The Church and the Barbarians | Page 2

THE WESTERN ISLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
CHAPTER XI
THE CONVERSION OF SLAVS AND NORTHMEN . . . . . . . . . . . 123
CHAPTER XII
PROGRESS OF THE CHURCH IN GERMANY . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
CHAPTER XIII
THE POPES AND THE REVIVAL OF THE EMPIRE . . . . . . . . . 143
CHAPTER XIV
THE ICONOCLASTIC CONTROVERSY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
CHAPTER XV
LEARNING AND MONASTICISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
CHAPTER XVI
SACRAMENTS AND LITURGIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
CHAPTER XVII
THE END OF THE DARK AGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
APPENDIX I LIST OF EMPERORS AND POPES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
APPENDIX II A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

{1}
THE CHURCH AND THE BARBARIANS
CHAPTER I
THE CHURCH AND ITS PROSPECTS IN THE FIFTH CENTURY
[Sidenote: The task of the Church]
The year 461 saw the great organisation which had ruled and united Europe for so long trembling into decay. The history of the Empire in relation to Christianity is indeed a remarkable one. The imperial religion had been the necessary and deadly foe of the religion of Jesus Christ; it had fought and had been conquered. Gradually the Empire itself with all its institutions and laws had been transformed, at least outwardly, into a Christian power. Questions of Christian theology had become questions of imperial politics. A Roman of the second century would have wondered indeed at the transformation which had come over the world he knew: it seemed as if the kingdoms of the earth had become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ. But also it seemed that the new wine had burst the old bottles. The boundaries of the Roman world had been outstepped: nations had come in from the East and from the West. The {2} system which had been supreme was not elastic: the new ideas, Christian and barbarian alike, pressed upon it till it gave way and collapsed. And so it came about that if Christianity had conquered the old world, it had still to conquer the new.
[Sidenote: The decaying Empire.]
Now before the Church in the fifth century there were set several powers, interests, duties, with which she was called upon to deal; and her dealing with them was the work of the next five centuries. They were,--the Empire, Christian, but obsolescent; the new nations, still heathen, which were struggling for territory within the bounds of the Empire, and for sway over the imperial institutions; the distant tribes untouched by the message of Christ; and the growth, within the Church itself, of new and great organisations, which were destined in great measure to guide and direct her work. Politics, theology, organisation, missions, had all their share in the work of the Church from 461 to 1003. In each we shall find her influence: to harmonise them we must find a principle which runs through her relation to them all.
[Sidenote: The need of unity.]
The central idea of the period with which we are to deal is unity. Up till the fifth century, till the Council of Chalcedon (451) completed the primary definition of the orthodox Christian faith in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, Christians were striving for conversion, organisation, definition. All these aims still remained, but in less prominence. The Church's order was completed, the Church's creed was practically fixed, and the dominant nations in Europe had owned the name of Christ. There remained a new and severe test. Would the {3} Church win the new barbarian conquerors as she had won the old imperial power? There was to be a great epoch of missionary energy. But of the firm solidity of the Church there could be no doubt. Heresies had torn from her side tribes and even nations who had once belonged to her fold. But still unity was triumphant in idea; and it was into the Catholic unity of the visible Church that the new nations were to be invited to enter. S. Augustine's grand idea of the City of God had really triumphed, before the fifth century was half passed, over the heathen conceptions of political rule. The