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History of Eastern Christianity in Asia

fatman2021 — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:15:52 CST

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Judging from the New Testament account of the rise and expansion of the early church, during the first few centuries of Christianity, the most extensive dissemination of the gospel was not in the West but in the East. In fact, conditions in the Parthian empire (250 BC - A.D. 226), which stretched from the Euphrates to the Indus rivers and the Caspian to the Arabian seas, were in some ways more favourable for the growth of the church than in the Roman world. And though opposition to Christianity increasingly mounted under successive Persian and Islamic rulers, Christian communities were eventually established in the vast territory which stretches from the Near to the Far East possibly as early as the first century of the church.

Luke states in Acts 2:5-11 that there were present in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost “devout men from every nation under heaven.” Among these were “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia...and Arabians”. Moreover, these pilgrims included “both Jews and proselytes,”alike in their familiarity with the culture of their respective countries and the revelation of the Old testament Scriptures. The most plausible explanation of the early appearance of Christian communities in these lands is that some of these pilgrims were converted and returned to the East as spirit-filled missionaries. Furthermore, the question immediately arises as to whether any of the apostles had a part in this eastern mission. According to two historians, Eusebius of Caesarea and Socrates, the twelve apostles parceled among themselves missionary responsibility for the known world. Thomas was assigned to the Parthian Empire and India, with Bartholomew sharing in the latter rea of mission.

The many Jews who lived in the vast territories of the Middle East were the descendants of those who were exiled at the time of the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities and later deportations. Most settled down in the comparatively stable and tolerant society of the East, and many prospered and became influential. Their biblically-inspired Messianic hope was doubtless a contributing factor to the widespread expectation of the coming King, so vividly portrayed in the coming of the magi (Matt. 2:1-2). It is not without significance that this visit is only recorded in Matthew, the gospel which had wide circulation in the East, including India, from the first century.

The spoken language of the dispersion was Aramaic, and the Syriac version of the Old Testament was in common use. Syriac or Aramaic was destined to become the religious language of the Eastern or Assyrian Church, commonly known as Nestorian. Many of the early churches grew out of the Jewish synagogues of the dispersion, with these often serving as a kind of bridge between Israel and the Gentiles. Though the early establishment of churches in the vast and populous countries of the East cannot be questioned, there is a scarcity of original sources of information. Thus we are often almost completely dependent upon traditional material, which is difficult to verify with absolute certainty. With few exceptions, the Christian community never became a dominant element in the population, nor did Christianity become the state religion. Moreover, the church usually found itself confronted by long-established ethnic religions of eclectic character, which were resistant to the exclusive claims of the gospel. Thus, from the third century there were long periods of persecution which involved the ruthless destruction of churches and monastic institutions and other depositories of invaluable historical documents.

Strangely, the church which spread throughout most of Asia bears the appellation “Nestorian,”after the fifth century patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius, who was condemned by Rome as a heretic in A.D. 430. The name is actually a misnomer which became current in the West; the Roman See had sought to discredit this church, which had renounced Rome's primacy for geographical, political, linguistic, and doctrinal reasons. Nestorian was not the name by which the church knew itself., nor was it so commonly designated in Asian lands. It was rather known as the Church of the East, or Easterns, to distinguish it from the Greek and Latin churches in the West which were divided by subtle theological controversies little appreciated by the Eastern Christians. It also came to be known as the Assyrian church because of the location of its successive headquarters, and also as the Luminous Religion, especially in China.

This ancient church claimed a first-century origin and developed almost wholly apart from the Greek and Roman churches. It did not embrace the heresy of which Nestorius was accused, though it endorsed his opposition to the Roman doctrines of purgatory and Mariolatry, especially her title as “Mother of God” and or Theotokos. For at least twelve hundred years the church of the Easterns was noted for its missionary zeal, its high degree of lay participation, its superior educational standards and cultural contributions in less developed countries, and its fortitude in the face of persecution.

The Church of the East had its inception at a very early date in the buffer zone between the Parthian and Roman Empires in Upper Mesopotamia. The vicissitudes of its later growth were rooted in its minority status in a situation of international tension. The rulers of the Parthian empire (250 BC - AD 226) were on the whole tolerant in spirit, and with the older faiths of Babylonia and Assyria in a state of decay, the time was ripe for a new and vital faith. The rulers of the Second Persian empire (226-640) also followed a policy of religious toleration to begin with, though later they gave Christians the same status as a subject race. However, these rulers also encouraged the revival of the ancient Persian dualistic faith of Zoroastrianism and established it as the state religion, with the result that the Christians were increasingly subjected to repressive measures. Nevertheless, it was not until Christianity became the state religion in the West that enmity toward Rome was focused on the Eastern Christians. After the Mohammedan conquest in the seventh century, the caliphate tolerated other faiths but forbade proselytism and subjected Christians to heavy taxation.

Edessa (now Şanlıurfa) in northwestern Mesopotamia was from apostolic times the principal center of Syriac-speaking Christianity. it was the capital of an independent kingdom from 132 BC to A.D. 216, when it became tributary to Rome. Celebrated as an important centre of Greco-Syrian culture, Edessa was also noted for its Jewish community., with proselytes in the royal family. Strategically located on the main trade routes of the Fertile Crescent, it was easily accessible from Antioch, where the mission to the Gentiles was inaugurated. When early Christians were scattered abroad because of persecution, some found refuge at Edessa. thus the Edessan church traced its origin to the apostolic age. (which may account for its rapid growth), and Christianity even became the state religion for a time.
An ancient legend recorded by Eusebius (A.D. 260-340) and also found in the Doctrine of Addai (c. A.D. 400) (from information in the royal archives of Edessa) describes how King Abgar V of Edessa communicated with Jesus, requesting Him to come and heal him, to which appeal he received a reply. After the resurrection, the Apostle Thomas sent one of the seventy (Luke 10:1), Addai or Thaddaeus, to preach the gospel and heal the king, with the result that the city was won to the Christian faith. In this mission he was accompanied by a disciple, Mari, and the two are regarded as cofounders of the church, according to the Liturgy of Addai and Mari (c. A.D. 200), which is still the normal liturgy of the Assyrian church. The Doctrine of Addai further states that Thomas was regarded as an apostle of the church, which long treasured a letter written by him from India.

Thus it was from Edessa that a missionary movement began which gradually spread throughout Mesopotamia, Persia, Central Asia and China. According to another ancient tradition, Mari was sent as a missionary to Seleucia (on the Tigris River near Baghdad), which, with its twin city of Ctesiphon across the river, became another canter of missionary outreach. Mari was also regarded as the pioneer evangelist in the whole region of Adiabene to the north, of which Arbela (now Erbil) was the capital. By the latter half of the second century, Christianity had spread east throughout Media, Persia, Parthia, and Bactria. The twenty bishops and many presbyters were more of the order of itinerant missionaries, passing from place to place as Paul did and supplying their needs with such occupations as merchant or craftsman. By A.D. 280 the metropolis of Seleucia assumed the title of “Catholicos,”and in A.D. 424 a council of the church at Seleucia elected the first patriarch to have jurisdiction over the whole church of the East, including India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). The seat of the Patriarchate was fixed at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, since this was an important point on the East-West trade routes which extended both to India and China, Java and Japan. Thus the shift of ecclesiastical authority was away from Edessa, which in A.D. 216 had become tributary to Rome. the establishment of an independent patriarchate with nine subordinate metropoli contributed to a more favourable attitude by the Persian government, which no longer had to fear an ecclesiastical alliance with the common enemy, Rome.

The great persecution fell upon the Christians in Persia about the year 340. Though the religious motives were never unrelated, the primary cause of the persecution was political. When Rome became Christian, its old enemy turned anti-Christian.

Up to then the situation had been reversed. For the first 300 hundreds after Christ it was in the West that Christians were persecuted. For two hundred and fifty years Persia had been a refuge from Roman persecution. The Parthians were too religiously tolerant to persecute, and their less tolerant Sassanian successors on the throne were too busy fighting Rome, Persian emperors were inclined to regard them as friends of Persia.
It was about 315 that an ill-advised letter from the Christian emperor Constantine to his Persian counterpart Shapur II probably triggered the beginnings of an ominous change in the Persian attitude toward Christians. Constantine believed he was writing to help his fellow believers in Persia but succeeded only in exposing them. He wrote to the young shah:

"I rejoice to hear that the fairest provinces of Persia are adorned with...Christians...Since you are so powerful and pious, I commend them to your care, and leave them in your protection".

It was enough to make any Persian ruler conditioned by 300 years of war with Rome suspicious of the emergence of a fifth column. Any lingering doubts must have been dispelled when about twenty years later when Constantine began to gather his forces for war in the East. Eusebius records that Roman bishops were prepared to accompany their emperor to "battle with him and for him by prayers to God whom all victory proceeds". And across the border in Persian territory the forthright Persian preacher Aphrahat recklessly predicted on the basis of his reading of Old testament prophecy that Rome would defeat Persia.

It is little wonder then, that when the persecutions began shortly thereafter, the first accusation brought against the Christians was that they were aiding the Roman enemy. The shah Shapur II's response was to order a double taxation on Christians and to hold the bishop responsible for collecting it. He knew they were poor and that the bishop would be hard-pressed to find the money. Bishop Simon refused to be intimidated. He branded the tax as unjust and declared, "I am no tax collector but a shepherd of the Lord's flock." Then the killings began.

A second decree ordered the destruction of churches and the execution of clergy who refused to participate in the national worship of the sun. Bishop simon was seized and brought before the shah and was offered gifts to make a token obeisance to the sun, and when he refused, they cunningly tempted him with the promise that if he alone would apostasize his people would not be harmed, but that if he refused he would be condemning not just the church leaders but all Christians to destruction. At that, the Christians themselves rose up and refused to accept such a deliverance as shameful. So according to the tradition in the year 344, he was led outside the city of Susa along with a large number of Christian clergy. Five bishops and one hundred priests were beheaded before his eyes, and last of all he himself was put to death.

For the next two decades and more, Christians were tracked down and hunted from one end of the empire to the other. At times the pattern was general massacre. More often, as Shapur decreed, it was intensive organized elimination of the leadership of the church, the clergy. A third category of suppression was the search for that part of the Christian community that was most vulnerable to persecution, Persians who had been converted from the national religion, Zoroastrianism. As we have already seen, the faith had spread first among non-Persian elements in the population, Jews and Syrians. But by the beginning of the fourth century, Iranians in increasing numbers were attracted to the Christian faith. For such converts, church membership could mean the loss of everything - family, property rights, and life itself. Converts from the "national faith" had no rights and, in the darker years of the persecution, were often put to death. The major agents in the slaughter were Zoroastrian clergy, but sometimes Christians suspected the Jews and accused them of acting as informers.

The martyrdom of Simon and the years of persecution that followed wiped out the beginnings of the central national organization the Persian church had only so recently achieved. As fast as the Christians of the capital elected a new bishop after Simon, the man was seized and killed. Inflaming the anti-Roman political motivation of the government's role in the persecutions was a deep undercurrent of Zoroastrian fanaticism and hatred of other religions.

Sometime before the death of Shapur II in 379, the intensity of the persecution slackened. Tradition calls it a forty-year persecution, lasting from 339-379 and ending only with Shapur's death.

When at last the years of suffering ended around the year 401, the historian Sozomen, who lived near enough to that time of tribulation to remember the tales of those who experienced it, wrote that the multitude of martyrs had been "beyond enumeration". One estimate is that as many as 190,000 Persian Christians died in the terror. It was worse than any suffering in the West under Rome.

Several important factors help to explain the extensive growth in the Church of the East during the first twelve hundred years of the Christian era. Geographically, and possibly even numerically, the expansion of this church outstripped that of the church in the West in the early centuries. The outstanding key to understanding this expansion is the active participation of the laymen - the involvement of a large percentage of the church's believers in missionary evangelism. The following significant factors inducing that church growth are all based largely on the fact that it was a lay as well as a clerical movement.

1) The church promoted an effective system of popular education, producing a literate Christian community, knowledgeable in the Scriptures. This training was based on use of the Syriac Old Testament and had available the canonical gospels before the end of the first century, though the Harmony of the Four, a life of Christ compiled by Tatian (c. A.D. 160), an Assyrian Christian, was the most popular Scripture portion for several centuries. Traveling Christians carried with them everywhere these portions of the Scripture, usually a gospel or the Harmony and parts of the Old Testament.

2) The Church backed specialized training programmes for youth, monastic Bible schools for laymen, theological schools for clergy, etc. As they travelled, the Christians introduced Syriac learning to the illiterate Turks, Uyghurs, Mongols, and Manchus, whose alphabets as a result are largely derived from the Syriac writing system. the first monastic schools at Edessa, later moved to Nisibis in 489, had eight hundred students enrolled. the church trained deaconesses, medical students in church hospitals, and musicians in church music schools, which stimulated an indigenous hymnody of the church of the East. Thus from scores of such schools a constant stream of well-trained Christians, clergy and lay, travelled throughout Asia, self-supporting and often enthusiastically witnessing - a strategy of mission which was not achieved in the West for hundreds of years.

3) Persecution strengthened and spread the Christian movement in the East. A great influx of Christian refugees from the Roman persecutions of the first two centuries gave vigour to the Mesopotamian church And persecution within the Persian empire saw thousands slain for the faith (at least sixteen thousand under the reign of Sapor II, A.D. 307-379) and numberless thousands more reported or fleeing as refugees to witness as far as Arabia, India, and other Central Asian countries. Following a period of relative quiet in the empire under Bahram V (420-38), more terrible persecution broke out, culminating in the massacre of ten bishops and 153,000 Christians within a few days.

Early Muslim conquest of these lands in the seventh and eighth centuries did not introduce direct persecution. However, Muslim apostasy was curbed by threat of death, and many nominal Christians began to gradually defect to Islam to avoid discrimination and heavy taxation. This type of subtle oppression stifled Christian growth, backed the church into ghetto communities, and discouraged evangelism. Muslim governments eventually gained control of the great trade routes, and the Islamic world became virtually closed to the proclamation of the gospel.

In our consideration of the penetration of the Arabian peninsula by the gospel, it is necessary to distinguish between the marauding Bedouin nomads of the interior, who were chiefly herdsmen and unreceptive to foreign influence, and the inhabitants of the settled communities of the coastal areas and oases, who were either middlemen traders or farmers and were receptive to influences from abroad. Christianity apparently gained its strongest foothold in the ancient center of Semitic civilisation in South-west Arabia or Yemen, (sometimes known as Seba or Sheba), whose queen visited Solomon. Because of geographic proximity, acculturation with Ethiopia was always strong, and the royal family traces its ancestry to this queen.

The presence of Arabians at Pentecost and Paul's three-year sojourn in Arabia suggest a very early gospel witness. A fourth-century church history, states that the apostle Bartholomew preached in Arabia and that Himyarites were among his converts. Arabia's close relations with Ethiopia give significance to the conversion of the treasurer to the queen of Ethiopia, not to mention the tradition that the Apostle Matthew was assigned to this land. Eusebius says that “one Pantaneous (c. A.D. 190) was sent from Alexandria as a missionary to the nations of the East,”including southwest Arabia, on his way to India.

Cosmas Indicopleustes, navigator and geographer of the sixth century, wrote about Christians, bishops, monks, and martyrs in Yemen and among the Himyarites. In the fifth century a merchant from Yemen was converted in Hira, in the northeast, and upon his return led many to Christ.

During the early centuries Christianity also penetrated Arabia from numerous points on its periphery. The kingdom of Hira in northeastern Arabia and near the border of Mesopotamia flourished from the end of the third to the end of the sixth century and was apparently evangelized by Christians from the Tigris-Euphrates Valley in the Fourth Century. The kingdom of Ghassan on the northwest frontier was also a sphere of missionary activity. In fact, by A.D. 500 many churches were also in existence along the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf and in Oman, with all connected with the Church of the East in the Persian Empire. Arabian bishops were found among those in attendance at important church councils in Mesopotamia. in the Seventh century, however, with the rise of Islam seriously inhibited the growth of the church in Arabia. The regulations imposed throughout Persian and Arab territories upon non-Muslims however, progressively reduced both the numbers and public roles of Christians. Yet it was only in the wake of the Crusades that the antagonism between Christian and Muslim become sharp enough to bring comprehensive discrimination and the consequent dismantling of Christian influence. Existing churches were gradually eliminated by Muslim oppression. Many of the remaining Christians fled the country and found refuge in Mesopotamia.

According to Eusebius' record, Thomas and Bartholomew were assigned to Parthia and India. The Didache (dating from the end of the first century) states, “India and all countries condering it, even to the farthest seas...received the apostolic ordinances from Judas Thomas, who was a guide and ruler in the church which he built.”Moreover, there is a wealth of confirmatory information in the Syriac writings, liturgical books, and calendars of the Church of the East, not to mention the writings of the Fathers, the calendars, the sacramentaries, and the martyrologies of the Roman, Greek and Ethiopian churches. Since trade routes from the East were wide open at the time and were used by early missionaries, there are no circumstantial reasons why Thomas could not have visited India in the first century. And his visit is the most plausible explanation for the early appearance of the church there.

An early third-century Syriac work known as the Acts of Thomas connects the apostle's Indian ministry with two kings, one in the north and the other in the south. According to one of the legends in the Acts, Thomas was at first reluctant to accept this mission, but the Lord appeared to him in a night vision and said, “Fear not, Thomas. Go away to India and proclaim the Word, for my grace shall be with you.”But the Apostle still demurred, do the Lord overruled the stubborn disciple by ordering circumstances so compelling that he was forced to accompany an Indian merchant, Abbanes, to his native place in northwest India, where he found himself in the service of the Indo-Parthian king, Gondophares. The apostle's ministry resulted in many conversions throughout the kingdom, including the king and his brother.

Critical historians treated this legend as an idle tale and denied the historicity of King Gundaphorus until modern archeology established him as an important figure in North India in the latter half of the first century. many coins of his reign have turned up in Afghanistan, the Punjab, and the Indus Valley. Remains of some of his buildings , influenced by Greek architecture, indicate that he was a great builder. Interestingly enough, according to the legend, Thomas was a skilled carpenter and was bidden to build a palace for the king. However, the Apostle decided to teach the king a lesson by devoting the royal grant to acts of charity and thereby laying up treasure for the heavenly abode. Although little is known of the immediate growth of the church, Bar-Daisan (A.D. 154-223) reports that in his time there were Christian tribes in North India which claimed to have been converted by Thomas and to have books and relics to prove it. But at least by the time of the establishment of the Second Persian Empire (A.D. 226), there were bishops of the Church of the East in northwest India, Afghanistan and Baluchistan, with laymen and clergy alike engaging in missionary activity.

The Acts of Thomas identifies his second mission in India with a kingdom ruled by King Mahadwa, one of the rulers of a first-century dynasty in southern India. It is most significant that, aside from a small remnant of the Church of the East in Kurdistan, the only other church to maintain a distinctive identity is the Mar Thoma or “Church of Thomas” congregations along the Malabar Coast of Kerala State in southwest India. According to the most ancient tradition of this church, Thomas evangelized this area and then crossed to the Coromandel Coast of southeast India, where, after carrying out a second mission, he suffered martyrdom near Madras. Throughout the period under review, the church in India was under the jurisdiction of Edessa, which was then under the Mesopotamian patriarchate at Seleucia-Ctesiphon and later at Baghdad and Mosul. Historian Vincent A. Smith says, “It must be admitted that a personal visit of the Apostle Thomas to South India was easily feasible in the traditional belief that he came by way of Socotra, where an ancient Christian settlement undoubtedly existed. I am now satisfied that the Christian church of South India is extremely ancient... ”.

Although there was a lively trade between the Near East and India via Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf, the most direct route to India in the first century was via Alexandria and the Red Sea, taking advantage of the Monsoon winds, which could carry ships directly to and from the Malabar coast. The discovery of large hoards of Roman coins of first-century Caesars and the remains of Roman trading posts testify to the frequency of that trade. in addition, thriving Jewish colonies were to be found at the various trading centers, thereby furnishing obvious bases for the apostolic witness.

Piecing together the various traditions, one may conclude that Thomas left northwest India when invasion threatened and traveled by vessel to the Malabar coast, possibly visiting southeast Arabia and Socotra enroute and landing at the former flourishing port of Muziris on an island near Cochin (c. A.D. 51-52). From there he is said to have preached the gospel throughout the Malabar coast, though the various churches he founded were located mainly on the Periyar River and its tributaries and along the coast, where there were Jewish colonies. He reputedly preached to all classes of people and had about seventeen thousand converts, including members of the four principal castes. Later, stone crosses were erected at the places where churches were founded, and they became pilgrimage centres. In accordance with apostolic custom thomas ordained teachers and leaders or elders, who were reported to be the earliest ministry of the Malabar church.

Thomas next proceeded overland to the Coromandel coast and ministered in what is now the Madras area, where a local king and many people were converted. One tradition related that he went from there to China via Malacca and, after spending some time there, returned to the Madras area (Breviary of the Mar Thoma Church in Malabar). Apparently his renewed ministry outraged the Brahmins, who were fearful lest Christianity undermined their social structure, based on the caste system. So according to the Syriac version of the Acts of Thomas, Masdai, the local king at Mylapore, after questioning the apostle condemned him to death about the year A.D. 72. Anxious to avoid popular excitement, “for many had believed in our Lord, including some of the nobles,”the king ordered Thomas conducted to a nearby mountain, where, after being allowed to pray, he was then stoned and stabbed to death with a lance wielded by an angry Brahmin. A number of Christians were also persecuted at the same time; when they refused to apostatize, their property was confiscated, so some sixty-four families eventually fled to malabar and joined that Christian community.

The agents of missionary expansion in central Asia and the far east were not only monks and clergy trained in the mesopotamian monastic schools, but also in many cases Christian merchants and artisans, often with considerable biblical training. They frequently found employment among people less advanced in education, serving in government offices and as teachers and secretaries and more advanced medical care. they also helped to solve the problem of illiteracy in backward lands by inventing simplified alphabets based on the Syriac language.

Persecution often thrust them forth into new and unevangelized lands to find refuge. The dissemination of the gospel by largely Syriac-using people had its advantages, but it was also a hindrance to indigenizing the church in the new areas. Because Syriac never became dominant, competition from ethnic religions was always a serious problem. For these reasons of political vicissitude, in later centuries Christianity suffered an almost total eclipse in Asia until the modern period. The golden age of early missions in central Asia extended from the end of the fourth to the latter part of the ninth century, although in the Far East Christianity again became resurgent in the latter half of the thirteenth century. An important factor which finally inhibited the permanent establishment of the Church of the East in central Asia and the far East was the expansion of Islam and Mahayana Buddhism.

Christianity had an early and extensive dissemination throughout the vast territory north of Persia and west and East of the Oxus River. As early as the fourth century cities like Merv, Herat and Samarkand had bishops and later became metropolitanates. Christians were found among the Hephthalite Huns from the fifth century, and the Mesopotamian patriarch assigned two bishops (John of Resh-aina and Thomas the Tanner) to both peoples, with the result that many were baptized. They also devised and taught a written language for the Huns and with the help of an Armenian bishop, taught also agricultural methods and skills.

In 644, Abdisho, the metropolitan, had succeeded in drawing a large number of Turks, beyond the Oxus River, into the Church of the East. Colleges were established in Merv and a further monastery was founded there in the eighth century. In fact, so successful were the missionary efforts that it appeared that Christianity might become the dominant faith in the whole region between the Caspian Sea and Xinjiang in Northwest China. The largely animistic and polytheistic religions there offered little or no effective resistance to the higher faith. Moreover, Islam at first made little headway in that area, and the dualistic faith of Manichaeism also had scant appeal. Christian Turks visiting Ctesiphon in connection with the election of a new metropolitan about this time were described as people of clean habits and orthodox beliefs and as readers of the Scriptures in both Syriac and their own language. Though there was a mass conversion of Turks to Islam in the ninth century, the Moslems did not dominate the area until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Once the Christian faith had been established in the valleys of the Oxus and Jaxartes Rivers, it was easily carried further east into the basin of the Tarim River, then into the area north of the Tien Shan Mountains, and finally down into far northwest China, above Tibet. This was the principal caravan route, and with so many Christians engaged in the trade it was natural that the gospel was early planted in the towns and cities which were caravan centers. The Mesopotamian patriarch in the eighth century wrote that he was appointing a metropolitan for Tibet, implying that their churches were numerous enough to require bishops and lesser clergy. Thus Christians were to be found in Xinjiang, and possibly in Tibet, as early as the ninth century. But it was not until the beginning of the eleventh century that the faith spread among the nomadic peoples of this and other central Asian regions. These Christians were chiefly Turko-Tatar peoples, including the Keraits, Onguts, Uyghurs, Naimans, Merkits, and Mongols.

It is unclear exactly when Christianity reached Tibet, but it seems likely that it had arrived there by the sixth century. The ancient territory of the Tibetans stretched farther west and north than the present-day Tibet, and they had many links with the Turkic and Mongolian tribes of Central Asia. It seems likely that Christianity entered the Tibetan world around 549, the time of a remarkable conversion of the White Huns. A strong church existed in Tibet by the eighth century. The Assyrian patriarch Timothy I (780-823) wrote from Baghdad c.794 of the need to appoint another bishop for Tibet (Syriac: Beth Tuptaye), and in a letter of 782 he mentioned the Tibetans as one of the significant Christian communities of the Assyrian Church. The seat of the Assyrian bishops of Tibet was probably at Lhasa, and Assyrian Christians are likely to have been active in Tibet as late as the thirteenth century, prior to the popular extension of Buddhism.

Carved into a large boulder at Tankse, Ladakh, once part of Tibet but now in India, are three crosses and some inscriptions. The rock dominates the entrance to the pass at Drangste, one of the main ancient trade routes between Lhasa and Bactria. The crosses are clearly of the Church of the East, and one of the words, written in Sogdian, appears to be "Jesus". Another inscription in Sogdian reads, "In the year 210 came Nosfarn from Samarkhand as emissary to the Khan of Tibet". It is possible that the inscriptions were not related to the crosses, but even on their own the crosses bear testimony to the power and influence of Christianity in that area. Christianity was sufficiently accepted in the region to warrant carving the Christian symbol to protect travellers.

When Christianity was first introduced to China three major religious systems, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, were already popular there, woven into the ancient traditions and customs of the people. The average Chinese did not regard himself as an exclusive adherent of any one of the three, but rather as a follower of a general Chinese religion made up of both animistic and polytheistic elements which represented a syncretistic conglomeration of ideas. Thus the Church of the East encountered grave difficulties as it sought to introduce the “Luminous Religion” to China. Only in the periods of the Tang (A.D. 618-906) and Yuan (A.D. 1206-1368) dynasties did the gospel enterprise have any considerable degree of success.

It is difficult to determine the exact time when the Christian gospel first reached China. The ancient Breviary of the Syrian church of Malabar (India) states that “By the means of St. Thomas the Chinese...were converted to the truth...By means of St. Thomas the kingdom of heaven flew and entered into China...The Chinese in commemoration of St. Thomas do offer their adoration unto Thy most Holy Name, O God.” Some authors have claimed to have found in a very ancient Taoist writing evidence of a spiritual awakening in China in the latter part of the first century.

Arthur Lloyd relates the story of the Han emperor, Ming-Ti, who in A.D. 64 supposedly had a dream on several successive nights of a man in golden raiment who held in his hand a bow and arrows and pointed the emperor to the West. The emperor was much impressed and resolved to send an embassy to the West to seek out “the true man” of his vision. En route they met two monks from the West leading a white horse laden with Scriptures. They returned with them to China, where the monks gave their message. They died in A.D. 70 but left some writings, out of which developed the “Sutra of the Forty-Two Sections,” a collection of logia containing short, pithy sayings of “the Master” which closely resembled Christian teachings. It has been conjectured that the two monks were actually Christians, disciples of Thomas from India.

Active trade for centuries between China and the West could have brought Christian missionaries at an early date. But aside from one rather obscure reference in the Adversus Gentes by Arnobius (A.D. 303) to “the Chinese as among those united in the faith of Christ, “there is little or no evidence of Christians in China before the Seventh Century. But from then on the evidence of Christianity in China during the T’ang Era (A.D. 618-906) are numerous, including references in Chinese writings, imperial edicts, and in particular the famous inscriptions on the so-called “Nestorian Monument”. During the Táng period conditions were favorable for the introduction of foreign faiths: the lines of international communication were wide open; foreign trade flourished; the government was tolerant toward all faiths; all foreigners were welcome in various capacities. It was in this T’ang Era that the Christianity of the Church of the East first came to be known as the “Luminous Religion” (Jǐng Jiào, 景教).

The “Nestorian Monument” was erected in A.D. 781 near the capital city of Cháng-ān, or Hsianfu (where it was discovered in 1625), to commemorate the charitable acts of a Bactrian Christian who had become noted for his gifts to the poor and his funds for restoring and building churches and monasteries. The top of the monument is adorned not only with a cross but also with the Buddhist emblem of the lotus and the Taoist symbol of the cloud. The writer of the inscription was one Adam, a leader of the “Luminous Religion,” and the calligraphist was one Lu Hsiu-yen (two who later collaborated in some Buddhist writing).

The earlier part of the inscription is in Chinese, with certain Buddhist terms used to express Christian ideas, probably indicating that a distinctly Christian vocabulary had not yet developed in China. The doctrinal statement mentions the triune of God, the Creator of all things, the fall of mankind, the incarnation and virgin birth, the holy life and ascension of Christ, the rite of Baptism, and certain scriptures, but no mention is made of Christ's redemptive death for sin. Following this is an account of how Alopen of Dà-chín (the Near East, especially Syria or Persia) arrived in Ch’angan in 635 bearing the Scriptures. He was welcomed by the emperor T’ai Tsung, the founder of the Tang Dynasty and one of the most famous of Chinese rulers. The emperor, having examined the sacred writings, ordered their translation and the preaching of their message. He also directed the building of a Christian monastery in his capital. According to the inscription, his successor, the emperor Kao Tsung, also encouraged Christianity and ordered the building of a monastery in each province of his domain.

The second part of the monument was written in Syriac and listed some sixty-seven names: one bishop, twenty-eight presbyters, and thirty-eight monks. Some of these have been verified from Assyrian church records. The inscription displays considerable grace of literary style, and the allusions and phraseology reveal competence in both Chinese and Syriac and familiarity with both Buddhism and Taoism. Ancient Christian manuscripts were also discovered at Dunhuang from about the same period and are written in the literary style of the Monument. These include a “Hymn to the Trinity” and refer to at least thirty Christian books, indicating that considerable Christian literature was in circulation.

The 250-year span of the Christian movement in the T’ang period was characterized by vicissitudes of imperial favor and prosperity, persecution and decline. Christianity fared badly during the reign of the infamous Dowager Wu (689-699), who was an ardent Buddhist. However, several succeeding emperors were favorable, and the missionary forces were reinforced from time to time. Furthermore, a number of Christians served in high official positions. By the end of the eighth century a metropolitan had been consecrated and assigned by the Mesopotamian patriarch. About the middle of the ninth century the ardent Taoist emperor Wu Tsung proscribed Buddhism and ordered all monks and nuns to return to private life; he included all the Christians in this interdiction. It was probably in connection with this persecution that the Nestorian Monument was buried or hidden and did not come to light until modern times. The Christian church apparently continued in a feeble state for some time, though isolated Christian remnants survived. The resurgence of the Christian faith had to await the Mongol conquest and the rise of the Yuan Dynasty in the thirteenth century.

The trade routes of the ‘Silk Road’ are also known to have reached Korea, Japan, and what is today eastern Russia by this time, contributing to these exchanges. Against this background it is from China, in particular from Chang-an during the Tang Dynasty, that Christianity also first came to Korea and Japan. In the case of Korea, where Christianity seems to have been present, evidence has been found in the Korean Chronicles Sanguk Yusa and Sanguksa, for the presence of ‘Nestorian’ Christianity during the united Silla Dynasty (661-935). This is not unexpected in the light of the known presence of Koreans at the Tang capital, Chang-an, in the seventh to ninth centuries.

The later inclusion of present-day Korea within the Mongol Empire (from 1236) opened the peninsula to Nestorian missionaries who enjoyed full acceptance from the early khans, throughout their territories. In the fourteenth century, when the Koryo state remained under Mongol control, Koryo crown princes were held hostage in Khanbaliq and often forced to marry Mongol princesses. Some of these were Nestorian Christians.

There has been a continuous Orthodox presence in the Philippines for at least 200 years with the arrival of Greek settlers in Manila as early as the 17th century.

An influx of Russian émigrés fleeing the Soviet Union occurred during the American colonial period.[3] In 1935, a Russian parish was established in Manila, and the Episcopal Church then permitted the use the north transept of their cathedral for worship. It is said that in 1937, the first Orthodox church was built, which also housed the first Orthodox altar in the Philippines. Later, both the Episcopal cathedral and the Orthodox church in Manila were destroyed during the Second World War.

In 1949, 5,500 Russian Orthodox from China, including then-Archbishop John Maximovitch, were relocated to the island of Tubabao in the south-central Philippines by the International Refugee Organization and with the permission of the newly independent Republic of the Philippines. Maximovitch then established a makeshift wooden church, orphanage, and other buildings in Tubabao exclusively for the Russian refugees. Tubabao, however, was (and still is) an underdeveloped island which is humid (typical of the Philippine climate), prone to typhoons, and at times inaccessible due to the ocean conditions. When a Russian refugee commented to the locals on their fear that a typhoon would destroy their camp, they replied that there was nothing to worry about because “your holy man blesses your camp from four directions every night,” and indeed, there were no typhoons or floods while Maximovitch was there. Maximovitch did not preach the Orthodox faith to the natives: no Filipino was baptized, chrismated, ordained, or consecrated by him during his stay in the country. Through the persistent lobbying of Maximovitch to the United States Congress, the refugees were eventually allowed in 1951 to settle in the United States and Australia.

In 1996, the Orthodox Metropolitanate of Hong Kong and Southeast Asia was created for the needs of the faithful in Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and India.
Today, there are some 560 Orthodox in the Philippines under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Christianity in Asia

fatman2021 — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:00:10 CST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Christianity in Asia has its roots in the very inception of Christianity, which originated in the western part of the Asian continent in the area of the Levant, at the beginning of the 1st millennium AD.

According to tradition, the Christian movement was started by Jesus Christ, and then spread through the missionary work of his Apostles. Christianity first expanded in the Levant, taking roots in the major cities, such as Jerusalem and Antioch.

Christianity spread from Western Asia to China between the 1st to the 14th century AD, and further to Eastern Asia from the 16th century with the European Age of Discovery.

Christianity spread through the Levant from the 1st century CE. One of the key centers of Christianity became the city of Antioch, previous capital of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire. It was evangelized perhaps by Peter the Apostle, according to the tradition upon which the Antiochene patriarchate still rests its claim for primacy (cf. Acts xi.), and certainly by Barnabas and Paul. Its converts were the first to be called Christians (Acts 11:26). They multiplied exceedingly, and by the time of Theodosius were reckoned by Chrysostom at about 100,000 people. Between 252 and 300, ten assemblies of the church were held at Antioch and it became the seat of one of the four original patriarchates, along with Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Rome (see Pentarchy). During the 4th century, Antioch was one of the three most important cities in the eastern Roman empire (along with Alexandria and Constantinople), which led to it being recognized as the seat of one of the five early Christian patriarchates (see Pentarchy). In Armenia, the Armenian Church was founded by two of Jesus' twelve apostles -Thaddaeus and Bartholomew- who preached Christianity in Armenia between 40-60 CE. Because of these two founding apostles, the official name of the Armenian Church is Armenian Apostolic Church. Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion, in 301. In Georgia, Christianity was first preached by the Apostles Simon and Andrew in the first century, and became the state religion of Kartli (Iberia) in 327, making Georgia the second oldest Christian country after Armenia. The final conversion of Georgia to Christianity in 327 is credited to St. Nino of Cappadocia. Christianity further spread eastward under the Parthian Empire, which displayed a high tolerance of religious matters. According to tradition, Christian proselytism in Central Asia, starting with Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau, was put under the responsibility of Saint Thomas the Apostle, and started in the first century CE. Saint Thomas is also credited with the establishment of Christianity in India. The Christians of Mesopotamia and Iran were organized under several bishops, of whom at least one is known by name, and were present at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. The spread of Christianity in Central Asia seems to have been facilitated by the great diffusion of Greek in the region (Seleucid Empire, Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Indo-Greek Kingdom), as well as Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ. The spread of the Jews in Asia since the deportation from Babylone and the capture of Jerusalem by Titus also seems to have been a contributing factor. The earliest known references to Christian communities in Central Asia is from a writing by Bar Daisan around 196 AD: "Nor do our sisters among the Gilanians and Bactrians have any intercourse with strangers". The Sasanians also proved rather tolerant of the Christian faith until the persecution by the Zoroastrian priest Kartir under Bahram II (276−93 AD). Further persecutions seems to have taken place under Shapur II (310-379) and Yazdegerd II (438-457), with 338 events having brought significant damage to the faith.

According to tradition, the Indo-Parthian king Gondophares was proselytized by St Thomas, who continued on to southern India.

According to Eusebius' record, Thomas and Bartholomew were assigned to Parthia (modern Iran) and India. The Didache (dating from the end of the first century) states, “India and all countries condering it, even to the farthest seas...received the apostolic ordinances from Judas Thomas (same as the Apostle Thomas), who was a guide and ruler in the church which he built.” Moreover, there is a wealth of confirmatory information in the Syriac writings, liturgical books, and calendars of the Church of the East, not to mention the writings of the Fathers, the calendars, the sacramentaries, and the martyrologies of the Roman, Greek and Ethiopian churches. Since trade routes from the East were wide open at the time and were used by early missionaries, there are no circumstantial reasons why Thomas could not have visited India in the first century. And his visit is the most plausible explanation for the early appearance of the church there. An early third-century Syriac work known as the Acts of Thomas connects the apostle's Indian ministry with two kings, one in the north and the other in the south. According to one of the legends in the Acts, Thomas was at first reluctant to accept this mission, but the Lord appeared to him in a night vision and said, “Fear not, Thomas. Go away to India and proclaim the Word, for my grace shall be with you.”But the Apostle still demurred, do the Lord overruled the stubborn disciple by ordering circumstances so compelling that he was forced to accompany an Indian merchant, Abbanes, to his native place in northwest India, where he found himself in the service of the Indo-Parthian king, Gondophares. The apostle's ministry resulted in many conversions throughout the kingdom, including the king and his brother. Critical historians treated this legend as an idle tale and denied the historicity of King Gundaphorus until modern archeology established him as an important figure in North India in the latter half of the first century. Many coins of his reign have turned up in Afghanistan, the Punjab, and the Indus Valley. Remains of some of his buildings , influenced by Greek architecture, indicate that he was a great builder. Interestingly enough, according to the legend, Thomas was a skilled carpenter and was bidden to build a palace for the king. However, the Apostle decided to teach the king a lesson by devoting the royal grant to acts of charity and thereby laying up treasure for the heavenly abode. Although little is known of the immediate growth of the church, Bar-Daisan (AD 154-223) reports that in his time there were Christian tribes in North India which claimed to have been converted by Thomas and to have books and relics to prove it. But at least by the time of the establishment of the Second Persian Empire (AD 226), there were bishops of the Church of the East in northwest India, Afghanistan and Baluchistan, with laymen and clergy alike engaging in missionary activity. The apocryphal Acts of Thomas (3rd century) identifies his second mission in India with a kingdom ruled by King Mahadwa, one of the rulers of a first-century dynasty in southern India. It is most significant that, aside from a small remnant of the Church of the East in Kurdistan, the only other church to maintain a distinctive identity is the Mar Thoma or “Church of Thomas” congregations along the Malabar Coast of Kerala State in southwest India. According to the most ancient tradition of this church, Thomas evangelized this area and then crossed to the Coromandel Coast of southeast India, where, after carrying out a second mission, he suffered martyrdom near Madras. Throughout the period under review, the church in India was under the jurisdiction of Edessa, which was then under the Mesopotamian patriarchate at Seleucia-Ctesiphon and later at Baghdad and Mosul. Historian Vincent A. Smith says, "It must be admitted that a personal visit of the Apostle Thomas to South India was easily feasible in the traditional belief that he came by way of Socotra, where an ancient Christian settlement undoubtedly existed. I am now satisfied that the Christian church of South India is extremely ancient...'' Although there was a lively trade between the Near East and India via Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf, the most direct route to India in the first century was via Alexandria and the Red Sea, taking advantage of the Monsoon winds, which could carry ships directly to and from the Malabar coast. The discovery of large hoards of Roman coins of first-century Caesars and the remains of Roman trading posts testify to the frequency of that trade. in addition, thriving Jewish colonies were to be found at the various trading centers, thereby furnishing obvious bases for the apostolic witness. Piecing together the various traditions, one may conclude that Thomas left northwest India when invasion threatened and traveled by vessel to the Malabar coast, possibly visiting southeast Arabia and Socotra enroute and landing at the former flourishing port of Muziris on an island near Cochin (c. AD 51-52). From there he is said to have preached the gospel throughout the Malabar coast, though the various churches he founded were located mainly on the Periyar River and its tributaries and along the coast, where there were Jewish colonies. he reputedly preached to all classes of people and had about seventeen thousand converts, including members of the four principal castes. Later, stone crosses were erected at the places where churches were founded, and they became pilgrimage centres. In accordance with apostolic custom thomas ordained teachers and leaders or elders, who were reported to be the earliest ministry of the Malabar church. Thomas next proceeded overland to the Coromandel coast and ministered in what is now the Madras area, where a local king and many people were converted. One tradition related that he went from there to China via Malacca and, after spending some time there, returned to the Madras area (Breviary of the Mar Thoma Church in Malabar). Apparently his renewed ministry outraged the Brahmins, who were fearful lest Christianity undermined their social structure, based on the caste system. So according to the Syriac version of the Acts of Thomas, Masdai, the local king at Mylapore, after questioning the apostle condemned him to death about the year AD 72. Anxious to avoid popular excitement, “for many had believed in our Lord, including some of the nobles,”the king ordered Thomas conducted to a nearby mountain, where, after being allowed to pray, he was then stoned and stabbed to death with a lance wielded by an angry Brahmin. A number of Christians were also persecuted at the same time; when they refused to apostatize, their property was confiscated, so some sixty-four families eventually fled to malabar and joined that Christian community. In 410 the Sassanid emperor summoned the Persian church leaders to the Synod of Seleucia. His purpose was to make the Catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon minority leader of his people and personally responsible for their good conduct throughout the Persian empire. The synod accepted the emperor's wish. In 424 the bishops of Persia met in council under the leadership of Catholicos Dadiso and determined that there would be no reference of their disciplinary or theological problems to any other power, especially not to any church council in the Roman Empire. The formal separation from the See of Antioch and the western Syrian Church under the Roman (Byzantine) Emperors, occurred at this synod in 424. Because of its independence, there were no representatives of the Persian Church at the First Council of Ephesus in 431, and of course they did not feel bound in any way whatsoever by any decisions of that or any subsequent church councils in the Roman Empire. It was the Council of Ephesus which decided the question of the title of the mother of Jesus and lead to the condemnation of Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople. The theological nicety of ‘Theotokos’ as her title rather than ‘Christotokos’, was irrelevant to the Persian Christians and those further east. They were Greek terms, and the Persian Church used Syriac, not Greek. Later European church historians decided to categorize the Persian Church as the "Nestorian Church", an historically inaccurate, theologically incorrect, and heresiologically motivated insult. The present head of the Assyrian Church of the East, Catholicos Patriarch Mar Dinkha IV, explicitly rejected the term Nestorian, on the occasion of his consecration in 1976. In 1988, Anglican Church leaders publicly repudiated the use of this label for the Assyrian Church of the East. Proselytism combined with sporadic Sassanian persecutions to encourage the spread of Christinity to the east. Since the Edict of Milan (313) Christianity was considered as state religion of the Roman Empire, and therefore considered as a political threat by the Sassanians. They are known to have exiled Christian communities to the east, such as a community of Orthodox Melchites who were installed in Romagyri near Tashkent, or a community of Jacobites, who were sent to Yarkand in the Xinjiang at the doorstep of China. The Hephthalites are known to have been open somewhat to Christianity since 498, and they requested the Assyrian Catholicos to establis a diocesan bishop in their lands in 549. Christianity continued its eastward development. By 650, there were 20 Assyrian dioceses east of the Oxus river. The development of Islam started to cut off Asian Christianity from the western Christians, but eastern expansion of the faith continued nonetheless. Relations with Islam were good enough for the Catholicos to leave Seleucia-Ctesiphon to set up his seat in Baghdad upon the establishment of the Abbassids in 750. From the 7th century onward, the nomadic Turks of Central Asia started to convert to Assyrian Christianity. Mass conversions are recorded in 781−2 and later in 1007, when 200,000 Turks and Mongols reportedly became Christians. The Turkish Kipchaks are also known to have converted to Christianity at the suggestion of the Georgians as they allied in their conflicts against the Muslims. A great number were baptized at the request of the Georgian king David II. From 1120, there was a Kipchak national Christian church and an important clergy.

The Nestorian Stele in China, erected in 781. The title is :大秦景教流行中國碑 "Stele of the propagation of the luminous Roman faith in China"

Assyrian Christian tombstone with inscriptions in Uyghur, found in Issyk Kul, dated 1312.

Overall, Mongols were highly tolerant of most religions, and typically sponsored several at the same time. They had been proselytized by Assyrian Christian since about the 7th century. William of Rubruck was shocked to discover that there were, indeed, Christians at the Mongol court. He categorised them as schismatic Nestorians. Assyrian Christians had long been active along the Silk Road. Their existence in Tang China is testified by the "Nestorian monument", a stele still to be seen in the forest of Stelae in Xi'an. Many Mongol tribes, such as the Kerait, who were a semi-nomadic people of Turkish origin, and inhabited the country round the Orkhon river in modern Outer Mongolia also became Christian. Early in the eleventh century their ruler converted to Assyrian Christianity, together with most of his subjects; and the conversion brought the Keraits into touch with the Uighur Turks, amongst whom were many Assyrian Christians. The Naiman, the Merkit, and to a large extent the Kara Khitan, were also Assyrian Christian. In 1196, Genghis Khan succeeded in the unification under his authority of all the Mongol tribes, some of which had been converted to Assyrian Christianity.

The founder of the Mongol Empire, Genghis Khan (1162-1227) was a shamanist, but was tolerant of other religions. The Assyrian Christians of Central Asia were generally highly favorable towards him. His sons were married to Christian princesses of the Kerait clan, such as Sorghaghtani Beki and Doquz Khatan. This remarkable lady was a Kerait princess, the granddaughter of Toghrul Khan and cousin, therefore of Hulagu's mother. She was a passionate Assyrian Christian, who made no secret of her dislike of Islam and her eagerness to help Christians of every sect. She held considerable influence at the court of the Khan.

Under the rule of Genghis's grandson Möngke Khan (1205-1259), son of Sorghaghtani, the main religious influence was that of the Assyrian Christians, to whom Mongka showed especial favour in memory of his mother Sorghaqtani, who had always remained loyal to her faith.

Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons

fatman2021 — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:30:26 CST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The history of Christianity in England from the Roman departure to the Norman Conquest is often told as one of conflict between the Celtic Christianity spread by the Irish mission, and Roman Christianity brought across by Augustine of Canterbury. Ultimately, though, it was more of a creative symbiosis.

Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England began around AD 600, influenced by Celtic Christianity from the north-west and by the Roman Catholic Church from the south-east, gradually replacing Anglo-Saxon polytheism which had been introduced to what is now England over the course of the 5th and 6th centuries with the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. The first Archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine took office in 597. In 601, he baptised the first Christian Anglo-Saxon king, Æthelberht of Kent. The last pagan Anglo-Saxon/Jutish king, Arwald, died in 686.

Æthelberht of Kent's wife Bertha, daughter of Charibert, one of the Merovingian kings of the Franks, had brought a chaplain (Liudhard) with her. Bertha had restored a church from Roman times to the east of Canterbury and dedicated it to Saint Martin of Tours, the patronal saint for the Merovingian royal family. Æthelberht himself, though a pagan, allowed his wife to worship God her own way. Probably under influence of his wife, Æthelberht asked Pope Gregory I to send missionaries, and in 596 the Pope dispatched Augustine, together with a party of monks.

Typical Saxon altar as seen in Escomb Church.

Augustine had served as praepositus (prior) of the monastery of Saint Andrew in Rome, founded by Gregory. His party lost heart on the way and Augustine went back to Rome from Provence and asked his superiors to abandon the mission project. The pope, however, commanded and encouraged continuation, and Augustine and his followers landed on the Island of Thanet in the spring of 597.

Æthelberht permitted the missionaries to settle and preach in his town of Canterbury. By the end of the year he himself had converted, and Augustine received consecration as a bishop at Arles. At Christmas 10,000 of the king's subjects underwent baptism.

Augustine sent a report of his success to Gregory with certain questions concerning his work. In 601 Mellitus, Justus and others brought the pope's replies, with the pallium for Augustine and a present of sacred vessels, vestments, relics, books, and the like. Gregory directed the new archbishop to ordain as soon as possible twelve suffragan bishops and to send a bishop to York, who should also have twelve suffragans. Augustine did not carry out this papal plan, nor did he establish the primatial see at London as Gregory intended, as the Londoners remained heathen. Augustine did consecrate Mellitus as bishop of London and Justus as bishop of Rochester.

Pope Gregory issued more practicable mandates concerning heathen temples and usages: he desired that temples become consecrated to Christian service and asked Augustine to transform pagan practices, so far as possible, into dedication ceremonies or feasts of martyrs, since "he who would climb to a lofty height must go up by steps, not leaps" (letter of Gregory to Mellitus, in Bede, i, 30).

Augustine reconsecrated and rebuilt an old church at Canterbury as his cathedral and founded a monastery in connection with it. He also restored a church and founded the monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul outside the walls. He died before completing the monastery, but now lies buried in the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul.
In 616 Æthelbert of Kent died. The kingdom of Kent and the associated Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which Kent had had influence over relapsed into heathenism for several decades.

The Synod of Whitby in 664 forms a significant watershed in that King Oswiu of Northumbria decided to follow Roman rather than Celtic practices. The spokesman of the dominant faction was St. Wilfrid, who had been much impressed by the power and lavish life style of the Roman Church in comparison with the austerity and subservience to local rulers of the Celtic Church. Using subsidiary arguments about Easter and the tonsure, Wilfrid established the model of the Church as not ultimately answerable to the local king but to the Archbishop and to the Pope. It became a tradition for each Archbishop of Canterbury to receive the pallium from the Pope in Rome This issue was to be frequently revisited until the Reformation.

The Anglo-Saxon mission on the continent took off in the 8th century, assisting the Christianisation of practically all of the Frankish Empire by AD 800.

The Benedictine reform was led by St. Dunstan over the latter half of the 10th century. It sought to revive church piety by replacing secular canons- often under the direct influence of local landowners, and often their relatives- with celibate monks, answerable to the ecclesiastical hierarchy and ultimately to the Pope. This deeply split England, bringing it to the point of civil war, with the East Anglian nobility (such as Athelstan Half-King, Byrhtnoth) supporting Dunstan and the Wessex aristocracy (Ordgar, Æthelmær the Stout) supporting the secularists These factions mobilsed around King Eadwig (anti-Dunstan) and his brother King Edgar (pro). On the death of Edgar, his son Edward the Martyr was assassinated by the anti-Dunstan faction and their candidate, the young king Æthelred was placed on the throne. However this "most terrible deed since the English came from over the sea" provoked such a revulsion that the secularists climbed down, although Dunstan was effectively retired. This split fatally weakened the country in the face of renewed Viking attacks.

Since the Church enjoyed an almost complete monopoly on literacy at this period, it undertook many more functions than we would expect today. The Church functioned as a civil service, drafting legal documents, the education and social services. The Exchequer was run by the Church. On occasion Bishops would even provide military and political leadership. Trial by ordeal was carried out by monks. The Church had a priest in every village, which also enabled them to function as a mass medium. The Church was a huge landowner in its own right. Throughout the period Christian kings were reluctant to lay hands on priests, which prevented the usual cut and thrust of politics applying to them — except for the pagan Vikings. Even with them the Church was able to convert them, thus partially defusing their threat.

Christianization of Hungary

fatman2021 — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:25:09 CST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article deals with the history of the Kingdom of Hungary from the 10th century to c. 1526.

Note that, although strictly speaking a "kingdom" arose only in AD 1000 and a Hungarian state or principality only in the late 9th century, this text also describes its early development after the year 896 when the Magyars arrived in the Carpathian Basin.

The term "Kingdom of Hungary" is often used to denote the multiethnic configuration of territories in order to draw a clear distinction with the modern Hungarian state, which is significantly smaller and more ethnically homogeneous. Prior to and in the 19th century, the term Hungarian in English and other languages often referred to any inhabitant of this state, regardless of his or her ethnicity.

The Latin terms "natio Hungarica" and "Hungarus" referred to all noblemen of the kingdom. A Hungarus-consciousness (loyalty and patriotism above ethnic origins) existed among many inhabitants of this state, however according to István Werbőczy's Tripartitum Natio Hungarica or Hungarus were only the privileged noblemen, subjects of the Holy Crown regardless of ethnicity.

In the four centuries after their migration into the Carpathian Basin, the Magyars gradually developed from a loose confederation of tribes into a recognized kingdom. This kingdom, which became known as the Kingdom of Hungary, was led by the Árpád Dynasty and was firmly allied to the Christian West. Eventually the Árpád line died out and the Kingdom of Hungary again descended into anarchy, with the most powerful nobles vying for control.

The Holy Roman Empire at Otto's death.

Mgft. = march/margraviate Hzt. = duchy Kgr. = kingdom

After the Árpád Dynasty ended, Hungary's nobles chose a series of foreign kings who re-established strong royal authority. Hungary and the adjacent countries prospered for several centuries as Central Europe, and experienced an era of peace interrupted only by succession struggles. But over time, the onslaughts of the Ottoman Empire and the strife of the Reformation weakened Hungary, and the country was eventually partitioned by the Ottomans and the Habsburgs.

The bonds linking the seven Magyar tribes grew frail soon after the migration into the Carpathian Basin. At that time, Europe was weak and disunited, and for more than half a century Magyars taxed Bavaria, Great Moravia, Italy, the Byzantine Empire, and lands as far away as the Pyrenees. In 907, Margrave Luitpold of Bavaria built up his army and attempted to score a decisive victory against the Magyars. The European army included about 100,000 soldiers, but they were defeated by Árpád's army in Battle of Brezalauspurc. In 910 The Magyars defeated Louis the Child's united Frankish Imperial Army near Augsburg. From 917-925, Magyars raided through Basle, Alsace, Burgundy, Saxony, and Provence. In 937, they raided France as far west as Reims and Italy as far as Otranto in the south. Sometimes fighting as mercenaries and sometimes lured by spoils alone, the Magyar bands looted towns and took captives for labor, ransom, or sale on the slave market. The Byzantine emperor and European monarchs and princes paid the Magyars annual tribute. In 955, however, German armies under Otto I of the Holy Roman Empire destroyed a Magyar force near Augsburg (Battle of Lechfeld). The defeat effectively ended the Magyar raids against western Europe, although the raids on the Byzantine Empire continued until 970.

Hungary in the 11th century

In the 970s—as a pressing result of the changed domestic and foreign affairs—chief prince Géza adopted Christianity, the faith of the victors, and started spreading it in the country. At the same time he started to organize the central power, too. He hardly ever made war against foreign countries during his 25-year-long princely rule. His peace policy was reinforced by dynastic marriages—which were quite usual at that time—between his children and members of foreign ruling families, in order to consolidate the rule of the Magyars in the Carpathian Basin by other European countries.

Géza's efforts to establish a stable state power and guarantee the throne for his son were not successful because he had to share the country with the other members of the principal family. Prince Koppány also laid claim to the throne. In the Hungarian succession the theory of seniority—the right of the oldest living brother—prevailed. Koppány also laid claim upon the principal's widow, Sarolt. Géza's will, that his first-born son should inherit the throne, contradicted the ancestral right.

In connection with adopting Christianity, the question of vital importance was whether Hungary should join the western or the Eastern Orthodox Church. Initially (around 948) the Hungarian noblemen joined the Byzantine Church. In the autumn of 972 Saint Adalbert of Prague was sent as bishop of the Hungarians by Pope Silvester II to spread western Christianity among the Hungarians. He christened Géza and his family. His wife, Sharolt, had been baptized by a Greek bishop in her early childhood. The decision to accept the second christening was dictated by foreign relations. The last phase of the Hungarian raids was directed against the southeast, and this alienated the Byzantines. It may have been a warning to the Hungarian principality when the Byzantine emperor abolished the political and religious independence of Bulgaria.

Holy Crown of Hungary.

Consequently, the Hungarian chief prince needed the political, moral, and occasional military help of the German empire because of the Byzantine threat. Adopting western Christianity was thus both a cultural and a political event for the Hungarians. During Géza's reign, the plundering campaigns came to an end. His efforts to establish a country independent of other powers was almost successful before he died.

Europe in 1000 AD, during Stephen I's rule.

The Old Hungarian script, the so-called "Rovás alphabet" The country switched to using the Latin language and alphabet under king saint Stephen (reigned: 997-1038), and until as late as 1844, Latin remained the official language of Hungary

When Geza died the issue of succession to the throne created tension at the court: by ancestral right Koppány should have claimed the throne, but Geza chose his first-born son to be his successor. The fight in the chief prince's family started after Géza's death, in 997. Koppány took up arms, and many people in Transdanubia joined him. The rebels represented the old faith and order, the ancient human rights, tribal independence and the pagan belief. His opposer, Vajk Stephen, got the name István/Stephen when he was christened, at that time the prince of Nitra, supported by the loyal Magyar lords and German and Italian knights wanted to join European Christian community of independent states. Stephen won the throne struggle and became chieftain/prince. The victory of the Christian István over the pagan Koppány in the battle for succession was of the utmost importance in determining the future course of Hungarian history.

Stephen consolidated his rule by ousting other rival clan chiefs and confiscating their lands. Stephen then asked Pope Sylvester II to recognize him as king of Hungary. The pope agreed, and legend says Stephen was crowned on Christmas Day in the year 1000. The crowning legitimized Hungary as a Western kingdom independent of the Holy Roman and Byzantine empires. It also gave Stephen virtually absolute power, which he used to strengthen the Roman Catholic Church and Hungary. Stephen ordered the people to pay tithes and required every tenth village to construct a church and support a priest. Stephen donated land to support bishoprics and monasteries, required all persons except the clergy to marry, and barred marriages between Christians and pagans. Foreign monks worked as teachers and introduced Western agricultural methods. In the earliest times Hungarian language was written in a runic-like script. The country switched to the Latin alphabet under Stephen. From 1000 to 1844, Latin was the official language of the country.

Stephen administered his kingdom through a system of counties (administrative model of Frankish Empire), each governed by an ispan count, or magistrate, appointed by the king. In Stephen's time, Magyar society had two classes: the freemen nobles and the unfree. The nobles were descended in the male line from the Magyars who had either migrated into the Carpathian Basin or had received their title of nobility from the king. Only nobles could hold office or present grievances to the king. They paid tithes and owed the crown military service but were exempt from taxes. The unfree—who had no political voice—were slaves, freed slaves, immigrants, or nobles stripped of their privileges. Most were serfs who paid taxes to the king and a part of each harvest to their lord for use of his land. The king had direct control of the unfree, thus checking the nobles' power.

Clan lands, crown lands, and former crown lands made up the early realm. Clan lands belonged to nobles, who could will the lands to family members or the church; if a noble died without an heir, his land reverted to his clan. Crown lands consisted of Stephen's patrimony, lands seized from disloyal nobles, conquered lands, and unoccupied parts of the kingdom. Former crown lands were properties granted by the king to the church or to individuals. Stephen also subdued semi-independent princes like Ajtony in South-Hungary near the Mureş River (Maros) and Gyula in Transylvania.

Stephen died in 1038 and was canonized in 1083. Despite pagan revolts and a series of succession struggles after his death, Hungary grew stronger and expanded. Transylvania was defended against nomads from the east, and Székelys (a tribe related to the Magyars), and Saxons were settled in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Stephen created the Hungarian heavy cavalry as an example for Western European powers.

After his death, a period of revolts and conflict for supremacy ensued between the royalty and the nobles. In 1051, armies of the Holy Roman Empire tried to conquer Hungary, but they were defeated at Vértes mountain and at Pozsony in 1052.

In 1091 Ladislaus I of Hungary conquered Croatia. According to an alternative history based on the document Pacta Conventa, which is most likely a forgery Hungary and Croatia created a personal union. There is no undoubtedley genuine document of the personal union, and medieval sources mention the annexation into the Hungarian kingdom.
The eleventh and twelfth centuries were relatively peaceful, and Hungary slowly developed into a western type of feudal economy. Crop production gradually supplemented stock breeding, but until the twelfth century planting methods remained crude because tillers farmed each plot until it was exhausted, then moved on to fresh land. Gold, silver, and salt mining boosted the king's revenues. Despite the minting of coins, cattle remained the principal medium of exchange. Two important kings led portions of the remainder of the Árpád dynasty.

King Coloman published his most famous law half a millennium before other governments: De strigis vero quae non sunt, nulla amplius quaestio fiat (As for the matter of witches, no such things exist, therefore no further investigations or trials are to be held).

Béla III was the most powerful and wealthiest member of the dynasty. Béla spent annual the equivalent of 23,000 kilograms (51,000 lb) of pure silver. It exceeded those of the French king (estimated at some 17,000 kilograms (37,000 lb)) and was double the receipts of the English Crown. He rolled back the Byzantine potency in the Balkan region. Agricultural methods and the clearing of additional land produced enough surplus to support a class of full-time craftsmen. In the thirteenth century Hungary's nobles were trading gold, silver, copper, and iron with western Europe for luxury goods.

Europe in 1190, during Bela III's rule.

The red and white stripes symbolizing the Árpáds used in 1202 on a seal of King Imre. This coat of arms was used for a short time only.

Until the end of the twelfth century, the king's power remained paramount in Hungary. He was the largest landowner, and income from the crown lands nearly equaled the revenues generated from mines, customs, tolls, and the mint. In the thirteenth century, however, the social structure changed, and the crown's absolute power began to wane. As the crown lands became a less important source of royal revenues, the king found it expedient to make land grants to nobles to ensure their loyalty. King Andrew II (1205-35), a profligate spender on foreign military adventures and domestic luxury, made huge land grants to nobles who fought for him. These nobles, some of whom were foreign knights, soon made up a class of magnates whose wealth and power far outstripped that of the more numerous lesser nobles.

In 1211, he granted the Burzenland (Transylvania) to the Teutonic Knights. In 1225, Andrew II expelled the Teutonic Knights from Transylvania, hence Teutonic Order had to transfer to the Baltic sea. He led the Fifth Crusade to the Holy Land in 1217. He set up the largest royal army in the history of crusades (20,000 knights and 12,000 castle-garrisons). When Andrew tried to meet burgeoning expenses by raising the serfs' taxes, thereby indirectly slashing the lesser nobles' incomes, the lesser nobles rebelled. In 1222 they forced Andrew to sign the Golden Bull. The Golden Bull of 1222 was the first constitution in Continental Europe. It limited the king's power. The golden Bull—the Hungarian equivalent of England’s Magna Carta—to which every Hungarian king thereafter had to swear. Its purpose was twofold: to reaffirm the rights of the smaller nobles of the old and new classes of royal servants (servientes regis) against both the crown and the magnates and to defend those of the whole nation against the crown by restricting the powers of the latter in certain fields and legalizing refusal to obey its unlawful/unconstitutional commands (the "ius resistendi"). The lesser nobles also began to present Andrew with grievances, a practice that evolved into the institution of the parliament, or Diet. The most important legal-ideology was the Doctrine of the Holy Crown. Important points of the Doctrine: The sovereignty belongs to the noble nation==>(the Holy Crown). The members of the Holy Crown are the citizens of the Crown's lands. None can reach full power. The nation is sharing a portion of the political power with the ruler. Minority cannot rule over majority. ( against tyranny and oligarchy ) .

Andrew II's son Béla IV (1235-79) tried with little success to reestablish royal preeminence by reacquiring lost crown lands. His efforts, however, created a deep rift between the crown and the magnates just as the Mongols were sweeping westward across Russia toward Europe. Aware of the danger, Bela ordered the magnates and lesser nobles to mobilize. Few responded, and the Tatars (Mongols) routed Bela's army at the Battle of Mohi on April 11, 1241. Bela fled first to Austria, where Duke Frederick II of Babenberg held him for ransom, then to Dalmatia. The Tatars (Mongols) reduced Hungary's towns and villages to ashes and slaughtered a great part (estimations go to 25-30%) of the population before news arrived in 1242 that the Great Ögedei Khan had died in Karakorum. The Tatars (Mongols) withdrew, sparing Bela and what remained of his kingdom. Another theory says, that Ögodei's death wasn't the only reason for the withdrawal of the Tatar (Mongol) Army. It is also possible that the leadership of the army realized that the campaign wasn't so successful as thought, due to the well-fortified castles and towns, and this would lead to a demoralisation soon. Therefore they decided to abort the campaign. The biggest calamity for the population were the periods of diseases and food shortages after the Mongol invasion. Only strongly fortified cities and abbeys could withstand the assault. As a consequence, after the Mongols retreated, King Béla ordered the construction of hundreds of stone castles and fortifications, meant to be defense against a possible second Mongol invasion.
Bela realized that reconstruction would require the magnates' support, so he abandoned his attempts to recover former crown lands. Instead, he granted crown lands to his supporters, reorganized the army by replacing light archers with heavy cavalry, and granted the magnates concessions to redevelop their lands and construct stone-and-mortar castles that would withstand enemy sieges. Bela repopulated the country with a wave of immigrants, transforming royal castles into towns and populating them with Germans, Italians, and Jews. Mining began anew, farming methods improved, and crafts and commerce developed in the towns. Romanian (Wallachs)—who already had settlings in Transylvania—were also welcome. Furthermore he resettled the Cumans of Cuthen, who left the country before the Tatar invasion into Kunság/Kiskunság/Nagykunság, and gave them autonomy. After Bela's reconstruction program, the magnates, with their new fortifications, emerged as Hungary's most powerful political force. However, by the end of the thirteenth century, they were fighting each other and carving out petty principalities.
Mongols returned to Hungary in 1286, but the new built stone-castle systems and new tactics (using higher ratio of heavy knights) stopped them. The invading Mongol force was defeated near Pest by the royal army of Ladislaus IV of Hungary.

King Bela IV died in 1270, and the Árpad line expired in 1301 when Andrew III, who strove with some success to limit the magnates' power, unexpectedly died without a male heir. Anarchy characterized Hungary as factions of magnates vied for control. During the reigns of the Kings after the Árpád dynasty, the Kingdom of Hungary reached its greatest extent, yet royal power was weakened as the major landlords (the Barons) greatly increased their influence. The most powerful landlords started to use royal prerogatives (coinage ,customs, declaration of wars against foreign monarchs).

"Medieval Hungarian constitutional development made the power of Hungarian Kings the most efficient one of medieval age, and that reason was the absence of feudalism. No doubt, infiltrations of feudalism, as prevalent through-out Europe, are to be found in old Hungarian institutions, but as an accidental inter-mixture only, not as their essence and chief feature. That blending of public prerogative with rights belonging to the sphere of private law, which is the essence of feudalism never prevailed in the organisation of Hungarian public powers, never broke their action on the nation as a whole. To this early prevalence of public law in the government of the country do Hungary owe not only a superior efficiency not detrimental to liberty of Hungarian public powers, but in connection with it an early growth of conscious national unity, of patriotism on broad lines, at a time when tribal feeling and feudal allegiance sub-divided all European nations into small units which paralysed each other, and into a corresponding fractional mentality adverse to the very idea of State and to inchoate national feeling." ( Count Albert Apponyi: "The juridical nature of the relations between Austria and Hungary" Arts and Science Congress, held at United States St. Louis in 1904 )

The local (regional) power of aristocracy from medieval Hungary was based on three pillars: the court offices they performed; their domains and castles; their suite based at the institution of familiaritas (a kind of vassality). This study – reconstructing a concrete instance – tries to follow the interactions between these factors and to introduce the reader in the strange world of medieval Hungarian noble society with its legal procedures, practical solutions, family links, policies and rivalries. One of the conclusions I made, is that from these factors the primary and the most active one is that of court connections of aristocratic people and their political roles. They had chances to obtain new estates (conserving they actual power) and to protect their interestes only being in this status. Another conclusion is, that political changes on the national level (in the royal government, for ex.) had an instantly effect on the regional situation, on the fate of some estates, on the family policies and regional balance of forces.

Hungary's first two foreign kings, Charles Robert and Louis I of the House of Angevin, ruled during one of the most glorious periods in the country's history. Central Europe was at peace, and Hungary and its neighbors prospered.

After the destructive period of interregnum (1301–1308), the first Angevin king, Charles I of Hungary (King: 1308–1342) -An Árpád descendant in the female line- successfully restored the royal power, who defeated oligarch rivals, the so called "little kings". Charles I was crowned as a child and raised in Hungary. His new fiscal, customs and monetary policies proved successful under his reign. Charles Robert also introduced tax reforms and a stable currency. One of the primary sources of his power was the wealth derived from the gold mines of east and northern Hungary. Eventually production reached the remarkable figure of 3,000 lb. of gold annually—one third of the total production of the world as then known, and five times as much as that of any other European state. He reestablished the crown's authority by ousting disloyal magnates and distributing their estates to his supporters. Charles Robert then ordered the magnates to recruit and equip small private armies called banderia. Charles Robert ruled by decree and convened the Diet only to announce his decisions. Dynastic marriages linked his family with the ruling families of Naples and Poland and heightened Hungary's standing abroad.

Hungary was the first non-Italian country, where the renaissance appeared in Europe.

The Renaissance style came directly from Italy during the Quattrocento to Hungary foremost in the Central European region. The development of the early Hungarian-Italian relationships was a reason of this infiltration, which weren't manifested only in dynastic connections, but in cultural, humanistic and commercial relations. This effect was getting stronger from the 1300s. In the first half of the 14th century, the statues of ladies, knights, court musicians, servants and guardsmen mark not only the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but also the beginning of a new age. Dressed in full-length gowns, richly gathered cloaks, pointed shoes and daring hats, they are an unexpected reminder of a flourishing, almost decadent Hungarian Trecento, whose mere existence was no more than a conjecture before the miraculous appearance of the archaeological foundings at Buda Castle.

The power of the former Árpad Dynasty was still based on the vast royal estates. Under the Angevins, the royal family was restored as the greatest land owning family of the realm (they had one-third of all lands), but the Angevin power rather based on the possession of castles.

Charles Robert's son and successor Louis I of Hungary (1342-82) maintained the strong central authority Charles I had amassed. In 1351 Louis issued a decree that reconfirmed the Golden Bull, erased all legal distinctions between the lesser nobles and the magnates, standardized the serfs' obligations, and barred the serfs from leaving the lesser nobles' farms to seek better opportunities on the magnates' estates. The decree also established the entail system. Hungary's economy continued to flourish during Louis's reign. Gold and other precious metals poured from the country's mines and enriched the royal treasury, foreign trade increased, new towns and villages arose, and craftsmen formed guilds. The prosperity fueled a surge in cultural activity, and Louis promoted the illumination of manuscripts and in 1367 founded Hungary's first university. Louis extended his rule over territories to the Adriatic Sea, and occupied the Kingdom of Naples several times. Under his reign lived the most famous epic hero of Hungarian literature and warfare, the king's Champion: Nicolas Toldi. Louis had become popular in Poland due to his successful campaigns against the Tatars and pagan Lithuanians. Two successful wars (1357–1358, 1378–1381) against Venice annexed Dalmatia and Ragusa and more territories at Adriatic Sea. Venice also had to raise the Angevin flag on St. Mark's Square on holy days. Louis I established a university in Pécs in 1367 (by papal accordance). The Ottoman Turks confronted the country ever more often. In 1366 and 1377, Louis led successful champaigns against the Ottomans (Batlle at Nicapoli in 1366), therefore Balkanian states became his vassals. From 1370, the death of Casimir III of Poland, Louis became king of Poland in 1370 and ruled the two countries for twelve years. Until his death, he retained his strong potency in political life of Italian Peninsula. While Louis was engaged in these activates, the Ottomans made their initial inroads into the Balkans.

Sigismund (1387-1437), Louis's son-in-law, won a bitter struggle for the throne after Louis died in 1382. Under Sigismund, Hungary's fortunes began to decline. Many Hungarian nobles despised Sigismund for his cruelty during the succession struggle, his long absences, and his costly foreign wars. In 1401 disgruntled nobles temporarily imprisoned the king. In 1403 another group crowned an anti-king, who failed to solidify his power but succeeded in selling Dalmatia to Venice. Sigismund failed to reclaim the territory. Sigismund became king of Bohemia in 1419. In 1404 Sigismund introduced the Placetum Regium. According to this decree, Papal bulls and messages could not be pronounced in Hungary without the consent of the king. Sigismund congregated Council of Constance (1414–1418) to abolish the Papal Schism of Catholic church, which was solved by the election of a new pope. In 1433 he even became Holy Roman Emperor. In response, Sigismund created the office of palatine to rule the country in his stead.
Like earlier Hungarian kings, Sigismund elevated his supporters to magnate status and sold off crown lands to meet burgeoning expenses. Although Hungary's economy continued to flourish, Sigismund's expenses outstripped his income. He bolstered royal revenues by increasing the serfs' taxes and requiring cash payment. Social turmoil erupted late in Sigismund's reign as a result of the heavier taxes and renewed magnate pressure on the lesser nobles. Hungary's first peasant revolt erupted when a Transylvanian bishop ordered peasants to pay tithes in coin rather than in kind. Also, Husite teachings spread among the population making the bishop more unpopular. The revolt was quickly checked, but it prompted Transylvania's Szekel, Magyar, and German orders to form the Union of Three Nations, which was an effort to defend their privileges against any power except that of the king. During his long reign Royal castle of Buda became probably the largest Gothic palace of the late Middle Ages. The first Hungarian Bible translation completed in 1439, but Hungarian Bible was illegal in its age. Hungary was the first non-Italian country, where the renaissance appeared in Europe.

Additional turmoil erupted when the Ottomans expanded their empire into the Balkans. They crossed the Bosporus Straits in 1352, subdued Bulgaria in 1388, and defeated the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. Sigismund led a crusade against them in 1396, but the Ottomans routed his forces in the Battle of Nicopolis, and he barely escaped with his life. Tamerlane's invasion of Anatolia in 1402-03 slowed the Ottomans' progress for several decades, but in 1437 Sultan Murad II prepared to invade Hungary. Sigismund died the same year, and Hungary's next two kings, Albert II of Germany (1437-39) and Władysław III of Poland (1439-44), known in Hungary as Ulaszlo I, both died during campaigns against the Ottomans.

This coat of arms first appeared during the reign of Louis I (1342-1382) and evolved into the one used today.

After Władysław III, Hungary's nobles chose an infant king, Ladislaus V the Posthumous, and a regent, John Hunyadi, to rule the country until the former came of age. The son of a lesser nobleman of the Vlach ( though some historians suggest a Cumanic) descent, who had won distinction in the wars against the Ottomans. Hunyadi rose to become a general, Transylvania's military governor, one of Hungary's largest landowners, and a war hero. He used his personal wealth and the support of the lesser nobles to win the regency and overcome the opposition of the magnates. Hunyadi then established a mercenary army funded by the first tax ever imposed on Hungary's nobles. He defeated the Ottoman forces in Transylvania in 1442 and broke their hold on Serbia in 1443, only to be routed at the Battle of Varna (where Władysław I (of Hungary) himself perished) a year later. In 1446, the parliament elected the great general János Hunyadi as governor (1446–1453) and then as regent (1453–1456) of the kingdom. In 1448 Hunyadi tried to expel the Turks from Europe, but because of the treachery of Serbs and Vlachs he was outnumbered and routed in the 3 days battle of Kosovo Polje.

One of his greatest victories being the Siege of Belgrade in 1456. Hunyadi defended the city against the onslaught of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II. During the siege, Pope Callixtus III ordered the bells of every church to be rung every day at noon, as a call for believers to pray for the defenders of the city. However, in many countries (like England and Spanish kingdoms), news of the victory arrived before the order, and the ringing of the church bells at noon thus transformed into a commemoration of the victory. The Popes didn't withdraw the order, and Catholic churches still ring the noon bell to this day. Hunyadi died of the plague soon after.

Some magnates resented Hunyadi for his popularity as well as for the taxes he imposed, and they feared that his sons might seize the throne from Ladislaus. They coaxed the sons to return to Laszlo's court, where Hunyadi's elder son was beheaded. His younger son, Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, was imprisoned in Bohemia. However, lesser nobles loyal to Mátyás soon expelled László. After Ladislaus's death abroad, they paid ransom for Mátyás, met him on the frozen Danube River, and proclaimed him king. Corvinus (1458-90) was, with one possible exception (John Zápolya), the last Hungarian king to rule the country.

This was the first time in the medieval Hungarian kingdom that a member of the nobility, without dynastic ancestry and relationship, mounted the royal throne. A true Renaissance prince, a successful military leader and administrator, an outstanding linguist, a learned astrologer, and an enlightened patron of the arts and learning.[14] András Hess set up a printing press in Buda in 1472.

Although Matthias regularly convened the Diet and expanded the lesser nobles' powers in the counties, he exercised absolute rule over Hungary by means of a secular bureaucracy. Matthias enlisted 30,000 foreign and Hungarian mercenaries in his standing army and built a network of fortresses along Hungary's southern frontier, but he did not pursue his father's aggressive anti-Turkish policy. Instead, Mátyás launched unpopular attacks on Bohemia, Poland, and Austria, pursuing an ambition to become Holy Roman Emperor and arguing that he was trying to forge a unified Western or Central European alliance strong enough to expel the Ottoman Turks from Europe. He eliminated tax exemptions and raised the serfs' obligations to the crown to fund his court and the military. The magnates complained that these measures reduced their incomes, but despite the stiffer obligations, the serfs considered Matthias a just ruler because he protected them from excessive demands and other abuses by the magnates. He also reformed Hungary's legal system and promoted the growth of Hungary's towns. Matthias was a true Renaissance man and made his court a center of humanist culture; under his rule, Hungary's first books were printed and its second university was established. His library, the Corvina, was famous throughout Europe. It was Europe's greatest collection of historical chronicles, philosophic and scientific works in the 15th century, and second only in size to the Vatican Library which mainly contained religious material. His renaissance library is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In his quest for the imperial throne, Matthias eventually moved to Vienna, where he died in 1490. His death is supposed to be caused by poison.

The magnates, who did not want another heavy-handed king, procured the accession of Vladislaus II, king of Bohemia (Ulászló II in Hungarian history), precisely because of his notorious weakness: he was known as King Dobže, or Dobzse (meaning “Good” or, loosely, “OK”), from his habit of accepting with that word every paper laid before him. Under his reign the central power began to experience severe financial difficulties, largely due to the enlargement of feudal lands at his expense.

Matthias' reforms did not survive the turbulent decades that followed his reign. An oligarchy of quarrelsome magnates gained control of Hungary. They crowned a docile king, Vladislaus II (the Jagiellonian king of Bohemia, who was known in Hungary as Ulaszlo II, 1490-1516) the son of King Casimir IV of Poland, only on condition that he abolish the taxes that had supported Matthias' mercenary army. As a result, the king's army dispersed just as the Turks were threatening Hungary. The magnates also dismantled Mathias' administration and antagonized the lesser nobles. In 1492 the Diet limited the serfs' freedom of movement and expanded their obligations while a large portion of peasants became prospering because of cattle-export to the West. Rural discontent boiled over in 1514 when well-armed peasants preparing for a crusade against Turks rose up under György Dózsa (a borderguard captain) and attacked estates across Hungary. United by a common threat, the magnates and lesser nobles eventually crushed the rebels. Dozsa and other rebel leaders were executed in a most brutal manner.

Shocked by the peasant revolt, the Diet of 1514 passed laws that condemned the serfs to eternal bondage and increased their work obligations. Corporal punishment became widespread, and one noble even branded his serfs like livestock. The legal scholar István Werbőczy included the new laws in his Tripartitum of 1514, which made up the espirit of Hungary's legal corpus until the revolution of 1848. However, the Tripartitum was never used as a code. The Tripartitum gave Hungary's king and nobles, or magnates, equal shares of power: the nobles recognized the king as superior, but in turn the nobles had the power to elect the king. The Tripartitum also freed the nobles from taxation, obligated them to serve in the military only in a defensive war, and made them immune from arbitrary arrest.
When Vladislaus II died in 1516, his ten-year-old son Louis II (1516-26) became king, but a royal council appointed by the Diet ruled the country. Hungary was in a state of near anarchy under the magnates' rule. The king's finances were a shambles; he borrowed to meet his household expenses despite the fact that they totaled about one-third of the national income. The country's defenses sagged as border guards went unpaid, fortresses fell into disrepair, and initiatives to increase taxes to reinforce defenses were stifled. In 1521 Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent recognized Hungary's weakness and seized Belgrade in preparation for an attack on Hungary. After that, Louis II and his wife, Maria von Habsburg tried to manage an anti-magnate putsch, but they were not successful. In August 1526, he marched nearly 100,000 troops into Hungary's heartland. Hungary's forces were just gathering, when the 26,000 strong Hungarian army met the Turks with bad luck in the battle of Mohacs. Hungarians had well-equipped and well-trained troops, and awaited more reinforcements from Czechia and Transylvania, but lacked a good military leader. They suffered bloody defeat leaving 20,000 dead on the field. Louis himself died, thrown from a horse into a bog.
After Louis's death, rival factions of Hungarian nobles simultaneously elected two kings, John I Zápolya (1526-40) and Ferdinand of Habsburg (1526-64). Each claimed sovereignty over the entire country but lacked sufficient forces to eliminate his rival. Zápolya, a Hungarian who was military governor of Transylvania, was recognized by the sultan and was supported mostly by lesser nobles opposed to new foreign kings. Ferdinand, the first Habsburg to occupy the Hungarian throne, drew support from magnates in western Hungary who hoped he could convince his brother, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, to expel the Turks. In 1538 George Martinuzzi, Zápolya's adviser, arranged a treaty between the rivals that would have made Ferdinand sole monarch upon the death of the then-childless Zápolya. The deal collapsed when Zápolya married and fathered a son. Violence erupted, and the Turks seized the opportunity, conquering the city of Buda and then partitioning the country in 1541.

Saint Mesrob

fatman2021 — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:08:38 CST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Saint Mesrop Mashtots (also Mesrob, Mashtotz, Armenian: Մեսրոպ Մաշտոց; 361 or 362 - February 17, 440) was an Armenian monk, theologian and linguist. He is best known for having invented the Armenian alphabet, which was a fundamental step in strengthening the Armenian Church, the government of the Armenian Kingdom, and ultimately the bond between the Armenian Kingdom and Armenians living in the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire.

Mesrop Mashtots by Francesco Maggiotto

Mesrop Mashtots was born in Taron and died in Vagharshapat. Koryun, his pupil and biographer, tells us that Mesrop received a liberal education, and was versed in the Greek and Persian languages. On account of his piety and learning Mesrop was appointed secretary to King Chosroes III. His duty was to write in Greek and Persian characters the decrees and edicts of the sovereign.

But Mesrop felt called to a more perfect life. Leaving the court for the service of God, he took holy orders, and withdrew to a monastery with a few chosen companions. There, says Koryun, he practiced great austerities, enduring hunger and thirst, cold and poverty. He lived on vegetables, wore a hair shirt, slept upon the ground, and often spent whole nights in prayer and the study of the Holy Scriptures. This life he continued for a few years, preparing himself for the great work to which Providence was soon to call him. Indeed both Church and State needed his services.
Armenia, so long the battle-ground of Romans and Persians, lost its independence in 387, and was divided between the Byzantine Empire and Persia, about four-fifths being given to the latter. Western Armenia was governed by Byzantine generals, while an Armenian king ruled, but only as feudatory, over Persian Armenia. The Church was naturally influenced by these violent political changes, although the loss of civil independence and the partition of the land could not destroy its organization or subdue its spirit. Persecution only quickened it into greater activity, and had the effect of bringing the clergy, the nobles, and the common people closer together. The principal events of this period are the invention of the Armenian alphabet, the revision of the liturgy, the creation of an ecclesiastical and national literature, and the readjustment of hierarchical relations. Three men are prominently associated with this stupendous work: Mesrop, Patriarch Isaac, and King Vramshapuh, who succeeded his brother Chosroes III in 394.

Illustration of Mesrop Mashtots from a 1776 manuscript.

Saint Mashtots' statue in Yerevan

Mesrop, as noted, had spent some time in a monastery preparing for a missionary life. With the support of Prince Shampith, he preached the Gospel in the district of Golthn near the river Araxes, converting many heretics and pagans. However, he experienced great difficulty in instructing the people, for the Armenians had no alphabet of their own, but used the Greek, Persian, and Syriac scripts, none of which were well suited for representing the many complex sounds of their native tongue. Again, the Holy Scriptures and the liturgy, being written in Syriac, were, to a large extent, unintelligible to the faithful. Hence the constant need of translators and interpreters to explain the Word of God to the people.

Mesrop, desirous to remedy this state of things, resolved to invent a national alphabet, in which undertaking Isaac and King Vramshapuh promised to assist him. It is hard to determine exactly what part Mesrop had in the fixing of the new alphabet. According to his Armenian biographers, he consulted Daniel, a bishop of Mesopotamia, and Rufinus, a monk of Samosata, on the matter. With their help and that of Isaac and the king, he was able to give a definite form to the alphabet, which he probably adapted from the Greek. Others, like Lenormant, think it derived from the Avestan. Mesrop's alphabet consisted of thirty-six letters; two more (long O and F) were added in the twelfth century.

The Amaras Monastery in Nagorno Karabakh where in the 5th century Saint Mesrop Mashtots, the inventor of the Armenian Alphabet, established the first-ever Armenian school that used his script.

The invention of the alphabet (406) was the beginning of Armenian literature, and proved a powerful factor in the upbuilding of the national spirit. "The result of the work of Isaac and Mesrop", says St. Martin, "was to separate for ever the Armenians from the other peoples of the East, to make of them a distinct nation, and to strengthen them in the Christian Faith by forbidding or rendering profane all the foreign alphabetic scripts which were employed for transcribing the books of the heathens and of the followers of Zoroaster. To Mesrop we owe the preservation of the language and literature of Armenia; but for his work, the people would have been absorbed by the Persians and Syrians, and would have disappeared like so many nations of the East".

Anxious that others should profit by his discovery, and encouraged by the patriarch and the king, Mesrop founded numerous schools in different parts of the country, in which the youth were taught the new alphabet. But his activity was not confined to Eastern Armenia. Provided with letters from Isaac he went to Constantinople and obtained from the Emperor Theodosius the Younger permission to preach and teach in his Armenian possessions. Having returned to Eastern Armenia to report on his missions to the patriarch, his first thought was to provide a religious literature for his countrymen. Having gathered around him numerous disciples, he sent some to Edessa, Constantinople, Athens, Antioch, Alexandria, and other centres of learning, to study the Greek language and bring back the masterpieces of Greek literature. The most famous of his pupils were John of Egheghiatz, Joseph of Baghin, Yeznik, Koryun, Moses of Chorene, and John Mandakuni.

Verses of Mesrop Mashtots

The first monument of this Armenian literature is the version of the Holy Scriptures. Isaac, says Moses of Chorene, made a translation of the Bible from the Syriac text about 411. This work must have been considered imperfect, for soon afterwards John of Egheghiatz and Joseph of Baghin were sent to Edessa to translate the Scriptures. They journeyed as far as Constantinople, and brought back with them authentic copies of the Greek text. With the help of other copies obtained from Alexandria the Bible was translated again from the Greek according to the text of the Septuagint and Origen's Hexapla. This version, now in use in the Armenian Church, was completed about 434.
The decrees of the first three councils — Nicæa, Constantinople, and Ephesus — and the national liturgy (so far written in Syriac) were also translated into Armenian, the latter being revised on the liturgy of St. Basil, though retaining characteristics of its own. Many works of the Greek Fathers also passed into Armenian. The loss of the Greek originals has given some of these versions a special importance; thus, the second part of Eusebius's Chronicle, of which only a few fragments exist in the Greek, has been preserved entire in Armenian. In the midst of his literary labours Mesrop did not neglect the spiritual needs of the people. He revisited the districts he had evangelized in his earlier years, and, after the death of Isaac in 440, looked after the spiritual administration of the patriarchate. He survived his friend and master only six months. The Armenians read his name in the Canon of the Mass, and celebrate his memory on 19 February.

He is buried in Oshakan, a village 8 km southwest from Ashtarak.

Virtually every town in Armenia has a street named after Mashdots. In Yerevan, Mashdots street is one of the most important in the city center, which was previously known as Lenin street (prospect). There is a statue to him at the Matenadaran, one at the church he was buried at in Oshakan village, and one at the monument to the alphabet found on the skirts of Mt. Aragats north of Ohanavan Village. Stamps have been issued with his image by both the Soviet Union and by post-Soviet Armenia.

Saint Mesrop also produced a number of liturgical compositions. Some of the works attributed to him are: Megha Qez Ter, Voghormea indz Astvats, Ankanim Aadgi Qo, and Voghormea (Hymns of Repentance).

The first sentence in Armenian written down by St. Mesrop after he invented the letters is said to be the opening line of Solomon’s Book of Proverbs:

“	Ճանաչել զիմաստութիւն եւ զխրատ, իմանալ զբանս հանճարոյ: Čanačʿel zimastutʿiwn ew zxrat, imanal zbans hančaroy. «To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding.»	”
—Book of Proverbs, 1:2.

Christianization of Armenia

fatman2021 — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:00:45 CST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Arsacid Dynasty (Arshakuni Dynasty) (Armenian: Արշակունի Aršakuni) ruled the Kingdom of Armenia from 54 AD to 428 AD. Formerly a branch of the Iranian Parthian Arsacids, they became a distinctly Armenian dynasty. Arsacid Kings reigned intermittently throughout the chaotic years following the fall of the Artaxiad Dynasty until 62 AD when Tiridates I of Armenia secured Arsacid rule in Armenia. An independent line of Kings was established by Vologases II of Armenia (Valarses/Vagharshak) in 180 AD. Two of the most notable events under Arsacid rule in Armenian history were the conversion of Armenia to Christianity by St. Gregory the Illuminator in 301 AD and the creation of the Armenian alphabet by Mesrop Mashtots in 405 AD.

Kingdom of Armenia under the Arshakuni Dynasty, 150

The first appearance of an Arsacid on the Armenian throne came about in AD 12 when the Parthian King Vonones I was exiled from Parthia due to his pro-Roman policies and Occidental manners. Vonones I briefly acquired the Armenian throne with Roman consent, but Artabanus II demanded his deposition, and as Augustus did not wish to begin a war with the Parthians he deposed Vonones I and sent him to Syria. Wasting no time Artabanus installed his son Orodes on the Armenian throne. Tiberius had no intention of giving up the buffer states of the Eastern frontier and sent his nephew and heir Germanicus to the East, who concluded a treaty with Artabanus, in which he was recognized as king and friend of the Romans. Armenia was given in 18 AD to Zeno the son of Polemon I of Pontus, who assumed the Armenian name Artaxias. The Parthians under Artabanus were too distracted by internal strife to oppose the Roman-appointed King. Zeno's reign was remarkably peaceful in Armenian history. Once Zeno died in 34 AD, Artabanus decided to reinstate an Arsacid over the Armenian throne, choosing his eldest son Arsaces as a suitable candidate. The throne was disputed by the younger son of Artabanus, Orodes. Tiberius quickly concentrated more forces on the Roman frontier and once again after a decade of peace, Armenia was to become for twenty-five years the theater of bitter warfare between the two greatest powers of the known world. Tiberius, sent an Iberian named Mithridates, who claimed to be of Arsacid blood. Mithridates successfully recovered Armenia and deposed Arsaces causing much devastation to the country. Surprisingly, Mithridates was summoned back to Rome where he was kept a prisoner, and Armenia was given back to Artabanus who gave the throne to his younger son Orodes. Another civil war erupted in Parthia upon the death of Artabanus. Mithridates was put back on the Armenian throne, with the help of his brother, Pharasmanes I of Iberia, and Roman troops. Civil war continued in Parthia for several years with Gotarzes eventually seizing the throne in 45. In 51, Mithridates’ nephew Radamistus invaded Armenia and killed his uncle. The governor of Cappadocia, Julius Pailinus, decided to conquer Armenia but settled for crowning Radamistus who generously rewarded him. The current Parthian King Vologeses I, saw an opportunity, invaded Armenia and succeeded in forcing the Iberians to withdraw. The harsh winter that followed proved too much for the Parthians who withdrew, leaving the door open for Radamistus to regain his throne. Back in power, according to Tacitus the Iberian was so cruel that the Armenians stormed the palace and forced Radamistus out of the country and Vologeses was able to put his brother Tiridates on the throne. Unhappy with the growing Parthian influence at their doorstep, Roman Emperor Nero sent General Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo with a large army to the east in order to restore Roman client kings (see Roman–Parthian War of 58–63). Tiridates escaped and a Roman client king was setup again. The Roman-appointed King Tigranes VI invaded the Kingdom of Adiabene in 61, which was a vassal of Parthians. Vologeses considered this as an act of aggression from Rome and restarted a campaign to put Tiridates back on the Armenian throne. Following the Battle of Rhandeia in 62. The command of the Roman troops was again entrusted to Corbulo, who marched into Armenia and set a camp in Rhandeia, where he made a peace agreement with Tiridates upon which Tiridates was recognized king of Armenia but he would be a client of Rome. Tiridates agreed that he would go to Rome to be crowned by Nero. Tiridates ruled Armenia until his death or deposition around 100/110. Osroes I of Parthia invaded Armenia and placed his nephew Axidares, the son of Pacorus II as King of Armenia.

Greater Armenia as part of the Roman Empire (in red), Lesser Armenia (in blue).

This enchroachment on the traditional sphere of influence of the Roman Empire ended the peace since the time of Nero some 50 years earlier and started a new war with the Roman emperor Trajan. Trajan marched towards Armenia on October, 113 to restore a Roman client king in Armenia. At Athens Osroes’ envoys met him, informing him that Axidares had been deposed and asking that the latter's elder brother, Parthamasiris, be granted the throne. Trajan declined and by August 114 he captured Arsamosata where Parthamasiris asked to be crowned, but instead of crowning him, he annexed the kingdom to the Roman Empire. Parthamasiris was dismissed and died mysteriously soon afterwards. As a Roman province Armenia was administered along with Cappadocia by Catilius Severus of the gens Claudia. The Roman senate issued coins on this occasion bearing the following inscription: ARMENIA ET MESOPOTAMIA IN POTESTATEM P.R. REDACTAE', thus solidifying Armenia's position as the newest Roman province. A rebellion by a Parthian pretender Sanatruces was put down, though sporadic resistance continued and Vologases III of Parthia managed to secure a sizeable chunk of Armenia just before Trajan's death in August of 117. However, in 118 the new Emperor Hadrian gave up Trajan's conquests including Armenia and made Parthamaspates King of Armenia and Osroene, though Vologases III held most of the country. A compromise with the Parthians was reached eventually and the Parthian Vologases was placed in charge of Armenia. He ruled Armenia until 140 A.D. Vologases IV of Parthia dispatched troops to seize Armenia in 161 and eradicated the Roman legions stationed there under legatus C. Severianus, encouraged by the spahbod Osroes, Parthian troops marched further West into Roman Syria. Marcus Aurelius immediately sent Lucius Verus to the Eastern front. In 163, Verus dispatched General Statius Priscus who was recently transferred from Britain with several legions to Armenia from Antioch. Vologases' army surrendered in Artaxata and Priscus installed a Roman puppet, Sohaemus (a Roman senator and consul of Arsacid and Emessan ancestry) on the Armenian throne, deposing a certain Pacorus installed by Vologases III.

Coin issued to celebrate the victory of Lucius Verus Armeniacus against Vologases IV of Parthia in the war for Armenia.

As a result of an epidemic within the Roman forces, Parthians retook most of their lost territory in 166 and forced Sohaemus to retreat to Syria. After a few intervening Roman and Parthian rulers, the son of Vologases I of Armenia, Vologaes II assumed the throne in 186 A.D. In 191 he assumed the Parthian throne and named his son Khosrov I to the Armenian throne. Khosrov was subsequently captured by the Romans, who installed one of their own to take charge of Armenia. However the Armenians themselves revolted against their Roman overlords, and, in a new Rome-Parthia compromise, Khosrov's son, Trdat II (217 - 252 A.D.), was made king of Armenia.

In 224 A.D. Ardashir I overthrew the Arsacids in Parthia and began the new Persian Sassanid dynasty. The Sassanids were determined to restore the old glory of the Achaemenid Persia, making Zoroastrianism the state religion and claiming Armenia as part of the empire. To preserve the autonomy of Arshakuni rule in Armenia, Trdat II sought friendly relations with Rome. This was an unfortunate choice, because the Sassanid king Shapur I defeated the Romans and struck a peace with the emperor Philip, whereby Rome acquiesced to paying tribute and relinquishing control of Greater Armenia. In 252 A.D. Shapur invaded Armenia and, forcing Trdat to flee, installed his own son Hurmazd on the Armenian throne. When Shapur died in 270 A.D., Hurmazd took the Persian throne and his brother Narseh ruled Armenia in his stead. Under Diocletian, Rome tried to install Khosrov II as ruler of Armenia, and between 279 and 287 A.D. he was in possession of the western parts of Armenian territory. But the Sasanids stirred some nobles to revolt, killing Khosrov in the process. When Narseh left to take the Persian throne in 293 A.D., Khosrov's murderer was installed on the Armenian throne. Rome nevertheless defeated Narseh in 298 A.D., and Khosrov's son Trdat III regained control of Armenia with the support of Roman soldiers.

In 314, St. Gregory the Illuminator converted King Tiridates III and members of his court (traditionally dated to 301 following Mikayel Chamchian 1784).

The Armenian alphabet was created by Saint Mesrop Mashtots in 406 for the purpose of translating the Bible, and Christianization at thus also marks the beginning of Armenian literature. According to Moses of Chorene, Isaac of Armenia made a translation of the Gospel from the Syriac text about 411. This work must have been considered imperfect, for soon afterwards John of Egheghiatz and Joseph of Baghin were sent to Edessa to translate the Scriptures. They journeyed as far as Constantinople, and brought back with them authentic copies of the Greek text. With the help of other copies obtained from Alexandria the Bible was translated again from the Greek according to the text of the Septuagint and Origen's Hexapla. This version, now in use in the Armenian Church, was completed about 434.

Baptism of Tiridates III.

In 337, during the reign of Khosrov III the Small, Shapur II invaded Armenia. Over the following decades, Armenia was once again disputed territory between East Rome and the Sassanid Empire, until a permanent settlement in 387, which remained in place until the Arab conquest of Armenia in 639. Arsacid rulers intermittently (competing with Bagratuni princes) remained in control of some extent of power, as governors (marzban) under either Byzantine or Persian protectorate, until 428.

Christianization of the Germanic peoples

fatman2021 — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:58:21 CST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Germanic people underwent gradual Christianization in the course of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. By the 8th century, most of England and the Frankish Empire was, in principle, Christian, and by AD 1100, Germanic paganism had also ceased to have political influence in Scandinavia.

9th century depiction of Christ as a heroic warrior (Stuttgart Psalter, fol. 23, illustration of Psalm 91:13)

In the 4th century, the early process of Christianization of the various Germanic people was partly facilitated by the prestige of the Christian Roman Empire amongst European pagans. Until the decline of the Roman Empire, the Germanic tribes who had migrated there (with the exceptions of the Saxons, Franks, and Lombards, see below) had converted to Christianity. Many of them, notably the Goths and Vandals, adopted Arianism instead of the Trinitarian (a.k.a. Nicene or orthodox) beliefs that came to dominate the Roman Imperial Church.[1] The gradual rise of Germanic Christianity was, at times, voluntary, particularly amongst groups associated with the Roman Empire. From the 6th century, Germanic tribes were converted (and re-converted) by missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church.
Many Goths converted to Christianity as individuals outside the Roman Empire. Most members of other tribes converted to Christianity when their respective tribes settled within the Empire, and most Franks and Anglo-Saxons converted a few generations later. During the later centuries following the Fall of Rome, as the Roman Church gradually split between the dioceses loyal to the Patriarch of Rome in the West and those loyal to the other Patriarchs in the East, most of the Germanic peoples (excepting the Crimean Goths and a few other eastern groups) would gradually become strongly allied with the Western Church, particularly as a result of the reign of Charlemagne.

In the 3rd century, East-Germanic peoples migrated into Scythia. Gothic culture and identity emerged from various East-Germanic, local, and Roman influences. In the same period, Gothic raiders took captives among the Romans, including many Christians, (and Roman-supported raiders took captives among the Goths).
Wulfila or Ulfilas was the son or grandson of Christian captives from Sadagolthina in Cappadocia. In 337 or 341, Wulfila became the first bishop of the (Christian) Goths. By 348, one of the (Pagan) Gothic kings (reikos) began persecuting the Christian Goths, and Wulfila and many other Christian Goths fled to Moesia Secunda (in modern Bulgaria) in the Roman Empire. Other Christians, including Wereka, Batwin, and Saba, died in later persecutions.

Between 348 and 383, Wulfila translated the Bible into the Gothic language. Thus some Arian Christians in the west used the vernacular languages, in this case including Gothic and Latin, for services, as did Christians in the eastern Roman provinces, while most Christians in the western provinces used Latin.

The Franks and their ruling Merovingian dynasty, that had migrated to Gaul from the 3rd century had remained pagan at first. On Christmas 498, however, Clovis I following his victory at the Battle of Tolbiac converted to the orthodox faith of the Roman Church and let himself be baptised at Rheims. The details of this event have been passed down by Gregory of Tours.

The Alamanni became Christians only after a period of syncretism during the 7th century, by gradual emulation of the new religion of the Merovingian elite. The Lombards adopted Roman Christianity as they entered Italy, also during the 6th century.

In the 8th century, the Franks became standard-bearers of Roman Catholic Christianity in Western Europe, waging wars on its behalf against Arian Christians, Islamic invaders, and pagan Germanic peoples such as the Saxons and Frisians. Until 1066, when the Danes and the Norse had lost their foothold in Britain, theological and missionary work in Germany was largely organized by Anglo-Saxon missionaries, with mixed success. A key event was the felling of Thor's Oak in 723 near Fritzlar by Boniface, apostle of the Germans and first archbishop of Mainz.

Eventually, the conversion was imposed by armed force and successfully completed by Charles the Great (Charlemagne) and the Franks in a series of campaigns (the Saxon Wars), starting in 772 with the destruction of their Irminsul and culminating in the defeat and massacre of Saxon leaders at the Bloody Verdict of Verden in 787 and the subjugation of this large tribe by forced population movements of Saxons into Frankish territory and vice-versa.

Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England began around AD 600, influenced by the Gregorian mission from the south-east and the Hiberno-Scottish mission from the north-west. Gregory I sent the first Archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine, to southern England in 597. The process of conversion usually proceeded from the top of the social hierarchy downwards, generally peacefully, with a local ruler choosing to convert, whereupon his subjects then also nominally became Christian. This process was often only partial, perhaps due to confusion as to the nature of the new religion, or for a desire to take the best of both traditions. A famous case being that of king Raedwald of East Anglia, who had a Christian altar erected within his pagan temple. His suspected burial place at Sutton Hoo shows definite influences of both Christian and pagan burial rites.

Scandinavia was the last part of Germanic Europe to convert and most resistant. From the High Middle Ages, the territories of Northern Europe were gradually converted to Christianity under German leadership, and made into nation states under the Church's guidance, finalized in the Northern Crusades.
Later, German and Scandinavian noblemen extended their power to also Finnic, Samic, Baltic and some Slavic peoples.

The last pagan Anglo-Saxon king, the Jutish king Arwald of the Isle of Wight, was killed in battle in 686 fighting against the imposition of Christianity in his kingdom.

During the prolonged period of viking incursions and settlement of Anglo-Saxon England pagan ideas and religious rites made something of a comeback, mainly in the Danelaw during the 9th century and particularly in the Kingdom of Northumbria, who's last king to rule it as an independent state was Eric Bloodaxe, a viking, probably pagan and ruler until 954 AD.

Not only because it had an immense impact on the history of Europe, the Baptism of Clovis deserves a second look. It may also serve to highlight two important characteristics of the Christianization of Europe. Clovis I' wife Clotilde was Roman Catholic and did have an important role in the conversion of her husband. Long before his own baptism, Clovis had allowed that his sons became baptised. However, the decisive reason for Clovis to adopt the Christian belief was the spiritual battle aid he received from Christ. In the Battle of Tolbiac he came in such difficulties that he prayed to Christ for victory. Clovis was victorious, and afterwards he had himself instructed in the Christian faith by Saint Remigius.

That a Commander-in-chief would attribute his victory to the Christian God is a recurring motive since the Constantinian shift. Although the New Testament nowhere mentions that divine battle aid could be gained from Christ, the Christian cross was known as a trophy to bestow victory since Constantine I and the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

However, that a pagan like Clovis, could ask Christ for help also shows the adaptability of the Germanic polytheism. In the polytheistic Germanic tradition, if Odin failed, one absolutely could try it with Christ for once. The Christian sense of religious exclusiveness, as obvious from the First Commandment, was unknown to the pagans. As a result, pagans could be pragmatic and almost utilitarian in their religious decisions. A good example for this are several Thor's Hammer with engraved crosses, worn as an amulet, that archaeologists have found in Scandinavia.

Another exemplary event happened during Ansgar's second stay in Birka: A pagan priest demanded from the locals, that they did not participate in the cult of the foreign Christian God. If they did not have enough Gods yet, they should elevate one of their deceased kings, Erik, to be a God.

The baptism of Clovis I also highlights the sacral role of the Germanic king. A Germanic king was not only a political ruler, but also held the highest religious 'office' for his people. He was seen as of divine descent, was the leader of the religious cult and was responsible for the fertility of the land and military victory. Accordingly, the conversion of their leader had a strong impact on his people. If he considered it appropriate to adopt the Christian belief, this also was a good idea for them.
Unlike the history of Christianity in the Roman Empire, conversion of the Germanic tribes in general took place "top to bottom", in the sense that missionaries aimed at converting Germanic nobility first, which would then impose their new faith on the general population: This is connected with the sacral position of the king in Germanic paganism: the king is charged with interacting with the divine on behalf of his people, so that the general population saw nothing wrong with their kings choosing their preferred mode of worship.

Consequently, Christianity had to be made palatable to these Migration Age warlords as a heroic religion of conquerors, a rather straightforward task, considering the military splendour of the Roman Empire.

Thus early Germanic Christianity was presented as an alternative to native Germanic paganism and elements were syncretized, for examples parallels between Woden and Christ. A fine illustration of these tendencies is the Anglo-Saxon poem Dream of the Rood, where Jesus is cast in the heroic model of a Germanic warrior, who faces his death unflinchingly and even eagerly. The Cross, speaking as if it were a member of Christ's band of retainers, accepts its fate as it watches its Creator die, and then explains that Christ's death was not a defeat but a victory. This is in direct correspondence to the Germanic pagan ideals of fealty to one's lord.

Christianization of the Rus' Khaganate

fatman2021 — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:49:01 CST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Christianization of the Rus' Khaganate is supposed to have happened in the 860s and was the first stage in the process of Christianization of the East Slavs which continued well into the 11th century. Despite its obvious historical and cultural significance, records detailing the event are frustratingly hard to come by, and it seems to have been forgotten by the time of Vladimir's Baptism of Kiev in the 980s.

Patriarch Photius of Constantinople

The most authoritative source on the first Christianization of the Rus' is an encyclical letter of Patriarch Photius, datable to early 867. Referencing the Russo-Byzantine War of 860, Photius informs the Oriental patriarchs and bishops that, after the Bulgars turned to Christ in 863, the Rus' followed suit so zealously that he found it prudent to send to their land a bishop.

Byzantine historians, starting with the continuation of Theophanes the Confessor, assumed that the Rus' raid against Constantinople in 860 was a Byzantine success and attributed the presumed victory to the Intercession of the Theotokos. This conviction dictated the following interpretation: awed by the miracles they witnessed under the walls of the imperial capital and grief-stricken at the disaster that befell them, the Rus' sent envoys to Photius and asked him to send a bishop to their land.

According to Constantine VII, who authored a biography of his grandfather, Basil the Macedonian, it was his ancestor who persuaded the Rus' to abandon their pagan ways. Constantine attributes the conversion to Basil and to Patriarch Ignatius, rather than to their predecessors, Michael III and Photius. He narrates how the Byzantines galvanized the Rus' into conversion by their persuasive words and rich presents, including gold, silver, and precious tissues. He also repeats a traditional story that the pagans were particularly impressed by a miracle: a gospel book thrown by the archbishop (sic!) into an oven was not damaged by fire.

Constantine's account precipitated a long-term dispute over whether the 9th-century Christianization of the Rus' went through two stages. One school of thought postulates that there was only one Christianization: wishing to glorify his ancestor, Constantine simply ascribed to Basil the missionary triumphs of his predecessor, Michael III.

On the other hand, Constantine Zuckerman argues that, in response to the initial request of the Rus', Photius (and Michael III) sent to the Rus' Khaganate a simple bishop. The pagans felt slighted at the low rank of the prelate and their Christian zeal evaporated. In September 867, Michael was assassinated by Basil, who (together with a new patriarch, Ignatius) sent to the Rus' an archbishop who propped up the religious fervor of the local leaders with rich presents. Parenthetically, the contemporaneous Christianization of Bulgaria was likewise effected in two stages: the Bulgars were offended when a simple bishop arrived to their capital from Constantinople and requested Pope Nicholas I to send them a higher-ranking church official. Such considerations were an important matter of political prestige. This pattern has parallels with the stories of Frankish historians about the multiple "baptisms" of the Vikings, whose true intention was to get hold of the rich gifts accompanying the Christianization rituals.

The date and rationale for the Christianization are also shrouded in controversy. Grigory Litavrin views the event as "a formal and diplomatic act making it easier to obtain advantageous agreements with the ruler of the Christian state." Zuckerman argues that Ignatius sent his archbishop to Rus' in about 870, while Dmitry Obolensky inclines to accept 874 as the date of the definitive Christianization. Zuckerman further reasons that the Christianization of both Bulgaria and Rus' was triggered by the adoption of Judaism by their chief enemy, Khazaria, in the late 8th or early 9th century.

Although Byzantine sources provide the most detailed account of the 9th-century Christianization of the Rus', the contemporary Muslim authors seem to corroborate their evidence. Ibn Khordadbeh, when describing the Rus' in the 880s, notes that "they style themselves as Christians". The phrasing suggests that he did not take these claims seriously. Al-Marwazi, reports that the Rus abandoned their wild pagan ways and raids, settling into Christianity in 912 AD.

The Primary Chronicle posits Olga of Kiev as the first Christian in Rus'. However, the Rus'-Byzantine Treaty (945), concluded during the reign of Olga's predecessor and extensively quoted in the Primary Chronicle, mentions that part of the Rus' envoys who signed the treaty were Christian. Furthermore, the chronicle admits that the collegiate church of Saint Elijah existed in Kiev as early as 944, "for many Varangians and Khazars were Christians". It is not clear why the authors of the Primary Chronicle, faithfully following George Hamartolus in other details, chose to omit the very mention of Photius's efforts at Christianizing the country. In order to explain this conspicuous silence, Boris Rybakov constructed an intricate conspiracy theory, suggesting that the account of Askold's Christianization was deliberately removed from the chronicle at the behest of Mstislav the Great, supposedly a pro-Scandinavian and anti-Byzantine ruler.

Late medieval Russian sources (such as the Nikon Chronicle of the 16th century) were aware of the Byzantine account of the 9th-century Christianization and attempted to reconcile it with the traditional version about Vladimir's conversion of Kiev in 992. In the ensuing confusion, Vladimir and Photius were sometimes represented as contemporaries. The name of the first "metropolitan" of Rus' was given as either Michael or Leon. The first Christianization is connected in these sources with the name of Askold, a Kievan ruler whose assassination was orchestrated by Oleg in 882.

Since the Byzantines believed that the Rus' had been converted in the 9th century, they treated them as a Christian nation and failed to record the second Christianization of the country under Vladimir in 988. (Parenthetically, no foreign source, barring Yahya of Antioch, mentions Vladimir's conversion in the 980s). In Leo VI's inventory of Orthodox bishoprics, the see of Rus' ranks sixty-first. In the list compiled during Constantine VII's reign, the see of Rus' holds the 60th position. The Life of Saint Cyril reports that, when passing through Crimea on his way to Khazaria, the Apostle of the Slavs found in Chersonesos a Bible written in the Rus' language, possibly indicating the existence of a vernacular written tradition as early as the 9th century.

No primary source specifies what happened to the Rus' converts of the 9th century. The scope and importance of this first conversion is also disputed. The authors of the imperial period, starting with August Ludwig von Schlozer, assumed that only a fraction of the Rus' society adopted Christianity at the time of Photius. Dmitry Ilovaisky, for instance, speculated that Photius had referred to the Christianization of the so-called Tmutarakan (or Pontic) Rus', while the Novgorod (or Northern) Rus' remained pagan for another century.

Most Soviet historians (Boris Grekov, Vladimir Pashuto, Rybakov) agree that Christianity was adopted in the 9th century only by the Varangian elite of the Rus' Khaganate. That the fact of the first Christianization was obliterated so rapidly is explained by the 882 coup d'état that led to the downfall of the supposedly Christian Askold and the usurpation of power by the pagan Oleg. The first proponent of this theory was Vasily Tatischev who concluded that Askold and Dir had been murdered on account of their Christian views. He went so far as to style Askold "the first Russian martyr".

Constantine Zuckerman rejects Rybakov's view that Photius converted the Kievan Rus'. He ranks among those authors who believe that the centre of the Rus' Khanagate was Novgorod. According to him, the Christianised Varangians were expelled from the country during the anti-Varangian movement of the 860s or 870s. This movement, associated in the Novgorodian tradition with the name of Vadim the Bold, may have been triggered by the Varangians' attempts to Christianize the pagan populace. Their failure to convert the Ilmen Slavs supposedly resulted in the collapse of the Rus' Khaganate.

Christianization of Bulgaria

fatman2021 — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:43:01 CST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Christianization of Bulgaria was the process of converting 9th-century medieval Bulgaria to Christianity.

When Khan Boris began his reign in 852, the international situation was very complicated. The conflict with the Byzantine Empire for the rulership over the Slavic tribes in modern-day Macedonia and Thrace was still far from being resolved. In the middle Danube region, Bulgaria's interests crossed with those of the newly created kingdom of the East Franks and the principality of Great Moravia. It was about that period when Croatia emerged on the international scene, carrying its own ambitions and demands for territories in the region.

On a more global scale, the tensions between Constantinople and Rome were tightening. Both centres were competing for the Christianization that would precede the integration of the Slavs in South and Central Europe. The Bulgarian Khanate and the Kingdom of the East Franks had established diplomatic relations as soon as the 20s and 30s of the 9th century. In 852, at the beginning of the reign of Khan Boris, a Bulgarian embassy was sent to Mainz to inform Louis II for the change in Pliska, the Bulgarian capital. Most probably this embassy was also to renew the Bulgarian-German alliance.

Some time later, Khan Boris concluded an alliance with the Great Moravian Knyaz Rastislav (846-870). The inspirer for this move was the King of the West Franks, Charles the Bald (840-877). The German Kingdom responded by attacking Bulgaria. Bulgaria was defeated and Khan Boris was forced to re-establish his alliance with the German king. This alliance was, however, directed against Great Moravia, which was a Byzantine ally. The situation held great risk for the Bulgarian state.

Another conflict with the Byzantines started in 855-856. The Empire wanted to regain its control over some fortresses on the Diagonal Road (Via Diagonalis or Via Militaris) that went from Constantinople, through Philippopolis (Plovdiv), to Naissus (Niš) and Singidunum (Belgrade). The Byzantine Empire was victorious in the conflict and reconquered a number of cities, with Philippopolis being among them.

Khan Boris' alliance with the Germans threatened Great Moravia, which sought help from Byzantium (862-863). It was exactly in the same time that a Byzantine mission to Great Moravia was taking place. The purpose of this mission (led by Cyril and his brother Methodius) was to draw Great Moravia towards Constantinople and strengthen the Byzantine (Orthodox Christian) influence there.

What made the mission very interesting for Khan Boris was the fact that the two brothers Cyril and Methodius brought the first Slavonic alphabet to Knyaz Rostislav. Bulgaria was extremely interested in the implementation of a Slavonic alphabet because it saw it as means to stop the cultural influence of its enemy, the Byzantine Empire.

In the last months of 863, Bulgaria was once again attacked by the Byzantines. The most probable reason was that Boris had informed the German king that he wanted to accept Christianity. Byzantium had to take measures because a Roman Catholic Bulgaria, standing in the hinterland of Constantinople, was viewed as a threat to the Byzantine Empire's immediate interests.

The baptism of Boris I

This time Byzantium did not demand territories, as the conditions for peace were: the Bulgarian representatives were to convert to Christianity, followed by the rest of the Bulgarian people. Such an offer would be unacceptable in other circumstances.

The two sides concluded a "deep peace" for a 30-years period. In the late autumn of 863, a mission from the Patriarch of Constantinople came to Pliska and converted the khan, his family and high-ranking dignitaries.

Following the conquests of Khan Krum of Bulgaria at the beginning of the 9th century, Bulgaria became an important regional power in Southeastern Europe. Its future development was connected with the Byzantine and East Frankish Empires. Since both of these states were Christian, pagan Bulgaria remained more or less in isolation, unable to interact on even grounds, neither culturally nor religiously.

After the conversion of the Saxons, most of Europe was Christian. The preservation of paganism among the Bulgars and the Slavs (the two ethnic groups that formed the Bulgarian people) brought another disadvantage — the two ethnic groups' unification was hampered by their different religious beliefs. Lastly, Christianity had its roots in the Bulgarian lands prior to the formation of the Bulgarian state.

The Bulgarians pray to God for a famine to go away

Naturally, the German King Ludowic was not satisfied with Boris's plan to convert to Orthodox Christianity, although things did not escalate to open conflict.

The Christianization of Bulgaria was carried out simultaneously with the destruction of the old pagan holy places. There was opposition in the conservative aristocratical circles.

In 865, malcontents from all ten administrative regions (komitats) revolted against Boris (now titled Knyaz), accusing for giving them "a bad law". The rebels moved towards the capital with the intention to capture and kill the knyaz, then restore the old religion.

Nothing is known about the conflict, except that Knyaz Boris gathered the people loyal to him and suppressed the revolt. 52 boyars who had taken the lead of the revolt were executed "along with their whole families", but the commonfolk that "wished to do penance" were allowed to go without harm.

This harsh measure should not simply be regarded as something normal in that age. Until the end of his life, Knyaz Boris was haunted by suspicions about the moral price of his decision in 865. In his later correspondence with Pope Nicholas I, the knyaz asked whether his actions had crossed the borders of Christian humility. The pope answered:

“

... You have sinned rather because of zeal and lack of knowledge, than because of other vice. You receive forgiveness and grace and the benevolence of Christ, since penance has followed on your behalf.

”

Of course, it was not zeal or lack of knowledge that caused the knyaz to execute almost half of the most dignified representatives of the Bulgarian aristocracy. From a practical point of view, all these murders were the high price of ending the conflict once and for all.

This revolt was caused mostly by the fear that the Byzantine Empire would spread its influence through Christianity and destroy Bulgaria. In this part of the Middle Ages, for Bulgarians "Christians" was equal to "Byzantines" or "Greeks", as they were most often called. Many Bulgarians thought that along with the religion, they would be forced to accept the Byzantine way of life and morals.

Knyaz Boris realized that the Christianization of his subjects would result in the spread of Byzantine influence, as the liturgy was carried out in the Greek language, and the newly established Bulgarian Church was subordinate to the Church of Constantinople. The revolt against the new religion prompted the Knyaz to request that the Bulgarian Church be granted independence by Constantinople.

Prior to the middle of the 9th century, in the practice of the formally still united Church, there were no precedents of creating national churches among the newly converted peoples. It was Bulgaria that created this precedent and set the example for others to follow.

After Constantinople refused to grant the Bulgarian Church independence, Knyaz Boris turned to the Pope. In the end of August 866, a Bulgarian mission arrived in Rome, carrying a list of 115 questions by Knyaz Boris, regarding the Christian way of life of the newly converted Bulgarians and the organization of a future Bulgarian Church under Rome's jurisdiction. On 13 November 866, the Bulgarian knyaz was presented with the Pope's 106 answers. Formosa from Portua and Paul of Populon were leading the Pope's mission. At the same time, the Pope sent other emissaries to Constantinople.

The arrival of the Roman clerical mission concluded the activity of the Byzantine mission, which was ordered by the Knyaz to leave Bulgaria. This was viewed as an official change of Bulgarian orientation from Constantinople to Rome. The German mission that had arrived in the meantime also left Bulgaria after seeing Rome's emissaries were already there.

The banishment of Byzantium's clergymen naturally irritated Emperor Michael III. In a letter to Knyaz Boris, the Byzantine emperor expressed his disapproval of Bulgaria's religious reorientation and used offensive language against the Roman Church. The old rivalry between the two Churches burned with new power. In less than two years, Bulgaria's name became widely known in Western Europe.

In Constantinople, people nervously watched the events taking place in their northern neighbour, because a pro-Roman Bulgaria threatened Constantinople's immediate interests. A religious council was held in the summer of 867 in the Byzantine capital, during which the Roman Church's behaviour was harshly condemned. As a personal culprit, Pope Nicholas I was anathematized.

Without losing time, Knyaz Boris asked the Pope to appoint Formosa of Portua as Bulgarian Archbishop. Unfortunately for the Roman Church, the Pope refused. It is likely that Nicholas I had some personal reasons for this, because his official argument that Formosa already had an eparchy of his own was untrue.

The Pope then ordered new leaders of the mission to be sent to Bugaria — Dominic of Trivena and Grimwald of Polimarthia. Pope Nicolas I died soon after. His successor Pope Adrian II (867-872) turned out to be even more disinclined to comply with Knyaz Boris' demand that a Bulgarian archbishop be appointed by him.

The Knyaz proposed another candidature for Bulgarian archbishop, the Pope not sensing how important the moment was, refused again. Instead, he suggested a cleric named Silvester, who stood so low in the hierarchy that he was not even allowed to carry out liturgy by himself. After a three-day stay in Pliska, Silverster was sent back to Rome, accompanied by emissaries carrying a rather impolite letter by Knyaz Boris. The Knyaz saw these refusals and delays as an insult and a sign of unwillingness that the decision for Bulgarian archbishop be coordinated with him.
As a result, Knyaz Boris began negotiations Constantinople, where he now expected more cooperation than he had been shown in the past. Things might have easily taken a different turn, had Constantinople's attention not been turned in another direction.

On 23 September 867, Emperor Michael III was killed by his close acquaintance Basil, who started the Dynasty of the Macedonians that ruled the Empire until 1057. Patriarch Photius was replaced by his ideological rival Ignatius (847-858; 867-877), which caused a change in the relations with the Roman Church.

With the new rulers of the Empire, the tensions between Constantinople and Rome were quickly eased. Pope Adrian II needed the help of Basil I against the Arabs' attacks in Southern Italy. In the same time, Byzantium expected the Pope's support for Patriarch Ignatius.

As a result of the agreements reached, a Church Council was held in Constantinople. After the end of the official conferences, on 28 February 870 Bulgarian emissaries arrived in Constantinople, sent by the Knyaz and lead by the Ichirguboil (the first councilor of the Knyaz) Stasis, the Kan-Bogatur (high-ranking aristocrat) Sondoke, the Kan-Tarkan (high-ranking military commander) among others.

Few people suspected the real purpose of these emissaries. On 4 March Emperor Basil I closed the Council with a celebration at the Emperor's palace. The Bulgarian Kavkan (roughly a vicekhan or viceknyaz) Peter was also invited, and after he greeted the representatives of the Roman and Byzantine Churches (the Roman being first), Kavkan Peter asked them under whose jurisdiction the Bulgarian Church should fall. This question came as a surprise to the Roman representatives, who were not prepared to discuss this matter.

Apparently, there was a secret agreement between the Byzantine Patriarch, the Emperor and the Bulgarian emissaries, because the fathers immediately asked the Bulgarians whose clergy they had found when they came to the lands ruled by them. Naturally, the answer was "Greek". Then the Orthodox fathers declared that the right to look over the Bulgarian Church belonged only to the Constantinople Mother Church, which had held its jurisdiction on these lands in the past.

The protests of the Pope's emissaries were not taken into account. With the approval of the Knyaz and the Fathers of the Council, the Bulgarian Church was declared an Archbishopric. The Archbishop was to be elected among the bishops with the approval of the Knyaz.

The creation of an independent Bulgarian Archbishopric was unprecedented in the practice of the Churches. Usually, independent were those churches that were founded by apostles or apostles' students. For a very long period, Rome had been challenging Constantinople's equality to Rome, on the grounds that the Church of Constantinople had not been founded by a student of Christ.

Nevertheless, Knyaz Boris had been granted very quickly (just six years after converting to Christianity) a national independent church and a high-ranking supreme representative (the Archbishop). In the next 10 years, Pope Adrian II and his successors made desperate attempts to reclaim their influence in Bulgaria and to persuade Knyaz Boris to leave Constantinople's sphere of influence.

The foundations of the Bulgarian national Church had been set. The next stage was the implementation of the Cyrillic alphabet and the Slavonic language (Old Bulgarian) as official language of the Bulgarian Church and State in 893 AD — something considered unthinkable by most other European Christians.

Christianization of Scandinavia

fatman2021 — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:36:24 CST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Christianization of Scandinavia took place between the 8th and the 12th century. The realms of Scandinavia proper, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, established their own Archdioceses, responsible directly to the Pope, in 1104, 1154 and 1164, respectively. The conversion to Christianity of the Scandinavian people would require more time, since it took additional efforts to establish a network of churches. The Samis remained unconverted until the 18th century.

In fact, although the Scandinavians became nominally Christian, it took considerably longer for actual Christian beliefs to establish themselves among the people. The old indigenous traditions that had provided security and structure since time immemorial were challenged by ideas that were unfamiliar, such as original sin, the Incarnation, and the Trinity. Archaeological excavations of burial sites on the island of Lovön near modern-day Stockholm have shown that the actual Christianization of the people was very slow and took at least 150-200 years, and this was a very central location in the Swedish kingdom. Thirteenth century runic inscriptions from the bustling merchant town of Bergen in Norway show little Christian influence, and one of them appeals to a Valkyrie. At this time, enough knowledge of Norse mythology remained to be preserved in sources such as the Eddas in Iceland.

It may be a sign of the slowness of the conversion that many elements of the old faith, even several of the gods, remained part of Scandinavian folklore until modern times.

Moreover, during the early Middle Ages the papacy had not yet manifested itself as the central Catholic authority, so that regional variants of Christianity could develop. Since the image of a "victorious Christ" frequently appears in early Germanic art, scholars have suggested that Christian missionaries presented Christ "as figure of strength and luck" and that possibly the Book of Revelation, which presents Christ as victor over Satan, played a central part in the spread of Christianity among the Vikings.

A Viking Age image stone from Skåne depicting a man carrying a cross.

Recorded missionary efforts in what is today Denmark started with Willibrord, Apostle to the Frisians, who preached in Schleswig, which at the time was part of Denmark. All that is recorded is that he went north from Frisia sometime between 710 and 718 during the reign of King Agantyr (Latin:Ogendus). Agantyr is described as "hideous as a beast and hard as granite." Willibrord and his companions had little success: the king was respectful but had no interest in changing his beliefs. Agantyr did permit 30 young men to return to Frisia with Willibrord. Perhaps Willibrord's intent was to educate them and recruit some of them to join his efforts to bring Christianity to the savage Danes. A century later Ebbo, Archbishop of Reims and Willerich, later Bishop of Bremen, baptized a few persons during their 823 visit to Denmark. He returned to Denmark twice to prosyletize but without any recorded success.

In 826, the King of Jutland Harald Klak was forced to flee from Denmark by Horik I, Denmark's other king. Harald went to Emperor Louis I of Germany to seek help getting his lands in Jutland back. Louis I offered to make Harald Duke of Frisia if he would give up the old gods. Harald agreed, and his family and the 400 Danes with him were baptized in Ingelheim am Rhein. When Harald eventually returned to Jutland, Emperor Louis assigned the monk Ansgar to accompany him and oversee Christianity among the converts. When Harald Klak was forced from Denmark by King Horik I again, Ansgar left Denmark and focused his efforts on the Swedes. In 831 the Archdiocese of Hamburg was founded and assigned responsibility for proselytizing Scandinavia.

Horik I sacked Hamburg in 845 where Ansgar had become the archbishop. The seat of the archdiocese was transferred to Bremen. In a strange twist of events, Ansgar returned to Denmark in 860 and won over the trust of King Horik I who gave him land in Hedeby Schleswig for the first Christian chapel in Denmark. A second church was founded a few years later in Ribe on Denmark's west coast. Ribe was an important trading town, and as a result, southern Denmark was made a diocese in 948 with Ribe as its seat, a part of the Archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen under its first bishop, St. Leofdag who was murdered that year while crossing the Ribe River.

The supremacy of the archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen over ecclesiastical life in the north gradually declined as the papacy, from the pontificate of Pope Gregory VII onwards, involved itself more with the North directly. A significant step in this direction was the foundation of an archbishopric for the whole of Scandinavia at Lund in 1103/04.

The spread of Christianity in Denmark occurred intermittently. Danes encountered Christians when they participated in Viking raids from the 800s to the 1060s. Their contempt for Christian teaching, sites, and those who lived a religious life was notorious. Danes were still tribal in the sense that local chief determined attitudes towards Christianity and Christians for their clan and kinsmen. Bringing Christian slaves or future wives back from a Viking raid brought large numbers of ordinary Danes into close contact with Christians for perhaps the first time.

As the chiefs and kings of Denmark became involved in the politics of Normandy, England, Ireland, France, and Germany, they adopted a kinder attitude toward their Christian subjects. In some cases the conversion of the chief or king appears to be purely political to assure an alliance or prevent powerful Christian neighbours from attacking. There were instances when the conversion of a powerful chief (Danish: jarl) or one of the kings was followed by wholesale conversions among their followers. In a few instances conversion was brought about by trial-by-ordeal miracles wrought by saintly Christians in the presence of the king or other great men of the time.

Christian missionaries recognized early on that the Danes did not worship stone or wooden idols as the north Germans or some Swedes did. They could not simply destroy an image to prove that Christ was a superior god. The great religious sites at Viborg, Leira, Lund, and Odense were also the location of Denmark's great assembly places (Danish: landsting). Religious sites in Denmark were often located at sacred springs, magnificent beech groves, or isolated hilltops. Missionaries simply asked to build chapels in those places. Over time the religious significance of the place transferred itself to the chapel.

Even after becoming Christian, Danes blended the two beliefs systems together. Families who lived close to the earth did not want to offend the local spirits (Danish: landvætter), so offerings were left just as they had been in pre-Christian days. Sacred springs (Danish: kilder) were simply consecrated to one of the local saints associated with the spring and life went on much as it had before. Christian missionaries were able to help the process along by locating churches on or near sacred places, in some cases actually using wood from the sacred groves for church construction. Thor's hammer sign was easily absorbed by the cross.

Denmark has several saints, canonized by local bishops as was the custom in early Scandinavia or revered by locals as saints. Often these saints derive their veneration from deeds associated with the Christianization of Denmark. Viborg has St Kjeld, Aarhus has St Niels (also called St Nickolas), Odense has St Canute (Danish: Sanct Knud). Others include Canute Lavard, Ansgar, St Thøger of Vendsyssel, St Wilhelm, St Leofdag of Ribe, and others gave their lives and efforts to the task of making the Danes Christian.

King Gorm the Old (Danish: den Gamle), who was known in his lifetime as Gorm the Sleepy (Danish: Løge), was the first king of all of Denmark. Until his day, Danish kings were local kings without influence over all the Danes. Denmark consisted of Jutland and Schleswig and Holstein all the way down to the Eider River, the main islands of Zealand, Funen, Langeland, the nearby lesser islands, and southern Sweden (Danish: Skåne). Gorm was said to be "hard and heathen", but Queen Thyra's influence permitted Christians to live more or less without trouble. Gorm and Queen Thyra's son, King Harald Bluetooth (c. 911 - c. 986) boasted on one of the stones at Jelling that he had "made (Danish: gjorde) the Danes Christian".

The first Danish king to convert to Christianity was Harald Klak, who had himself baptised during his exile in order to receive the support of Louis the Pious. Rimbert reports that he set out to return home, accompanied by missionaries, however, Sanmark regards it as "unlikely" that he actually returned home and thus considers his impact on the conversion of Denmark as "probably minor."

Christianity only gained a strong hold in Denmark following the baptism of Harald 'Bluetooth' Gorsem. Initially, Harald had remained pagan, although he had allowed public preaching by Christian missionaries as early as 935. Around 960, Bluetooth (Danish: Blåtand) converted to Christianity, reportedly when the Frisian monk Poppo held a fire-heated lump of iron in his hand without injury. Harald's daughter, Gunhilde, and his son, Sweyn Forkbeard were baptized, too. There was also a political reason for conversion. German histories record Harald being baptized in the presence of Emperor Otto I, Sweyn Forkbeard's godfather. One consequence of his conversion is that Danish kings abandoned the old royal enclosure at Jelling and moved their residence to Roskilde on the island of Zealand.

Sweyn rebelled against his father, who spent an inordinate amount of time and money raising a great stone at Jelling to commemorate his accomplishments. One day King Harald asked a traveler if he had ever seen human beings move such a heavy load. "I have seen Sweyn drag all of Denmark away from you, sir. Judge for yourself which of you bears the heavier weight." Harald left the stone lying in the path, realizing at last that Svend had nearly succeeded in stealing the whole kingdom. Several battles brought the rebellion to stalemate, but in 985 Harald was mortally wounded by an arrow. Later his remains were buried in the little timber church at Roskilde, then Denmark's capital. His remains are supposed to be walled up in one of the pillars of Roskilde Cathedral.

Sweyn Forkbeard tried to wrest control of the church in Denmark away from the Holy Roman Empire and as a result was slandered by German historians of his day. He has been accused of relapsing from his Christian beliefs and persecuting Christians in England. In fact Sweyn gave land to the large cathedral at Lund to pay for the maintenance of the chapter. His army destroyed Christian churches in England as part of his invasion following the St Brice's Day massacre of Danes organized by Aethelred. But when Sweyn became King of England and of Denmark, politics required that he show a kinder face toward the church which had opposed him Denmark.

Another Christianizing influence was the mass emigration of Danes to England and Normandy in the Viking years. Thousands of Danes settled in east central England and in northern France displacing or intermarrying with the locals who were all Christian. Once part of a Danish clan became Christian, it often meant that the rest of the family's view toward Christianity softened.

By the early 11th century, certainly during the reign of Canute IV, Denmark can be said to be a Christian country. St Canute was murdered inside St Albans Church in 1085 after nobles and peasants alike rebelled at his enforcing the tithe to pay for the new monasteries and other ecclesiatical foundations which were introduced into Denmark for the first time during his reign. Both the institutions and the tax were considered foreign influences, and Canute's refusal to use the regional assemblies (Danish: landsting) as was customary to establish new laws, resulted not only in his own death, but that of his brother, Prince Benedict, and seventeen other housecarls. In many ways the canonization of St Canute in 1188 marks the triumph of Christianity in Denmark. When St Canute's remains were moved into Odense Cathedral, the entire nation humbled itself with a three day fast. Although he was not the first Dane to be made a saint, it was the first time for a king, the symbol of a more or less united Denmark was recognized as an example worthy of veneration by the faithful.

From that time until 1536 when Denmark became a Lutheran country under the King (or Queen) of Denmark as the titular head of the Danish National Church, (Danish: Folkekirke) the struggle between the power of the king and nobles and the church would define much of the course of Danish history.

Haakon Jarl was given missionaries by the king of Denmark, but before departure, Haakon sent the missionaries back.

The first recorded attempts at spreading Christianity in Norway were made by King Haakon the Good (reigned 934-961), who was raised in England. His efforts were unpopular and were met with little success. The subsequent King Harald Greyhide (reigned 961–976), also a Christian, was known for destroying pagan temples but not for efforts to popularize Christianity.

He was followed by the staunchly pagan Haakon Sigurdsson Jarl (reigned 971-995) who led a revival of paganism with the rebuilding of temples. When Harold I of Denmark attempted to force Christianity upon him around 975, Haakon broke his allegiance to Denmark. A Danish invasion force was defeated at the battle of Hjörungavágr in 986.
In 995 Olaf Tryggvason would become King Olaf I of Norway. Olaf had raided various European cities and fought in several wars. In 986 however, he (supposedly) met a Christian seer on the Isles of Scilly. This seer told him:Thou wilt become a renowned king, and do celebrated deeds. Many men wilt thou bring to faith and baptism, and both to thy own and others' good; and that thou mayst have no doubt of the truth of this answer, listen to these tokens. When thou comest to thy ships many of thy people will conspire against thee, and then a battle will follow in which many of thy men will fall, and thou wilt be wounded almost to death, and carried upon a shield to thy ship; yet after seven days thou shalt be well of thy wounds, and immediately thou shalt let thyself be baptized.[citation needed] The legend continues that, as the seer foretold, Olaf was attacked by a group of mutineers upon returning to his ships. As soon as he had recovered from his wounds, he let himself be baptized. He then stopped raiding Christian cities and lived in England and Ireland. In 995 he used an opportunity to return to Norway. When he arrived, Haakon Jarl was already facing a revolt, and Olaf Tryggvason could convince the rebels to accept him as their king. Haakon Jarl was later betrayed and killed by his own slave, while he was hiding from the rebels in a pig sty.

Olaf I then made it his priority to convert the country to Christianity using all means at his disposal. By destroying temples and torturing and killing pagan resisters he succeeded in making every part of Norway at least nominally Christian. Expanding his efforts to the Norse settlements in the west the kings' sagas credit him with Christianizing the Faroes, Orkney, Shetland, Iceland and Greenland.

After Olaf's defeat at the Battle of Svolder in 1000 there was a partial relapse to paganism in Norway under the rule of the Jarls of Lade. In the following reign of Saint Olaf, 1015-1028, pagan remnants were stamped out and Christianity entrenched.
Nicholas Breakspear, the later Pope Adrian IV, visited Norway from 1152 to 1154. During his visit, he set out a church structure for Norway. The Papal bull confirming the establishment of a Norwegian archdiocese at Nidaros (Archdiocese of Nidaros) is dated November 30, 1154.

Irish monks known as Papar are said to have been present in Iceland before its settlement by the Norse in the 9th century.

Following King Olaf I 's taking of Icelandic hostages, there were similar tension between the Christian and pagan factions in 10th century Iceland. Violent clashes were avoided by the decision of the Althing in AD 1000 to put the arbitration between them to Þorgeir Ljósvetningagoði, the leader of the pagan faction. He opted, after a day and a night of meditation, that the country should convert to Christianity as a whole, while pagan worship in private would continue to be tolerated.

Ansgar made an unsuccessful attempt as early as in the 830s.

U 136 stands in memory of an early convert who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

The first known attempts to Christianize Sweden were made by Ansgar in 830, invited by the Swedish king Björn at Haugi. Setting up a church at Birka he met with little Swedish interest. A century later Unni, archbishop of Hamburg, made another unsuccessful attempt. In the 10th century English missionaries made inroads in Västergötland.
Adam of Bremen's historical treatise Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum mentions a pagan Temple at Uppsala in central Sweden. "The reliability of Adam's description of the cult site at Gamla Uppsala has been seriously questioned." Although Uppsala's status as a pre-Christian cultic center is well documented, Adam's account could not been confirmed by archaeological findings. The "presumed cult buildings which have been excavated do not resemble Adam's description of a temple 'totally covered with gold."

The supporters of the cult at Uppsala drew a mutual agreement of toleration with Olof Skötkonung the first Christian king of Sweden who ascended to the throne in the 990s. Presumably Olof Skötkonung "was not in a powerful enough position to violently enforce the observance of Christianity" in Uppland. Instead he established an episcopal see at Skara in Västergötland, near his own stronghold at Husaby around the year 1000. Another episcopal see was established at Sigtuna in the 1060s, according to Adam vom Bremen by King Stenkil. "This seat was moved to Gamla Uppsala probably some time between 1134 and c.1140." This might have been due to Uppsala's importance as an old royal residence and thing site, but it "may also have been inspired by a desire to show that the resistance to Christianity in Uppland had now been defeated. By papal initiative an archdiocese for Sweden was establish at Uppsala in 1164.

Sources on Swedish history from this time are scant. What may be the one of the most violent occurrences between Christians and pagans was a conflict between Blot-Sweyn and Inge the Elder in the 1080s. This account survives in the Orkneyinga saga and in the last chapter of Hervarar saga where the saga successively moves from legendary history to historic Swedish events during the centuries before its compilation. The reigning king Inge decided to end the traditional pagan sacrifices at Uppsala which caused a public counter-reaction. Inge was forced into exile, and his brother-in-law Blot-Sweyn was elected king on condition that he allow the sacrifices to continue. After three years in exile, Inge returned secretly to Sweden in 1087, and having arrived at Old Uppsala, he surrounded the hall of Blot-Sweyn with his húskarls, and set the hall on fire, slaying the king as he escaped from the burning house. Hervarar saga reports that Inge completed the Christianization of the Swedes, but the Heimskringla suggests that Inge could not assume power directly, but had to dispose of yet another pagan king, Eric of Good Harvests.

According to M. G. Larsson, the reason why the Swedish core provinces had coexistence between paganism and Christianity throughout the 11th century was because there was a general support for the transition towards the new religion. However, the old pagan rites were important and central for legal processes and when someone questioned ancient practices, many newly Christianized Swedes could react strongly in support of paganism for a while.

Larrson theorizes that, consequently, the vacillation between paganism and Christianity that are reported by the sagas and by Adam of Bremen were not very different from vacillations that appear in modern ideological shifts. It would have been impossible for King Inge the Elder to rule as a Christian king without strong support from his subjects, and a Norwegian invasion of Västergötland by Magnus Barefoot put Inge's relationship with his subjects to the test: he appears to have mustered most of the Swedish leidang, 3,600 men, and he ousted the Norwegian occupation force.

Although Sweden was officially Christianized by the 12th century, the Norwegian king Sigurd the Crusader undertook a crusade against Småland, the south-eastern part of the Swedish kingdom in the early 12th century, and officially it was in order to convert the locals.

The Gutalagen (a Gotlandic law book from the 1220s) officially in use until 1595 but in practice until 1645, stated that performing blóts was punishable by a fine.

On the northernmost runestone of the world standing on the island Frösön in central Jämtland, the Frösö Runestone, it is said that a man called Austmaðr Christianized the region, probably in the period 1030-1050 when the runestone was risen. Little is known of Austmaðr, but he is believed to have been the lawspeaker of the regional thing Jamtamót.

Judging by archaeological finds, Christianity gained a foothold in Finland during the 11th century. It was strengthened with growing Swedish influence in the 12th century and the Finnish "crusade" of Birger Jarl in the 13th century.

In 1721, a new Danish colony was started in Greenland with the objective of converting the inhabitants to Christianity. Around the same time efforts were made in Norway and Sweden to convert the Sami (Lapps), who had remained pagan long after the conversion of their neighbours.

Apostolic

fatman2021 — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:29:27 CST

1) of or pertaining to an apostle.
2 derived from the apostles in regular succession.
3) of or pertaining to one of the unbroken lines of succession beginning with one of the apostles and perpetuated through bishops.

Orthodox

fatman2021 — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:26:33 CST

1) sound or correct in opinion or doctrine, esp. the theological or religious doctrine.

2) conforming to the Christian Faith as represented in the creeds of the early church.

3) of, pertaining to, or designating the Eastern Church.

4) of, pertaining to, or conforming to beliefs, attitudes, or modes of conduct that are generally approved.

5) customary or conventional as a means or method.

Christianization of Lithuania

fatman2021 — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 16:01:10 CST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Christianization of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos krikštas) was the event that took place in 1387, initiated by the Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland Jogaila with his cousin Vytautas, that signified the official adoption of Christianity by Lithuanians, one of the last pagan nations in Europe. This event ended one of the most complicated and lengthiest processes of Christianization in history.

The fresco in the Vilnius Cathedral, dating to the Christianization of Lithuania

Romuva sanctuary in Prussia

Lithuanians' contacts with the Christian religion have been extensive since the early period of the formation of their state. The first mention of Lithuania in 1009 (in Annals of Quedlinburg) is related to the Roman Catholic missionaries led by Bruno of Querfurt traveling not far from the border of Lithuania, when a few Yotvingian rulers were baptised. However, Lithuanians had more active contacts with the Kievan Rus' and subsequent Eastern Slavic states, which had Eastern Orthodox Christianity as their religion since the Christianization of Kievan Rus'.

The dukes of Lithuania, extending their dominion eastwards, experienced an influence of more culturally advanced Slavic states. Their subordinates and the people followed their example, borrowing, for instance, many of the East Slavic versions of Christian names in the 11th - 12th centuries. This borrowing became increasingly widespread among the pagan population in Aukštaitija, though much less in Samogitia. The influence of Orthodox Christianity in the pagan Lithuanian culture is evidenced in about one third of present day Lithuanian surnames which are constructed from baptismal names are Old Church Slavonic in origin. In addition, the Lithuanian words for "church", "baptism", "Christmas" and "fast" are classed as 'loanwords from Russian rather than Polish.'

The emergence of a monastic state of the Livonian Order around the Lithuanian borders made a choice of the state religion rather urgent. The first Lithuanian Grand Duke to adopt Western Christianity was Mindaugas, although his nephew and rival Tautvilas had done that earlier, in 1250. The first translations of Catholic prayers from German were made during his reign and have been known since.

The Pope Innocent IV bull regarding Lithuania's placement under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, Mindaugas' baptism and coronation

In 1249, Tautvilas' ally Daniel of Halych attacked Navahradak, and in 1250, another Tautvilas' ally, the Livonian Order, organized a major raid against Nalšia land and the Mindaugas' domains in Lithuania proper. Attacked from the south and north and facing the possibility of unrest elsewhere, Mindaugas was placed in an extremely difficult position, but managed to use the conflicts between the Livonian Order and the Archbishop of Riga in his own interests. In 1250 or 1251, Mindaugas agreed to receive baptism and relinquish control over some lands in the western Lithuania, for which he was to receive a crown in return.

Mindaugas and his family were baptised in the Catholic rite in 1250 or 1251. On July 17, 1251 Pope Innocent IV issued a papal bull proclaiming Lithuania as Kingdom and the state was placed under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. Mindaugas and his wife Morta were crowned at some time during the summer of 1253, and the Kingdom of Lithuania, formally Christian state, was established. Even after becoming a Catholic, King Mindaugas did not cease sacrificing to his own gods. After Mindaugas repudiated Christianity and expelled all the Christians from Lithuania in 1261, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania lost its status as a Western Christian state. Despite the ruling family's baptism, Lithuania had not become a truly Christian state, since there were no fruitful efforts to convert its population; Lithuanians and Samogitians stood firmly for their ancestral religion.

Fresco from Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune in Strasbourg, portraying 15 European states' path towards Christianity. Lithuania presented as the last figure.

Mindaugas' successors expressed not enough interest in following in his footsteps. There were decades of vacillation between the Latin and the Orthodox options. "For Gediminas and Algirdas, retention of paganism provided a useful diplomatic tool and weapon... that allowed them to use promises of conversion as a means of preserving their power and independence".[6] Grand Duke Algirdas had pursued an option of 'dynamic balance'. Throughout his reign he teased both Avignon and Constantinople with the prospects of a conversion; several unsuccessful attempts were made to negotiate the conversion of Lithuania.

To avoid further clashes with the Teutonic Order, in 1349, Lithuanian co-ruler Kęstutis started the negotiations with Pope Clement VI for the conversion and had been promised royal crowns for him and his sons. Algirdas willingly remained aside of the business and was concerned with the order in the Ruthenian part of the state. The intermediary in the negotiations, Polish King Casimir III, made an unexpected assault on Volhynia and Brest in October 1349 that ruined the Kęstutis' plan. During the Polish-Lithuanian war for Volhynia, King Louis I of Hungary offered a peace agreement to Kęstutis on 15 August 1351, according to which Kęstutis obliged himself to accept Christianity and provide the Kingdom of Hungary with military aid, in exchange of the royal crown. Kęstutis confirmed the agreement by performing a pagan ritual to convince the other side. In fact, Kęstutis had no intentions to abide the agreement and ran away on their road to Buda.

By the 14th century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had emerged as a successor to Kievan Rus in the western part of its dominions. Although its sovereign was pagan, the majority of the population was Slavic and Orthodox. To legitimize their rule in these areas, the Lithuanian royalty frequently married into the Orthodox Rurikid aristocracy of Eastern Europe. As a result, some Lithuanian rulers were baptised into Eastern Orthodoxy either as children (Švitrigaila) or adults. The first one was Vaišelga, son and heir of Mindaugas, who took monastic vows at an Orthodox monastery in Lavrashev near Novgorodok and later established a convent there.

The final attempt to Christianize Lithuania was made by Jogaila. Jogaila's Russian mother urged him to marry Sofia, daughter of Prince Dmitri of Moscow, who required him first to convert to Orthodoxy and to make Lithuania a fief of the Grand Duchy of Moscow.[14] That option, however, was unrealistic and unlikely to halt the crusades against Lithuania by the Teutonic Order. Jogaila chose therefore to accept a Polish proposal to become a Catholic and marry Queen Jadwiga of Poland. On these and other terms, on 14 August, 1385, at the castle of Krėva, Jogaila agreed to adopt Christianity, signing the Act of Krėva.
Jogaila was duly baptised at the Wawel Cathedral in Kraków on 15 February 1386 and became king of Poland. The royal baptism was followed by the conversion of most of Jogaila's court and knights[15], as well as Jogaila's brothers Karigaila, Vygantas, Švitrigaila and cousin Vytautas. Jogaila sent Dobrogost, Bishop of Poznań, as ambassador to Pope Urban VI with a petition for the erection of an episcopal see at Vilnius and the appointment of Andrzej Wasilko to fill it.

"Baptism of Lithuania" by Jan Matejko

Jogaila returned to Lithuania on February 1387. The baptism of nobles and their peasants was at first carried out in the capital Vilnius and its environs. The nobility and some peasants in Aukštaitija were baptized in spring, followed by the rest of the Lithuanian nobility. The parishes were established in ethnic Lithuania and the new Vilnius Cathedral was built in 1387 in the site of a demolished pagan temple. According to the information of disputed accuracy provided by Jan Długosz, the first parochial churches were built in Lithuanian pagan towns Vilkmergė, Maišiagala, Lyda, Nemenčinė, Medininkai, Krėva, Haina and Abolcy, all belonging to the Jogaila's patrimony. On 19 April 1389, Pope Urban VI recognized the status of Lithuania as a Roman Catholic state.

Samogitia was the last ethnic region of Lithuania to become Christianized in 1413, following the defeat of the Teutonic Order in the Battle of Grunwald and the Peace of Thorn and its subsequent return to the Lithuanian control. In November 1413, Vytautas himself sailed Neman River and Dubysa, reached the environs of Betygala, where he baptised first groups of Samogitians. In 1416, the construction of parochial churches was started. The Diocese of Samogitia was established on 23 October 1417 and Matthias of Trakai became the first Bishop of Samogitia. The cathedral was built in Medininkai around 1464.

Although ethnic Lithuanian nobles were the main converts to Catholicism, paganism remained strong among the peasantry. Pagan customs prevailed for a long time among the common people of Lithuania and were covertly practiced. There had been no prosecution of priests and adherents of the old faith. However, by the 17th century, following the Counter-Reformation, the Roman Catholic faith had essentially taken precedence over earlier pagan beliefs.

The conversion and its political implications had lasting repercussions for the history of Lithuania. As the majority of the population of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania outside Lithuania proper was Orthodox and the elite gradually converted to Roman Catholicism, religious tensions increased. Some of the Orthodox Gediminids left Lithuania for Muscovy, where they gave rise to such families as the Galitzine and the Troubetzkoy. The Orthodox population of present-day Ukraine and eastern Belarus often sympathized with the rulers of Muscovy, who portrayed themselves as the champions of Orthodoxy. These feelings contributed to such reverses as the Battle of Vedrosha, which crippled the Grand Duchy and undermined its position as a dominant power in the Eastern Europe.

On the other hand, the conversion to the Roman Catholicism facilitated Lithuania's integration into the cultural sphere of the Western Europe and paved the way to the political alliance of Lithuania and Poland, finalized as the Union of Lublin in 1569.

Christianization of Kievan Rus'

fatman2021 — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:54:00 CST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Christianization of Kievan Rus' took place in several stages. In early 867, Patriarch Photius of Constantinople announced to other Orthodox patriarchs that the Rus, baptised by his bishop, took to Christianity with particular enthusiasm. Photius's attempts at Christianizing the country seem to have entailed no lasting consequences, since the Primary Chronicle and other Slavonic sources describe the tenth-century Rus as firmly entrenched in paganism. The definitive Christianisation of Kiev dates from the late 980s (the year is disputed), when Vladimir the Great was baptized at Chersonesos, proceeding to baptize his family and people in Kiev.

The most authoritative source for the early Christianization of Rus is an encyclical letter of Patriarch Photius, datable to early 867. Referencing the Siege of Constantinople of 860, Photius informs the Oriental patriarchs and bishops that, after the Bulgarians turned to Christ in 863, the Rus' followed suit. As was the case with the Bulgarians, the Patriarch found it prudent to send to the barbarians a bishop from Constantinople. With some modifications, the story is repeated by Constantine VII in De Administrando Imperio, followed by several generations of Byzantine historians, including John Skylitzes and John Zonaras. That the imperial court and patriarchate regarded the 10th-century Rus' as Christians is evident from the fact that the bishopric of Rus' was enumerated in the lists of Orthodox sees, compiled during the reigns of Leo the Wise and Constantine VII. There is also an argumentum ex silentio: no Greek source recorded the second baptism of the Rus in the 990s.

Whatever the scope of Photius's efforts to Christianize the Rus, their effect was not lasting. Although they fail to mention the mission of Photius, the authors of the Primary Chronicle were aware that a sizable portion of the Kievan population was Christian by 944. In the Russo-Byzantine Treaty, preserved in the text of the chronicle, the Christian part of the Rus swear according to their faith, while the ruling prince and other non-Christians invoke Perun and Veles after the pagan custom. The Kievan collegiate church of St. Elijah (whose cult in the Slavic countries was closely modeled on that of Perun) is mentioned in the text of the chronicle, leaving modern scholars to ponder how many churches existed in Kiev at the time.

Either in 945 or 957, the ruling regent, Olga of Kiev, visited Constantinople with a certain priest, Gregory. Her reception at the imperial court is described in De Ceremoniis. Although it is usually presumed that she was baptized in Constantinople rather than Kiev, there is no explicit mention of the sacrament, so neither version is excluded. Olga is also known to have requested a bishop and priests from Rome. Her son, Sviatoslav (r. 963-972), continued to worship Perun and other gods of the Slavic pantheon. He remained a stubborn pagan all of his life; according to the Primary Chronicle, he believed that his warriors would lose respect for him and mock him if he became a Christian.

Svyatoslav's successor, Yaropolk I (r. 972-980), seems to have had a more conciliatory attitude towards Christianity. Late medieval sources even claim that Yaropolk exchanged ambassadors with the Pope. The Chronicon of Adémar de Chabannes and the life of St. Romuald (by Pietro Damiani) actually document the mission of St. Bruno of Querfurt to the land of Rus, where he succeeded in converting to Christianity a local king (one of three brothers who ruled the land). Alexander Nazarenko suggests that Yaropolk went through some preliminary rites of baptism, but was murdered at the behest of his pagan half-brother Vladimir (whose own rights to the throne were questionable) before his conversion was formalized. Following this theory, any information on Yaropolk's baptism according to the Latin rite would be suppressed by the later Orthodox chroniclers, zealous to keep Vladimir's image of the Russian Apostle untarnished for succeeding generations.

Fresco/Icon depicting the baptism of Kyiv at St. Joseph the Betrothed Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

Vasily Perov's painting illustrates clandestine meetings of Christians in pagan Kiev

Ivan Eggink's painting represents Vladimir listening to the Orthodox priests, while the papal envoy stands aside in discontent.

During the first decade of Vladimir's reign, pagan reaction set in. Perun was chosen as the supreme deity of the Slavic pantheon and his idol was placed on the hill by the royal palace. This revival of paganism was contemporaneous with similar attempts undertaken by Jarl Haakon in Norway and (possibly) Svein Forkbeard in Denmark. Although Vladimir seems to have gone further than both Scandinavian konungs (even human sacrifices were reported in Kiev), his religious reform failed. By the late 980s he had found it necessary to adopt monotheism from abroad.

The Primary Chronicle reports that in the year 987, as the result of a consultation with his boyars, Vladimir sent envoys to study the religions of the various neighboring nations whose representatives had been urging him to embrace their respective faiths. The result is amusingly described in the following apocryphal anecdote. Of the Muslim Bulgarians of the Volga the envoys reported there is no gladness among them; only sorrow and a great stench, and that their religion was undesirable due to its taboo against alcoholic beverages and pork; supposedly, Vladimir said on that occasion: "Drinking is the joy of the Rus'."

Russian sources also describe Vladimir consulting with Jewish envoys (who may or may not have been Khazars), and questioning them about their religion but ultimately rejecting it, saying that their loss of Jerusalem was evidence of their having been abandoned by God.

Ultimately Vladimir settled on Christianity. In the gloomy churches of the Germans his emissaries saw no beauty; but at Hagia Sophia, where the full festival ritual of the Byzantine Church was set in motion to impress them, they found their ideal: "We no longer knew whether we were in heaven or on earth," they reported, "nor such beauty, and we know not how to tell of it." If Vladimir was impressed by this account of his envoys, he was yet more so by political gains of the Byzantine alliance.

The Baptism of Vladimir, a fresco by Viktor Vasnetsov

Foreign sources, very few in number, present the following story of Vladimir's conversion. Yahya of Antioch and his followers (al-Rudhrawari, al-Makin, al-Dimashki, and ibn al-Athir) give essentially the same account. In 987, the generals Bardas Sclerus and Bardas Phocas revolted against the Byzantine emperor Basil II. Both rebels briefly joined forces and advanced on Constantinople. On September 14, 987, Bardas Phocas proclaimed himself emperor. Anxious to avoid the siege of his capital, Basil II turned to the Rus for assistance, even though they were considered enemies at that time. Vladimir agreed, in exchange for a marital tie; he also agreed to accept Orthodox Christianity as his religion and bring his people to the new faith. When the wedding arrangements were settled, Vladimir dispatched 6,000 troops to the Byzantine Empire and they helped to put down the revolt.

In the Primary Chronicle, the account of Vladimir's baptism is preceded by the so-called Korsun' Legend. According to this apocryphal story, in 988 Vladimir captured the Greek town of Korsun' (Chersonesos) in Crimea, highly important commercially and politically. This campaign may have been dictated by his wish to secure the benefits promised to him by Basil II, when he had asked for the Rus' assistance against Phocas. In recompense for the evacuation of Chersonesos, Vladimir was promised the hand of the emperor's sister, Anna Porphyrogeneta. Prior to the wedding, Vladimir was baptized (either in Chersonesos or in Kiev), taking the Christian name of Basil out of compliment to his imperial brother-in-law. The sacrament was followed by his marriage with the Greek princess.

The Baptism of Kievans, a painting by Klavdiy Lebedev

Returning to Kiev in triumph, Vladimir exhorted the residents of his capital to the Dnieper river for baptism. This mass baptism became the iconic inaugural event in the Christianization of the state of Kievan Rus'.

At first Vladimir baptised his 12 sons and many boyars. He destroyed the wooden statues of Slavic pagan gods (which he had himself raised just eight years earlier). They were either burnt or hacked into pieces, and the statue of Perun — the supreme god — was thrown into the Dnieper. Then he sent a message to all residents of Kiev, "rich, and poor, and beggars, and slaves", to come to the river on the following day, lest they risk becoming the "prince's enemies". Large number of people came; some even brought infants with them. They were sent into the water while Orthodox priests, who came from Chersonesos for the occasion, prayed.

To commemorate the event, Vladimir built the first stone church of Kievan Rus', called the Church of the Tithes, where his body and the body of his new wife were to repose. Another church was built on top of the hill where pagan statues stood before.

The baptism of Kiev was followed by similar ceremonies in other urban centres of the country. The Ioakim Chronicle says that Vladimir's uncle, Dobrynya, forced the Novgorodians into Christianity "by fire", while the local mayor, Putyata, persuaded his compatriots to accept Christian faith "by the sword". At that same time, Bishop Ioakim Korsunianin built the first, wooden, Cathedral of Holy Wisdom "with 13 tops" on the site of a pagan cemetery. Paganism persisted in the country for a long time, surfacing during the Upper Volga Uprising and other occasional pagan protests. The northeastern part of the country, centred on Rostov, was particularly hostile to the new religion. Novgorod itself faced a pagan uprising as late as 1071, in which Bishop Fedor faced a real threat to his person; Prince Gleb Sviatoslaich broke up the crowd by chopping a sorcerer in half with an ax.

The Christianisation of Kievan Rus' firmly allied it with the Byzantine Empire. The Greek learning and book culture was adopted in Kiev and other centres of the country. Churches started to be built on the Byzantine model. During the reign of Vladimir's son Yaroslav I, Metropolitan Ilarion authored the first known work of East Slavic literature, an elaborate oration in which he favourably compared Rus to other lands known as "the Sermon on Law and Grace". The Ostromir Gospels, produced in Novgorod during the same period, was the first dated East Slavic book. But the only surviving work of lay literature, The Tale of Igor's Campaign, testifies to the survival of pagan worldview under this Christian facade.

In 1988, the faithful of the Eastern Orthodox churches which have roots in the baptism of Kiev celebrated a millennium of Eastern Slavic Christianity. The great celebrations in Moscow changed the character of relationship between the Soviet state and the church. For the first time since 1917, numerous churches and monasteries were returned to the Russian Orthodox Church. In Ukrainian communities around the world, members of various Ukrainian churches also celebrated the Millennium of Christianity in Ukraine.

Nestorian Stele

fatman2021 — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:32:03 CST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Nestorian Stele (also known as the Nestorian Stone or Nestorian Tablet) is a Tang Chinese stele erected in 781 that celebrates the accomplishments of the Assyrian Church of the East in China, also referred to as the Nestorian Church (albeit inaccurately). It is a 279-cm tall limestone block. The stele documents the existence of Christian communities in several cities in northern China, and reveals that the church had initially received recognition by the Tang Emperor Taizong in 635.

The heading on the stone, which is in Chinese, means Memorial of the Propagation in China of the Luminous Religion from Daqin (大秦景教流行中國碑; pinyin: Dàqín Jǐngjiào liúxíng Zhōngguó bēi, abbreviated 大秦景教碑). It is also translated as A Monument Commemorating the Propagation of the Ta-Chin Luminous Religion in the Middle Kingdom (the church referred to itself as "The Luminous Religion of Daqin", Daqin being the Chinese language term for the Roman Empire) in the first and second centuries, and in later eras also used to refer to the Syriac Christian churches.

The stele erected on January 7, 781, at the imperial capital city of Chang'an (modern-day Xi'an), or at nearby Chou-Chih (盩厔; Pinyin Zhouzhi). The calligraphy was by Lü Xiuyan (呂秀巖), and the content was composed by the Nestorian monk, Jingjing (景淨), in the four- and six-character euphemistic style (駢體文) Chinese (total 1,756 characters) and a few lines in Syriac (70 words). On top of the tablet, there is a cross. Calling God "Veritable Majesty", the text refers to Genesis, the cross, and the baptism. It also pays tribute to missionaries and benefactors of the church, who are known to have arrived in China by 640. The text contain the name of an early missionary, Alopen.
The stele is thought to have been buried in 845, during a campaign of anti-Buddhist persecution, which also affected the Nestorians.

The stele was unearthed in the late Ming Dynasty (between 1623 and 1625) beside Chongren Temple (崇仁寺). According to the account by the Jesuit Alvaro Semedo, the workers who found the stele immediately reported the find to the governor, who soon visited the monument, and had it installed on a pedestal, under a protective roof, requesting the nearby Buddhist monastery to care for it. The newly discovered stele attracted attention of local intellectuals. It was Zhang Gengyou (Wade-Giles: Chang Keng-yu) who first identified the text as Christian in content. Zhang, who had been aware of Christianty through Matteo Ricci, and who himself may have been Christian, sent a copy of the stele's Chinese text to his Christian friend, Leon Li Zhizao in Hangzhou, who in his turn told about it to the locally based Jesuits.

The stele in Beilin Museum

Alvaro Semedo was the first European to visit the stele (some time between 1625 and 1628). Nicolas Trigault's Latin translation of the monument's inscription soon made its way in Europe, and was apparently first published in a French translation, in 1628. Portuguese and Italian translations, and a Latin re-translation, were soon published as well. Semedo's account of the monument's discovery was published in 1641, in his Imperio de la China.

The first publication of the original Chinese and Syriac text of the inscription in Europe is attributed to Athanasius Kircher. China Illustrata edited by Kircher (1667) included a reproduction of the original inscription in Chinese characters, Romanization of the text, and a Latin translation; this was perhaps the first sizable Chinese text made available in its original form to the European public. A sophisticated Romanization system, reflecting Chinese tones, used to transcribe the text, was the one developed earlier by Matteo Ricci's collaborator Lazzaro Cattaneo (1560-1640). The work of the transcription and translation was carried out by Michał Boym and two young Chinese Christians who visited Rome in the 1650s and 1660s: Andreas Zheng (Zheng Anduole; Wade-Giles: Cheng An-to-le), who had come to Rome with Boym, and someone who signed in Latin as "Matthaeus Sina" - perhaps the person who traveled from China to Europe overland with Johann Grueber.

Detail of the stele

The Nestorian Stone has attracted the attention of some anti-Christian, Christian anti-Catholic, or Catholic anti-Jesuit groups, who have argued that the stone is a fake or that the inscriptions were modified by the Jesuits who served in the Ming Court. The three most prominent early skeptics were the German-Dutch Presbyterian scholar Georg Horn (born 1620) (De originibus Americanis, 1652), the German historian Gottlieb Spitzel (1639-1691) (De re literaria Sinensium commentarius, 1660), and the Dominican missionary Domingo Navarrete (1618-1686) (Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos, y religiosos de la monarchia de China, 1676). Later, Navarrete's point of view was picked by French Jansenists and Voltaire.

By the 19th century, the debate had become less sectarian and more scholarly. Notable skeptics included Karl Friedrich Neumann, Stanislas Julien, Edward E. Salisbury. Ernest Renan initially had "grave doubts", but eventually changed his mind in the light of later scholarship, in favor of the stele's genuineness. The defenders included some non-Jesuit scholars, such as Alexander Wylie, James Legge, and Jean-Pierre-Guillaume Pauthier, although the most substantive and convincing work in defense of the stele's authenticty – the three-volume Le stèle chrétienne de Si-ngan-fou (1895 to 1902) was authored by the Jesuit scholar Henri Havret.

Paul Pelliot (1878–1945) did an extensive amount of research on the stele, which, however, was only published posthumously, in 1996. His and Havret's works are still regarded as the two "standard books" on the subject.

In the assessment of modern scholars (e.g., David E. Mungello), there is no scientific or historical evidence to support the claims of the non-authenticity of the stele. Both of Navarrete's main arguments – the absence of references in Chinese records to the events described on the stele, and the supposed widespread skepticism in 17th century China about the authenticity of the monument – appear to be mistaken.

A Nestorian tombstone from Quanzhou

The attitude of Western scholars to the stele has also attracted criticism, one author saying that "when Westerners discussed the Nestorian monument they were not really talking about China at all. The stone served as a kind of screen onto which they could project their own self-image and this is what they were looking at, not China. The stone came to represent the empire and its history for many Western readers, but only because it was seen as a tiny bit of the West that was already there." Similarly, some polemicists' skepticism about the stele was not a reflection of Chinese' own view, but "far more a European phenomenon which sprang from sectarian rather than scholarly grounds.

Numerous Christian gravestones have also been found in China in the Xinjiang region, Quanzhou and elsewhere from a somewhat later period. There are also two much later stelae (from 960 and 1365) presenting a curious mix of Christian and Buddhist aspects, which are preserved at the site of the former Monastery of the cross in the Fangshan District, near Beijing.

In the late 19th and early 20th century a number of European scholars opined in favor of somehow getting the stele out of China and into the British Museum or some other "suitable" location (e.g., Frederic H. Balfour in his letter published in the Times in early 1886), but their plans were frustrated.

After being housed near Chongren Temple until 1907, the Nestorian Stele was moved to Xi'an's Beilin Museum (Forest of Steles Museum). It is now exhibited in the museum's Room Number 2, and is the first stele on the left after the entry.

Paulinus II of Aquileia

fatman2021 — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:59:39 CST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Saint Paulinus II (c.730/740 - 802), was an Italian bishop, theologian, poet, and scholar of the Carolingian Renaissance.

Paulinus was born at Premariacco, near Cividale (the Roman Forum Iulii) in the Friuli region of north-eastern Italy, probably of a Roman family during the latter days of Lombard rule. He received his education in the patriarchal school at Cividale and, after ordination to the priesthood, he became master of the same school. There he acquired a thorough Latin culture, both in pagan and Christian classics. He also developed a relatively deep knowledge of jurisprudence, and an extensive Scriptural, theological, and patristic training. Paulinus' educational background would prepare him to be a key player in the Carolingian Renaissance, allowing him to capably assist in the promotion of Christendom and the restoration of Western Civilization after centuries of unstable barbarian rule.

It was precisely because of his exceptional learning that Paulinus first came to the attention of Charlemagne in 774 when the King of the Franks conquered all of Lombard northern Italy. Moreover, because of his loyalty to Charlemagne during Duke Hrodgaud's rebellion in 776, Paulinus was rewarded by many favours, among them the gift of the property of Waldand, son of Mimo of Lavariano, by means of a diploma issued by Charlemagne from Ivrea. In the same year, Charlemagne also invited Paulinus to his court to be royal "master of grammar (grammaticus magister)". It was at the itinerant palace school (schola palatina) that Paulinus would make the acquaintance of other leading scholars of the age, including Peter of Pisa, Alcuin of York, Fardulf, Arno of Salzburg, Albrico, Bona, Riculph, Raefgot, Rado, Lullus, Bassinus, Fuldrad, Eginard, Adalard and Adelbert.

On the death of Patriarch Siguald in 787, Charles appointed Paulinus to be consecrated as the Patriarch of Aquileia. Paulinus returned from court to his see and took of residence at Cividale, also the seat of the Carolingian count in charge of the March of Friuli. (Aquileia itself had long before been reduced to a tiny village after its destruction in 452 by Attila the Hun, although the patriarchal basilica remained there.) As patriarch, Paulinus could take a more active and prominent part in implementing societal reforms. In his relations with the churches of Istria, or with the Patriarch of Grado, the representative of Byzantine interests, he exhibited prudence and pastoral zeal. From Charlemagne, Paulinus obtained diplomas for the free election of the future patriarchs by his cathedral chapter, and other privileges for his patriarchate as well as for the monastery of St. Mary in Organo, the church of St. Lawrence of Buia, and the hospitals of St. John at Cividale and St. Mary at Verona.

Paulinus was sollicitous for the integrity of Catholic doctrine. In 792 Paulinus took part in the Council of Ratisbon, which condemned the heresy of Adoptionism taught by Spanish bishops, Elipandus of Toledo and Felix of Urgel. In 794 he took a leading part in the Frankish national council at Frankfort-am-Main, where Adoptionism was again condemned, and he composed a book against it which was sent to Spain in the name of the assembled bishops. Departing Frankfort, Paulinus returned to his epsicopal residence at Cividale.

In 796 he accompanied Charlemagne's son Pepin in his military campaign against the nearby hostile Avars. In late summer of 796, after the Avars had been defeated, Paulinus presided over a synod of bishops at Pepin's military camp on the banks of the Danube in which the bishops decided on a program of evangelization and catechesis for the recently subdued territories inhabited by the Avars and Slovenes. With the consent of Paulinus, the synod also assigned the patriarchate of Aquileia's northernmost territory to the bishop of Salzburg, headed by Arno. Returning from the expedition, the Paulinus once more opposed the Adoptionists at the Council of Cividale. The patriarch expounded the Catholic doctrine about the Blessed Trinity, especially about the procession of the Holy Spirit from both the Father and the Son. At this synod fourteen "canons" on ecclesiastical discipline, and on the sacrament of marriage, were framed and a copy of the Acts was sent to the emperor. [Paulinus was once thought to have assisted at a Council of Altinum, but the theologian Karl Josef von Hefele has provided evidence that such a council never occurred.]

Always protesting the immunity of the Church from secular obligations and interference in his correspondences with Charlemagne, Paulinus, nonetheless, served as one of Charlemagne's Missus Dominicus at Pistoia, with Arno of Salzburg and ten other bishops in 798. Afterwards he also traveled to Rome as legate to the Pope Leo III.
Much of the activity of Paulinus as patriarch can be gathered from the Sponsio Episcoporum ad S. Aquileiensem Sedem.

He died, revered as a saint, on January 11, 802.

Among his works are: Libellus Sacrosyllabus contra Elipandum, Liber Exhortationis, Libri III contra Felicem, and the protocol of the conference with Pepin and the bishops on the Danube, a work very important for the history of that expedition. Among his early works is a Commentary on the Letter to the Hebrews. This work remains, however, in manuscript form.

Paulinus was also a poet. Among his better known poetical productions are his Carmen de regula fidei; a Versus de Lazaro; a planctus or elegy inspired by the death of his friend, Duke Eric of Friuli who was killed in battle, 799; a rhythm on the destruction of Aquileia; and eight liturgical rhythms or hymns to be sung in his own church at Christmas, the Candlemas, Lent, Easter, the feast of St. Mark, the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, and the feast of the dedication of his cathedral.

Letters written by and to Paulinus are preserved in the Monumenta Germanica Historica and Patrologia Latina.

After several translations the relics of the patriarch were laid to rest under the altar of the crypt of the basilica of Cividale del Friuli.

The first appearance of the name St. Paulinus in the Liturgy occurs in the "Litaniae" of Charles the Bald of the 9th century. It appears also in the "Litaniae Carolinae," in the "Litaniae a S. Patribus constitutae," and finally in the "Litaniae of the Gertrudian" MS. of the 10th century.

In manuscripts prior to the Martyrology of Usuard his feast day is recorded on 11 January. In the calendars of saints of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, used in the Church of Aquileia and Cividale, his feast has a special rubric. Until the sixteenth century the feast continued to be celebrated on 11 January, during the privileged octave of the Epiphany. The patriarch Francesco Barbaro at the beginning of the seventeenth century translated the feast to 9 February. The Church of Cividale keeps his feast on 2 March.

According to the most recent (2004) edition of the Roman Martyrology, Paulinus' feast day is assigned to the date of his death, 11 January.

Epiphanius (Patriarch of Aquileia)

fatman2021 — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:56:27 CST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Epiphanius (served 612-613) was the first Patriarch of Aquelia to rule from Grado.

Paulinus I of Aquileia

fatman2021 — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:54:47 CST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paulinus I was Patriarch of Aquileia from 557 to 571.
He moved his see to Grado, a small island opposite Aquileia, keeping, however, the old title. Under the pontificate of Pelagius I, in a synod, he renounced communion with Rome, and excommunicated the great Byzantine general Narses, the hope of Italy.

Nicetas (Bishop of Aquileia)

fatman2021 — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:53:32 CST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nicetas was the bishop of Aquileia in the mid-5th century.

In 452 he temporarily moved from Aquileia to Grado, because the latter was safer from attacks by the groups moving west from the Eurasian Steppe into the former lands of the Roman Empire.