Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/534

Rh 512 MISSIONS was that towards the middle of the 2d century the church had gradually extended its conquests through Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, southern Gaul, and northern Africa. 1 Ecclesiastical history can tell but little of the church s earliest teachers, and the infancy of many of the primitive congregations is wrapped in hopeless darkness. Whatever was effected was due to the evangelizing labours of individual bishops and clergy, who occupied themselves &quot; in season and out of season,&quot; and toiled zealously and effectively in the spread of the church, though leaving no record of their devotion. Amongst the most distinguished representatives of this individual activity in the 4th and 5th centuries may be mentioned Ulfila, the &quot; apostle of the Goths,&quot; about 325; Frumentius, a bishop of Abyssinia, about 327 ; Chrysostom, who founded at Constantinople in 404 A.D. an institution in which Goths might be trained to preach the gospel to their own people f Valentinus, the &quot; apostle of Noricum,&quot; about 440 ; and Honoratus, who from his monastic home in the islet of Lerins, about 410, sent forth numerous labourers to southern and western Gaul, to become the leading missionaries of their day among the masses of heathendom in the neighbourhood of Aries, Lyons, Troyes, Metz, and Nice. 2. The Mediaeval Period. With the 5th century the church found a very different element proposed to her missionary energies and zeal. Her outposts of civilization had scarcely been planted when she was confronted with numberless hordes which had long been gathering afar off in their native wilds, and which were now precipitated over the entire face of Europe. Having for some time ceased to plead for toleration, and learnt to be aggressive, she not only stood the shock of change but girded herself for the difficult work of calming the agitated elements of society, of teaching the nations a higher faith than a savage form of nature worship, of purifying and refining their recklessness, independence, and uncontrollable love of liberty, and fitting them to become members of an enlightened Christendom. (a) The Celtic Missionaries. The first pioneers who went forth to engage in this difficult enterprise came from the secluded Celtic churches of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, which, though almost forgotten amidst the desolating contest which was breaking up the Roman world, were no sooner founded than they sent forth &quot;armies of Scots &quot; to pour back upon the Continent the gifts of civilization and the gospel. Of many who deserve mention in connexion with this period, the most prominent were Columba, the founder of the famous monastery of lona, and the evangelizer of the Albanian Scots and northern Picts ; Aidan, the apostle of Northumbria ; Columbanus, the apostle of the Burgundians of the Vosges ; Callich or Gallus, the evangelizer of north-eastern Switzer land and Alemannia ; Kilian, the apostle of Thuringia ; and Trudpert, the martyr of the Black Forest. The zeal of these singular men at the head of ardent disciples seemed to take the world by storm. Travelling generally in companies, and carrying a simple outfit, these Celtic pioneers flung themselves on the Continent of Europe, and, not content with reproducing at Annegray or Luxeuil the willow or brushwood huts, the chapel and the round tower, which they had left behind in Derry or in the island of Hy, they braved the dangers of the northern seas, and pene trated as far as the Faroes and even far distant Iceland. 3 (6) The English Missionaries. Thus they laid the foundations, awing the heathen tribes by their indomitable spirit of self-sacrifice and the sternness of their rule of life. 1 Justin, Dial. c. 117; Tertull., Apol., 37; Id., Adv. Jud., 7. 2 Theodoret, II. E., v. 30. 3 See A. V. Haddan, &quot;Scots on the Continent,&quot; Remains, p. 256. But, marvellous as it was, their work lacked the element of permanence ; and it became clear that if Europe was to be carried through the dissolution of the old society, and missionary operations consolidated, a more practical system must be devised and carried out. The men for this work were now ready. Restored to the commonwealth of nations by the labours of the followers of Augustine of Canterbury and the Celtic missionaries from lona, the sons of the newly evangelized English churches were ready to go forth to the help of their Teutonic brothers in the German forests. The energy which warriors were accustomed to put forth in their efforts to conquer was now &quot; exhibited in the enterprise of conversion and teaching &quot; 4 by Wilfrid on the coast of Friesland, 5 by Willibrord in the neighbourhood of Utrecht, 6 by the martyr-brothers Ewald or Hewald amongst the &quot; old &quot; or continental Saxons, 7 by Swidbert the apostle of the tribes between the Ems and the Yssel, by Adelbert, a prince of the royal house of Northumbria, in the regions north of Holland, by Wursing, a native of Friesland, and one of the disciples of Willibrord, in the same region, and last, not least, by the famous Winfrid or Boniface, the &quot;apostle of Germany,&quot; who went forth first to assist Willibrord at Utrecht, then to labour in Thuringia and Upper Hessia, then, with the aid of his kinsmen Wunibald and Willibald, their sister Walpurga, and her thirty companions, to consolidate the work of earlier missionaries, and finally to die a martyr on the shore of the Zuyder Zee. (c) Scandinavian Missions. Devoted, however, as were the labours of Boniface and his disciples, the battle was not yet nearly won. All that he and they and the emperor Charlemagne after them achieved for the fierce untutored world of the 8th century seemed to have been done in vain when, in the 9th, &quot;on the north and north-west the pagan Scandinavians were hanging about every coast, and pouring in at every inlet ; when on the east the pagan Hungarians were swarming like locusts and devastating Europe from the Baltic to the Alps ; when on the south and south-east the Saracens were pressing on and on with their victorious hosts. It seemed then as if every pore of life were choked, and Christendom must be stifled and smothered in the fatal embrace.&quot; 8 But it was even now that one of the most intrepid of missionary enterprises was undertaken, and the devoted Anskar went forth and proved himself a true apostle of Denmark and Sweden, sought out the Scandinavian viking in his native home and icy fiords, and, after persevering in the face of apparently insurmountable difficulties and hardships, handed on the torch of self-denying zeal to others, who &quot;casting their bread on the waters &quot; saw, after the lapse of many years, the close of the monotonous tale of burning churches and pillaged monasteries, and taught the fierce Northman to lay aside his old habits of piracy, and gradually learn respect for civilized institutions. (d) Slavonic Missions. Thus the &quot;gospel of the kingdom &quot; was successively proclaimed to the Roman, the Celtic, the Teutonic, and the Scandinavian world. A contest still more stubborn remained with the Slavonic tribes, with their triple and many-headed divinities, their powers of good and powers of evil, who could be approached only with fear and horror, and propitiated only with human sacrifices. Mission work commenced in Bulgaria during the latter part of the 9th century ; thence it extended to Moravia, where two Greek missionaries Cyril and Methodius provided for the people a Slavonic Bible 4 Church, Gifts of Civilization, p. 330. 5 Bede, H.E., v. 19. 6 &quot; Aimal. Xantenses,&quot; Pertz, Mon. Germ., ii. 220. 7 Bede, H.E., v. 10. 8 See Lightfoot, Ancient and Modern Missions.