Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/496

Rh 478 G E l{1l. N Y [HIs'ror.v. 717-77-2. again and again to put an end to the evil by subduing the ' Bavaria into the episcopal secs of Salzburg, 1’reisingen, Introduc- tion of Chris- tianity. St Boni- face. Saxons. They could not, however, attain their object. An occasional victory was gained, an'l some border tribes were from time to time compelled to pay tribute; but the mass of the Saxons remained unconqucred. This was partly due to the fact that the Saxons had not, like the other German confederations, a duke who, when beaten, could be held responsible for the engagements forced upon him as the re- presentative of his subjects. A Saxon chief who made peace with the Franks could undertake nothing for the whole people. As a conquering race, they were ﬁrmly compact; conquered, they were in the hands of the victor a rope of sand. Although, at the time of King I’ippin’s death in 768, the Germans were still imperfectly subdued, they had received the germs of new life ; for, with the exception of the Saxons, they were then nominally Christians. The ﬁrst missionaries to Germany were Irish monks. In the 7th century a number of these laboured with considerable suc- cess in different parts of the country, especially among the Alemanni and the Bavarians; and when the inﬂuence of the Franks became dominant, Frankish missionaries also began to do for the church what the warriors did for the state. The honour of converting Germany as a whole, how- ever, belongs mainly to St Boniface, an Englishman, who in 717 began the task of his life as an assistant to another English missionary, Willibrord, in Friesland. Soon after- wards, during a visit to Rome, he received from Pope Gregory II. a commission as apostle of the Germans, and worked incessantly among the 'l‘huringians and the Frisians. He proved himself one of the most skilful of missionaries, adapting the conceptions of Christianity to the ideas of those whom he taught. The peculiar powers of Wodan, for instance, were transferred to the archangel Michael, those of Donar to St Peter; and the chief Christian festival, Easter, received its name from the goddess Ostara. His zeal and talent, although largely rewarded, effected less than he had hoped, so that in 723 he went once more to Rome to obtain, if possible, increased powers. Hitherto the mission in Germany had possessed an essentially independent character; Boniface now undertook to work in all things under the direction and for the beneﬁt of the papacy. In return for this engagement he was not only made bishop of all Germans who had been or should be converted, but received from the pope a letter commend- ing him to Charles, the mighty duke of the Franks. The Frankish bishops, who had no wish to become subordinate to the papacy, received Boniface coldly, and threw every kind of obstacle in his way. Charles, however, believing that the conversion of Germany would be the most effectual means of establishing Frankish authority, took Boniface under his protection, and sent him forth with orders that he should be everywhere respected. Thus strengthened, he entered upon a wholly new stage of his career. He was looked upon as to some extent armed with the authority of the great warrior and ruler, and he and his fellow-workers rapidly brought vast districts within the pale of the church. Possessing a high talent for organization, he would willingly have established an orderly ecclesiastical system as he pro- ceeded ; but the Alemanni and the Bavarians, among whom Christianity had made some progress before his time, would not allow him free scope for his activity ; and Charles, who, by “ resuming” church lands and granting them to faithful followers, had done much to weaken ecclesiastical authority in Gaul, did not wish to see it assume threatening propor- tions in Germany. In 738 Boniface again visited Rome, from which he returned in the following year as papal legate to the Frankish state. Armed with this new authority, he was able to some extent to give effect to his ideas. The duke of Bavaria permitted him to divide the whole of -Catholic creed. llatisbon, and Pass-an, and to appoint the bishops; and a little later, with the sanction of Charles, he formed also the sees of 'iirzburg, Erfurt, Bnraburg, and Eichstiidt. Before l’ippin the Short was made king, he ruled for some years in association with his brother Carlman, to whom the eastern part of the kingdom was confided. Carlman was a man of strongly religions temperament, and warmly supported Boniface. He set up by his advice bishoprics and monasteries, among the latter being the great abbey of Fulda, which, throughout the Middle Ages, was one of the chief centres of intellectual light in Germany. In 742 was held the ﬁrst German council, s'nnmoned by Carlman, and presided over by Boniface. It did much for the organization of the church, and was the beginning of an important movement for the reform of ecclesiastical abuses among the Franks. Boniface wished to become archbishop of Cologne, that he might the more readily inﬂuence the Frisians ; but the suggestion met with opposition, and he ultimately accepted the see of Mainz. As archbishop of Mainz and primate of Germany, he was able to foster and control the institutions he had established. The last years of his life he spent in missionary labours among the ]“risians, and in 755 he died a 1nartyr’s death. By that time all German tribes, with the exception of the" Saxons, professed Christianity ; and the church was not only highly organized, but possessed great wealth. The old pagan faith had struck its roots too dccply into the German nature to be at once or soon completely destroyed. Traces of its influence may even yet be detected in popular beliefs and customs; and for many centuries some of its conceptions, in altered forms, had hardly less vitality than those of the Christianity was, however, the dominant power, and soon became a great civilizing agency. It was a fact of high importance that its triumph was due mainly to the influence of the papacy. The German Church thus stood from the beginning in close relation to the pope,-— a circumstance which added largely to his power, and which was followed by results of the utmost consequence in the later history of the nation. Under Charles the Great (Charlemagne) a momentous era dawned in the history of the Germans. From the (~1~,m-1,. outset of his reign he had vast plans, which, however, lllilgllc. were not so great as those ultimately realized. He saw at once that he could not hope to execute his schemes if on the north-eastern boundary of his kingdom there was a powerful and hostile people, ready at all times to plot against him, and to take advantage of any misfortune which might temporarily bcf-all him. Accordingly, when the death of his brother Carlman made him, in 771, sole king, one of his first resolutions was to advance against the Saxons, and thoroughly to subdue them. I t is not necessary to suppose that he went to war without an adequate special reason ; for, as the Frankish and the Saxon frontiers touched each other along the whole western and southern boundary of Saxony, and as the Saxons were con- tinually robbing their neighbours, pretexts for war were always overabundant. In his first campaign in 772 he overran the country, took the fortress of Eresburg, previ- ously supposed to be impregnable, and cast down the Irminsul, a mysterious column to which the Saxons attached profound religious signiﬁcance. Awed by the lordly bearing of the great Frank, by the numbers and dis- cipline of his army, and by these proofs of his power, the Saxons appeared to submit at once, and Charles was under the impression that he had conquered them. Never was there a more profound mistake ; in reality, he was at the beginning of a struggle which laste(l upwards of thirty years. Time after time, when apparently they were utterly beaten, they rose against the invaders, and tried with des- (‘onque of Saxony