Cyril and Methodius
ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS: BAPTIZING THE MASSES
It is natural to think (especially from a Western linear perspective) that with the passage of time comes progress—that the Mediterranean world in A.D. 600, for example, would be far more advanced than it had been hundreds of years earlier. But that was not true. Western Europe was uncivilized in comparison with the Greco-Roman world at the time of Christ. “The new Western world which emerged, the world of the first half of the Middle Ages,” writes Philip Hughes, “was to be a world where countrysides were vastly more important than towns—which indeed shrank to vanishing point.” It was a world of illiterate peasants and “country-bred, fighting warrior lords” far removed from “the centuries-old urban civilization of the Hellenistic East where the Church was born and for four hundred years had its first developments.”
With the fall of Rome, the world changed. Where once there was peace and where lay missionaries had traveled along the extensive network of Roman roads and the very Scriptures were carried through an almost-modern mail system, now there was violence and crime—a deteriorating infrastructure and danger at every turn. It was a world of barbarians that stretched far beyond the old borders of the Roman Empire. “Life in this vast Western backwoods—on this vast frontier—was hard and cruel.”1
Missionary endeavors in this new world of the “Dark Ages” looked very different from those in earlier generations. Indeed, from this time forward the role of the missionary would primarily be that of a pioneer or explorer—one who ventured into the interior or the backwoods or the regions beyond—the foreign missionary venturing into faraway deserts and mountains and jungles, often in the company of soldiers or diplomats or merchants. These physical and geographical changes paralleled spiritual changes:
It is very difficult for the modern mind to enter this world of popular Christian imagination…. It is the Christianity of a society striving against the all-pervading influence of a barbaric environment. In this twilight world it was inevitable that the Christian ascetic and saint should acquire some features of the pagan shaman and demigod: that his prestige should depend upon his power as a wonder-worker and that men should seek his decision in the same way as they had formerly resorted to the shrine of a pagan oracle.
Nevertheless it was only in this world of Christian mythology—in the cult of the saints and their relics and their miracles—that the vital transfusion of the Christian faith and ethics with the barbaric tradition of the new peoples of the West could be achieved. It was obviously impossible for peoples without any tradition of philosophy or written literature to assimilate directly the subtle and profound theological metaphysics of a St. Augustine or the great teachers of the Byzantine world. The barbarians could understand and accept the spirit of the new religion only when it was manifested to them visibly in the lives and acts of men who seemed endowed with supernatural qualities. The conversion of Western Europe was achieved not so much by the teaching of a new doctrine as by the manifestation of a new power.2
But power encounter came in two forms—the most visible being that of military might. From the beginning, medieval Catholic missions were closely tied to political and military exploits, and mass forced conversions were considered a legitimate means of church growth. More often, however, diplomatic negotiations paved the way for conversion. A political leader would be lured by promises of military aid, and his subjects generally followed suit. In some instances the need for military protection was mixed with a superstitious belief that the Christian God was a better ally in battle than a pagan god or gods. Clovis, the fifth-century king of the Franks, is an example. He married a Christian princess but held on to his pagan deities until his army was on the verge of military defeat. At that moment he allegedly made a vow that he would serve the Christian God in exchange for victory. On Christmas Day of 496, the victorious king was baptized along with three thousand troops.
This mass conversion of Clovis’s army was the first of many during the Middle Ages, and it was this method, writes Bruce Shelley, “that converted Europe.” The concept of individual conversion was “the method used by Protestant missions under the evangelical movements of the nineteenth century, with individual change of heart,” but mass conversion is what expanded the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages.3
During this time, however, there were individuals who were truly concerned about Christian missions. Among them was Gregory the Great (540–604), one of the most able and influential popes during the whole medieval period. The story is told of how he was touched when he saw blond British boys in the slave market and said, “They are Angles, let them become angels.”4 From that point on, Gregory made missions to faraway Britain a top priority. In 596 he dispatched Augustine of Canterbury and a company of monks to take the gospel to that remote and undeveloped part of the world.
Though sincere and pious, Augustine was not initially a strong leader. On the way to Britain, while traveling through Gaul, he turned back with his monks, claiming that “they should not be compelled to undertake so dangerous, toil-some and uncertain a journey” through such a “barbarous, fierce and unbelieving nation.” Gregory was unmoved. He wrote back, insisting that they continue. They did, and Augustine and his monks were largely responsible for planting the Roman Catholic Church in England.
As Augustine and his team of monks evangelized England and baptized thousands of converts, they faced knotty problems relating to pagan traditions. Could pagan ceremonies, for example, be transformed into Christian observances? And what should be done with pagan temples? Should they be destroyed or abandoned? Gregory’s response established a framework for contextualizing the gospel that served as a model for centuries to follow:
The heathen temples of these people need not be destroyed, only the idols which are to be found in them…. If the temples are well-built, it is a good idea to detach them from the service of the devil, and to adapt them for the worship of the true God…. And since the people are accustomed, when they assemble for sacrifice, to kill many oxen in sacrifice to the devils, it seems reasonable to appoint a festival for the people by way of exchange. The people must learn to slay their cattle not in honor of the devil, but in honor of God and for their own food…. If we allow them these outward joys, they are more likely to find their way to the true inner joy…. It is doubtless impossible to cut off all abuses at once from rough hearts, just as a man who sets out to climb a high mountain does not advance by leaps and bounds, but goes upward step by step and pace by pace.
There were other monks who served the missionary cause during the early Middle Ages, most notably Boniface, known as the “Apostle to Germany.” It was not until later in the medieval period, however, that large numbers of Roman Catholic clerics became involved in missions-oriented monastic orders, most notably the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Augustinians, and the Jesuits. Through these orders, Roman Catholicism spread throughout the world and established churches that would dominate the religious scene in many regions.
Although Roman Catholics dominated Christian missions during the Middle Ages, they were not the only missionaries of the period. The Celtic church, represented by St. Patrick, Columba, and others, burned with evangelistic zeal, as did the Eastern or Nestorian church that spread out across Asia. Not to be confused with the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Nestorian church, according to historian John Stewart, was “the most mission-oriented church the world has ever seen.” From their early strongholds in Asia Minor, they fled into Persia and the Arabian Peninsula to avoid persecution from Roman officials and Catholic church leaders. But there they met fierce opposition from Zoroastrians and later from Muslims, so they continued to push farther east into central Asia, India, Afghanistan, and Tibet, areas that became “centers of Christian activity.” These men and women were Christians of “great faith” and “mighty in Scripture, large portions of which they knew by heart.” Schools were established to train the young, and monasteries, resembling modern-day Bible institutes, thrust young adults into full-time evangelistic activity.6
From Central Asia the Nestorians moved farther East, and by the ninth century had reached China and from there Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Their influence continued to grow, and by the thirteenth century it is estimated that there were no less than twenty-seven metropolitan patriarchs and two hundred bishops under them in China and surrounding areas. But in the centuries that followed, the church rapidly declined. The peace-conscious Nestorians were no match for militant Muslims, and even worse were the armies of Genghis Khan and other barbarians who devastated large portions of Asia, including major centers of Nestorian Christianity.
An era of Christian missions was over and mostly forgotten. Because of the early doctrinal differences between the Nestorians and the Western church over the two natures of Christ, Nestorians were viewed as heretics, and their great evangelistic endeavors were discounted. Scholars have more recently recognized that the charges of heresy were overstated and that the Nestorians were a vital part of the Christian missionary heritage.
As the Nestorians were pushing eastward, the Roman Catholic Church was pushing north—and eventually across the seas. Unencumbered by families, missionaries spread out with courage and zeal to take the one true church to the ends of the earth.
The expansion of Roman Catholic missions in central Europe during the early Middle Ages was associated with Boniface more than with any other individual. He has been variously described as “the greatest of all missionaries of the Dark Ages,” “one of the most remarkable missionaries in the entire history of the expansion of Christianity,” and “a man who had a deeper influence on the history of Europe than any Englishman who has ever lived.”7 But he is not universally acclaimed. His career, according to V. Raymond Edman, “reflects the lowering spiritual tone of English and Continental Christianity, which had begun to emphasize Church more than Christ, Sacrament more than Scripture.”8
Boniface was born in Devonshire, England, in the late seventh century. He entered monastic life as a youth, and at the age of thirty was ordained a priest. There were many opportunities for this young cleric with “unusual gifts” to excel in his homeland. He was a recognized leader and was “outstandingly suited to the work of teaching, preaching and oversight,” but his “call” was to evangelize the pagans on the Continent.9
His first tour of duty to Friesland, however, was unsuccessful because of political opposition and turmoil. He returned home, tempted to stay there and accept a position as head of a monastery. But his burden for foreign missions would not go away, and in 718, three years after he left on his first venture, he went back to the Continent. This time he went to Rome first. He had learned a lesson from his first experience. Papal recognition and backing were essential, and that is what he sought and received in Rome—an endorsement that colored his entire career. He was no longer an independent missionary going out simply to evangelize the pagan world. He was an emissary of Rome, commissioned to establish papal authority over the church in central Europe.
Boniface went first to what is present-day Germany and then back to Friesland for most of three years before returning to Germany, where he served the remainder of his life. In 723 he made his second journey to Rome, at which time he was consecrated a missionary bishop to Germany by Pope Gregory II. Following his return to Germany, Boniface began his missionary work in earnest and won a reputation for courage throughout the Rhineland. Here he exhibited leadership skills that would be the key to his successful ministry. Indeed, he had an uncanny ability to enlist the loyal assistance of others in his ministry. Through correspondence and personal contacts, he urged others to join him in his grand calling from God. While visiting Rome, he presented his vision not only to the pope but to anyone else who would listen. He visited the shrines not just as a pilgrim but also as a recruiter. There he knew he would find potential missionaries.10
Back in Germany, he focused first on the upper classes, knowing the masses would likely—out of fear or respect—follow their example. He took the beliefs of the people seriously and sought to communicate with them in a way that they understood. Many of the nominal Christians of the area had reverted to pagan practices and were involved in spirit worship and magical arts. To counteract this sacrilege, Boniface was convinced, drastic measures were needed. So he boldly struck a blow to the very heart of the local pagan worship.
He assembled a large crowd at Geismar, where the sacred oak of the Thundergod was located, and with the people looking on in horror, he began chopping down the tree. It was a defiant act, but one that clearly drew attention to the fact that there was no supernatural power in either the tree or the god whom it honored. At the same time, it heightened the prestige of Boniface, and soon fanciful tales were associated with the incident, one alleging that when “the giant monster fell, its trunk burst asunder into four parts which, as they fell to the ground, miraculously shaped themselves into the arms of a cross, each arm of equal length.”11
Boniface at Geismar after chopping down the sacred oak of the Thundergod.
It was “a master stroke of missionary policy,” according to Philip Schaff, and thousands of people recognized the superiority of the Christian God and submitted to baptism.12Boniface was encouraged and relieved by the positive reaction and continued on in the same vein, destroying temples and shrines and smashing sacred stones into bits. Gradually, he began to question the validity of this aggressive approach. He confided his doubts to another bishop, who advised him that such forceful methods were unwise and that a more meaningful and lasting approach was to “ask them questions about their gods, to inquire about their origins, their seemingly human attributes, their relationship with the beginning of the world, and in so doing elicit such contradictions and absurdities from their answers that they would become confused and ashamed.”13
Whatever the impact the felling of sacred trees and smashing of shrines may have had on initial evangelistic work, it was obvious that much more was needed to build an enduring church. Like the Celtic missionaries before him, Boniface established monastic mission outposts as training centers where monks who worked with him prepared new converts for the ministry. The only truly innovative aspect of his ministry was his enthusiastic recruitment of women to serve the cause of missions. “For the first time in a number of centuries,” writes Latourette, “we find women taking an active part in missions.”14
The most noted of these women was Lioba, a cousin of Boniface who had corresponded with him and expressed interest in mission work in Germany. Through arrangements with her abbess back in Wessex, England, thirty nuns were sent abroad to join the mission work. Boniface deeded them a convent that became known as Bischofsheim, and Lioba served as the abbess. They were considered missionary nuns, but like many missionaries of this era they did not travel about conducting evangelistic outreach. They were cloistered. Their evangelism consisted of seeking to attract native women to become nuns. Lioba served faithfully for decades, long after the death of Boniface. Though confined to her convent, she had regular contact with a wide range of people—from villagers to bishops—who often came to her for counsel on church matters.15
In 737, following his third visit to Rome, Boniface was empowered to organize bishoprics throughout Bavaria, and in 744 he founded the famous monastery of Fulda that has remained a center for Roman Catholicism in Germany to this day. The phenomenal accomplishments credited to Boniface could not have been carried out without the powerful backing of Charles Martel, whose victory over the Muslims at the Battle of Tours in 732 marked a turning point in the struggle against Islam. “Without the protection of the prince of the Franks,” wrote Boniface, “I can neither rule the people or the church nor defend the priests and clerks, monks and nuns; nor can I prevent the practice of pagan rites and sacrilegious worship of idols without his mandate and the awe inspired by his name.”16
To the end, Boniface’s ministry was to bolster the Roman Catholic Church—to “turn the hearts of the heathen Saxons to the Catholic Faith” and to “gather them among the children of Mother Church.”17 From that perspective, it is not surprising that the work of Boniface clashed with the missionary endeavors of Celtic and French monks. “He reaped the fruits of their labors,” according to Schaff, “and destroyed their further usefulness, which he might have secured by a liberal Christian policy. He hated every feature of individuality…. To him true Christianity was identical with Romanism.”18
The fact that many Celtic missionaries had wives and defended clerical marriage was anathema to Boniface, but imbued with the Roman passion for uniformity, even such nonessential issues as the date for Easter, the right to eat certain meats, and the frequency of making the sign of the cross during mass caused him to denounce them as false prophets.
During the last years of his ministry, Boniface relinquished the administrative church work that had long consumed so much of his energy and went back to doing pioneer missionary work. “The spirit of the missionary prevailed,” writes Neill, “and drove him out again into the lands where Christ had not been named.”19 In 753 he returned to Friesland, which was still largely pagan. There on the banks of the river Borne, he and some fifty assistants and followers set up their tents in preparation for a confirmation service of new converts. But the service never took place. Boniface and his companions were set upon and slain by a band of armed bandits, thus ending the ministry of medieval Europe’s most energetic and outwardly successful missionary.
In 771, less than two decades following the death of Boniface, the great Emperor Charlemagne ascended the throne, and during the nearly half-century of his reign, he was the most powerful promoter of Roman Catholic missions. Charlemagne freely mixed missions and military might to extend the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire. “How much of his zeal for missions,” writes Latourette, “arose from religious convictions and how much from political policy Charlemagne himself would probably have found it difficult to say.”20
But even while Charlemagne was expanding the empire, there were setbacks as barbarians and marauders of every description continued to plunder the outlying regions. This havoc continued on in the generations after Charlemagne, when the strength of both the emperor and the papacy was at a low point. Raids from Scandinavia and elsewhere sometimes seemed to threaten the very future of a Christian Europe.
The earliest Roman Catholic missions to Scandinavia, like those to Germany, were very closely tied to political and military exploits. The first knowledge of Christianity came to that part of the world through traders. Then, in 826, King Harold of Denmark, along with his wife and some four hundred court attendants and followers, submitted to baptism in hopes of obtaining Frankish military aid. Though such mass conversions gave no evidence of spiritual commitment, they opened the way for missionaries, and Anskar was summoned to begin evangelistic work in Scandinavia following the king’s turn to Christianity.
Anskar, often referred to as the “Apostle of the North,” was born in France in 801 and schooled from the age of five at the monastery of Corbie, founded more than two centuries earlier by Columba. Moved by visions and dreams, Anskar was a mystic whose highest ambition was to obtain a martyr’s crown. Thus, he accepted his dangerous new assignment with eagerness. His hopes of converting the Danes soon dimmed when the political and military impotence of King Harold became apparent, however; and in less than three years Anskar, along with the king, was expelled from Denmark.
No sooner had he been forced out of Denmark than an invitation came from the king of Sweden requesting missionaries. Anskar and another monk immediately accepted the challenge, only to have the ship on which they were sailing attacked by pirates and all of their possessions stolen. On their arrival in Sweden, King Björn warmly welcomed them and gave them liberty to preach. There were many conversions, especially among the nobility—but as in the case of King Harold, conversions were apparently politically motivated.
So significant was Anskar’s work from a political perspective that Emperor Louis the Pious struck a deal with Pope Gregory IV to appoint him Archbishop of Hamburg for the Scandinavian and Slavic states of Northern Europe. To aid him in his efforts, Louis gave him a wealthy monastery in West Flanders—a financial source that allowed him to bestow gifts on the provincial rulers. He recruited monks to assist him, and Catholicism made great strides in the next dozen years. The line between religion and politics, however, continued to be a fine one, and the gains were usually political in nature, motivated by what it was thought the Christian God and his temporal rulers could provide. Latourette relates one such incident recorded by Rimbert, Anskar’s colleague and biographer:
An army of non-Christian Swedes in besieging a town faced a discouraging outlook. They cast lots to inquire whether any of their gods would help them. The answer was unfavorable and the Swedes were much disheartened. However, some merchants who recalled Anskar’s teaching suggested that lots be cast to see whether Christ, the God of the Christians, would assist them. The outcome was propitious, the beleaguered purchased peace, and the victors, returning home, honored Christ by observing fasts and giving alms to the poor.21
While political and military victories brought new areas under Roman Catholic influence, defeats often brought a return to paganism. Such was the case in 845 when Anskar saw fourteen years of labor destroyed by invading Danish raiders from the north. They swept down on Hamburg, sacking and burning and driving Anskar into hiding. When he sought protection from a neighboring bishop, the bishop refused to help because of political rivalry.
But after a series of political alliances and military victories, Hamburg was again under Christian control and Anskar was given expanded authority. As military threats lessened, he was able to devote more time to spiritual ministry. He was an ascetic who regarded prayer and fasting as paramount—though never to be done at the expense of useful activity. He insisted his monks be ever occupied with work, and he himself was often seen knitting while he prayed. As with most medieval spiritual leaders, he was credited with great miracles, but he personally sought to avoid all such praise, telling others that “the greatest miracle in his life would be if God ever made a thoroughly pious man out of him.”22
Anskar died peacefully in 865 without the martyr’s crown that he had longed for. But that certainly was not the greatest prize that eluded him. In spite of all his efforts, he was unable to establish a permanent base for Christianity in Scandinavia. After he died, the people reverted to paganism, and not until after the tenth century did the Catholic Church gain a sure foothold in that region.
Safeguarding the borders was a continual struggle for the successors of Charlemagne. By the time one boundary was secured, another was being invaded by the enemy. This was particularly true in central Europe, which had long been ravaged by invasions from the east—a situation further complicated by warring ethnic factions and political rivalry. “On the one side was German imperialism or Papal ambition, and on the other Byzantine imperialism.”23 Enter two brothers from Thessalonica—a city visited by Paul eight centuries earlier.
Like most medieval mission ventures, the work of Cyril and Methodius was tied to political maneuvering. Caught between East and West, a Moravian prince whose territory had been invaded by Western forces reached out to Constantinople—not for military might, but for missionaries. He wanted missionaries who could teach the people in their own language.
Cyril (whose given name was Constantine) and his brother Methodius were already seasoned missionaries—though for both, missions was a second career. They were raised in a Christian family, sons of a high-ranking military officer. Cyril became a philosopher and educator, whose first missionary experience was that of a Christian apologist to Muslims and later as an evangelist to the Khazars in Russia, many of whom were apparently converted through his teaching. Methodius, a civil servant, entered the monastery and then joined his brother in the mission to the Khazars.
In the early 860s Emperor Michael III of Constantinople arranged for Cyril and Methodius to begin a new mission among the nominally Christian Slavic peoples of central Europe. Like so many peoples before and after, the Christian faith had seemed to them entirely foreign. Now they would have their own alphabet devised by Cyril, and the gospels and liturgy in their own language. The brothers’ ministry had a profound spiritual influence in the region and also gave the Slavic peoples a sense of identity that they had not had previously. Their achievements, according to Latourette, had “lasting consequences for Slavic literature, not only in Central Europe and the Balkans, but also in Russia.”24