and was baptized by St. Adalbert. Upon the occasion of his marriage with Gisela, sister of the future emperor, St. Henry II, Stephen vowed to give his people the blessings of Christianity. One of the most important measures taken by him for the security of the new faith was the founding at Gran of an archbishopric with ten subordinate sees. As Stephen's patron saint in battle had been St. Martin, he founded the Benedictine monastery of Martinsberg. He also founded hospices for the reception of Hungarian pilgrims at Ravenna, Rome, and Jerusalem. Astriens, the Abbot of Martinsberg, obtained for him, from the pope, the title of king. Sylvester II sent Stephen a crown of gold and, according to a tradition (which, however, is not well founded) a Bull which decreed to the Kings of Hungary the privilege of the "Apostolic Majesty". Having a great devotion to the Blessed Virgin, Stephen caused himself to be crowned on the festival of the Assumption, the 15th day of August, in the year 1000, and church historians have given to Hungary the title of "Mary's Realm" (Regnum Marianum).

The gradual advance of Christianity in Austria towards the east is shown in the shifting of the abode of the early rulers of the Babenberg (Bamberg) line from Melk, on the Kahlenberg, to Vienna. One of this family, Leopold I, the Illustrious, had already founded at Melk an establishment of secular canons. These were replaced in 1089 by twelve Benedictine monks from Lambach. At the time when Leopold's youngest son, Adalbert I, the Victorious, was margrave, three youths left this region to go to Paris to