Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/788

 CHRISTENING

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CHRISTIAN

and especially, transalpine lands, and by means which aroused much discontent and which affected the credit of Rome as the central court of Christen- dom. The conception of canon law, of a system of courts Christian and a sacred jurisdiction over-riding political frontiers, is a magnificent one, and the debt which European law owes to the canonists is ad- mitted by the modern masters of legal history. It was a system, however, which had many rivals, and it required the support of a high moral prestige. Un- fortunately, the machinery was, from the first, de- fective; there was no organization at Rome capable of dealing with the press of legal business, and even in the twelfth century complaints of venality and delay were frequent and bitter. Litigants are not easily satisfied, nor has the law often been at once impartial, cheap, and speedy in any country; yet it can hardly be denied that in the thirteenth century the Roman courts suffered from very serious abuses.

It is unnecessary to follow the fortunes of the pa- pacy after the thirteenth century; the lesson of the French influence, of the schism, of the Italianization of the fifteenth-century popes, is but too clear. Though the essential rights of the Holy See were but seldom denied in those years, it was clear, when the crisis came, and when the papal supremacy had to bear the first attack, that that devotion which makes martyrs and the enthusiasm which inspires righteous rebellion were sadly lacking. It would seem, then, that the growth of national divisions, the increased secularism of everyday life, the diminished influence of the Church and the papacy, that all these inter- dependent influences had broken up the social unity of Christendom at least two centuries before the Reformation, yet it must never be forgotten that religious unity remained. As long as Christendom was Catholic it was a reality, a visible society with one head and one liierarchy. Though for the moment centrifugal tendencies were in the ascendant, the future was full of possibilities. A great religious movement, a revival of the Christian spirit, the reform which should have come when the Reforma- tion came, any such appeal to the common faith and to Catholic loyalty might have brought the Christian nations together again, have put some check upon their internal absolutism and external combativeness, and have removed from the Christian name the reproach of mutual antagonism.

Such speculation is, however, as idle as it is fasci- nating; instead of the reform, of the renewal of the spiritual life of the Church round the old principles of Christian faith and unity, there came the Reforma- tion, and Christian society was broken up beyond the hope of at least proximate reunion. But it was long before this fact was realized even by the Reformers, and indeed it must have been more difficult for a subject of Henry VIII to convince himself that the Latin Church was really being torn asunder than for us to conceive the full meaning and all the conse- quences of a united Christendom. Much of the weakness of ordinary men in the earlier years of the Reformation, much of their attitude towards the papacy, can be explained by their blindness to what was happening. They thought, no doubt, that all would come right in the end. So dangerous is it, particularly in times of revolution, to trust to any- thing but principle.

The effect of the Reformation was to separate from the Church all the Scandinavian, most of the Teu- tonic, and a few of the Latin-speaking populations of Europe; but the spirit of division once established worked further mischief, and the antagonism betw een Lutheran and Calvinisl was almost as bitter as that between Catholic and Protestant. At the beginning,

however, of the seventeenth century, Christendom was weary of religious war and persecution, and for a moment it almost seemed as if the breach were to be

closed. The deaths of Philip II and Elizabeth, the conversion and tolerant policy of Henry IV of France, the accession of the House of Stuart to the English throne, the pacification between Spain and the Dutch, all these events pointed in the same direction. A like tendency is apparent in the theological specu- lation of the time: the learning and judgment of Hooker, the first beginnings of the High Church movement, the spread of Arminianism in Holland, these were all signs that in the Protestant Churches thought, study, and piety had begun to moderate the fires of controversy, while in the monumental works of Suarez and the other Spanish doctors, Catholic theology seemed to be resuming that stately, com- prehensive view of its problems which is so impressive in the great Scholastics. It is not surprising that this moment, when the cause of reconciliation seemed in the ascendant, was marked by a scheme of Christian political union. Much importance was at one time attributed to the grand dessein of Henry IV. Re- cent historians are inclined to assign most of the design to Henry's Protestant minister, Sully; the king's share in the plan was probably but small. A coalition war against Austria was first to secure Europe against the domination of the Hapsburgs, but an era of peace was to follow. The different Christian States, whether Catholic or Protestant, were to preserve their independence, to practise toleration, to be united in a "Christian Republic" under the presidency of the pope, and to find an outlet for their energies in the recovery of the East. These dreams of Christian reunion soon melted away. Re- ligious divisions were too deep-seated to permit the reconstruction of a Christian polity, and the cure for international ills has been sought in other directions. The international law of the seventeenth-century jurists was based upon national law, not upon Chris- tian fellowship, the balance of power of the eigh- teenth century on the elementary instinct of self- defence, and the nationalism of the nineteenth on racial or linguistic distinctions. It has never oc- curred to anyone to take seriously the mystic termi- nology with which in the Holy Alliance Alexander I of Russia clothed his policy of conservative interven- tion. The Greek insurrection and the Eastern ques- tions generally restored the word Christian to the vocabulary of the European chanceries, but it has come in recent times to express our common civiliza- tion rather than a religion which so many Europeans now no longer profess. (See Religions.)

Olderworks are: GrizoT, Civilization in Europe; Bryce.Ho^ Roman Empire; Hergenruther, Handbuch der allgemcinen Kirchengeschichte (3 vols.. 1884-80), with his Catholic Church and Christian State (London. 1S7G); Kraus. Lehrbuch der Kir- chengeschichte. Among more modern works the following might be consulted: Majtland, tr. (with commentary) o f Giki-ke, Political Theories of the Middle Age (Cambridge, 1000); Grupp, Kidturgeseh. des Miltelalters (2 vols., Stuttgart . 1S04); Devas, The Keu of the World's Progress (London. 1906); KJuu. MthLutH, Kirchmgetch. (Tubingen, 1002V Ilm. .4 History of Diplomacy (London, 1000), especially vol, I. Of these writers Hergenrother, Kraus, Devas, and GRUPPare Catholics.

Francis TJrqohart.

Christening. See Baptism.

Christian, first Bishop of Prussia, d. 1245. Before becoming a missionary he was a Cistercian monk at the monastery of Oliva near Danzig or, as appears more probable, at Lekno or some other Polish monas- tery. In 1209 he was commissioned by Innocent III to direct the Prussian missions between the Rivers Vistula and Memel, which had been begun by Abbot Godfrey of Lekno and the monk Philip in 12(17. He was appointed bishop in 1212, anil, when, in 1215, lie went to Home in order to report to the pope on the condition and prospects of his mission, lie was conse- crated first Bishop of Prussia. On his journey to Rome he was accompanied by two converted Prus- sian noblemen, Warpoda and Suavabona, who were