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THE SLAVS 
 
 GeogzEftuhr 
 
 Published. In- the Sodfh for Promoting Christian Khcn 
 
CONVERSION OF THE WEST, 
 
 THE SLAVS, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. G. f/mACLEAR, D.D., 
 
 HEAD MASTER OF KING'S COLLEGE SCHOOL, AUTHOR OF "THE MISSIONS 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES," ETC. 
 
 WITH MAP. 
 
 PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF 
 
 THE COMMITTEE OF GENERAL LITERATURE AND EDUCATION, 
 
 APPOINTED BY THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING 
 
 CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 LONDON : 
 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 SOLD AT THE DEPOSITORIES : 
 77, GREAT QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN's-INN FIELDS 
 4, ROYAL EXCHANGE; 48, PICCADILLY*, 
 AND BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. 
 
 NEW YORK : POTT, YOUNG, & CO. 
 1879. 
 
WYMAN AND SONS, PRINTERS, 
 
 GREAT QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS, 
 
 LONDON, W.C. 
 
PEIHGHTOn \ 
 REC. NOV IBbO 
 
 The present Volume forms a sequel to and closes 
 the series of those which have been projected on 
 the Conversion of Europe. 
 
 In its preparation, as in that of the former Vo- 
 lumes, the most recent and trustworthy authorities 
 have been consulted, and where it has been deemed 
 expedient notes have been subjoined, and references 
 given to larger works. 
 
 These it is hoped will increase its value and 
 usefulness. 
 
 I cannot, however, allow it to appear without 
 acknowledging the great assistance I have received 
 in its compilation from my sister, Mrs. Herman 
 Gaskoin, who has rendered easy a task which would 
 otherwise have been difficult, if not impossible, 
 amidst my numerous pressing engagements. 
 
 G. F. M. 
 
 King's College School, London. 
 March, 1879. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 Chapter • . Page 
 
 I. Introduction 9 
 
 II. Slavonic Heathendom 29 
 
 III. Conversion of Bulgaria 45 
 
 IV. Moravia, Bohemia, and Servia ... 66 
 V. Russia 87 
 
 VI. Poland and Pomerania 109 
 
 VII. The Wends and Lieflanders 142 
 
 VIII. Prussia, Lithuania, and Lapland 164 
 
 IX. Conclusion 185 
 
PRUTOETOIT 
 C, NOV I860 
 THEGLQGIC&L 
 
 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It has been observed that the place of the Slavonic 
 nations in history bears a very small proportion to 
 the space occupied by them on the surface of the 
 globe. They belong to the great Aryan or Indo- 
 European family, and of all its tribes they were 
 almost the last to fall within the focus of historic 
 light. " Their domicile was so remote from the 
 centres of ancient culture, that the Greeks and 
 Romans could scarcely come into direct contact with 
 them ; and having always been, as they are still, by 
 nature a peaceable people, they themselves never 
 greatly interfered in the affairs of their border- 
 lands." 1 
 
 Nevertheless, although until the 6th century these 
 races are unnoticed in the records of Byzantium and 
 of Western Europe, some knowledge of them can be 
 traced back even to the days of Herodotus. 
 
 1 Dr. Vilhelm Thomsen's Lectures on 'The relations be- 
 tween Ancient Russia and Scandinavia,' &c. Lect. i. p. 2. 
 See also Krasinski's 'Lectures on Slavonia' [Ed. of 1869], p. I. 
 
 B 
 
IO CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 The "father of history" himself speaks of the 
 Callipedae, the Alazones, and the husbandmen of 
 Scythia, who have been identified with the Slavo- 
 nians. 
 
 The first Latin author who mentions them is Pliny 
 the elder, a.d. 79; by him, and by Tacitus, allusion 
 is made to them under the names of Venedi, Serbi, 
 and Stavani. By a form of the first of these names, 
 " unknown to the Slavonians themselves, the Teutonic 
 tribes have from the first designated these their eastern 
 neighbours, viz., Wends ; and the use of this appel- 
 lation by the Roman authors plainly shows that their 
 knowledge of the Slavonians was derived only from the 
 Germans. The old German form of this name was 
 Wineda, and Wenden is the name which the Germans 
 of the present day give to the remnants of a Slavonic 
 population, formerly large, who now inhabit Lusatia, 
 while they give the name of Winden to the Slovens 
 in Carinthia, Carniola, and Styria. We find the 
 Anglo-Saxon form, Winedas, Weonodas, in King 
 i\.lfred's Orosius, as a designation of the Wends, or 
 Slavonians, south of the Baltic ; and Vender (in the 
 Old Norse, Vindr) was the name under which this 
 wild heathen people was known in the North, espe- 
 cially in Denmark, during the middle ages." 1 
 
 " The fifth branch," writes Professor Max Miiller, 
 enumerating the Aryan forms of speech, "which is 
 commonly called Slavonic, I prefer to designate by 
 the name of IVindic, Winidce. being one of the most 
 
 1 Dr. Vilhelm Thomsen, Lectures, p. 3. 
 
INTRODUCTION. II 
 
 ancient and comprehensive names by which these 
 tribes were known to the early historians of Europe." l 
 
 The original native form of the word Slavonian was 
 Slovene, but it does not appear that either this, or any 
 other name, was applied by the ancient Slavonians 
 themselves to the whole of their family collectively. 
 On the contrary, "each of the numerous tribes " into 
 which they were divided, " called itself by some pecu- 
 liar name." 2 
 
 Various derivations have been assigned to the word 
 Slav. Some have seen in it a deduction from Slava, 
 which, in Slavonic dialects, means glory? Nor have 
 reflections been wanting on the singular reversal, in 
 that case, of the bearing of the term. From glory its 
 signification has been transformed into servitude. In 
 the Slav, as reduced to bondage by the Germans, 
 we find the undoubted origin of our word slave. 
 " This conversion of a national into an appellative 
 name," says the historian Gibbon, " appears to have 
 arisen in the 8th century, in Oriental France, where 
 the princes and bishops were rich in Slavonian cap- 
 tives." 
 
 Others, again, have found the source of this word 
 Slav, in Slovo, the Slavonic expression for word. 
 
 1 Lectures on the ' Science of Language,' series i. p. 204. 
 
 2 Dr. Vilhelm Thomsen, p. 4. 
 
 3 "A great number of Slavonic names are unquestionably 
 derived from that word, [slava,] as, for instance Stani-slav, 
 ' establisher of glory ' ; Premi-slav, ' sense of glory ' ; Vladi- 
 slav, 'ruler of glory,' &c."— Krasinski's Lectures [Ed. 1851], 
 p. I, note. 
 
 B 2 
 
12 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 These perceive in it an appellation assumed by those 
 who bore it, in proud contradistinction from alien 
 races. For the Slavonians habitually applied to the 
 Germans, and other foreigners, the term Niem, or 
 mute, thereby implying that they admitted no lan- 
 guage but their own to be articulate, and regarded 
 themselves as the only people gifted with true words, 
 or speech. 1 
 
 When the Roman Empire was crumbling into 
 decay, cohesion giving place to disunion, and strength 
 dwindling into impotence, the scene of her declining 
 majesty was overrun and occupied by hordes of 
 barbarous strangers. Briefly and broadly classifying 
 them, these peoples fall easily into three groups, — 
 the Celts, the Teutons, and the Slavs. 
 
 In this triple distribution the Slavonic nations take 
 third rank, because, although the Teutonic immigra- 
 tion occurred at a somewhat later date than their 
 own, they were soon outstripped in point of culture, 
 both social and moral, by the Teutons, who also 
 anticipated them in their relations with the moribund 
 Empire. 
 
 The most ancient home of the Slavonians, of which 
 we have any knowledge, lay in a region whose 
 boundaries may thus be defined : — on the west, the 
 river Vistula ; on the east, the river Dnieper, or the 
 district immediately beyond it ; on the south, the 
 Carpathian mountains. On the north, it is thought, 
 
 1 Kra^inski's Lectures [Ed. 1851], note, p. 2. Stanley's 
 ' Eastern Church,' p. 285. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 it may have stretched beyond the Dwina, towards 
 what was afterwards called Novgorod. 1 
 
 The cause of the Slavonian descent on the im- 
 perial frontiers can only be conjectured. The move- 
 ment is supposed to have been, in the first instance, 
 compulsory, and due to pressure in the rear from 
 nations dwelling beyond the north-eastern border of 
 the Slavs. This view is confirmed by an examina- 
 tion of the nature of the immigration, as well as of 
 the characteristics of the immigrants. 
 
 Unlike the Teutonic tribes, the Slavs did not 
 press forward at once in the direction of the heart 
 of the Empire. They must have halted not very far 
 within the Roman boundaries. For it was only 
 gradually that they became known to the inhabitants 
 of Western Europe, and not until after the Teutonic 
 races had conquered and settled in the south-western 
 imperial provinces. For some time, indeed, they 
 contented themselves with treading in the first foot- 
 steps of the Teutonic invaders. They quietly took 
 possession of lands abandoned, after temporary oc- 
 cupation, by the Teutons, who had pushed impatiently 
 onward, bent on exploring the interior of the Roman 
 dominions. 
 
 It is also to be remarked, that the Slavonic, tribes 
 were by no means distinguished either for a love of 
 arms or adventure, or for any capacity for warfare. 
 They were found, indeed, at a very early period, 
 among the Goths on the banks of the Don, and sub- 
 
 o 
 
 1 Dr. Vilhelm Thomsen, p. 4. 
 
14 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 sequently with the Huns and Bulgarians on the 
 Danube ; and they took part in several of the memo- 
 rable incursions of those fierce races, which agitated 
 the Roman Empire so profoundly. But it was generally 
 in the character of hired auxiliaries, allies, or, more 
 often still, vassals, that they were incorporated with 
 the armies of other nations. In their wild homes 
 beyond the Carpathians they led a peaceful and 
 monotonous life. Little molested, probably, among 
 those unattractive wastes of forest and marsh land, 
 they were never either aggressive or ambitious, and 
 played no part in the events occurring beyond their 
 own borders. 
 
 From this brief consideration of the antecedents of 
 the Slavs, we pass to a survey of their characteristics, 
 at the time when they had freshly exchanged their 
 original haunts for settlements within the confines of 
 the Empire. 
 
 Theirs was no savage rush upon defenceless lands, 
 no frightful pathway of blood and fire cleft through a 
 shuddering civilization. They were not the scourge 
 and terror of Europe, as the Celts had been, nor 
 were they haunted, like their Teutonic neighbours, by 
 a spirit of incessant restlessness, nor consumed by 
 a thirst for plunder and conquest. They neither 
 menaced the Empire nor assaulted its outposts. Their 
 natural tendencies, on the contrary, were of a tran- 
 quil kind. The life they had led among the remote 
 Scythian marshes was reproduced in their new quar- 
 ters, and their aim, as immigrants, seems to have 
 been simply to turn their present more favourable 
 
INTRODUCTION. 1 5 
 
 conditions to account, in the expansion of the habits 
 which had hitherto, by force of circumstances, been 
 only imperfectly developed. 
 
 We have seen that the Slavs began by quietly 
 occupying lands evacuated by the Teutons. These 
 they diligently cultivated. They grew and stored 
 large quantities of corn. They owned valuable and 
 increasing herds of cattle. They were brewers of 
 mead, fruit-growers, shepherds,— proficients in the 
 agriculture of the age. 
 
 Nor did they, as time wore on, confine themselves 
 to a pastoral life. Their peaceful habits of industry 
 naturally developed a taste and an aptitude for com- 
 merce. They sought, and found, a market for the 
 products of their labour. 
 
 On the shores of the Baltic, Slavonian towns were 
 gradually built, of which Lubeck was the first. 
 Among these primitive seaports, one, situated at the 
 mouth of the Oder, and known as Vineta, or Julin, 
 has been called the ' Slavonic Amsterdam.' Trading 
 connections were opened between the Baltic and 
 the Black seas. Kief was built on the banks of the 
 Dnieper, and Novgorod on the Wolkhow. Both 
 these towns rapidly rose into commercial importance. 
 In Germany mines were sunk. Metals were smelted 
 and cast. Salt became an article of export. 
 
 It is clear that the Slavonic population, devoted 
 to the profitable pursuits just indicated, must have 
 been highly beneficial to the countries they inhabited. 
 What those countries were it is time that we should 
 turn back to inquire. 
 
1 6 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 In a map illustrating the early part of the 6 th 
 century we find the Slavs represented as consisting 
 of three principal divisions, each embracing a 
 number of subordinate tribes. On the east lay 
 the Antes. They extended from the Dniester east- 
 ward to the Dnieper and the Don, and southward 
 as far as the shores of the Euxine. The western 
 branch, called the Venedi, or Wends, inhabited the 
 shores and neighbourhood of the Baltic. The cen- 
 tral body, known as the S/ave/ies, was a nomad race. 
 These intermingled, from time to time, with both the 
 eastern and western wings of the great settlement. 1 
 
 As time went by, the Slavonians gradually and 
 steadily extended their borders, spreading eastward, 
 southward, and westward. North of the Carpathians, 
 their territories included the areas of Pomerania, 
 Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Saxony, Lusatia, Bohe- 
 mia, Moravia, and Silesia, as well as Poland and 
 Russia. South of the same mountains, they occupied 
 Moldavia and Wallachia, and they established the 
 kingdoms of Slavonia, Bosnia, Servia, and Dalmatia ; 
 they were found in Pannonia, and they penetrated as 
 far as Illyria and Carinthia. 2 
 
 The occupiers of this vast tract of country were, at 
 the outset, most simple and rude in their manner of 
 
 1 ' ' The best modern writers on the history and languages of 
 the Slavonians have divided the nation into two great branches, 
 a western one corresponding to the Sclaveni, and an eastern one 
 corresponding to the Antes, the distinction between these being 
 founded upon the languages spoken by the tribes belonging to 
 either division." — Smith's Gibbon [Ed. 1854], p. 168, note. 
 
 2 See Krasinski's Lectures [Ed. 1851], p. 3. 
 
INTRODUCTION. I 7 
 
 life. They were satisfied to live in miserable huts of 
 roughly hewn timber, to fare frugally and coarsely, 
 and to confine their wants to the fewest possible. 
 Most of the early writers, however, have something 
 favourable to say of them. Procopius asserts that they 
 were artless and kind, as well as generous. Adam of 
 Bremen testifies to their lavish hospitality. It was 
 recorded by the emperor Maurice 1 that their pri- 
 soners were not doomed to perpetual bondage, but, 
 if not ransomed by their countrymen, were liberated 
 after a given time, and allowed to live among their 
 captors on a free and friendly footing. The biographer 
 of bishop Otho of Bamberg bears witness to the 
 honesty of the race, remarking that the Pomeranians 
 never found it necessary to keep anything under lock 
 and key. " They were much astonished," he writes, 
 "when they beheld the chests and trunks of the 
 bishop locked." The same author relates the signifi- 
 cant circumstance, that these Slavonians of Pomerania 
 grounded their chief objection to Christianity on the 
 dishonesty and immorality of its professors. 2 But 
 this is to anticipate. 
 
 Free alike from care and from ambition, these 
 early Slavonians were a cheerful, light-hearted race, 
 keenly alive to enjoyment, and entering with zest 
 into such homely pleasures as their circumscribed 
 interests afforded them. Though not without latent 
 courage, and readiness to defend themselves when 
 attacked, they displayed none of that ferocious 
 
 1 ' Stratagems,' lib. xi. cap.viii. 
 
 2 Krasinski's Lectures [Ed. 1869], p. 25. 
 
1 8 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 vehemence which we are accustomed to associate 
 with the races who ran riot over the mouldering 
 Empire. " Their courage/' says Mr.Sheppard, "is more 
 passive than active in its character, and the Slavo- 
 nian blood is deficient in that fiery ardour, the elan 
 which precipitates the Frank and his kindred races 
 upon the foe." Y 
 
 Into war, when war thrust, itself upon them, the 
 Slavs rushed almost without clothing, protecting 
 themselves with the shield alone, and fitting poisoned 
 arrows to their bows. They were skilled in the use 
 of the lasso, and as spearmen were not to be despised, 
 particularly in single combat. " In the field the 
 Slavonian infantry was dangerous, by their speed, 
 agility, and hardiness ; they swam, they dived, they 
 remained under water, drawing their breath through 
 a hollow cane ; and a river, or lake, was often the 
 scene of their unsuspected ambuscade. But these 
 were the achievements of spies or stragglers ; the 
 military art was unknown to them." 3 
 
 From the slight sketch already presented of the 
 manners and customs of the ancient Slavonians, we 
 easily infer that they must have offered a peculiarly 
 tempting prey to races of a different calibre. They 
 became the victims of a long course of tyranny and 
 oppression. 
 
 As early as the 3rd or 4th century, before their 
 pristine settlements were broken up, they bent 
 
 1 c The Fall of Rome, and Rise of the Nationalities,' p. 146. 
 
 2 Gibbon, vol. v. p. 229. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 1 9 
 
 their necks under the Gothic yoke. The Goths, 
 under their leader Ermanarik, conquered the western 
 part of the country now called Russia. But they did 
 not long linger so far north, and the Slavs were 
 relieved of their masters after a short submission. 1 
 Bondage of a darker type, however, awaited them. It 
 has been hinted that they were from time to time 
 forced into war on behalf of their barbarian neighbours, 
 and compelled to fight for the interests of those who 
 were fiercer than themselves. Let us take a single 
 instance of this species of early thraldom. Conquered, 
 towards the end of the 6th century, by the terrible 
 Avars, many Slavic tribes passed through a scath- 
 ing ordeal, thus graphically described by an author 
 already quoted. " In peace their houses, their flocks, 
 and herds, and fields, their wives and daughters, 
 were at the disposal of their brutal masters, while 
 they were themselves driven away into the depths 
 of forests and morasses, yet all the while com- 
 pelled to keep up the payment of a burdensome 
 tribute. In war their position was more terrible still. 
 Driven to the field in herds, before the Avar war- 
 riors, they were placed, though imperfectly armed, in 
 the front of the battle, and compelled to meet the 
 shock of the imperial legionary, with his iron-clad 
 body and sweeping sword. If they recoiled, as they 
 necessarily must, they were goaded onward by the 
 pike of their masters and allies in the rear." 3 Thus 
 
 1 Dr. Vilhelm Thomsen, p. 5- 
 
 2 Sheppard's « Rise of the Nationalities,' p. 217. Hence the 
 Slavs acquired the epithet of " Bifurci? or "pricked on both 
 sides." 
 
20 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 were these unfortunate people, — deficient as they were 
 in martial instinct, — of whom Gibbon writes that "their 
 name was obscure, and their conquests inglorious," 1 
 compelled to bear the brunt of savage wars in which 
 they had not a particle of interest. Defenceless, 
 despised, and held of no more account than dumb 
 beasts, they awaken in us necessarily — though we 
 perceive them but dimly across the centuries — feelings 
 of the deepest compassion. 
 
 At this stage of their existence, however, the Slavs 
 had not, as we have seen, anything of their own to 
 forfeit, beyond the right of every human being to live. 
 At a later period, when they were not only inde- 
 pendent, but raised by their own exertions to a posi- 
 tion of commercial prosperity unusual for their day, 
 they fared worse, because they lost more, than before. 
 
 Systematically crushed, degraded, and oppressed by 
 the Germans on the one hand, by the Turks on the 
 other, and, finally, by the Mongols to the eastward, it 
 was not wonderful that the typical virtues of the Slavs, 
 rude as they were, gradually declined and finally dis- 
 appeared, to make room for qualities and capabilities 
 of an infinitely lower character. 
 
 Mingled motives probably inspired the onslaught 
 of their enemies. Of these, it is natural to suppose 
 that cupidity was the most powerful. The religious 
 element may not indeed be wholly excluded. For 
 here, as everywhere in those dark ages, the light 
 vouchsafed to guide men's lives burned but dimly, 
 and the Cross was often thrust forward as the initial 
 1 Vol. v. p. 230. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 21 
 
 symbol of lamentable cruelty. Besides, as we shall 
 presently see, the Slavonians were wedded to their 
 idols with a persistent tenacity peculiarly calculated 
 to provoke the rough reformers of the period. But 
 it cannot be doubted that commercial advantages so 
 patent as theirs must have constituted a very strong 
 temptation to more powerful and less prosperous 
 races. Fortitude under protracted suffering, and 
 unusual powers of passive endurance, have been 
 claimed as attributes of the Slavs by an able 
 apologist of their cause. He institutes a compari- 
 son in this respect, between them and the North 
 American Indians, whose resolute demeanour under 
 torture is well known. 1 These qualities were destined 
 to be severely tried. 
 
 The sufferings of this people seem to have culmi- 
 nated in Germany. There, persecution may be said to 
 have befallen them both collectively and individually. 
 
 On the one hand, whole provinces were reduced 
 to slavery, while entire populations were not only 
 banished from the towns which were occupied by 
 German colonists, but were crippled by sweeping 
 commercial disabilities, and impoverished by the 
 compulsory payment of heavy tribute. 
 
 On the other hand, the life of the individual could 
 not be called his own. Although his wife and family 
 may not have been the absolute property of his 
 masters, as under the Avar regime, his liberty was 
 curtailed to such an extent that its very name became 
 a mockery. He was an exile from every community 
 
 1 Krasinski [1869], p. 30. 
 
2 2 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 except that one in which he was peremptorily ordered 
 to dwell. If he ventured beyond a certain distance 
 from this appointed place, and could produce no 
 satisfactory reason for the irregularity, he was liable 
 to instant death. At Hamburg, an enactment pro- 
 vided that every person desirous of becoming a 
 burgher must furnish proof that he was not even of 
 Slavonic descent. 
 
 When the bishop of Oldenburg visited Lubeck, for 
 the purpose of admonishing the Slavs of the Baltic 
 for their idolatry and other malpractices, and of urging 
 them to exchange their corrupt faith for the purer 
 creed of Christianity, he was thus addressed by one 
 of the Slavonic chiefs : — " Oh ! venerable prelate ! 
 your words are the words of God, and useful for our 
 salvation ; but how can we follow the way which you 
 are pointing out to us, when we are entangled in so 
 many evils ? Our princes oppress us with such seve- 
 rity, and impose upon us such tributes and servitude, 
 that death is become more desirable to us than life. This 
 very year, we, the inhabitants of this little corner, 
 have paid to the duke 1,000 marks, and ioo to the 
 count, and yet this is not sufficient, and we are 
 squeezed unto exhaustion every day. How shall we 
 then attend to this new religion ? If we cross the 
 Travena — in Holstein — the same calamities await us j 
 if we retire to the river Panis — in Pomerania — it is 
 still the same. What, then, remains to us except to 
 leave the earth, to go to the sea, and to live upon the 
 waves? Is it, then, our fault if, expelled from our 
 country, we disturb the sea, and levy on the Danes, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 23 
 
 or on the merchants who navigate it, our means of 
 living ? Are not our princes answerable for this mis- 
 chief to which they compel us ?" There is a touch 
 of pathos in the respectful name, our princes, thus 
 applied to the ruthless conquerors whose iron yoke 
 galled the speaker's countrymen almost into madness. 
 " The wild but plaintive spirit of the hereditary bond- 
 man," says Mr. Sheppard, " yet lives in his national 
 music, as it breaks upon the ear in the low, melancholy 
 wail of the wind instruments from the bands of Croat 
 and Slavonian regiments, on the Glacis of Vienna." 1 
 
 Oppression had its way. Cruelty begat cruelty. 
 The wind having been diligently sown, the whirlwind 
 was duly reaped. The Slavonic character was slowly 
 metamorphosed. Gentleness degenerated into an 
 apathetic indolence, frankness gave place to cunning, 
 manliness was lost in servility. The time came when 
 the long oppressed gloried in oppressing. They 
 who had writhed in the dust at the feet of con- 
 temptuous tyrants exulted at last, in setting an iron 
 heel on the necks of those whom they found to be 
 weaker than themselves. 
 
 On this melancholy passage from honour to dis- 
 honour it is not needful to dwell further. The story 
 of this group of nationalities after their contact with 
 the Empire, has been sufficiently unrolled to show 
 how the cithern 2 came to be replaced by the dagger, 
 
 1 ' Nationalities,' p. 146. 
 
 2 Byzantine writers report that the Slavonians were a very 
 musical people. ' ' The cithern is mentioned as a favourite 
 instrument among them." 
 
24 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 and pastoral hospitalities by deadly and suspicious 
 hatred. 
 
 Before drawing these introductory observations to 
 a close, it remains to invite attention to the geo- 
 graphical features of the regions peopled by the 
 Slavonic races. 
 
 For it were a mistake to suppose that the sur- 
 roundings of nature are effectless upon the character 
 of any people. They reflect themselves upon 
 humanity in varying degrees of vividness. 
 
 The mountain has a mysterious power over those 
 who creep about its foot ; the forest uplifts, with its 
 mighty branches, the thoughts of the humblest wan- 
 derer in its shade ; the sea has a voice, unheard by 
 the multitude, for those who commune with it in all 
 its changing moods. 
 
 But the connection between the features of the 
 landscape and the moral and mental development of 
 the men who daily behold them, is perhaps more 
 intimate, as it certainly is more visible, in the primi- 
 tive condition of a society, than at a later stage of its 
 growth. 1 It follows, that where such growth has been 
 slow and inconsiderable, the connection in question 
 continues to be clearly apparent, even after the lapse 
 of many generations. 
 
 The very word Oriental conjures up a vision of still 
 life. In the East, the region of speculative immo- 
 bility, are no rapid changes, no violent reactions, no 
 sudden innovations. There, the Present faithfully 
 
 1 Stanley's ' Eastern Church,' p. 292. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 25 
 
 illustrates the Past, because it is a reiteration of it. 
 "The Eastern Church," says a well-known writer, "was 
 like the East, stationary and immutable ; the Western, 
 like the West, progressive and flexible. This dis- 
 tinction is the more remarkable, because at certain 
 periods of their course, there can be no doubt that the 
 civilization of the Eastern Church was far higher 
 than that of the Western." Again : " the East holds 
 the chief place in the monastic world. The words 
 which describe the state are not Latin, but 
 Greek or Syriac, — Hermit, monk, anchoret, monastery, 
 coenobite, ascetic, abbot, abbey. And not only was 
 monasticism born in the Eastern Church ; it has 
 also thriven there with unrivalled intensity. Indeed, 
 the earliest source of monastic life is removed even 
 further than the Thebaid deserts, in the Manichean 
 repugnance of the distant East towards the material- 
 world, as it is exhibited under its simplest form in 
 the Indian Yogi, or the Mussulman Fakir. It is this 
 Oriental seclusion which, whether from character, or 
 climate, or contagion, has to the Christian world been 
 far more forcibly represented in the Oriental than in 
 the Latin Church. Active life is, on the strict 
 Eastern theory, an abuse of the system." 1 
 
 The relevancy of the foregoing reflections to our 
 immediate subject is easily demonstrable. In the 
 story of " the Conversion of the Slavs," the Byzan- 
 tine Church figures prominently. So closely and 
 continuously is its instrumentality interwoven with 
 
 i 
 
 ■ 'Eastern Church,' p. 26. 
 C 
 
26 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 the work of enlightenment, 1 that no preliminary sur- 
 vey of the field to be traversed in this treatise would 
 be complete without a briefly comprehensive glance 
 at its position, its character, and its machinery. All 
 these, according to the author above quoted, were 
 subtilely blended with the natural bias arising from 
 the geographical configuration of the lands over 
 which Oriental influence brooded. Before pursuing in 
 his own words this interesting line of thought, let us 
 ourselves look round over the countries of Slavonic 
 adoption. For a large proportion of them are 
 identical with the domains of the Eastern Church. 
 
 We are at once impressed with the vastness, the 
 vagueness, the dreaminess, on every side. 
 
 The eye travels over broad, level expanses, loses 
 itself in shadowy distances, and is confused by in- 
 definite boundary-lines. 
 
 The idea of space transcends every other. 
 
 The element of the picturesque may indeed seem 
 wanting. It could hardly translate itself into con- 
 ditions so large. Where the horizon is so distant 
 and so wide, the foreground does not challenge con- 
 centrated attention. 
 
 But while our gaze wanders across the great, green 
 plains, through which stately rivers roll slowly towards 
 invisible seas, we become conscious of that " lulling 
 effect of almighty sight and sound, which all feel 
 and none define (it would be less sacred if more 
 
 1 "The conversion of the Slavonic races was to the Church 
 of Constantinople, what the conversion of the Teutonic races 
 was to the Church of Rome." — Stanley's 'Eastern Church,' 
 p. 287. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 27 
 
 explicable)," and are aware that we behold "repose, 
 expressed in matter." 1 
 
 " Look for a moment," exclaims the writer from 
 whose musings we have been digressing : — " look for 
 a moment at the countries included within the range of 
 the Oriental churches. What they lose in historical, 
 they gain in geographical grandeur. Their barbarism 
 and their degradation have bound them to local pecu- 
 liarities, from which the more progressive Church of 
 the West has shaken itself free. It is a Church, in 
 fact, not of cities and villages, but of mountains, and 
 rivers, and caves, and dens of the earth. The eye 
 passes from height to height, and rests on the suc- 
 cessive sanctuaries in which the religion of the East 
 has intrenched itself, as within huge, natural fortresses, 
 against its oppressors : — Athos, in Turkey ; Sinai, in 
 Arabia ; Mar Saba, in Palestine \ Ararat, in Armenia ; 
 the cedars of Lebanon ; the catacombs of Kieff ; -the 
 cavern of Megaspelion ; the cliffs of Meteora. Or we 
 see it, advancing up and down the streams, or cling- 
 ing to the banks of the mighty rivers which form the 
 highways and the arteries of the wide plains of the 
 East. The Nile still holds its sacred place in the 
 liturgies of Egypt. The Jordan, from Constantine 
 downwards, has been the goal of every Eastern 
 pilgrim. Up the broad stream of the Dnieper sail 
 the first apostles of Russia. Along the Volga and 
 the Don cluster the mysterious settlements of Russian 
 nonconformity." 2 
 
 1 Ruskin's 'Modern Painters,' vol. ii. p. 64. 
 
 2 'Eastern Church,' pp. 3, 4. 
 
 C 2 
 
28 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 Reference has been made to the immovable dogged- 
 ness with which the Slavonic races were found to 
 cling to their early pagan creed. Before opening the 
 story of the torchbearers who braved the gloom 
 whence these tribes were so reluctant to emerge, 
 it would therefore seem that some attention should 
 be bestowed on the shadowy, idol-peopled sphere of 
 Slavic heathenism itself. 
 
 For it is natural to inquire into the character of 
 the influences which were found so powerful by all 
 who sought to undermine b them. A constitutional 
 slowness in mental movement, even when enhanced 
 by a strong aversion to change as change, cannot be 
 held entirely accountable for tenacity l such as the 
 Slavs will be found displaying in their hold upon 
 their ancient superstitions. 
 
 1 Apropos of this peculiar tenacity, the subjoined reference, 
 by the author of "The Foregleams of Christianity " [Charles 
 Newton Scott], to Count de Gobineau's ' valuable remarks on 
 the inflexible adherence of the Asiatics even to forms of worship 
 dating from a remote antiquity,' will not be without interest : 
 "Tousces choeurs que je viens de decrire ; confreries dansant 
 sur place, berberys, corps de ballet, tout cela est l'heritage de 
 la plus haute antiquite. Rien n'y est change, ni la musique des 
 tambourins, ni les battements de poitrine, ni les cantiques, ni les 
 litanies. Les noms des divinites sont autres, voila tout, et la 
 Perse moderne entoure ses tazyehs des memes ceremonies, des 
 memes expiations, de la meme pompe qui se voyaient jadis aux 
 fetes dAdonis. Ce n'est pas un mediocre sujet de reflexion que 
 de voir partout et toujours cette Asie si tenace dans ses resolu- 
 tions, dans ses admirations, braver et traverser deux cultes aussi 
 puissants que le Christianisme et l'lslam, pour conserver ou 
 reprendre ses plus anciennes habitudes." P. 32, note. 
 
SLAVONIC HEATHENDOM. 
 
 2 9 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SLAVONIC HEATHENDOM. 
 
 The simplicity which marked the mode of life of 
 the ancient Slavs reflected itself in their religious 
 system. This was less elaborate than that either of 
 the Teutons or Scandinavians. " As their supreme 
 god/' we are briefly told by one historian, " the 
 Slavonians adored an invisible master of the thunder. 
 The rivers and the nymphs obtained their subordinate 
 honours, and the popular worship was expressed in 
 vows and sacrifice." 1 
 
 The earliest attainable information on this sub- 
 ject is to be gathered from Procopius. He tells us 
 that the Slavonic people were no believers in fate, 
 and that they originally worshipped the Thunder- 
 maker as the sole lord of the universe, to whom sacri- 
 fices of various kinds were imperatively due. This 
 being was impersonated at Novgorod, Kief, and else- 
 where, by an idol known as Perun, 2 which was con- 
 structed of wood, with a head of silver adorned by 
 golden whiskers. Of the great respect entertained for 
 this image we shall find abundant proof in future pages. 
 
 Some temples, again, contained idols of fantastic 
 
 1 Gibbon, v. p. 229. 
 
 2 Perun may be taken as answering to the Paranjya of the 
 Vedas. The Slavonic Dazhbog, the day-god, and Stribog, the 
 wind-god, have also their counterparts in the old Aryan nature- 
 worship. 
 
30 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 shapes, conceived in the fertile imaginations of their 
 devotees. Of this kind was a celebrated image at 
 Plumen, or Plon, in Holstein. As among the Teu- 
 tonic races, indeed, the primitive idea of a single, 
 supreme god, which Perun represented, seems to have 
 been gradually modified into an admission of various 
 subordinate claims to divinity. The woods were held 
 to be the haunts of certain deities, who were however 
 unrepresented by any figures, and unassociated with 
 any fixed shrines. We read that " the belief in fairies 
 and other imaginary beings, inhabiting the woods, the 
 water, and the air, still lingers among the peasantry of 
 many Slavonic countries, and is preserved in a great 
 number of popular tales, songs, and superstitious 
 observances." 1 When death seemed imminent, from 
 illness or by the sword, it was the custom of the 
 Slavonians to register solemn vows that, in the event 
 of recovery or deliverance, they would offer sacrifices 
 of thanksgiving to their gods. And, the threatened 
 danger once past, they were invariably careful to 
 fulfil all such engagements. 
 
 A characteristic feature of their religion was a par- 
 tiality for many-headed divinities. Of this grotesque 
 kind was Triglav, — whose triple head, we shall find, 
 was preserved when his body was destroyed at Stettin, 
 as a curiosity worth sending to the pope, — and, 
 again, Radegast, the god of war. When Danish 
 missionaries forced their way at last into the island of 
 Riigen, they found that fastness of Slavonic heathenism 
 
 1 Krasinski [1869], p. 15. 
 
SLAVONIC HEATHENDOM. 
 
 3* 
 
 teeming with monstrous figures of this description. 
 At Arcona, the capital, among other temples, stood 
 that of the great Svantovit, the favourite idol of the 
 Baltic Slavonians. The circumstances under which 
 this image was destroyed will be detailed in their 
 proper place. But a sketch of the figure itself could 
 scarcely be excluded with propriety from this prelimi- 
 nary endeavour to picture to ourselves the Slavonic 
 conceptions of supernatural majesty and power. 
 
 We are indebted for the description of Svantovit 
 to a Danish historian, who may not improbably have 
 been an eye-witness of his demolition. The temple 
 which enclosed the god was in itself a model of beauty 
 and symmetry. / ? It was built of wood, and consisted 
 of an outer and an inner court. The roof of the 
 outer enclosure was painted red, and the inner 
 division of the building was decorated with paintings, 
 and draped with tapestry. Here stood Svantovit, 
 whose enormous size and plurality of members may 
 well have amazed an unaccustomed spectator. He 
 possessed four heads, four necks, two chests, and two 
 backs, and in his great right hand he grasped a horn, 
 variously composed of blended metals, which was once 
 a year filled by the priest in attendance, with mead. 
 His left arm was bent in the shape of a bow, while 
 his lower limbs were concealed by long drapery, which 
 fell to his feet. His sword, enriched with a silver hilt 
 and scabbard, lay, with his bridle, beside him. 1 L— * 
 
 The worship of so magnificent a deity was neces- 
 
 1 In the Teutonic religious system, the Saxon Irmin-Saule 
 was, in many particulars, the corresponding deity to Svantovit.. 
 
32 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS, 
 
 sarily expensive, and its cost was met in several 
 ways. Besides an annual tax paid by the inhabitants 
 of the island, a third of the booty seized in war 
 was devoted to this object, irrespectively of the many 
 offerings which were presented at the temple by 
 opulent chiefs. A picked cavalry detachment, 
 numbering three hundred men, was devoted to the 
 special service of Svantovit. These troopers fought 
 in the god's name, and all the spoil wrested by them 
 from the enemy was considered his peculiar property 
 and used by the priest, so far as it was available 
 for ornamenting his temple. 13 Svantovit also pos- 
 sessed a horse, on which his presence was believed 
 invisibly to accompany the army in time of war. 
 This animal was spotlessly white, and was regarded 
 with such awe, that a priest only was allowed either 
 to feed or to mount him, and it was accounted a 
 sin to draw a single hair out of his mane or his tail. 
 The sacred horse of Svantovit was further solemnly 
 consulted as an oracle, when war was about to be 
 declared. Three rows of spears having been laid on 
 the ground in front of the temple, special prayers 
 were addressed to its august inmate, after which the 
 horse was led out by the attendant priest. The 
 movements of his feet were watched with great 
 anxiety, for if, in stepping over the spears, he lifted 
 his right hoof first, the omen was favourable, and the 
 proposed expedition might safely be undertaken. If, 
 on the other hand, the left foot was first raised, or both 
 feet moved together, it was a sign that it must be 
 promptly abandoned. D ' 
 
SLAVONIC HEATHENDOM. 33 
 
 / But the greatest solemnity conducted under the 
 auspices of Svantovit, occurred after the ingathering 
 of harvest. The inhabitants assembled from all parts 
 of Riigen, and celebrated a feast, which was duly in- 
 augurated by liberal sacrifices of cattle. The priest, 
 venerable and solemn, with hair unshorn, and beard 
 undipped, first entered the inner enclosure of the 
 temple, and swept it with reverent care. During 
 
 ^his process he was obliged to guard against defiling 
 the presence of the god by holding his breath, and if 
 respiration became, as it must repeatedly have 
 become, necessary, he withdrew to indulge in it 
 in the outer air. When all was ready, he took 
 the mead-cup, before mentioned, from the hand 
 of Svantovit, and bore it forth to the multitude 
 outside. From the state of its contents he augured 
 the fortune to be expected in the coming year. 
 If the mead had decreased in quantity since its 
 solemn inpouring at the last festival, scarcity was im- 
 pending. But if it had increased, the people might 
 confidently reckon on abundance. In either case, 
 the year-old mead was emptied at the feet of the 
 god as a libation, and the priest proceeded to re-fill 
 the horn, praying at the same time for prosperity and 
 for success in war. His next step was to drink the 
 freshly dedicated mead at a draught, and he then 
 once more poured the prescribed amount into the 
 horn, which was replaced in the idol's hand, there 
 to be undisturbed until the next annual festival. 
 Sweet circular cakes of honey and flour were after- 
 wards offered, and the ceremonial observances ended 
 
34 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 in a general benediction on the part of the priest, who 
 in this act personated the god, and accompanied 
 his blessing with exhortations to continual sacrifices, 
 which, he assured the people, would find their reward 
 in the victory over all enemies so ardently coveted. 
 Feasting followed, and the revellers were encouraged, 
 if not commanded, to give an unbridled rein to their 
 appetites. 1 
 
 In Riigen, as will later be recorded, other gods 
 of a stamp not dissimilar to Svantovit were found in 
 abundance. There was the image of Porenut, the deity 
 presiding over the seasons, with five faces, the fifth 
 being on his breast. There also towered Rhugevit, 
 with his seven faces and his eight swords. 2 
 
 But enough has been said to show the character of 
 the Slavonic ritual up to a date as late, even, as the 
 year a.d. ti68. We must now consider with care the 
 principles on which it was based. 
 
 As in other pre-Christian systems of religion, we 
 find among the Slavonians — and, perhaps, to a some- 
 what unusual degree — that bewildered recognition of 
 the unfathomable mysteries thronging the road of 
 human life, which is co-existent even with the 
 present broad flood of Gospel light. 
 
 The solemn silence of the unseen world, — the 
 beauty and the grandeur of the visible universe, with 
 the pain, the sorrow, the sin, that shadow it, — 
 the contradictory impulses of the human heart, the 
 
 1 Saxo Grammaticus. Historic Danicce, lib. xiv. 
 
 2 The Lettic tribes added a god in the form of a bird to 
 their catalogue of divinities. 
 
SLAVONIC HEATHENDOM. 35 
 
 ever-brooding presence of gigantic power held in 
 leash, the strange dissonances of life which none 
 knew how to resolve into concord, — these enigmas 
 confronted the ancients as they confront us now, 
 but without the key by which it is permitted to 
 us, in some degree, to solve them. In our day, the 
 possessors of " the tranquillity of deep and living 
 faith, are most conscious that in the kingdoms both 
 of grace and nature, in the volume of God's works, 
 and in the volume of His Word, a thousand 
 difficulties remain, which they are utterly unable 
 to decipher ; depths of thought they never hope to 
 fathom, discords which they cannot harmonize, and 
 elevations which they cannot climb." 
 
 " A man of this kind " — it has, again, been well said 
 — " knows in what he has believed ; and though he 
 still sees darkly, communing with adumbrations of the 
 truth, and not with truth itself, he waits in patience 
 till that veil which separates the present from the 
 future has been finally withdrawn, till Christianity has 
 been divested of the earthly symbols under which it 
 is presented to his faith, and he beholds it as it is. 
 What happens in the physical world as the reward of 
 patient observation, will, he is persuaded, happen also 
 in the moral world. The seeming incongruities will 
 form at last a concordissima dissonantia, and the 
 riddles that now test and try us will be then converted 
 into proofs of harmony and vehicles of love." 1 
 
 To many among ourselves, the ' silence of God ' is 
 
 3 Hardwick's ' Christ and other Masters,' pp. 8, 9. 
 
36 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 profoundly impressive. He has spoken, indeed, and 
 by His Blessed Revelation we hold fast. But it 
 seems to us long ago ; and since those Divine utter- 
 ances died away, there has been no sign, no voice 
 nor language from heaven to earth, of such a kind 
 that all must needs hear and heed. The thought 
 presents itself to us again and again, — but it does 
 not agitate us, because of the Holy Whisperings which 
 the heart of each man can detect in its own depths, 
 — because of the never-ceasing call of Providence 
 in circumstances, which none who watch them can 
 deny, — and because the written Word we grasp, con- 
 taining all things necessary to our salvation, requires no 
 codicil. But when the early Slavonians, and their un- 
 enlightened contemporaries, stood, with bated breath, 
 face to face with the gaugeless problems of life and 
 death, the unbroken silence beyond the gates of the 
 Invisible must have seemed oppressive indeed. For, 
 as far as their knowledge went, the Divine Voice had 
 not spoken at all, and they were fain to grope, in gross 
 darkness, for such a clue as they could find or fashion. 
 
 We have already noted that the Slavonians were 
 conspicuous as sufferers at the hands of other peoples. 
 They were only too familiar, from very early times, 
 with the dark side of life, and it was natural that they 
 should transport the colouring of their practical ex- 
 perience into the character of the religion which they 
 systematized. We accordingly find fear to be the 
 predominant element in it. 
 
 Everywhere, in the worlds of nature and of 
 humanity, they beheld an unceasing strife, marked by 
 
SLAVONIC HEATHENDOM. 37 
 
 violent fluctuations and constant vicissitudes, between 
 two warring powers. They accounted for this double 
 agency of good and evil, by the supposition that a 
 duality of gods exercised an ever-conflicting sway 
 over the fortunes of mortals, and they met, or hoped 
 to meet it, by every conceivable device to magnify 
 the good, while they propitiated the evil, divini- 
 ties. 1 
 
 Like the Mexicans and the South Sea Islanders, 
 they ascribed every event in life to the influence 
 either of the "white," i.e. the benignant, or of the 
 " black," i.e. the malevolent, invisible powers. 
 
 Though a devout worshipper of the beneficent 
 " sun-god," and other good and generous agents, 
 "the rude American," writes Mr. Hardwick, "was 
 haunted by the thought of some co-equal and co- 
 ordinate array of hostile deities, who manifested their 
 malignant nature by creating discord, sickness, death, 
 and every possible form of evil. Everywhere the 
 worship of the Indian was mainly occupied in de- 
 precating powerful and malevolent spirits, demons, 
 spectres, fiends, hobgoblins, whose errand was to 
 poison human joys and aggravate the load of human 
 wretchedness. If only the American could turn away 
 
 1 "Dualism is not merely the perception of a difference 
 between right and wrong, for, since man has been man, his 
 moral sense must have been more or less in activity, but it is 
 the perception of a radical difference, of a difference at least suffi- 
 ciently accentuated to be the basis of the classification which 
 men consciously or unconsciously make of things external to 
 themselves/' — 'Foregleams of Christianity,' p. 61. 
 
3S CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 their anger, and evade or disappoint their malice, he 
 had realized the principal aim of his religion. Hence 
 his constant dread of some unearthly apparition. 
 Hence the meaning of his fetishes, his amulets, his 
 charms, his exorcisms, his trembling and convulsive 
 efforts to explore the secrets of the past or future, his 
 wild cries and frantic dances. Hence, again, the 
 vast ascendancy obtained by seers and witches, 
 payes, jossakeeds, and medicine-men, with other dark 
 and nameless instruments of heathen sorcery." l 
 
 Again. " The dread of malevolent beings [in 
 Oceanica] far outbalances the hope inspired among 
 these tribes by vague ideas respecting the beneficence 
 of other spirits ; and as happiness itself is seldom 
 there associated with the presence of moral qualities, 
 either in the judge or in the human subject, but is 
 treated merely as the fruit of chance or of caprice, 
 the sentiment of fear is still more terribly awakened 
 whensoever the Vitian, 2 in the hours of silence or of 
 sickness, listens to the beating of his inmost heart, 
 and communes more directly with the world in- 
 visible." 3 
 
 Once more. " The gloomy terror everywhere in- 
 spired alike by the religions of the wild American and 
 by those of Oceanica, has found its counterpart again 
 among the various tribes of Central Africa." " Their 
 religion, if such it may be called, is one of dread. 
 
 1 'Christ and other Masters,' pp. 358, 359. 
 
 2 Allusion is here being made specially to the inhabitants of 
 the Fiji — or Viti — and neighbouring islands. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 397. 
 
SLAVONIC HEATHENDOM. 
 
 39 
 
 Numbers of charms are employed to avert the evils 
 with which they feel themselves to be encompassed. 
 There is nothing more heartrending than their death 
 wails." 1 
 
 This triple illustration of the bondage of fear, 
 thus represented as enthralling these widely severed 
 groups of heathen, is here adduced, because it 
 depicts with equal accuracy the mainspring of the 
 ancient Slavonic religious system. 2 
 
 Cringing fear begets unscrupulous barbarity, and 
 the worship of Zernabog, the chief among the 
 " black " — or sinister — powers adored by the Sla- 
 vonians, was disfigured by human sacrifices, and 
 polluted by rites, from the details of which their very 
 chronicler might be pardoned for recoiling in horror. 
 For apart from " the instinct of expiation," which the 
 Slavonic people shared, more or less consciously, 
 with all other divisions of the human family, it was 
 naturally concluded that the powers of death and 
 darkness could find no satisfaction in observances or 
 in offerings which did not partake of their own fierce 
 and sanguinary nature. 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 582. And Dr. Livingstone, as there quoted. 
 
 2 The native Indians of South America, also, are dominated 
 by terror. With reference to them, Dr. J. G. Midler says : 
 "Man sieht, dass audi hier das Schauerliche und Furchter- 
 regende vorherrscht ; Furcht ist ja das Gruildgefiihl, das durch 
 das Vernehmen des Gottlichen auch bei diesen Naturmenschen 
 erregt wird ; die ganze Natur ist von einer Unzahl von Geistern 
 erfullt, die bei Tag und bei Nacht, beim Schlafen und beim 
 Wachen, Welt und Seele mit Angst und Schauder erfullen." 
 —P. 83, quoted in ' Christ and other Masters,' p. 360, note. 
 
40 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 We turn away with a feeling of relief to glance, 
 though it can be only momentarily, at the more 
 peaceful side of the picture. 
 
 Lada was the Slavonic goddess of love and pleasure. 
 
 Kupala was the god of the fruits of the earth. 
 
 And Koleda, the god of festivals. In various parts 
 of Russia and Poland, the name of Koleda is even 
 now given to the feast of Christmas. 
 
 In festive honour of St. John Kufta/a, youths still 
 dance round lighted fires in some Slavonian coun- 
 tries, on the 23rd of June, the eve of St. John the 
 Baptist's day. 
 
 An outline has now been drawn of the wild Sla- 
 vonic cult, to the practices of which its believers 
 were attached with a persistency which we shall find 
 repeating itself, as we pass from country to country, 
 with redoubled, and again redoubled, emphasis. It 
 is only an outline ; and here and there, — as, for 
 example, in Prussia, — the local usages and beliefs, 
 when stamped with unusual clearness upon a particular 
 people or district, will help, as we go on, to fill it in. 
 
 But before concluding this introductory sketch of 
 the Slavonic mythology, it may be observed that no 
 Celtic community ever paid more profound respect 
 to the Druids, in whom its members loved to recog- 
 nize their guardians and their presidents, than that 
 accorded by the Slavs to their priests. 
 
 The priesthood blended and monopolized functions 
 both civil and religious. Its power was never ques- 
 tioned, and in some cases deference as servile as it 
 was extravagant was exacted from the people. 
 
SLAVONIC HEATHENDOM. 4 1 
 
 This implicit submissiveness will scarcely surprise 
 us after a moment's reflection on the service of ab- 
 ject terror, which we have seen that the dualistic reli- 
 gion of the Slavs really was. St. Augustine said, in 
 allusion to the attraction which Manichasanism once 
 possessed for him, that its " imagery put into marked 
 contrast before him the 'most lucid substance of God,' 
 and evil, as having its own foul and hideous bulk, 
 whether gross, which they called earth, or thin and 
 subtle like the body of the air." — "All dualistic reli- 
 gions," maintains Professor Mozley, " contain their 
 main appeal to human reason in the circumstance 
 of their pretension to represent facts. This is a mixed 
 world, and it must have a mixed Deity. That is their 
 real basis. In what form they do this — whether under 
 the form of two gods, a good and an evil, — or of a 
 god who is a mixture of both good and evil, or who 
 is devoid of either, is a subordinate point." 1 
 
 How vivid was the " imagery" of the Slavonic du- 
 ality theory we have had an opportunity of observing. 
 Every force in nature, as well as every occurrence 
 in daily life, was pressed into the service of one or 
 other of the two great conflicting principles, which were 
 supposed to be engaged in an unending struggle for 
 the empire of the universe. In the faintest breeze 
 that stirred the leaves into a whisper, in the lightest 
 cloud that sailed across the blue, in the most careless 
 twitter of the waking bird at sunrise, there lurked a 
 meaning, a message, of good or evil import, from the 
 
 1 'The Manichseans and the Jewish Fathers,' in Prof. 
 Mozley's ' Ruling Ideas in Early Ages,' pp. 258, 259. 
 
 D 
 
42 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 other world. How much more in the appalling mani- 
 festations of nature ; — in the muttering thunder and 
 the writhing lightning, in winds that awoke groans in 
 the forests, and earthquakes that shook the very hills ! 
 
 Between the people and the mystic domains of 
 the supernatural — the theatre of that incomprehensible 
 battle of the gods — stood the priests. 
 
 In them was vested a power which, outside the 
 sacred circle of the hierarchy, was nowhere to be found. 
 
 They knew how to gratify, and how to draw down 
 blessings from the good spirits. And how-^more 
 important still, — to avoid and hinder the deadly shafts 
 of the evil ones. To them the book of nature, which 
 others might not decipher, was written in legible 
 characters. 1 And when we remember what "nature" 
 was to the Slavonic races, even long after other 
 nations had learnt to look beyond her to the God 
 Who made her, we cannot wonder that no bounds 
 checked the credulity, the awe, the obedience, com- 
 manded by the priesthood. " The earliest historical 
 ideal of heathendom," it has been thoughtfully re- 
 marked, " is the worship of physical strength : it 
 finds its peculiar sphere in the Asiatic continent. 
 Mr. Buckle, in his history of European civilization, 
 
 1 "When Deity is revealed only in nature, one cannot be 
 oblivious of the fact that nature in her parts is to a certain 
 degree in man's power, and in all countries men have believed 
 that there are means, known to the initiated, of increasing that 
 power a hundred or a thousand fold ; so that a polytheistic 
 worship of God in nature easily degenerates, without losing its 
 xsthetic charm, into the celebration of real or supposed magical 
 incantations," &c. — ' Foregleams of Christianity,' p. 38. 
 
SLAVONIC HEATHENDOM. 43 
 
 has mentally divided the human race into two great 
 sections : in the one, man has power over nature ; in 
 the other, nature has power over man. The former 
 is the characteristic of Europe, the latter of Asia. 
 We believe the distinction to be at once historical 
 and philosophical. As we survey the great systems 
 of Asiatic worship, we are impressed, beyond all 
 other things, with the conviction that we are in the 
 presence of a life where the aspect of nature is more 
 reverenced than the movements of mind, where the 
 individual sinks into insignificance in the contempla- 
 tion of an outward universe, whose vast extent and 
 changeless duration contrast so painfully with the 
 frailty of his human years." 
 
 " The outward universe appeared invulnerable by 
 time, and it was therefore an object of reverence; 
 the individual life was transitory and fading, and it 
 was therefore an object of contempt." l 
 
 The Christian ideal was "the antagonist and the 
 subversion of the worship of physical power. So 
 far from being created by that worship, it could 
 only begin to exist in its decay and death. It grew 
 out of another order of thought, — it was the product 
 of a contrary element, and the element which pro- 
 duced it was foreign, not only to the mind of Judea, 
 but to the entire genius of the Asiatic intellect." 2 
 
 We find the heathen Slavonians, then, prostrated 
 before their altars of propitiation, their piteous gaze 
 
 1 "The Originality of the Character of Christ." — Cont,:m- 
 torary Review, Nov. 1878. 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
 D 2 
 
44 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 riveted on the distant portals of the unseen, to 
 which their priests jealously guarded the passage. By 
 what they saw and understood not, they judged of 
 what they did not see. 
 
 Far off, as yet, were the feet of those who were 
 bringing good tidings, and publishing peace. 1 Slowly 
 would the timid and desponding Slavonians be brought 
 to believe the news they carried, for it was soothing, 
 and not alarming. But to them, too, fearful as they 
 were, the message of the perfect Love, Which casteth 
 out fear, was on its way, and in this desert, also, a 
 highway was to be " made strait" for God. 
 
 1 In one respect, at least, the missionaries, when they did 
 arrive, avoided creating unnecessary prejudice. They did not 
 present the God Whose worship they advocated under any 
 strange name. On the contrary, they contented themselves 
 with adopting the general term for "deity" in the Slavonic 
 tongue, i.e. Bog ox Bogu. Considering the indiscreet intoler- 
 ance, and the abhorrence of the Slavonic language, on the score 
 of which the story, as it progresses, will oblige us to find these 
 missionaries for the most part blameworthy, this circumstance 
 deserves recollection. 
 
CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 45 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CONVERSION OF BULGARIA. 
 
 " The name of the Bulgarians," writes Dean Milman, 
 "a race, next to the Huns, the most terrible and 
 most hateful to the invaded Europeans, was known 
 in the West as early as the reign of Theodoric the 
 Ostrogoth. Either mingled with, or bordering upon, 
 the Slavonians, they spread over a large tract of 
 territory, from the shores of the Palus Maeotis and 
 the Euxine, along the course of the Lower Danube." l 
 
 This people appears to have been "of Asiatic 
 origin, of the same stock with the Huns." 2 Towards 
 the close of the 7 th century, they attacked and con- 
 quered the division of the Slavs settled in Mcesia, 
 and, in the first instance, gave their own name to 
 the tribes they had subdued. In the course of two 
 centuries, however, having adopted the language and 
 manners of the Slavonians, the conquerors became 
 identified with their subjects. 3 
 
 The precise position of their very earliest haunts is 
 a somewhat vexed question. It is held by many that 
 their primeval home was on the banks of the Volga, 
 and that this river either owed its name to the Bul- 
 
 1 'Latin Christianity,' ii. 418. 
 
 2 Robertson's ' History of the Christian Church,' hi. 431. 
 
 3 See Krasinski's Lectures [Ed. 185 1], p. 20, note. 
 
46 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 garians, or bestowed it upon them. 1 This opinion, 
 however, has been warmly combated. 2 
 
 The Bulgarians are said to have originally sprung 
 from a Turanian stock. But " in the latter decades 
 of the 4th century, the populations belonging to the 
 three great Teutonic, Slavonic, and Turanian — or 
 Mongol — races, had become intermingled, and, so to 
 speak, interlaced with each other, by the action of 
 war and migration." 3 
 
 In order to lay before the reader an outline of the 
 characteristics to be expected in a people of Turanian 
 birth, a passage, from the author to whom appeal has 
 just been made, is here transcribed, which bears 
 upon the attributes of the Huns. For they, as far as 
 Turanian extraction was concerned, were of kin to 
 the Bulgarians. 4 
 
 " The Huns," then, " are fickle, faithless, change- 
 able as the wind ; a prey to the furious impulse of 
 the moment ; they know no more than brute beasts 
 the distinction between right and wrong. As for 
 religion, or religious instinct, they have none, nor do 
 
 1 Milman [Ed. 1S54], ii. 418. 
 
 2 See The Athtnceum, No. 2664, p. 620. 
 
 3 'Nationalities,' p. 176. "The terms Turanian and Mongol 
 are not exactly identical, for Dr. Latham has observed that as a 
 linguistic appellative the former has a larger range ; whereas in 
 anthropology the second is the wider class." — 'Nationalities,' 147. 
 
 4 " The Huns will serve for us as an ethnological type of all 
 those tribes of Turanian stock — Avars, Bulgarians, Turks — who 
 appeared, each with more appalling aspect than the other, from 
 behind the Ural mountains and the Caspian Sea, on the frontiers 
 of the falling Empire." — 'Nationalities,' p. 14S. 
 
BULGARIA. 
 
 47 
 
 they practise any form of worship. Gold is the 
 object of their passionate adoration. They surpass 
 in barbarism and ferocity all that we can conceive, of 
 barbarous and ferocious." 1 This is the testimony of 
 Ammianus Marcellinus, and bears date about the 
 year a.d. 375. 
 
 Of the Finns, again, also of Turanian parentage, 
 Tacitus speaks, as a "marvellously savage race," 
 having "neither arms, horses, .nor household gods; 
 their food is herbage, their clothing, skins; their 
 sleeping-place, the bare ground; their only hope of 
 sustenance rests in their arrows, which, from want of 
 iron, they point with bones." 
 
 The Turanians of the remotest antiquity, it is true, 
 offer a curiously marked contrast to the above un- 
 attractive picture. It is well known to be the opinion 
 of many modern writers of note, that the authors of 
 the Cuneiform inscriptions which of late years have 
 excited such great and general interest, were of none 
 other than Turanian origin. This belief does but 
 corroborate the views of the Roman historian Trogus 
 Pompeius, which were based upon an ancient tradi- 
 tion that the Turanian race was the first to acquire 
 the advanced scientific knowledge and elaborate cul- 
 ture of a highly developed civilization. 2 
 
 1 ' Nationalities,' pp. 150, 152. 
 
 2 "Un passage celebre de l'historien Justin," writes M. 
 Lenormant, " dit qu'anterieurement a la puissance de toute 
 autre nation, l'Asie des anciens, I'Asie anterieure, fut. en entier 
 possedee pendant quinze siecles par les Scythes, c'est-a-dire 
 par les Touraniens, dont il fait le plus vieux peuple du monde, 
 
48 Conversion of the Slavs. 
 
 In the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates, it 
 would appear, this condition of social and intellectual 
 enlightenment chiefly flourished. The Accadians 1 of 
 Babylonia, however, probably succumbed to the 
 Hamitic Cushites about the year B.C. 3500. Not 
 long after this, " the inhabitants of Babylonia were 
 familiar with scientifically constructed buildings, gem- 
 engraving, metal-work in gold, silver, bronze, and 
 iron, bas-reliefs and sculptures in the round, embroi- 
 dered dresses, elegant furniture, the art of writing, 
 mathematical science — including the knowledge of 
 square and cube roots, an elaborate system of weights 
 and measures, treatises on various sciences, regular 
 laws, extensive commerce and ship-building, artificial 
 irrigation, scientific tillage of the ground, &c. It is 
 hardly rash, moreover, to conclude that these inven- 
 tions were in the main of Turanian origin, as we know 
 from the records of another Turanian nation, which 
 has never been overwhelmed ,by any other race, and 
 
 plus ancien meme que les Egyptiens. Cette donnee, que 
 Trogue-Pompe'e avait puisee dans les traditions asiatiques, est 
 aujourd'hui confirmee par les decouvertes de la science, et 
 passe a l'etat de verite fondee sur des preuves solides. Le 
 resultat le plus considerable et le plus inattendu des etudes 
 assyriologiques a ete la revelation du developpement des popu- 
 lations touraniennes dans toute l'Asie anterieure avant les Aryas 
 et les Semites, et de la part preponderate qu'elles eurent a la 
 naissance des premieres civilisations de cette partie de monde." 
 — ' Les premieres Civilisations.' 
 
 3 The Accadian was " the aboriginal element in the popula- 
 tion of Babylonia, Assyria, Susiana, and Armenia." — Tore- 
 gleams of Christianity,' Appendix, p. 217. " The magic of 
 Jews and Gnostics, of mediaeval sorcerers and witches, can all be 
 traced to the superstitions of the primitive population of Accad." 
 — ' Babylonian Literature,' Rev. A. H. Sayce, M.A., p. 49. 
 
BULGARIA. 
 
 49 
 
 which has carefully preserved its chronicles, how 
 familiar were the Chinese with similar arts and sciences 
 — at least the real Chinese, 'the hundred families' — 
 not long after, and probably before, their settlement 
 in the far East of the Asiatic continent." 1 But with 
 reference to the religious aspect of the subject, it 
 may be observed, finally, that about the year b.c. 
 2000, Sargon, king of Agane, is believed to have 
 reigned over the whole of Babylonia, and that 
 although — supposing this date to be correct — 1500 
 years must have elapsed since the Cushites had sub- 
 dued the aborigines, no regular priesthood had been 
 established in the valley of the Tigris and the 
 Euphrates until his'time. " The Accadians, who were 
 then permitted to form an inferior order of the Chal- 
 daean caste, were not priests, but magicians." 2 
 
 But to return to Bulgaria. 
 
 "How early the Bulgarians became Slavonized," 
 says Dr. Latham, " we cannot tell. Nor can we give 
 the details of the Bulgarian kingdom on its origin. 
 We only know that during the prevalence of the Hun 
 name, that of the Bulgarian was unknown ; and 
 that soon after the break-up of the kingdom of 
 Attila, the word 'Bulgarian' presents itself. As 
 a rule, they are the enemies of the Empire ; 
 and, as a rule, they are allied with the Slavonians." 3 
 It should be borne in mind that these Bulgarians 
 
 1 ' Foregleams of Christianity,' pp. 1 14, 1 15. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 117. But varying opinions are held with respect 
 to these dates. Mr. Sayce speaks of Agane as "a city near 
 Sippara, founded by Sargon I., probably in the 17th century 
 B.C." — 'Babylonian Literature,' p. 9. 
 
 3 'Russian and Turk,' p. 133. 
 
50 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 could not, however gradually, become blended with 
 the defeated Slavonians of Mcesia without importing 
 among them some, at least, of their own peculiar cha- 
 racteristics. Enough has been said to show that 
 such importations could not have been otherwise 
 than most unpromising. 
 
 The conversion of Bulgaria is our present theme. 
 And it is advisable to remember that the uninvit- 
 ing elements of Turanian character, above specified, 
 — even if considerably modified, or, indeed, only 
 reflected, — were anything but hopeful ingredients 
 for the construction of a Christian community. 
 For, in order to judge accurately of the up spring- 
 ing of seed sown, — fairly to estimate its slow or rapid 
 fructification, its interrupted or its successful growth, — 
 some knowledge of the soil which received it is im- 
 peratively necessary. 
 
 Reasonable expectations of progress of any kind 
 can be based only on a thorough acquaintance with 
 attendant circumstances, and the obstacles which lay 
 heaped in the several paths of early Christianity are 
 often too little taken into account. Let us borrow the 
 noble thought of a modern writer of note, on this call 
 for careful comparison of capabilities and achievement, 
 nor reject his words as inapplicable, because they refer 
 to physical life in its humblest forms, and not to things 
 confessedly spiritual. For, as in a glass, — and less and 
 less darkly as our gaze becomes more earnest, — we 
 may behold in the ways of Nature lessons of grace. 
 
 " It would be hard upon a plant, if, after being tied 
 to a particular spot, — where it is indeed much wanted, 
 
BULGARIA. 5 1 
 
 and is a great blessing, but where it has enough to do 
 to live, — whence it cannot move to obtain what it needs 
 or likes, but must stretch its unfortunate arms here 
 and there for bare breath and light, and split its way 
 aj?iong rocks, and grope for sustenance in unkindly 
 soil, — it would be hard, I say, if, under all these dis- 
 advantages, it were made answerable for its appear- 
 ance, and found fault with, because it was not a fine 
 plant of the kind. That is always an ideal oak, 
 which, however poverty-stricken, or hunger-pinched, 
 or tempest-tortured, is yet seen to have done, under 
 its appointed circumstances, all that could be ex- 
 pected of oak." 1 
 
 The Bulgarians were a perennial source of disquiet 
 to the Greek emperors. On the particulars of the 
 many fierce inroads 2 in which they took either a lead- 
 ing or a subordinate part, it is not to our purpose to 
 dwell. 
 
 In the year a.d. 775, Constantine V. died, "be- 
 queathing to his successors the coercion of the Bul- 
 garians as a condition of the security of the northern 
 provinces of his empire. Their power, however, though 
 more than once broken, was never annihilated, until 
 the time of the Ottomans. Soon after the establish- 
 ment of the Avar dominion, and after the breaking up 
 of the power of Attila, 3 the Bulgarian kingdom of 
 Krum, Bogoris, and their pagan predecessors, began. 
 
 1 Ruskin's 'Modern Painters,' ii. p. 103. 
 
 2 Gibbon, v. pp. 231, 329, 331. 
 
 3 Dr. Latham's 'Native Races of the Russian Empire,' 
 p. 254. 
 
52 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 By this time, the whole land, whatever it may have 
 been before, is Slavonic." l 
 
 The allusion just made to the Avars, suggesting the 
 period of their dominance as an approximate starting- 
 point for the Bulgarian kingdom, leads us to the 
 passing remark that the name Avar has been often 
 confusedly applied both to the original Asiatic pro- 
 prietors of it, and to certain neighbouring tribes, — 
 the "Ouars," or Khouni \yovvoi\, whom they reduced 
 to submission. This appellation, x° v vo h was bestowed 
 by the Greek historians on the Huns. These Ouar 
 Khouni it was, who, flying themselves from the thral- 
 dom of the Turks, first precipitated themselves on the 
 Empire in the middle of the 6th century, under the 
 terror-inspiring name of the Avars. 2 According to 
 the patriarch Nicholaos, writing in the year a.d. 807, 
 this powerful race had then kept possession of the 
 Peloponnesus for 218 years, and had so completely 
 separated it from the Byzantine empire, that no By- 
 zantine official dared to put his foot in the country." 
 " There is good reason," Dr. Latham observes, " for 
 attaching great hosts of Slavonians" to the Avar 
 armies. 3 He takes " the history of the Slavotiizers of 
 Hellas " to have " begun with that of the Avars, con- 
 tinued with that of the Bulgarians, and ended with 
 the amalgamation of the invaders with the older 
 occupiers of the land." 1 ' 
 
 1 Dr. Latham's ' Russian and Turk,' p. 134. 
 See Sheppard's ' Nationalities,' p. 212. 
 
 3 'Russian and Turk,' p. 146. See also Gibbon [Smith's 
 edition, 1854], v. 171. 
 
 4 'Russian and Turk,' p. 148. 
 
BULGARIA. 
 
 53 
 
 It has been thought that the origin of the word 
 Morea is Slavonic, and in support of this view it is 
 urged that the Byzantine writers never speak of the 
 Peloponnesus by that name, the inference being that 
 its derivation was barbaric. For no repugnance would, 
 presumably, have been evinced by Greek authors to a 
 word of Greek extraction. But whether we detect 
 in the sea-girt "Morea" traces of the Slavonic more, 
 the Sea, — or content ourselves with the popular idea 
 of the mulberry-leaf, we must accept the witness of 
 Cedrenus, of Theophanes, and of the patriarch Nice- 
 phorus, who wrote in the 8th century, to the Slavonic 
 presence in Greece at that time. They all call " the 
 country from the Danube to the highlands of Arcadia 
 and Messenia, Sclabinia; i.e., the country of the 
 Slavi." Constantine Porphyrogenitus states that in 
 the middle of the 8th century "the whole of the 
 Peloponnesus was Slavonized and barbarized." It is 
 in one of the records of this writer, that we find a 
 King of Bulgaria first mentioned. 1 " Many locali- 
 ties described by Pausanias, and even by Procopius, 
 have disappeared, and have been replaced by others, 
 bearing Slavonic names ; as Goritza, Slavitza, Velogisti, 
 &c." 2 
 
 In the year a.d. 8ii, the emperor Nicephorus, 
 highly incensed by the arrogance and hostility of the 
 Bulgarians, marched into their territory, and destroyed 
 
 1 The first Bulgarian kingdom, according to Dr. Latham, 
 began about a.d. 640, and ended, a.d. 1017. — ' Native Races,' 
 p. 254. 
 
 2 Krasinski's Lectures [1851]. Appendix, p. 331. 
 
54 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 the palace of their king by fire. Three days only 
 elapsed before this indignity was amply avenged. 
 The enraged Bulgarians fell upon the emperor and 
 slew him, together with his principal officers. After 
 parading the imperial head tauntingly on a spear, 
 the savage warriors converted the skull into a drinking- 
 bowl, which they ornamented with gold enrichments, 
 and from it they were accustomed to quaff their deep 
 draughts of triumph on the occasion of their wildest 
 revelries. It is plain that their early instincts were 
 as yet by no means weakened. 
 
 But after a while, a ray of light pierced the dark- 
 ness. It glanced from behind prison bars. 
 
 In the beginning of this 9th century, a sister of the 
 reigning Bulgarian king, Bogoris, had fallen as a 
 captive into the keeping of the Greek emperor. 
 For thirty-eight years she lived at Constantinople, 
 and was there instructed in the doctrines of the 
 Christian Faith. 
 
 Meanwhile, the administration passed into the hands 
 of the empress Regent, Theodora. She was interested 
 in a certain monk named Cupharas, who had been 
 taken prisoner by the Bulgarians, and with a view 
 to his redemption, she opened negotiations with 
 Bogoris. An exchange of prisoners was finally effected. 
 The sister of Bogoris was restored to him, while 
 Cupharas was permitted to return to Constanti- 
 nople. 
 
 Before the release of the pious monk, however, he 
 had striven, though quite unavailingly, to win the 
 Bulgarian prince to the service of the Cross. These 
 
BULGARIA. 
 
 55 
 
 fruitless endeavours were supplemented by the en- 
 treaties of the king's sister, on her return from Con- 
 stantinople. But even to such a suppliant Bogoris 
 turned a deaf ear. 
 
 At last, fear snapped the fetters which love had 
 failed to disengage. A famine, — or, as some say, a 
 pestilence, — occurred, and the anxieties of the king 
 were aroused. In vain he petitioned his own deities 
 for relief. None came. The scourge which so dis- 
 tressed him continued to afflict his country. In these 
 straits, he at length consented to invoke the God Whom 
 his sister worshipped ; nor were his tardy prayers 
 unanswered. The grievous visitation was suspended, 
 and the proud spirit of the pagan prince bowed low 
 before the Author and Giver of all good things. 
 
 But he had slender hope of inducing his subjects 
 to share his new-born convictions. 
 
 His baptism was celebrated at midnight with 
 profoundest secrecy. The rite was administered 
 by no less a personage than the patriarch Photius. 
 He emphasized the solemnity of the occasion by 
 presenting the neophyte with a lengthy treatise on 
 Christianity, theoretical and practical, considered 
 mainly in its bearings on the duties of a monarch. 
 The emperor Michael stood sponsor by proxy, and 
 the Bulgarian king received, as his Christian name, 
 that of his imperial godfather. 1 
 
 Two monks of note were at this time living at Con- 
 stantinople. They were the sons of one Leon — or 
 
 1 Robertson's 'History of the Christian Church,' iii. 431. 
 
56 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 Leo — of Thessalonica. Both were men of mark, each 
 in his own department of culture. Cyril, otherwise 
 called Constantine, was a linguist, for his day. He was 
 familiar with the Greek, Latin, Slavonian, Armenian, 
 and Khasarian languages. Methodius, the other 
 brother, was a painter of no mean skill. l In 
 monasteries only, the art of the period found a 
 home. 
 
 Solicited by Bogoris for the services of a painter 
 competent to decorate his palace, the emperor 
 despatched Methodius to the Bulgarian court. 
 
 The king, true to the leanings of his race, directed 
 the monk, on his arrival, to embellish the walls of the 
 royal entrance-hall with a series of terrifying pictures. 
 Instead of turning to the chase or the battle-field for 
 subjects, Methodius executed the behests of his 
 patron by painting the awful scenes of the " Last 
 Judgment." Bogoris, gazing at the frightful doom 
 of the heathen, as depicted by the pious artist, 
 shuddered at the spectacle, and forthwith aban- 
 doned the idols with which he had hitherto found 
 himself unable to part. Nor were the dreadful 
 pictures effectless upon his courtiers. Many of them 
 participated to such an extent in their master's agita- 
 tion, that they became candidates for admission into 
 the Christian Church. 
 
 But the bulk of his subjects remained de- 
 votedly pagan, and when the secret of his bap- 
 tism at last transpired, they cast their allegiance 
 
 1 Milman's 'Latin Christianity ' [Ed. 1854], ii. 420.' 
 
BULGARIA. 
 
 57 
 
 to the winds, menaced the king with death, and 
 attacked his palace. This heathen demonstration, 
 however, did not alarm Bogoris. He marched boldly, 
 with no large force, against the rebels, wearing the 
 Cross upon his breast. That holy symbol, indeed, 
 was quite out of keeping with the merciless punish- 
 ment inflicted by him upon the insurgents, who 
 quailed before his resolute aspect. Nevertheless, a 
 line was drawn between the plebeians among the 
 offenders, and the men of high degree who had 
 instigated them to revolt. These nobles, with their 
 entire families, were put to death, while pardon was 
 extended to the lower orders. 
 
 Bogoris did not long rest satisfied with half-measures. 
 He began to revolve in his mind projects for the con- 
 version of the Bulgarians as a nation. But on pondering 
 the formulas tendered to him by Photius at his baptism, 
 lie found them far too exalted for his comprehension. 
 More perplexed than edified by these written argu- 
 ments which he could not follow, he was further 
 confounded by the rival exhortations of sundry 
 missionaries who had found their way into Bulgaria. 
 
 These zealots were the exponents of differing 
 creeds — Greek, Roman, Armenian — and each natu- 
 rally pressed his favourite dogmas on the royal 
 acceptance. Distracted by such conflicting pre- 
 tensions, and also prompted, possibly, by an un- 
 spoken dread of the Greek Empire, whose shadow 
 lay almost across his kingdom, Bogoris determined 
 to go straight to the fountain-head. 
 
 He therefore applied to Pope Nicolas I. for advice 
 
 E 
 
5S CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 as to matters of faith. He is said to have Submitted 
 no less than 106 questions to the pontiff for solution. 
 These embraced, as well they might, " every point 
 of ecclesiastical discipline, of ceremonial observance, 
 and of manners." 1 
 
 The appeal was far from unavailing. The pope 
 adapted himself with considerable adroitness to the 
 difficulties of this untutored son of the Church. The 
 contents of his voluminous despatch to Bogoris deserve 
 our careful attention. 
 
 Mildly rebuking the Bulgarian king for the barbarity 
 with which he had recently treated his rebellious sub- 
 jects, and pointing out that at his baptism he had en- 
 rolled himself under a standard emblazoned with mercy, 
 and not with violence, the august director proceeded 
 to deprecate the employment of force in the pro- 
 mulgation of the Faith. It might indeed, he said, be 
 well to withdraw from communion with persistent 
 idolaters, but persuasion should on every possible 
 occasion take precedence of stronger measures. 
 To this rule of toleration, the case of apostates 
 constituted the solitary exception. To the grievous 
 sin of relapse leniency was not enjoined. 
 
 Nicolas was astute enough to accommodate his 
 injunctions, within certain limits, to the fierce and 
 undisciplined nature of the people for whom he was 
 legislating. He perceived that, there being no hope 
 as. yet of quenching the Bulgarian passion for war, 
 his present efforts must be directed only to brid- 
 
 1 'Latin Christianity ' [Ed. 1S54], ii. 421. 
 
BULGARIA. 
 
 59 
 
 ling, guiding, and chastening it. The national en- 
 sign was no longer to be the time-honoured horse- 
 tail, but the Cross itself. The Bulgarian warriors 
 were advised at once and for ever to abjure 
 enchantments and all kindred pagan superstitions, 
 and to consecrate their war sallies by solemn, dedi- 
 catory attendance at church, by confessing their sins, 
 offering alms, and doing charitable deeds. 
 
 It had been the Bulgarian custom, on the eve of 
 battle, to subject the horse and accoutrements of 
 every soldier to a searching inspection; if in any 
 case they were found to fall below the appointed 
 standard of efficiency, the owner was unhesitatingly 
 put to death. Availing himself of this practice as a 
 text, the pope recommended that henceforth the 
 thorough sph'itiial equipment of each warrior should 
 rather be the object of solicitude. 
 
 Oaths were to be in future administered on 
 the Holy Gospels, and not, as heretofore, on the 
 characteristic sword driven into the ground. Poly- 
 gamy was declared to be inadmissible, but Bogoris 
 was gently admonished to be courteous to his queen, 
 who had hitherto been kept at so respectful a dis- 
 tance, that she neither dined with her husband nor sat 
 down in his presence. In urging the prince to culti- 
 vate the grace of humility, Nicolas did not fail to point 
 to the Great Exemplar, Who condescended to associate 
 and to eat with the lowliest. Bogoris had anxiously 
 inquired whether intercessory prayer might be offered 
 for his pagan ancestors. But this was peremptorily 
 orbidden. Nor did the pope accede to his request 
 
 E 2 
 
60 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 that a patriarch might be appointed to Bulgaria. 
 Before taking such a step, he must, he said, receive 
 the report of his episcopal envoys, whom he now 
 sent among the Bulgarians. These were Paul, bishop 
 of Populonia, and Formosus, bishop of Portus, both 
 of whom were the bearers of Bibles and other books 
 of spiritual instruction. Pending the regular organiza- 
 tion of the Bulgarian Church, whose members were 
 as yet not even numbered, the question of a patriarch 
 must be left in abeyance. 
 
 Besides, argued Nicolas, there were in reality 
 only three true patriarchal sees, for those of 
 apostolic foundation could alone be recognized as 
 genuine. This observation was intended to exclude 
 Jerusalem and Constantinople from the honours of 
 the patriarchate. The papal letter concluded with 
 adjurations to loyalty to the Roman Church, mingled 
 with disapproving remarks upon some of the usages 
 of the Greek communion. 
 
 Simultaneously with his suit to the pope, Bogoris 
 had made an appeal for religious enlightenment to 
 the Western emperor, Louis of Germany. Louis is 
 said to have furnished him, by way of response, with 
 a bishop. This prelate, however, finding the ground 
 occupied by the papal envoys, seems to have returned 
 home without taking any action. 1 
 
 The religious affairs of Bulgaria were not destined 
 to be peacefully settled by the pastoral letter of Pope 
 Nicolas. No sooner did the news reach Constanti- 
 
 1 Robertson, iii. 434. 
 
BULGARIA. 6 5 
 
 nople that Western influence had been brought to 
 bear upon the kingdom of Bogoris, than the wrath of 
 the Byzantine patriarch was violently inflamed. He 
 insisted that, as the seeds of Christianity had been 
 implanted in Bulgaria by Byzantine hands, and had 
 ripened, in the baptism of the king, under Greek 
 auspices, the Bulgarians belonged by right to the fold 
 of the Oriental Church. Nicolas, on the other hand 7 
 rejoined that before Bulgaria was wrested from the 
 Empire by its present possessors, it had pertained to 
 the Roman jurisdiction, — that, moreover, the king had 
 voluntarily applied to him for help and instruction, 
 and that as he had provided the required instrumen- 
 tality in the shape of clergy and churches, the credit 
 of the conversion of the kingdom as a kingdom, what- 
 ever might be said about individuals, certainly could 
 only be his. Photius, however, disdained the papal 
 representations. He angrily summoned a council at 
 Constantinople, and in a circular letter to the patri- 
 archs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, he in- 
 veighed bitterly against the encroachments of Rome. 
 By the intrusive energies of the Latin Church, his 
 people, he complained, were in danger of doctrinal 
 corruption. Mischievous innovations were introduced, 
 both with respect to fasting, to celibacy, to the second 
 unction, and other kindred points, and also to the 
 important question of the Procession of the Spirit. 
 The departure from orthodoxy on this last subject 
 was the chief offence. The patriarch vehemently 
 appealed against the Roman tenet to the authority 
 of Athanasius, Gregory, and Basil, and denouncing 
 
Gl CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 Rome herself as Antichrist, he invited his correspon- 
 dents to despatch representatives to Constantinople. 
 A combined resistance to Latin pretensions might in 
 this way, he thought, be organized without delay. 
 The tone of his present letter, be it observed, 
 harmonized very imperfectly with the spirit of the 
 memorable treatise bestowed by him on Bogoris at 
 his baptism. 
 
 The challenge of Photius echoed, of course, through 
 the Christian world. Papal apologists promptly came 
 to the front. The accusations of the patriarch were 
 hotly repelled by Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, 
 Odo, bishop of Beauvais, ^Eneas of Paris, and Rat- 
 ramnus of Corbey. Thus the battle-cries of theology 
 rang over Christendom, and the world was regaled 
 with the spectacle of a struggle between the rival 
 Churches for the possession of Bulgaria, a country 
 till recently so conspicuously destitute of dogma of 
 any kind. The Bulgarians themselves,' doubtless much 
 astonished at the uproar for their sake, and, surely, 
 more perplexed than ever by the manners and customs 
 of Christianity, began to waver in their adherence to the 
 Western Church, and to exhibit symptoms of an in- 
 clination to transfer their allegiance to Constantinople. 
 The strife went on for years. At last, a.d. 877, the 
 Latin clergy having been dismissed from the country, 
 Pope John VIII. solemnly expostulated, protesting 
 against the Greek proclivities of the Bulgarians, and 
 predicting dire results from their identity with a 
 Church which was rarely free from heresy in one 
 form or another. 
 
BULGARIA. 6$ 
 
 Nevertheless, the Byzantine leanings of Bulgaria 
 did culminate in union with the Eastern Church. 
 A Greek archbishop, and bishops of the same 
 communion, settled in the country. Photius had, 
 meanwhile, been deposed as an usurper, and Ignatius, 
 whom he had displaced, formally reinstated. But 
 Ignatius, though he had acknowledged the papal 
 authority, 1 was not more disposed than Photius had 
 been, to relinquish Bulgaria. He, indeed, conse- 
 crated the archbishop already mentioned. But he 
 was threatened with deposition, as well as excommu- 
 nication, if he did not loosen his grasp on the much- 
 coveted country. He owed his dignified position — 
 said the voice from the pontifical chair — to the papal 
 see, and he must forfeit it, or cede Bulgaria to the 
 Western Church. How Ignatius might have treated 
 these solemn utterances, had his life been spared, it is 
 impossible to guess. His death, which occurred that 
 very year, put an end to the contention. But it was 
 soon revived in the person of Photius, who, for the 
 second time, ascended to the vacant seat of Ignatius. 
 He inaugurated his new elevation by the convention 
 of a synod at Constantinople, at which he invited the 
 attendance of papal legates. Hastily construing this 
 overture into a preliminary to the relinquishment of 
 Bulgaria, Pope John accepted the invitation. His 
 emissaries were charged to convey the papal pardon, 
 on certain conditions, to Photius, whose humble frame 
 of mind he took entirely for granted. They were 
 
 1 Robertson, iii. p. 440. 
 
64 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 instructed to resist to the uttermost all claims to 
 Bulgaria on the part of the patriarch. 1 On their 
 arrival at Constantinople, however, they discovered 
 that the pontiffs conclusions had been prema- 
 turely drawn, and coloured by his ardent wishes. 
 Photius displayed perfect independence of spirit, 
 repudiating all assumption that he required any exten- 
 sion of the papal sceptre, and steadily putting aside 
 the Bulgarian question as irrelevant to the topics 
 proposed for debate. 
 
 Foiled where he had least expected it, Pope John 
 had no consolation except in his own anger, which 
 escaped in copious anathemas, hurled furiously at the 
 obdurate patriarch. 
 
 Three succeeding popes took up the quarrel, and 
 made it their own. 
 
 And here we must leave Bulgaria, the apple of dis- 
 cord among these venerable personages for so many 
 years. The dawn of Christianity in other kingdoms 
 claims our observation. 
 
 But we may state, in withdrawing from Bulgarian 
 ground, that in the year a.d. 923, king Symeon, while 
 prescribing terms of a peace to be concluded with the 
 emperor Romanus I., stipulated for the acknowledg- 
 ment of the chief Bulgarian bishop by Constantinople, 
 as an independent patriarch ; " and this lasted until 
 JohnTzimisces put an end to the Bulgarian kingdom, 
 a.d. 972." 2 
 
 1 A.D. 879. 
 
 2 Finlay, ii. Si, quoted by Robertson, iii. 449 [note]. 
 
BULGARIA. 65 
 
 The conversion of Bulgaria led to the extension 
 of Christian influences in other quarters, 1 counter- 
 acted though they were, in several cases, by the 
 proselytizing exertions of Jews and Mussulmans. 
 
 1 Notably in the Crimea, the interior of Hellas, Servia, &c. 
 
66 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE CONVERSION OF MORAVIA, BOHEMIA, AND SERVIA. 
 
 The geographical confines of ancient Moravia, which 
 was far from an insignificant kingdom, must not be 
 confused with those of the modern province which 
 has inherited its name. In the opening .years of the 
 9th century, Moravia stretched from the Bavarian 
 borders to the Hungarian river Drina, 1 and from the 
 banks of the Danube, beyond the Carpathian moun- 
 tains, to the river Stryi 2 in Southern Poland. 
 
 Into this territory Christianity had been ushered as 
 early as a.d. 801, by Charlemagne, who, as his cus- 
 tom was, enforced baptism at the point of the sword, 
 at least as far as the king was concerned. Efforts 
 were subsequently made by the archbishops of Salz- 
 burg and Passau to fan this first feeble flicker into 
 something like a flame. But no success attended 
 their exertions. Paganism was overpoweringly strong, 
 and Christianity not only weak, but rude and uncouth 
 in type. The native princes, unattracted by solemni- 
 ties conducted in a language unintelligible to them, 
 soon sank back into heathenism, and the spark of light, 
 ceasing to struggle with the heavy atmosphere, expired. 
 
 But in the year a.d. 863, the Moravian king Ros- 
 
 1 Sec Krasinslri, p. 20 [Ed. 1S51]. 2 Ibid. 
 
MORAVIA, BOHEMIA, AND SERVIA. 6j 
 
 tislav, 1 anxious to shake off the yoke of the Western 
 Empire, sought to strengthen his hands by a political 
 alliance with Michael, the Greek emperor. He 
 accordingly commissioned ambassadors to solicit the 
 imperial co-operation, and it is said that his nephew 
 Sviatopolk, who was one of the envoys, became a 
 convert to Christianity while absent on this mission. 2 
 
 On his return to Moravia, Sviatopolk called the king's 
 attention to the new creed, and was warmly seconded 
 in his advocacy of its claims, by the queen, herself 
 already a professing Christian. Their efforts resulted 
 in a formal application to the emperor Michael on 
 the part of king Rostislav, for teachers qualified to 
 expound Christianity in the Slavonic tongue. 
 
 Bogoris had appealed to the pope, — Rostislav im 
 portuned the emperor ; one turned to the West, the 
 other stretched out his hands to the East, for help ; 
 but in both cases it was a pathetic cry out of gross 
 darkness for a share in the Great Light. 
 
 " The land is baptized," pleaded the Moravian 
 king, " but we have no teachers to instruct us and 
 translate for us the Sacred Books. We do not under- 
 stand either the Greek or the Latin tongue, — some 
 teach us one thing, and some another ; therefore we 
 do not understand the meaning of the Scriptures, 
 neither their import. Send us teachers who can ex- 
 plain to us the words of the Scripture, and their 
 meaning." When this petition reached the Byzan- 
 tine court, the emperor lost no time in communi- 
 
 1 Sometimes called Radislav. 
 
 2 Robertson's ' History of the Christian Church,' iii. 458. 
 
68 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 eating its tenor to his philosophers, and requesting 
 their advice. These sages reminded their master of 
 the two sons of Leon the Thessalonian, of whose 
 proficiency in art and languages we have already 
 heard. Men of such culture and piety seemed to 
 them peculiarly qualified for evangelistic work. 
 According to one account, indeed, Rostislav had 
 especially begged that Cyril, one of these noted 
 brothers, might be appointed to the Moravian 
 mission. 
 
 A slight allusion has been made on an earlier 
 page, to the rise of Christianity among the Chazars 
 of the Ukraine and the Crimea. Eighteen years 
 before the errand of Methodius to Bulgaria, these 
 tribes, finding themselves unable to discriminate 
 between the contradictory claims of Judaism, Ma- 
 hometanism, and Christianity, had reported their 
 difficulties at Constantinople, accompanying the state- 
 ment with an entreaty for assistance : a.d. 843. 
 
 Constantine — better known under the name of 
 Cyril, which he is said to have assumed towards the 
 end of his life, in obedience to a vision, 1 — was the 
 chosen apostle to the Chazars. His labours among 
 them were crowned with remarkable success. He 
 declined any compensation for himself, stipulating 
 only for the release of all Christian captives in the 
 country. 
 
 On the shores of the Tauric Chersonese he had 
 lighted upon a saintly relic, reputed to be the body 
 
 1 Robertson, iii. 45S. 
 
MORAVIA, BOHEMIA, AND SERVIA. 69 
 
 of St. Clement. Rival remains of this saint no 
 doubt existed in other places, but Cyril considered 
 his particular treasure to be genuine on the ground 
 that St. Clement, according to report, had been 
 banished to the Chersonese by the emperor Trajan. 
 
 We return now to Constantinople, whither Cyril 
 and Methodius repaired at the imperial summons, 
 to hear and to act upon the Moravian appeal. 
 " Being persuaded by the emperor," says Nestor, 
 " they went into the Slavonic land, to Rostislav, 
 to Sviatopolk, and to Kotzel ; and, having arrived, 
 they began to compose a Slavonic alphabet, and 
 translated the' Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles ; 
 and the Slavonians rejoiced, hearing the greatness of 
 God in their own language : after which they trans- 
 lated the Psalter and other books." 
 
 The Slavonic alphabet constructed by Cyril and 
 Methodius consisted of the Greek letters, with some 
 additional Armenian and Hebrew characters, besides 
 a few signs of their own invention. " The Eastern 
 branch" of the Slavonic languages, properly so called, 
 " comprehends the Russian, with various local dia- 
 lects, the Bulgarian, and the Illyrian. The most 
 ancient document of this Eastern branch is the so- 
 called ecclesiastical Slavonic, i.e., the ancient Bul- 
 garian, into which Cyrillus and Methodius translated 
 the Bible in the middle of the 9th century. This is 
 still the authorized version of the Bible for the 
 whole Slavonic race, and to the student of the Sla- 
 vonic languages it is what Gothic is to the student of 
 German. The modern Bulgarian, on the contrary, as 
 
70 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 far as grammatical forms are concerned, is the most 
 reduced among the Slavonic dialects." 1 
 
 The importance of the service rendered by these 
 indefatigable missionaries, in translating the Scrip- 
 tures into the native language, cannot be over- 
 estimated. 
 
 When the champions of a new and unknown faith 
 have to disarm prejudice and to enchain attention, no 
 method can compete for a moment with the policy 
 of clothing the unaccustomed tenets in the accents 
 of that tongue with which the peasant has been 
 familiar from his cradle. How uncouth and un- 
 musical soever its cadences may sound in other ears, 
 they have a power all their own to unlock his heart 
 and enlist his affections. Where one language is for 
 things human, and another for things divine, the 
 priest may appeal, but he will appeal in vain, to the 
 sympathies of the people. In the foreign tongue a 
 line — fatal to the growth of spiritual life — has been 
 drawn, and cannot be overstepped, between the 
 visible and the Invisible, the apparent and the Real, 
 the shadow and the Substance, the "here" and the 
 Hereafter. Two lives, the earthly and the unearthly, 
 which should act and react upon one another, have 
 been divided, and can be re-united only by one bridge, 
 — the homely language of home. But to this truth 
 hierarchical instinct has been too seldom friendly. 
 
 " In every country converted by the Latin Church, 
 the Scriptures and the Liturgy had been introduced," 
 
 1 Prof. Max Mailer's 'Science of Language,' i. 205. 
 
MORAVIA, BOHEMIA, AND SERVIA. 71 
 
 as we know on an authority which is second to 
 none, " not in the vernacular language of the original 
 or conquered population, but in the language of 
 the government or missionaries, the Latin lan- 
 guage of the old Empire and the new Church 
 of Rome. Our own sense and experience are suffi- 
 cient to tell us what a formidable obstacle must have 
 been created by this single cause to the mutual and 
 general understanding of the new faith ; what bar- 
 riers between the conquerors and conquered, between 
 the educated and the vulgar, above all, between the 
 clergy and the laity. In the Eastern Church, on the 
 other hand, a contrary method was everywhere fol- 
 lowed. The same principle which had led Jerome, 
 in his cell at Bethlehem, to translate the Bible into 
 what was then the one known language of the West, 
 was adopted by the Oriental Church with regard to 
 all the nations that came within its sphere. Hence, 
 in the remote East, sprang up the Syriac, Coptic, 
 Armenian, and Ethiopic versions; hence, in the 
 only attempt made by the Eastern Church on the 
 Western barbarians, Ulfilas immortalized himself by 
 producing the only wide-spread translation of the 
 Scriptures which existed in any Western language till 
 the times of WyclirTe. In like manner, at the ap- 
 proach of the Greek Church to the Slavonic nations 
 on the shores of the Danube, the first labour of the 
 missionaries, Cyril and Methodius, was to invent 
 an alphabet for the yet unwritten language of the 
 Slavonic tribes." 1 
 
 1 Stanley's « Eastern Church,' pp. 309, 310. 
 
72 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 For four years and a half the brothers worked 
 among the Moravians, and abundant fruit rewarded 
 their earnest toil. Churches were built, conversions 
 were numerous, and such respect was inspired by the 
 missionaries, that a title was assigned to them, equiva- 
 lent, in the Slavonic tongue, to princes. But matters 
 were not always to roll thus smoothly on. Jealousies 
 and suspicions arose among the German priests. Whis- 
 pers of disparagement began to circulate, murmurs 
 crept to and fro ; the performance of divine service 
 in the vernacular, nay, the Slavonic alphabet itself, 
 seemed to give great and general offence. " Some 
 persons," records Nestor, " began to blame the Sla- 
 vonian Scriptures, saying that it does not become 
 any nation to have its own alphabet, except the 
 Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Latins, according to 
 the inscription of Pilate, which he wrote on the Cross 
 of our Lord. 1 
 
 Rumours of the uneasiness current among the 
 Latin clergy at last travelled to Rome. The pope 
 thereupon cited Cyril and Methodius to appear before 
 him without delay, and to give account of their 
 proceedings. This summons was immediately obeyed. 
 The brothers started for Rome, taking the precious 
 relics of St. Clement with them. These remains, 
 which had accompanied them throughout their 
 Moravian mission, were accredited with large mira- 
 culous powers, and in Rome they produced a con< 
 siderable sensation. Pope Nicolas had died just 
 
 1 ■ Reformation in Toland,' Krasinski, i. 12 [note]. 
 
MORAVIA, BOHEMIA, AND SERVIA. 73 
 
 before the arrival of the brothers, but they were 
 introduced to his successor, Adrian II. By him their 
 orthodoxy was tested, and the principles on which 
 they had conducted their work of evangelization 
 duly examined. 
 
 The pope, declaring himself satisfied with the result 
 of his inquiries, then consecrated Methodius arch- 
 bishop of Moravia, 1 a practical acknowledgment of 
 the independence of the Moravian Church which 
 was very agreeable to king Rostislav. Cyril died in 
 Rome, and was buried in the church of St. Clement. 
 Methodius, however, returned to Moravia, his posi- 
 tion substantially strengthened by the papal sanction. 
 For some little time he prosecuted his labours with 
 steadily increasing success. But again shadows fell 
 athwart the sunshine. 
 
 Rostislav, after a protracted and ineffectual struggle 
 against Louis of Germany, was at length betrayed by 
 his nephew Sviatopolk into the imperial power. He 
 was blinded, a.d. 870, by the orders of Louis, and 
 deprived of his throne, which the treacherous 
 Sviatopolk was permitted to occupy in his stead. 
 Under the administration of the new king, Methodius 
 found himself beset by difficulties. On one occasion, 
 indeed, it is said that he was even driven to the 
 necessity of excommunicating the sovereign. 2 The 
 old prejudice against his Slavonic Bible and Liturgy 
 revived, and fresh complaints of him were lodged at 
 
 1 Robertson, iii. 461 ; Milman, ii. 427. 
 3 • Robertson, iii. 462. 
 F 
 
74 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 Rome. Aspersions were now cast upon the doc- 
 trines he preached, as well as upon the language in 
 which they were clothed. At this time, a.d. 879, Pope 
 John VIII. was much occupied, as we have seen, 
 with the Bulgarian quarrel. It was in the August of 
 this year that he despatched his legates to the synod 
 at Constantinople, in charge of the olive branch which 
 he imagined the contrition of Photius to deserve. 
 
 Methodius journeyed a second time to Rome, and 
 presented himself to John, who engaged him in 
 argument; and a lengthy discussion resulted in a 
 compromise, the pope agreeing to sanction the use 
 of the Slavonic language, subject to certain conditions 
 and restrictions of no great importance. The story 
 goes, that in the course of the debate, the command 
 in the Psalter, "Praise the Lord, all ye nations," 
 came home with irresistible force to the pope's mind. 
 If the glory of God was indeed intended to be pro- 
 claimed only in three languages, a very meagre con- 
 struction- must clearly be put upon this plain injunc- 
 tion. Other languages also must surely be referable 
 to the allwise Creator. The Moravian Liturgy, he 
 therefore decided, might be read in the vernacular, 
 but the mass must be celebrated either in Greek or 
 Latin. Moreover, as a mark of respect to venerable 
 custom, the Gospel must first be read in Latin, and 
 then in Slavonic. And further, if the king, or any 
 nobleman, preferred the entire service in Latin, he 
 might be indulged in his private chapel. 1 Thus 
 
 1 Robertson, iii. 463. 
 
MORAVIA, BOHEMIA, AND SERVIA. 75 
 
 mildly did Pope John deal with Methodius, whom 
 he manifestly perceived to be irreproachable. Grave 
 exception has been taken by some Roman writers to 
 the permission accorded by him to the use of the 
 vernacular in the public services of the Church. 
 " II y a des homines qui pensent que si le pape Jean 
 VIII. avait tenu plus ferme a V usage du Latin dans 
 la liturgie sacree, il aurait rendu moins facile le schisme 
 et la perversion des nations Slavonnes" 1 
 
 Methodius, confirmed in his archbishopric, now 
 returned once more to Moravia, the bearer of a letter 
 from the pope to Sviatopolk. John informed the 
 king that he had already consecrated one bishop 
 to assist the primate, and desired that another 
 ecclesiastic worthy of elevation to the episcopate 
 should be forthwith sent to Rome, in order that a 
 second coadjutor might be provided for him. 
 
 And now the great work was again set in motion, 
 Methodius continuing to regard the native language 
 as the only channel through which the hearts of the 
 people could be reached. The shelter of papal 
 approval, however, only heightened his unpopularity 
 with the German clergy, who neglected no opportunity 
 of frustrating his efforts. Sviatopolk also seems to 
 have thrown all his influence into the Latin scale. 
 Nor was the good archbishop free from antagonism 
 still nearer home. The bishop first consecrated by 
 Pope John as his assistant, became disaffected towards 
 him, and indeed went so far as to repudiate his 
 
 1 M. Rohrbacher, xii. 354. See Robertson, iii. 464 [note]. 
 
 F 2 
 
76 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 authority. The pope did his best, in at least one 
 letter, to console Methodius under these trying cir- 
 cumstances, a.d. 88 1. 
 
 A complete release from trouble, however, was not 
 far off. Within a few years the pious missionary 
 died, probably in a.d. 885. The scene of his death 
 has been laid by some at Rome, but it seems more 
 likely that such a man remained at his post until the 
 last. His presence, which had embodied papal 
 patronage, once removed, the smouldering ill-feeling 
 towards the Slavonic clergy in Moravia broke forth 
 in action. About a year after the death of Methodius 
 they were expelled in numbers from the country, 
 a.d. 886, and obliged to take refuge in Bulgaria. 
 
 Fresh political disturbances followed, which ended 
 in the subjugation of Moravia by the people known 
 as Hunugars, Maygars, or Hungarians, a.d. 907. 
 
 These pagans suddenly inundated Christian Europe 
 in the 10th century. In numbers apparently count- 
 less, in brutality unparalleled, in the very rudiments of 
 common humanity wholly deficient, their onslaught 
 acted as a tremendous and paralyzing shock to the 
 civilized world. None knew whence they came, nor 
 whither they were bound. Their language was un- 
 known, and their aspect terrifying. Startled by so 
 unexpected and unaccountable a scourge, 1 the trem- 
 bling nations identified the ravages of these appalling 
 barbarians with monstrous calamities intended to 
 herald the approaching dissolution of the world. 
 
 1 For the Hungarian inroads see Milman's 'Latin Chris- 
 tianity ' [1854], ii. pp. 444, 445. 
 
MORAVIA, BOHEMIA, AND SERVIA. 77 
 
 Henry the Fowler at last defeated the Hungarians, 
 a.d. 935, near Merseburg, and some twenty years 
 afterwards an irrecoverable blow was dealt them by 
 Otho the Great. 
 
 Finally, abandoning their roaming propensities, they 
 became stationary within the boundaries of the country 
 which at present bears their name. Between the 
 years a.d. 949 and 974, efforts were made again and 
 again to irradiate the spiritual darkness of these 
 Hungarian tribes. From time to time a voice arose, 
 — now from a solitary chief, himself rescued from the 
 prevailing degradation, and baptized, and now from 
 some band of unfortunate Christian captives, — plead- 
 ing with the wild wanderers the cause of the Crucified 
 One. But it was not until the year a.d. 974, that any 
 organized attempt was made to win them over col- 
 lectively. Pope Benedict VII. then deputed Piligrin, 
 the bishop of Passau, to undertake the evangeliza- 
 tion of the country. Piligrin became archbishop of 
 Lorch, 1 and, assisted by a small staff of clergy, he 
 addressed himself to the unpromising work. The 
 results were most disheartening. Little impression was 
 made until the year a.d. 997, when, in the person ot 
 a chief called Waik, a son of Geisa, the secular arm 
 was uplifted in support of Christianity. He had no 
 sooner ascended the throne than he directed all his 
 energies to the establishment of the Faith. 
 
 At his baptism, by Adelbert, bishop of Prague, this 
 king was called Stephen. 2 His determination cowed 
 
 1 Jaffe's ' Regesta Pont. Rom.,'' p. 332. 
 
 2 Pertz, 'Mon. Germ.,' xiii. 231. The bishop was at the 
 time on the point of starting for Prussia. 
 
7 8 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 all antagonists. He divided his kingdom into eleven 
 dioceses, under the supervision of the archbishop of 
 Gran. He invited monks and clergy to settle in 
 the country; he founded schools and Benedictine 
 monasteries ; he promoted the culture of his people 
 in all possible ways, and sternly bore down oppo- 
 sition in every quarter. A college at Rome, and 
 monasteries and hospitals at Ravenna, Constantinople, 
 and Jerusalem, were connected with his name, 1 and 
 he earned, as we may easily believe, the most favour- 
 able regard of Pope Silvester II. 2 
 
 But Stephen's successor did not share his feelings. 
 A reaction succeeded this period of prosperity. 
 Paganism reared its head again, and as late as the 
 middle of the nth century Hungary was the wrestling- 
 ground of the old faith and the new. Moravia, 
 emerging from its burial in Hungarian barbarism, was 
 eventually incorporated with Bohemia, to which king- 
 dom our attention must now be transferred. 
 
 We find the origin of the name Bohemia in the Boii, 
 a Celtic race who once occupied the country. 3 The 
 land was subsequently inhabited by the Marcomanni, 
 and after their departure to the south-west, in company 
 with the Goths and Alani, by the Slavonic tribes known 
 as the Chekhs. As in the case of Moravia, Christianity 
 
 1 Pertz, xiii. 235. Dollinger, iii. 34. Gieseler, iii. 463. 
 
 2 " Such was Stephen's hospitality to pilgrims, that the 
 journey through Hungary came to be generally preferred to a 
 sea voyage by those who were bound for the Holy Land." — 
 Robertson, iv. 94. 
 
 3 " Bojohcmum, the home of the Boii, was converted into 
 Bohemia,''' — Krasinski's Lectures [1869], p. 43. 
 
MORAVIA, BOHEMIA, AND SERVIA. 79 
 
 seems to have found its earliest way to Bohemia in 
 the wake of Charlemagne's victorious armies. With 
 the tribute levied on the province it is probable that 
 the conqueror exacted some profession of Christianity. 
 In the year a.d. 844, fourteen Bohemian chiefs were 
 baptized at Ratisbon. But in these isolated cases, 
 the recognition of the new faith appears to have been 
 little more than a politic and superficial subscription 
 to the creed of the German court. 
 
 About a.d. 871, duke— or prince — Borziwoi, a 
 pagan, paid a visit to Sviatopolk, king of Moravia. 
 He was received with due courtesy, but we read 
 that, at dinner, his host indicated the floor as 
 the only suitable seat for pagans. While thus 
 humbly accommodated, Borziwoi and his suite 
 attracted the notice of Methodius, whose place 
 the story represents to have been at the king's high 
 table. Turning to the group of Bohemians, he 
 expressed surprise and regret that they should be 
 placed in such a position. "If I became a Christian," 
 queried the duke, from the floor, " what should I 
 gain thereby?" "A place," solemnly responded 
 Methodius, "higher than all kings and princes." If 
 the tale is to be credited, Borziwoi became a con- 
 vert on the spot, was at once baptized, with thirty of 
 his attendants, and was accompanied on his return 
 home by a Moravian priest. His wife Ludmilla and 
 her two sons readily embraced Christianity, and did 
 what they could to promote its general reception, but 
 the Bohemian courtiers were by no means unanimous 
 in its favour. Ratislav,— or Radislav — who succeeded 
 
So CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 Borziwoi on the throne, was a zealous defender of the 
 faith ; and after his death Ludmilla was earnest in her 
 endeavours to train his two sons as its champions. 
 But their mother, Dragomira, a determined pagan, 
 counteracted all efforts to uphold Christianity. She 
 destroyed the churches, exiled the clergy, and mur- 
 dered her pious mother-in-law, a.d. 927. Her sons, 
 though they had been equal sharers in their grand- 
 mother's counsels, soon betrayed widely differing 
 inclinations. Wenceslav, the elder, was deeply im- 
 bued with the principles instilled by Ludmilla. He 
 was upright, devout, and zealous for the truth. So 
 little did he value the distinctions of this world, that 
 he was on the eve of laying aside his crown to assume 
 the cowl of a monk, a.d. 936, when Boleslav, his 
 brother, waylaid and attacked him one day, on 
 his way to church. Wenceslav, stronger than his 
 assailant, disarmed and overthrew him, exclaiming, 
 " God forgive thee, brother ! " But the attendants of 
 Boleslav, coming up, supposed Wenceslav to have 
 acted on the aggressive, and killed him. He became 
 the patron saint of Bohemia. 1 
 
 Boleslav, surnamed " the Cruel," who now assumed 
 the crown, persecuted the Christians to the heart's 
 content of his mother. On the birth of a son, however, 
 " he was led by a strange mixture of motives to devote 
 the child to a religious life, by way of expiation," 2 as it 
 was supposed, for his brother's violent death. But 
 he did not on that account desist from waging war 
 against Christianity. Again the clergy were banished, 
 
 Robertson, iv. S2 [note], s Ibid. 
 
MORAVIA, BOHEMIA, AND SERVIA. 8 1 
 
 churches and monasteries levelled to the ground, and 
 the barest tolerance denied to believers. 
 
 After a lapse of fourteen years, however, the course 
 of the heathen Boleslav was arrested. One stronger 
 than himself interfered with a high hand. The 
 emperor Otho I. forced him to alter his ways. The 
 condition attached to the peace granted by imperial 
 condescension was, that freedom of faith should be 
 guaranteed throughout Bohemia, and that Boleslav 
 should rebuild the churches he had destroyed. 
 
 The suffering Bohemian Church now enjoyed a 
 respite from assault, and ten years afterwards a 
 reaction in her favour set in, under the auspices of 
 Boleslav II. This king, consecrated when a child, as 
 we saw, to a religious life, amply fulfilled the promise 
 of his youth. Justly surnamed " the Pious," he 
 devoted himself, as soon as he had assumed the reins 
 of government, to the extirpation of the paganism 
 lately rampant, and left no stone unturned to further 
 the interests of Christianity throughout his country. 
 With the emperor's support he founded a bishopric 
 at Prague, which was first filled by one Dietmar, a 
 Saxon. He was succeeded by a Bohemian of high 
 birth, who had been educated at Magdeburg, under 
 the superintendence of archbishop Adelbert. The 
 name of his reverend preceptor was bestowed on 
 him at his confirmation, in the place of Woytiech} 
 his Bohemian appellation. 
 
 The new prelate was characterized by unflagging 
 energy. He built churches and monasteries, and 
 1 Or, Wogteich. 
 
S2 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 strenuously endeavoured to reform the lives of the 
 people. But this was up-hill work. Paganism, 
 though kept at bay, was still a living power. During 
 the period of its triumph, the evil habits fostered by 
 it had grown into giant barriers against any purer in- 
 fluence. Adelbert found that even such Christianity 
 as existed among the Bohemians was mixed with 
 pagan elements of the deadliest kind. The clergy 
 were steeped in gross immorality. Polygamy was 
 openly practised, as well as marriage within the pro- 
 hibited degrees. The slave-trade throve on a general 
 traffic with Jewish slave-dealers in serfs and prisoners, 
 who were sometimes even sold for sacrificial pur- 
 poses. 
 
 The bishop strove to stem the tide of sinful living. 
 But his temperament was all too vehement. Perceiving 
 that he was called upon to grapple with colossal 
 evils, he threw his whole strength into the work, 
 and was often carried by his natural impetuosity 
 beyond the bounds both of prudence and of tact. 
 And besides this flaw in his method of proceed- 
 ing, he favoured Latin instrumentality exclusively. 
 His education was no doubt accountable for his 
 strong aversion to the Slavonic Liturgy, which gave 
 rise to violent disputes and insurmountable diffi- 
 culties. At length he threw up the work in despair, 
 and fled for rest to the peaceful precincts of a con- 
 vent. Hither, however, in a.d. 994, a summons from 
 the Roman synod followed him. He was commanded 
 to return to his post. The order was obeyed, but his 
 second attempt was as unsuccessful as the first. When 
 
MORAVIA, BOHEMIA, AND SERVIA. 83 
 
 two or three years had expired, he started, commissioned 
 by Gregory V., for Prussia, as a regionary archbishop. 
 
 In Bohemia, Adelbert was succeeded by Severus, 
 who accomplished much. But he also was unfriendly 
 to the Slavonic language, and discouraged its use to 
 such an extent, that its liturgy was at last regarded as 
 a sign of heresy. In the yearA.D. 1080, duke Ratislav 
 attempted to win from Gregory VII. his approval 
 of the Slavonic service-book used in the abbey of 
 Sazawa. But the pope refused point-blank. " The 
 use of the vernacular," he said, " had been conceded 
 only on account of temporary circumstances, which 
 had now long passed away. As to a vernacular 
 edition of the Scriptures, that was impossible ; it was 
 not the Will of God that the Sacred Word should be 
 everywhere displayed, lest it should be held in con- 
 tempt, and give rise to error." 1 Twenty years before, 
 indeed, the Synod of Salona had pronounced Metho- 
 dius a heretic, and the Slavonic alphabet a diabolical 
 invention. 
 
 A corner of this chapter must be spared for a few 
 words about Servia. This country was peopled by 
 Slavonians, about the time when the emperor Hera- 
 clius, perhaps making a virtue of necessity, encour- 
 aged a division of the Croats to settle " in Dalmatia, 
 among the Istrian mountains, and on the coast of 
 the Adriatic Gulf." The Servian colonists, called, by 
 themselves, Srp, and by the Greeks, Serbes, inhabited 
 Upper Mcesia, Dardania, and Dacia, by the invitation 
 of Heraclius, who has thus been said to have assigned 
 
 1 See Robertson, iv. 86. 
 
84 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 to them "a function which they may even yet discharge, 
 — that of an outlying, independent outpost against a 
 preponderating Northern power." l While acknow- 
 ledging the general supremacy of the Greek Empire, 
 the early Servians preserved a degree of independ- 
 ence unusual in subject tribes. With the imperial 
 consent they were governed by native chiefs, and 
 this arrangement appears to have been successful 
 while it held good. 2 In the eleventh century, how- 
 ever, the Empire stretched out an appropriating 
 hand, and patronage bade fair to expand into 
 mastery. Of the struggle for freedom which then 
 ensued it does not concern us to speak here. 3 It is 
 the Servia of an earlier date with which we have 
 to do. 
 
 A few sentences will indeed suffice. For the story 
 of this country, during the process of emancipation 
 from paganism, is but a repetition of the incidents with 
 which, in neighbouring states, we have already become 
 familiar. Ramifications of the work of Cyril and 
 Methodius extended into Servia. The Slavonic alpha- 
 bet made way there, as in Bohemia and Moravia, for 
 Christianity. The Servians " enjoyed the advantage 
 of a liturgy which was intelligible to them ; and we 
 
 1 ' Nationalities,' p, 227. 
 
 2 " The patriarch of Constantinople granted them the 
 privilege of always electing their archbishop from their own 
 national clergy." — Hardwick, p. 136. 
 
 ! When, in a.d. 827, the Byzantine yoke was temporarily 
 shaken off, such allegiance to Christianity as the Servian 
 relations to Constantinople had superinduced seems also to have 
 been repudiated. 
 
MORAVIA, BOHEMIA, AND SERVIA. 85 
 
 • 
 
 find that, early in the ioth century, a considerable 
 number of Slavonian priests from all the dioceses were 
 ordained by the bishop of Nona, who was himself a 
 Slavonian by descent." 1 
 
 That the way of the Cross was here, as always, un- 
 even and difficult, is not to be doubted. The Ark of 
 God, guided by a cloud in the day, and by a fiery pillar 
 in the night, must needs, indeed, go forward until the 
 Better Land breaks in glory upon us all. But the pro- 
 tecting agencies have often been — still often are — in- 
 visible. The cloud over the Tabernacle rests in many 
 and many a "wilderness of Paran," — the stepping- 
 stones in Jordan are often hard to find. The mis- 
 sionary history of Servia was no exception to the 
 general rule. 
 
 It has been noted that — at least in her modern garb 
 — this country is in one respect " like England." 
 True, it is a humble possession that, as we learn from 
 travellers, Servia shares with us. Only the flozver* 
 which we call " common," so dear to us from child- 
 hood, — primroses, daisies, violets, forget-me-nots, 
 honeysuckles, lilacs, and laburnums. These fringe 
 her lanes, just as they cluster in our own. 3 Yet let 
 even this trifling characteristic of one of the countries 
 whose early evangelization we are trying to realize, 
 be remarked. The Greatest of all Apostles and 
 Missionaries turned and pointed to the wild flowers 
 by the wayside, as distinct helps on the heavenward 
 
 1 Ranke's ' History of Servia,' p. 4. 
 
 2 ' Servia and the Servians,' Rev. W. Denton, p. 5. 
 
86 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 road. 1 " Consider the lilies, how they grow ! they 
 toil not, they spin not ! If then, God so clothe the 
 grass, how much more you, O ye of little faith ?" 
 
 1 On the influence of flowers on human life and thought Prof. 
 Ruskin loves to dwell. "The unspeakable azure light along 
 the ground, of the wood-hyacinth in English spring ; the grape- 
 hyacinth, which is in south France, as if a cluster of grapes and 
 a hive of honey had been distilled and compressed together into 
 one small boss of celled and beaded blue ; the lilies of the 
 valley everywhere, in each sweet and wild recess of rocky 
 lands ; — count the influences of these on childish and innocent 
 life ; then measure the mythic power of the hyacinth and 
 asphodel as connected with Greek thoughts of immortality ; 
 finally, take their useful and nourishing power in ancient and 
 modern peasant life, and it will be strange if you do not feel 
 what fixed relation exists between the agencies of the creating 
 spirit in these, and in us who live by them. It is impossible to 
 bring into any tenable compass for our present purpose, even 
 hints of the human influence of the two remaining orders of 
 Amaryllids and Irids ; — only note this generally, that while 
 these, in northern countries, share with the Primulas the fields 
 of spring, it seems that in Greece, the Primulaceae are not an 
 extended tribe, while the crocus, narcissus, and Amaryllis lutea, 
 the ' lily of the field ' (I suspect also that the flower whose 
 name we translate ' violet ' was in truth an Iris), represented 
 to the Greek the first coming of the breath of life on the renewed 
 herbage ; and became in his thoughts the true embroidery of 
 the saffron robe of Athena. Later in the year, the dianthus 
 (which, though belonging to an entirely different race of plants, 
 has yet a strange look of having been made out of the grasses 
 by turning the sheaf-membrane at the root of their leaves into 
 a flower) seems to scatter, in multitudinous families, its crimson 
 stars far and wide. But the golden lily and crocus, together 
 with the asphodel, retain always the old Greek's fondest 
 thoughts, — they are only 'golden' flowers that are to burn on 
 the trees and float on the streams of paradise." — ' The Queen of 
 the Air,' pp. 98, 99,100. Cf. also, on passive influences, p. 16, and 
 theremarks on geographical configuration subsequently quoted. 
 
CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 87 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE CONVERSION OF RUSSIA. 
 
 The territory now known as European Russia, or, at 
 all events, the central and major part of it, seems 
 to have been peopled in the earliest historical times 
 by the Slavonic and Finno-Tartar tribes, of which 
 its present population chiefly consists. But the Sla- 
 vonic element was not predominant then as it is now, 
 and the Russian state, " the first nucleus of that 
 mighty Empire which has united all these various races 
 into one political body/' owed its actual foundation 
 to none of them. In the year a.d. 862, according to 
 Nestor, certain tribes, or clans, inhabiting this country, 
 the Chud} the Slavonians, the Meria, the Krivichi, 
 and the Ves, uprose in arms against the Varangians, 
 who three years previously had " come from beyond 
 the sea," demanding tribute. They now " drove the 
 Varangians over the sea, and paid them no tribute ; 
 and they began to govern themselves, and there was 
 no justice among them, and clan rose against clan, and 
 there was internal strife between them, and they began 
 to make war upon each other. And they said to each 
 other : ' Let us seek for a prince who can reign over us, 
 and judge what is right.' And they went over the sea 
 
 1 " Tsc/md" is one of the names still borne by the Fins. 
 
88 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 to the Varangians, to Rus, for so were these Varan- 
 gians called : they were called Rus, as others are 
 called Svie, others Nurmane, others Angliane, others 
 Gote. The Chud, the Slavonians, the Krivichi, and the 
 Ves said to Rus : ' Our land is large and rich, but there 
 is no order in it; Come ye, and rule and reign over us. 
 And three brothers were chosen, with their whole 
 clan, and they took with them all the Rus, and they 
 came. And the eldest, Rurik, settled in Novgorod. '" 
 The commonly received opinion that these Rus were 
 Scandinavians, and probably Swedes, is disputed by 
 many. The dissentients, as is well known, contend 
 that the Russians were, from the very beginning, of 
 purely Slavonic extraction. Into the general merits 
 of this question we cannot here enter, but must restrict 
 ourselves to a few remarks on the word which has 
 provoked so much and such animated discussion. 
 
 To the Greeks the Rus were known before the 
 middle of the 9th century. By them they were called 
 Rhos ['Pwc] ; and, about a century later, Rusioi 
 ['PuvfTtot]. The meaning of the name Rhos, however, 
 in Dr. Latham's opinion, on the other hand, is 
 ''ambiguous, up to the middle of the 10th century." 1 
 Be that as it may, a Greek author, Theophanes 
 Isaakios, in describing an attack on the Danubian 
 Bulgarians by Constantine Copronymus, in the year 
 a.d. 773, employs the expression rusioi in a manner 
 which casts some little light on the subject, even 
 if it be only negative. He records that Constantine 
 
 1 'Russian and Turk,' p. 375. 
 
RUSSIA. 89 
 
 followed his army on board certain vessels which he 
 describes as ra povaia xeXavdia. By believers in 
 the Slavonic origin of the Russ, these words have been 
 translated, the Russian galleys. But it is pointed out 
 by Dr. Vilhelm Thomsen that before the 10th century 
 the Greeks always spoke of the Rus as Rhos ['Pwg], 
 and that the adjective formed from that word was 
 pwtriKOQ. He therefore infers that only the common 
 signification, red, is to be assigned on this occasion 
 to the Greek word pnvaioe. It is known that the 
 ships which conveyed the emperor with his guard 
 and attendants, were painted red, and Dr. Thomsen 
 accordingly translates ra povtria ^cXav^ia into "the 
 red, or imperial galleys," as distinct from the common 
 war, or transport galleys, in which the army sailed. 1 
 He also considers it worthy of remark, that " the Russ 
 did not use ' chelandia,' which were a very large kind 
 of ship, but they always used small ships, or boats." 2 
 
 " The first time the Greeks came in contact with 
 the Russ," he continues, "as far as we know, was in 
 a.d. 838 or 839, and this is also the only time the 
 name 'Russ' 3 is mentioned in any document before 
 the time of Rurik." 4 
 
 Before quitting the subject, a slight reference may 
 be made to one division of the interesting evidence 
 
 1 'Origin of the Ancient Russ,' p. 22. 
 
 2 " The invaders from territories afterwards Russian," writes 
 Dr. Latham, "descend upon the Greeks of Macedonia in 
 boats made out of a single tree [monoxy/a,] which implies the 
 navigation of a river." — 'Russian and Turk,' p. 374. 
 
 3 'Po>ff. 
 
 4 ' Origin of the Ancient Russ,' p. 22. 
 
 G 
 
90 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 furnished by the same writer in proof ot the Scan- 
 dinavian origin of the ancient Russ clan. The em- 
 peror Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in describing the 
 rapids of the Dnieper, enumerates the cataracts in 
 both their Slavonic and their Russ names, at the 
 same time explaining the meaning of the words. Dr. 
 Thomsen shows that the Slavonic appellations are 
 " really pure Slavonic, and some of them completely 
 agree with the modern Russian names of the rapids, j; 
 while the names called Russ by Constantine are 
 found to be Scandinavian, or Old Norse words. But 
 the pages devoted to this examination by the author 
 of the ' Origin of the Ancient Russ/ should be read 
 as they stand. They undeniably lend a valuable 
 support to the view that the Rus were of Swedish 
 derivation. The eastward stream of Scandinavian 
 colonization set out from the shores of Sweden, and 
 the name Rus' or Rhos ['Pwe] seems to have been 
 of Eastern coinage, rather than the patronymic of the 
 clan in use among themselves. 
 
 In the year a.d. 865, the Russ sailed down the 
 Dnieper, crossed the Black Sea, and after plundering 
 its islands and coasts, and spreading general conster- 
 nation around them, made their appearance under the 
 walls of Constantinople. If we follow Nestor's chro- 
 nology, Rurik had barely settled himself and his 
 people in their new quarters, before their longing 
 eyes were cast on the wealthy Oriental capital. 
 
 The inhabitants of Constantinople seem to have 
 been too completely paralyzed by terror to attempt 
 any systematic defence. They implored the Virgin 
 
RUSSIA. 
 
 91 
 
 to come to their aid, accompanying their invocations 
 by ceremonies of a conciliatory character. These 
 solemnities were conducted by the patriarch Photius, 
 two sermons by whom, delivered " on the occasion 
 of the attack of the Rhos," were discovered in 
 Russia not many years ago. 
 
 Legend asserts that a miracle rewarded the faith of 
 the Greeks. A violent storm arose, and wrought such 
 havoc among the vessels of the " Rhos " that very few 
 escaped demolition. We have the testimony of tra- 
 dition, that so deeply were the barbarian invaders 
 impressed by this manifestation of Divine power, that 
 they forthwith became believers in the God Who had 
 confounded their plans. " They were," asserts M. 
 Mouravieff, " the firstfruits of their people to the Lord. 
 The hymn of victory of the Greek Church, ' To the 
 protecting conductress,' in honour of the most holy 
 Virgin, has remained a memorial of this triumph, and 
 even now, among ourselves, concludes the Office for 
 the First Hour in the daily Matins, for that was indeed 
 the first hour of salvation to the land of Russia." l 
 Photius also, in an encyclical letter, a.d. 866, to 
 the Oriental bishops, ascribes to the Greek Church 
 the honour of the conversion of the audacious Rhos, 
 that is, of those representatives of the general body 
 who had prepared to assail Constantinople. But 
 whether a single " grain of mustard-seed " was or 
 was not carried home by the invaders, it seems 
 clear that the general conversion mentioned by 
 
 1 ' History of the Church of Russia,' p. 8. 
 G 2 
 
(j 2 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 Photius was neither real nor lasting. For in spite 
 of a struggling ray of light here and there, paganism 
 was all but universal in Russia for nearly a hundred 
 years afterwards. 
 
 In the year a.d. 907, as Nestor relates, the Russ re- 
 appeared in the immediate neighbourhood of Con- 
 stantinople. This time, however, the Greeks had 
 effectually barred the sea approach. But Oleg, the 
 commander of the expedition, was nothing daunted. 
 We read that he caused his ships 1 to be dragged 
 ashore, and mounted on wheels. In this novel 
 position the wind filled their sails, and the Greeks 
 were appalled by the unnatural apparition of a hostile 
 fleet sailing towards the city on dry land ! The story 
 ends with the abject humiliation of the besieged, who 
 offered the ingenious Oleg any amount of tribute if 
 he would but make peace with them. That he 
 dictated terms highly advantageous to himself we 
 need not to be assured. 
 
 Other expeditions followed, which it is not our 
 province to recount, but we may observe that their 
 object was sometimes rather commercial than warlike. 
 In their readiness to adapt themselves either to trade 
 or war, the ancient Russ strongly remind us of the 
 Norse Viking, of whose kin they are supposed to 
 have been. A quaint picture of them survives, 
 drawn by an Arabian hand. Though due allowance 
 must be made for probable high colouring, the sketch 
 
 1 The small size of the Russ ships has already been noted. 
 See p. 76. 
 
kussia. 93 
 
 is too graphic to be altogether omitted. " I saw 
 the Russ," says Ibn Fadhlan, ambassador among 
 the Bulgarians, in a.d. 921 and 922, — "I saw the 
 Russ, who had arrived with their wares, and had 
 encamped upon the river Itil [Volga]. Never saw 
 I people of more perfect stature ; they are tall like 
 palm-trees, ruddy and fair-haired. They clothe them- 
 selves neither in jackets nor in kaftans, but the men 
 wear a coarse cloak, which they throw over the one 
 side, so that one of their hands is left free. Every 
 man carries an axe, a knife, and a sword. Without 
 these weapons they are never seen. The women 
 wear on the bosom a small capsule of iron, copper, 
 silver, or gold, according to the wealth and standing 
 of the husband. On the capsule is a ring, and on 
 that a knife, fastened equally on the bosom. When 
 a man possesses 10,000 dirhems [silver coins], he has 
 a chain made for his wife ; if he has 20,000, she gets 
 two neckchains," and so on. Their greatest orna- 
 ment consists of green glass beads. They are very 
 fond of them, and will pay a dirhem apiece for them, 
 and string them as neckchains for their wives." Ibn 
 Fadhlan goes on to describe the devotions of a Russ 
 merchant-warrior on his arrival on strange shores. 
 Leaving a present of eatables before the wooden image 
 which he sets up, he says, " I pray thee to grant me 
 a purchaser well-provided with gold and silver coins, 
 who will buy all as I wish, without bargaining." If 
 prosperous business follows this petition, he testifies 
 his gratitude by a sacrifice of sheep and oxen. 
 Another Oriental writer records of the early Russ, 
 
94 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 that when a son is born to any of them, the father 
 throws a sword at him, saying : " I do not leave thee 
 any property ; thine is only what thou gainest with 
 thy sword." 1 
 
 But it is time to turn to the religious aspect, in 
 which Russia and the Russians chiefly concern us 
 here. And first, we are confronted by legends. 
 " There is one feature of Russian scenery truly grand; 
 its network of magnificent rivers." This is the ob- 
 servation of the author of the well-known ' Lectures 
 on the Eastern Church.' "These," he continues, 
 " important for its political and commercial interests, 
 are the threads with which the country's religious 
 destinies have been always curiously interwoven. 
 Turn your mind's eye to the vast stream of the 
 Dnieper, the old Borysthenes, as it rolls into the 
 Euxine ! Over the banks of that stream, 500 miles 
 from its mouth, hangs a low range of hills, — low for 
 any other country, but high for the level steppes of 
 Russia, and therefore called Kieff i ' the mountain.' 
 From that mountain, we are told, a noble prospect 
 commands the course of the river ; and up the course 
 of that river, on his way from Sinope to Rome, came, 
 according to the ancient legend, Andrew, the Apostle 
 of Greece, the Apostle of Scythia ; and as he rose in 
 the morning, and saw the heights of Kieff, on which 
 he planted the first Cross, he said : ' See you those 
 hills ? For on those hills shall hereafter shine forth 
 
 1 Dr. Vilhelm Thomsen, 'Origin of the Russ,' &c, pp. 30, 
 32, 33- 
 
RUSSIA. 
 
 95 
 
 the Grace of God. There shall be a great city, and 
 God shall cause many churches to rise within it' M1 
 Another legend, still more fabulous in its groundwork, 
 connects the entrance of Christianity into Russia with 
 the flowing current of a river. A saint, so shadowy 
 that his name is scarcely known, cast ignominiously 
 into the Tiber for his faith's sake, floated miraculously 
 from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and from the 
 Baltic into the river Neva. On the bosom of its 
 placid waters the Neva bore him into Lake Ladoga. 
 Thence he passed by successive stages up to the 
 walls of Novgorod. 
 
 " The Dnieper and the Neva are the two inlets 
 by which life and light have penetrated into the 
 vast deserts of Russia, from the East and from the 
 West." 2 Calling to mind the soothing effect of the 
 various broad, majestic rivers, as we watched them 
 breaking the monotony of the silent plains, in our 
 survey of the Slavonic countries, before closing the 
 first chapter of this volume, the religious myths of 
 the Dnieper and the Neva commend themselves, in 
 spite of their fancifulness, to our affections. Nor 
 can we forget — once more to glance at the old word 
 Russ — that the signification of the Scandinavian 
 synonym for it is rower, boatman, or fisher. z But 
 the enchanted land of legend must no longer detain 
 us ; we are stepping now across its border into the 
 
 1 ■ Eastern Church,' pp. 292, 293. 
 
 2 'Ibid., p. 293. 
 
 3 Dr. V. Thomsen, p. 96. See also the note. 
 
Cj6 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 domain of history. Simultaneously, let us exchange 
 the old-world form, J?uss, for the modern Russians. 
 " It was once," says Dr. Thomsen, " the ancient 
 Slavonic appellation of the Northmen, and has at 
 last come to signify a purely Slavonic nationality." 
 
 In the middle of the ioth century, the widowed 
 princess Olga, lately released from the cares of 
 regency, travelled from Kief to Constantinople, 
 Whether her visit had political objects, or whether 
 she was prompted to pay it solely, as some say, by a 
 desire to know more of the holy faith of which only 
 glimpses had been vouchsafed her at home, cannot 
 be positively decided. But her sojourn in the 
 imperial city was a turning-point in her career. 
 Baptism was administered to her by the patriarch 
 Polyeuctes, the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus 
 officiating as sponsor. Polyeuctes then solemnly 
 addressed the princess, predicting that through her 
 instrumentality Russia should be richly blessed. 
 " Olga," writes M. Mouravieff, " now become Helena 
 by baptism, that she might resemble both in name 
 and deed the mother of Constantine the Great, 
 stood meekly bowing down her head, and drinking 
 in, as a sponge that is thirsty of moisture, the 
 instructions of the prelate." 1 His injunctions, which 
 were plentiful, she is recorded to have " observed 
 with holy exactness on her return to her own 
 country." 
 
 This pious princess strove, by all the means in her 
 
 1 ' Russian Church,' p. 9. 
 
RUSSIA. 
 
 97 
 
 power, to induce her son, Sviatoslav, to accept the 
 creed which she had speedily learnt to hold dear. 
 But on him her efforts were quite thrown away. He 
 heeded his mother's entreaties only so far as to abstain 
 from persecuting those of his subjects who, moved by 
 her example, had embraced Christianity. For himself, 
 absorbed as he was in perpetual military expeditions, 
 he was a soldier cast on the roughest scale. Inured 
 to the hardships inseparable from his mode of life, 
 impervious to danger, indifferent to luxury, he neither 
 knew nor cared about a higher standard than that 
 of his forefathers. The ground was his accustomed 
 bed, a saddle his pillow ; his diet coarse and spare. 
 He died, a.d. 972, in battle. His foes, the Pechene- 
 gians, are said to have fashioned his skull into a 
 drinking-cup, inscribing it with these elegiac words : 
 " In seeking for that which belonged to others, he 
 lost his own." r 
 
 During his continually recurring absences from 
 home, Sviatoslav had been accustomed to confide his 
 children to his mother's care. That princess natu- 
 rally, sought to win their childish hearts to the gentle 
 influences of the Gospel. Some latent impressions 
 favourable to Christianity her youngest grandson, 
 Vladimir, 2 doubtless owed to her. Nevertheless when, 
 on the death of his brother Yarapolk, for which in- 
 deed he was held responsible, he mounted the throne, 
 no signs of a gracious character revealed themselves. 
 
 1 Mouravieff, p. 352 [notes]. 
 
 2 Sometimes called Valdemar, as by the Norwegians. See 
 ' The Conversion of the Northmen,' p. 80. 
 
98 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 He was, on the contrary, a bitter and bigoted pagan. 
 He increased the number of heathen altars and idols, 
 and in his zeal for sacrificial offerings to Perun, did 
 not scruple to look around for human victims. Two 
 Christians, by name Theodore and John, suffered 
 death at the hands of an infuriated populace, 
 because one of them recoiled from the royal demand 
 for his son as a pagan sacrifice. " The contrast 
 between the cruelty and vices of Vladimir when a 
 heathen, and the mildness of his disposition and the 
 purity of his morals after his conversion, are adduced 
 by the annalists, as strong proofs of the Divine cha- 
 racter of the religion he had embraced." 1 
 
 Tt seems to have occurred to many missionaries of 
 varying types, that a chief of such mark should not 
 be left at the mercy of his own violent passions. 
 The spiritual well-being of Vladimir accordingly 
 became the object of laborious journeys, of much 
 exertion, and of redundant eloquence. Guidance was 
 first volunteered by the Bulgarian Mussulmans from 
 the Volga. " Believe, O prince," said they, " in our 
 religion ! and honour Mahomet." 
 
 " But what," asked Vladimir, " may your religion 
 be ? * The servants of the Prophet described some 
 of the leading advantages and prohibitions of their 
 faith. " Drink no wine ! " cried Vladimir, echoing 
 one peculiarly distasteful injunction which had caught 
 his ear ; "drinking is the great delight of the Russians ; 
 we cannot live without it ! " This clearly was not 
 
 1 Mouravieff, p. 360. 
 
RUSSIA. 99 
 
 the religion for him, and its apologists retreated, crest- 
 fallen. 
 
 The attention of the king was now solicited by a 
 deputation from the Chazarian Jews, who boasted of 
 the ancient glories of Jerusalem, and the privileges of 
 her children. But the astute Vladimir inquired where 
 their country lay, upon which they were fain to con- 
 fess that they were suffering for the misdoings of their 
 ancestors, and were scattered abroad by a justly dis- 
 pleased God. With a contemptuous intimation that 
 their fate was but a poor inducement to others to 
 worship their God, Vladimir, a firm believer in " the 
 Divine right of success," dismissed the Jewish envoys. 
 
 And now arrived delegates from Western Christen- 
 dom. They quoted the pope as their authority. 
 " Ours," they urged, " is the right religion. We fear 
 God, Who made the heaven and earth, the stars and 
 the moon, and every living creature, whilst thy gods 
 are of wood." 
 
 But Vladimir rejected their appeal. His ancestors, 
 he said, knew nothing about the pope. So the learned 
 doctors retired, having, like their predecessors, ac- 
 complished nothing. 
 
 Last of all came a Greek emissary. He was 
 neither "a priest nor a missionary, but a philoso- 
 pher." l He disclosed to Vladimir the " abominable 
 practices " of the Mahometans who had urged their 
 religion upon him, and confirmed the disgust already 
 conceived for them by the king. He expounded 
 
 1 Stanley's 'Eastern Church,' p. 298. 
 
IOO CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 some of the errors of the Latin Church, whose repre- 
 sentatives had also ineffectually recommended their 
 creed to the fastidious Vladimir. " They," observed 
 the ' philosopher,' "celebrate the mass with unleavened 
 bread ; therefore they have not the true religion." 
 " But Jews have been here," said the prince, " who told 
 me that both the Germans and Greeks believe on One 
 Whom they crucified ! " " That is even so," replied 
 the learned Greek. " But why" urged Vladimir, " why 
 was He crucified ? " Then the philosopher, secure 
 of his listener's patient attention, recited the Sacred 
 Story from beginning to end. The curiosity of the 
 king was plainly awakened, but the Greek, perceiving 
 the drift of the man's character, did not trust alone 
 to the beseeching force of pathos. He concluded by 
 bringing the element of fear also into play. Pro- 
 ducing a painted picture of the Last Judgment, he 
 laid it before Vladimir. Like Bogoris, the wild 
 Russian chief was greatly moved. The philosopher 
 pointed to the throng of the blessed, joyfully entering 
 the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation 
 of the world, and contrasted their condition with the 
 terror of the groups on the left hand. In baptism, 
 he said, his royal host would find both the entrance 
 to bliss, and the escape from woe. 
 
 But Vladimir, though he " heard him gladly," and 
 though he was " burdened with the heavy sins of a 
 tumultuous youth," shrank from committing himself 
 to a course which he had not thoroughly weighed. He 
 therefore postponed a decision, but the philosopher 
 withdrew loaded with marks of his favour. 
 
RUSSIA. IOI 
 
 The following year the king laid before the elders 
 of his council the rival pleas of these variously re- 
 commended forms of faith, and solicited their advice. 
 The nobles mused awhile, and then counselled their 
 master to ascertain how each religion worked at home. 
 This, they thought, would be more practical evidence 
 than the plausible representations of professors. On 
 this suggestion Vladimir acted. Envoys were chosen, 
 — presumably, for their powers of observation, — and 
 the embassy of inquiry started. 
 
 " This public agreement," says the historian of the 
 Russian Church, " explains in some degree the 
 sudden and general acceptance of Christianity which 
 shortly after followed in Russia. It is probable that 
 not only the chiefs, but the common people also, 
 were expecting and ready for the change." 1 A report, 
 far from encouraging, was in due time received from 
 the ambassadors. Of the German and Roman, as 
 well as the Jewish, religions in daily life, they spoke 
 in very disparaging terms, while they declared the 
 Mussulman creed, when reduced to practice, to be 
 utterly out of the question. Disappointed in all 
 these quarters, they now proceeded, by command, to 
 Constantinople, or, as the Russians called it, Tzara- 
 gorod. 
 
 Basil Porphyrogenitus, who at the time, a.d. 987, 
 shared the Byzantine throne with his brother Con- 
 stantine, was keenly alive to the possible political 
 results of the formal visit. He directed the patriarch 
 
 1 Mouravieff, p. 12. 
 
102 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 to gratify the strangers at the outset, with an imposing 
 display of ritual. "Let them see," said he, "the 
 glory of our God." 
 
 Singularly enough, the Russian envoys, accustomed, 
 as we must suppose them to have been, only to the 
 barest simplicity of life, had complained not only of 
 the paucity of decoration in the Latin churches, but 
 of a lack of beauty in their appointments. Thus the 
 preparations of the patriarch were accurately fitted to 
 their expectant frame of mind. 
 
 They were led into the church of S. Sophia, gleam- 
 ing with variegated marbles, and porphyries, and 
 jasper, at that time "the masterpiece of Christian 
 architecture." 1 The building glittered with gold and 
 rich mosaics. The service was that of a high festival, 
 either of St. John Chrysostom, or of the Death of the 
 Virgin, 2 and was conducted by the patriarch in person, 
 clad in his most gorgeous vestments. Tapers blazed, 
 anthems pealed, fragrant clouds of incense floated 
 upward. Melodious and rhythmic chanting broke 
 softly on the ear. The brilliant scene appealed 
 vehemently to every sense, and produced an effect 
 on the dazzled Russians which surpassed the most 
 sanguine calculations of the emperor. 
 
 While they gazed in rapturous wonder on the superb 
 spectacle, their critical perceptions became, not un- 
 naturally, somewhat confused. When the deacons 
 and sub-deacons poured forth in procession from 
 the sanctuary, wings of white linen adorning their 
 
 1 'Eastern Church,' p. 300. • Ibid. 
 
RUSSIA. 
 
 103 
 
 shoulders, and torches flashing in their hands, and 
 the people fell on their knees, crying " Kyrie Elei- 
 son ! " the envoys, completely carried away by emo- 
 tion, seized their guides by the hand. All that they 
 had previously seen, they said, had in truth been 
 magnificent and solemn, but now they had beheld 
 the supernatural. Angels, in lustrous apparel, and 
 chanting in the air, " Holy! Holy! Holy ! " took part, 
 they perceived, in the services of this Church. " We 
 want no further proof," cried they ; " send us home 
 again ! " 
 
 On their return to Vladimir, they dilated with 
 eager delight on the wonders they had seen. The 
 king listened gravely to their glowing account of " the 
 temple, like which there was none upon earth." After 
 sweetness, they protested, bitterness would be un- 
 bearable, so that — whatever others might do — they 
 at all events should at once abandon heathenism. 
 
 While the king hesitated, his boyars 1 turned the 
 scale by reminding him that if the creed of the Greeks 
 had not indeed had much to recommend it, his pious 
 and sagacious grandmother, princess Olga, would not 
 have loved and obeyed it. Her name acted like a 
 talisman. Vladimir resolved to conform to Chris- 
 tianity. But still, fondly clinging to the habits of his 
 
 1 "The boyars were nobles of the first class. In peace they 
 were governors of towns and districts, in which they adminis- 
 tered justice; also they attended the court, and formed the 
 privy council of the sovereign. In war, they led their retainers 
 to the field, and exercised nearly the same authority over them 
 that the feudal nobility of France and England did over their 
 vassals." — Mouravieff, p. 354. 
 
104 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 orefathers, he cherished the idea of wooing and win- 
 ning his new religion by the sword. 
 
 He determined that the people whose faith he 
 intended ultimately to accept should witness some 
 display of his power. In execution of this purpose, 
 he besieged the city of Cherson, in the Crimea, and 
 vowed that if his attempt succeeded, he would forth- 
 with be baptized. The city, which acknowledged the 
 imperial sway, long resisted the Russian attack. At 
 last, however, intelligence was craftily conveyed to 
 Vladimir, by means of an arrow shot from the town, 
 that his success might be ensured by cutting off the 
 water-supply from the aqueducts. 
 
 Acting on this hint, he speedily mastered the place. 
 His next step was to require of the emperor Basil 
 the hand of his sister Anne in marriage, nor did he 
 scruple to threaten that in the event of refusal he 
 would deal with Constantinople as he had dealt with 
 Cherson. Maintaining the dignity of the purple in 
 the face of danger, Basil replied that the proposal 
 could only be entertained on one condition. Vladi- 
 mir must adopt Christianity. To this counter-propo- 
 sition the Russian prince, already pledged to baptism 
 by his vow, consented. It now only remained, there- 
 fore, to reconcile the princess Anne to her fate, from 
 which she might excusably recoil. But in consideration 
 of the glory to be won for the Church, and the peril 
 to be averted from the State, she agreed to fulfil 
 the engagement contracted for her by her brother. 
 Attended by an escort of clergy, she sailed for Cher- 
 son, and her arrival was signalized by the baptism 
 
RUSSIA. 
 
 105 
 
 of Vladimir. He is said to have been suffering at 
 the time from some malady affecting his eyesight. No 
 sooner, however, according to this account, had he 
 emerged from the waters of baptism, than he found 
 that he was healed. "Now," exclaimed the royal 
 neophyte, " I have seen the true God ! " 
 
 Many of Vladimir's courtiers, influenced by his 
 example, received Christianity ; and having built a 
 church at Cherson, and restored the city to the em- 
 perors, he started homewards, accompanied by his 
 bride and her bevy of ecclesiastics. Arrived at Kief, 
 the king peremptorily prescribed baptism to his twelve 
 sons, and applied himself, with characteristic vigour, 
 to abolish all outward tokens of heathenism. 
 
 The colossal wooden idol, Perun, was dragged 
 ignominiously across the hills at a horse's tail, flogged 
 the while by a dozen mounted attendants. Finally, 
 the degraded image was flung scornfully into the 
 Dnieper. The people, beholding with dismay the 
 lamentable plight of their venerated deity, followed it 
 for some little distance along the river-banks, adjuring 
 it to assert its power. But as the helplessness of 
 Perun under these adverse circumstances gradually 
 manifested itself, the chase was abandoned, and the 
 god disappeared in the rush of the "rapids." 
 
 And now the waters of the Dnieper, which had 
 remorselessly swallowed the deposed idol, were de- 
 voted to a very different purpose. 
 
 A royal proclamation was issued, that " whoever, 
 on the morrow, should not repair to the river, whether 
 rich or poor," should be held as the king's enemy. 
 
 n 
 
106 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 " The morrow," accordingly, witnessed a remarkable 
 scene. The people of Kief obediently crowded to 
 the river-side, and there, as one flock, were baptized. 
 " Some," says Nestor, " stood in the water up to their 
 necks; others, up to their breasts, holding their young 
 children in their arms," while priests, stationed on the 
 banks, read the baptismal service. 
 
 The joy of the king, who for some time watched 
 the affecting scene in silence, knew no bounds. 
 Words at last broke from his lips, addressed to Him 
 in Whose rule and governance are the hearts of kings. 
 
 Let us listen to the Prayer of Vladimir. " O great 
 God ! Who hast made heaven and earth, look down 
 upon these Thy new people ! Grant them, O Lord, 
 to know Thee, the true God, as Thou hast been made 
 known to Christian lands ; and confirm in them a 
 true and unfailing faith. And assist me, O Lord, 
 against my enemy that opposes me ; that, trusting in 
 Thee, and in Thy power, I may overcome all his 
 wiles ! " 1 
 
 Under the auspices of the sovereign, the stately 
 church of St. Basil soon arose, on the very spot 
 recently occupied by the temple of Perun. 
 
 Kief became the centre of Christian influence, 
 whence evangelizing energies radiated in all directions. 
 
 Schools and churches were built, while Michael, 
 the first metropolitan, attended by his bishops, "made 
 progresses into the interior of Russia, everywhere 
 baptizing and instructing the people." The Greek 
 
 1 Mouravieff, p. 15. 
 
RUSSIA. 
 
 107 
 
 canon law came into force, and the use of the service- 
 book and choral music of the Greek communion 
 became general, while, in the Slavonic Scriptures and 
 Liturgy of Cyril and Methodius, a road was discovered 
 which led straight to the hearts of the native popula- 
 tion. " Cyril and Methodius, if any one, must be 
 considered by anticipation as the first Christian 
 teachers of Russia ; their rude alphabet first instructed 
 the Russian nation in letters, and, by its quaint Greek 
 characters, still testifies in every Russian book, and 
 on every Russian house or shop, the Greek source of 
 the religion and literature of the empire." l A year 
 after his conversion, Vladimir summoned builders from 
 Greece, and laid at Kief the foundation-stone of the 
 first cathedral built of stone in Russia. This church 
 was intended by him as a memorial of his baptism. 
 "Thus," says the Russian Chronicle, "did Christianity 
 diffuse her light over Russia, like the rising sun, with 
 progressively increasing splendour, and Vladimir re- 
 joiced thereat, and was liberal towards the poor and 
 afflicted, and distributed his gifts among all the people." 
 Under Leontius, the second metropolitan, the dioceses 
 of Novgorod, Rostoff, ChernigorT, Vladimir, and Bel- 
 gorod, were created. Joachim, bishop of Novgorod, 
 waged war against the idols as heartily as the king 
 himself. The image of Perun, in his city, was 
 handled as roughly as its namesake at Kief had 
 been. Pagan altars were destroyed, if not with the 
 open concurrence of the people, at least without oppo- 
 
 1 « Eastern Church,' pp. 310, 311. 
 H 2 
 
Io8 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 sition. Along the track of commerce and civilization, 
 the missionary work progressed with comparative ease. 
 But in less-favoured districts the idols were only dis- 
 placed with the greatest difficulty. In the Rostoff 
 diocese, for instance, the two first bishops, Theodore 
 and Hilarion, were forcibly expelled, and Christianity 
 was obliged for many years to contest every step of 
 its onward and upward way. 
 
 Twenty-seven years after his conversion, Vladimir, 
 the royal apostle 1 of Russia, died: a.d. 1015. A 
 guardian saint of his country he became as a matter 
 of course. His body was laid in a marble coffin, and 
 buried by John, the third metropolitan, in the church 
 of the Tithes, at Kief, near the tomb of Anne, his 
 Greek queen. The remains of his revered grand- 
 mother, Olga. were removed to the same spot. " The 
 union of Vladimir with Anne," it has been empha- 
 tically declared, " is still a living power. The Church 
 of Russia cannot be divided from the general fortunes 
 of Oriental Christendom." 2 
 
 1 "There is no apostle of Russia except Vladimir, who bears 
 the same title as that of Constantine, ' Isapostolos ; ' ' Vladimir 
 cqtial to an Apostle' " — Stanley's 'Eastern Church,' p. 307. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 304. 
 
CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 109 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE CONVERSION OF POLAND AND POMERANIA. 
 
 " The chief fact in the ethnology of the Poles," 
 writes Dr. Latham, "is its extreme character; inas- 
 much as either they or the Bohemians are the types 
 of the Western, as opposed to the Eastern, Slavo- 
 nians. Like that of the Servians, their blood is com- 
 paratively pure and unmixed, at least in the western 
 parts of the area. Like the Carinthians, Carniolans, 
 Styrians, and Slovaks, their line of ethnological and 
 historical influences has run from west to east, being — 
 politically and ecclesiastically — German and Roman, 
 rather than Turk or Greek." 1 
 
 It seems probable that Poland was not wholly 
 unaffected by the labours of Cyril and Methodius. 
 Some echoes of the teaching of those devoted mis- 
 sionaries no doubt found their way from Moravia 
 into that country. And when Christian refugees, 
 flying from the horrors of the Hungarian invasion, 
 passed through Poland, their witness must have con- 
 firmed the vague rumours of good tidings already 
 heard. Some attempts were made to introduce the 
 Slavonic Liturgy, and to persuade the people in dif- 
 
 1 'Native Races,' p. 255. The word Pols means "a dweller 
 in a flat country. " 
 
IIO CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 ferent parts of the country to lay aside their old faith 
 in favour of the new. But no tangible results sprang 
 from these disjointed and desultory efforts. Chris- 
 tianity remained, practically, a dead letter as far as 
 Poland was concerned, until the year a.d. 965, when 
 a marriage occurred which speedily wrought mighty 
 changes there. 
 
 Duke Mieceslav I. married Dambrowka, daughter 
 of the Bohemian prince Boleslav the Cruel, and was 
 induced by his bride to be baptized, and to accept 
 the faith which she professed. 
 
 The proclivities of Mieceslav, who acknowledged 
 the German Empire, and was a member of its diets, 
 could not but tinge the line of belief prescribed by 
 him to his subjects. His preferences being all anti- 
 Slavonic, the Eastern characteristics of the early and 
 fragmentary creed imported from Moravia found no 
 favour in his eyes. Nor was he content with a 
 passive disapproval. He proceeded to enforce that 
 form of Christianity which he discerned to be politi- 
 cally advantageous to himself. Coercion was the 
 only method that he recognized. 
 
 Christianity was to be the national religion, and 
 any evasion of this command would henceforth be 
 punished by the severest penalties. Such were the 
 proclamations which greeted the astonished ears of 
 his people. An instance of the duke's rigorous policy 
 may be adduced, in an enactment declaring that any 
 infringement of an order which prohibited the eating 
 of meat between Septuagesima and Easter, should be 
 followed by the loss of the offender's teeth. But that 
 
POLAND AND POMERANIA. I i i 
 
 such extreme measures did not strike the ecclesias- 
 tics of early days in the light wherein we regard 
 them, we learn from the comments of Dietmar, 
 bishop of Merseburg, upon this very edict. He 
 argues, in vindication of the duke's sternness, that 
 none but the roughest modes of treatment were suit- 
 able to people who were only comparable to cattle. 
 What they were too stubborn to accept graciously, 
 and too dull to perceive spontaneously, must, it was 
 clear, be beaten into them. The Poles, however, 
 were not disposed quietly to accept the castigation 
 considered so wholesome by the bishop. They vehe- 
 mently resented the severity of Mieceslav, and lost 
 no opportunity of thwarting and opposing him. Thus, 
 as might be expected, Christianity made very little 
 way. 
 
 The Polish bishopric of Posen owed its creation to 
 the emperor Otho I., who established it five years 
 after the marriage of Mieceslav with Dambrowka. 
 It was subject, in the first instance, to the archiepis- 
 copal see of Mayence, but was subsequently trans- 
 ferred to the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Mag- 
 deburg. 1 The Latin predilections of Mieceslav, 
 already strong, were strengthened tenfold by his 
 marriage to a fourth wife, Oda, daughter of a German 
 marquis. She had been a nun, but the violation of 
 her vows which marriage involved was condoned by 
 the clergy, in consideration of her activity in all 
 charitable and religious works. Under her auspices 
 
 1 Krasinski's ' Reformation in Poland,' i. p. 26. 
 
112 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 large bodies of ecclesiastics trooped into Poland, 
 from France, Italy, and Germany. Beneath the 
 weight of the Latin usages, now everywhere in vogue, 
 the Byzantine forms soon sank, completely over- 
 whelmed. Poland was a child of the Western Church. 
 
 About the year a.d. iooo, the emperor Otho III. 
 undertook a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Adelbert, 
 at Gnesen, the Polish capital, and was received by 
 Boleslav, the son and successor of Mieceslav, with 
 becoming pomp and splendour. 
 
 That there was a political side to this devotional 
 expedition, there can be little doubt. Before the 
 visit came to an end, Boleslav received the title of 
 king, while Gnesen was elevated to the rank of a 
 metropolitan see, and to its control were referred the 
 dioceses of Breslau and Cracow, as well as Colberg 
 in East Pomerania. "The popes," says Mr. Robert- 
 son, "were careful to draw close the bonds which 
 connected Poland with Rome, and from an early 
 time a yearly tribute of a penny was paid by every 
 Pole, with the exception of the clergy and the nobles, 
 to the treasury of St. Peter." 1 This custom is dated 
 by some from the imperial visit to Gnesen just 
 described, while others believe it to have an earlier 
 origin. 
 
 King Boleslav pursued his father's relentless policy. 
 The vernacular was the object of his unwearying 
 hatred, and no steps tending to its abolition were left 
 untaken. Paganism, on the other hand, was hunted 
 to the death. 
 
 1 ' History of the Christian Church,' p. 88. 
 
POLAND AND POMERANIA. 113 
 
 Resistance, however, was persistently, though inef- 
 fectually, offered, and thus Poland, throughout the life 
 of Boleslav, was the battle-field of the creeds. Nor 
 was the reign of his successor, Mieceslav II., at all 
 more tranquil. His consort, Rixa by name, was a 
 niece of the emperor Otho III., and naturally 
 furthered German interests by all the means in her 
 power. 
 
 The tithes exacted by the Latin clergy were an ever 
 fruitful source of discontent, and revolt succeeded 
 revolt until the death of Mieceslav. His son being a 
 minor, Rixa now governed as regent, and her un- 
 popularity increased with her power. At last, the 
 disaffection of the people swelled into such an 
 alarming and threatening clamour, that she was 
 driven to acknowledge that the only prudent course 
 left open to her was flight. She accordingly retreated, 
 with her young son Casimir, into Germany. 
 
 And now Poland became the prey of anarchy. 
 The pagans, aware that an opportunity for revenge 
 had occurred, raised their heads with renewed 
 courage. Springing from their cowering attitude of 
 sullen, stifled rage, into a sudden and terrible ac- 
 tivity, they hastened to turn the tables upon a per- 
 secuting Church. Monasteries and churches were 
 ruthlessly destroyed, the bishops and the clergy were 
 maltreated, banished, and even in some instances 
 murdered, and heathenism triumphed once more. 
 
 The ringleader of the pagan insurgents, named 
 Maslav, was acknowledged as the ruler of the Poles ; 
 yet no title of honour was accorded to him. He 
 
114 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 was called neither king, nor prince, nor duke, — he 
 was the mere representative of an infuriated populace, 
 who found, perhaps half-unconsciously, in this fierce 
 explosion of revenge on the faith so lately dominant, 
 an outlet also for the ancient republican instincts of 
 the Slavonians. In the German ascendency which 
 they loathed, the people saw embodied the monar- 
 chical form of government as well as the foreign form 
 of religion. 
 
 The struggle was desperate, and continued for 
 years, the pagans contriving, as a rule, to keep the 
 upper hand. But at last the fury of the combatants 
 began to be spent, and the country yearned for some 
 kind of order, after the long and wild misrule which 
 it had been enduring. Inquiring eyes were turned in 
 the direction whither Casimir, the heir-apparent, had 
 disappeared. And finally, it was generally agreed to 
 propose his return. 
 
 Casimir, in the mean time, had entered a Benedic- 
 tine monastery, 1 and had added to the vows of his 
 order the responsibilities of ordination. Conse- 
 quently, when his penitent subjects proffered him 
 the Polish crown, they met with an unexpected 
 check in the declaration of the abbot that he could 
 not liberate the royal monk from his obligations, 
 a.d. 1034. In this difficulty, the interposition of the 
 pope, Benedict IX., was solicited. After much 
 debating, the pontiff consented to cancel Casimir's 
 
 1 Either at Clugny or at Braunweiler. — Hard wick's 'Church 
 History,' p. 126. 
 
POLAND AND POMERANIA. 115 
 
 vows, and permission was accorded to him both to 
 marry and to accept the crown of Poland. 
 
 Casimir accordingly ascended the throne, and 
 under his patronage Christianity once more throve 
 apace. But he testified his gratitude to the pope, to 
 whose dispensation he owed his crown, by un- 
 remitting warfare against such remnants of the 
 Slavonic customs and services as had survived the 
 many persecutions levelled against them. Among 
 all the Slavonic nations, there is not one in which 
 mental cultivation was visibly so little affected by 
 Christianity as Poland. 1 " Upon its language " we are 
 assured, the new faith " exerted no influence at all. 
 The teachers of Christianity in this country were, for 
 nearly five centuries, foreigners ; viz. Germans and 
 Italians. Hence arose that unnatural neglect of the 
 vernacular tongue, of which these were ignorant, — the 
 private influence of the German, still visible in the 
 Polish language, — and the unlimited dominion of the 
 Latin. Slavic, Polish, and heathenish, were to them 
 synonymous words." 2 
 
 We have noted that the Pomeranian diocese of 
 Colberg was subjected by Otho III. to the archi- 
 episcopal control of Gnesen. Eastern Pomerania had 
 been conquered by king Boleslav, and incorporated 
 with the Polish territories. The first bishop appointed 
 to the see of Colberg was a German, who accom- 
 plished next to nothing in the interests of Chris- 
 
 1 ' Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the 
 Slavic nations.'— Talvi. Prefaced by Dr. Robinson, p. 224. 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
I 1 6 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 tianity, and was eventually murdered, in the yearA.D. 
 1015, while absent on a journey to Russia. 
 
 The Pomeranians resented and never ceased to 
 conspire against the dominion of the Poles. Their 
 continually recurring rebellions, however, were in- 
 variably unsuccessful, and only provoked their masters 
 into threatening fresh chastisements, which could be 
 averted in one way alone ; viz., by submission, while 
 there was yet time, to baptism. This rite was con- 
 sequently regarded as a symbol of degradation, and 
 detested accordingly. 
 
 In the year a.d. 1121, Western Pomerania was also 
 subdued, and the Polish yoke pressed heavily upon 
 the inhabitants, of whom an oath to adopt Chris- 
 tianity was required. Boleslav III. was merciless in 
 his treatment. He thought to implant Christianity 
 among the Pomeranians by his sword, and massacre 
 after massacre failed to convince him that the weapon 
 was ill suited to its work. An attack was made, in 
 mid-winter, on Stettin, the capital of Pomerania. No 
 quarter was given, and no limits imposed on the 
 barbarity of the besiegers. Three years afterwards, the 
 horrors of that time were mutely attested by heaps of 
 bleaching skeletons. Eighteen thousand Pomeranian 
 soldiers were killed ; while eight thousand, having 
 purchased bare life by renouncing their idols and 
 submitting to baptism, were sent into Poland, and 
 distributed among the frontier garrisons. 
 
 Finding that his engines of destruction did not 
 compass his ends, Boleslav, much at a loss for 
 methods, commended the evangelization of Pomerania 
 
POLAND AND POMERANIA. II 7 
 
 to the Polish bishops. But they declined his pro- 
 posal with precipitation. The year after the reduction 
 of Western Pomerania, however, a volunteer presented 
 himself. He was a Spanish ecclesiastic, named 
 Bernard, who had been raised at Rome to the 
 episcopal rank. He now declared himself ready to 
 undertake the mission from which every one else 
 shrank. Boleslav did not disguise the truth. He 
 explained that the task would abound with difficulties, 
 and that the tenacity of the" Pomeranians with respect 
 to their idols was of such a character as to hold out 
 small hope of a successful issue. 
 
 Bernard, however, was nothing daunted. He was, 
 indeed, ill adapted to the work he courted. A 
 Spaniard by birth, and ignorant alike of the language 
 and the tastes of the Pomeranians, he was also an 
 ascetic, which, to such easy, merry, and careless 
 people as those whom he proposed to convert, was a 
 peculiarly incomprehensible phenomenon. 
 
 Untroubled, notwithstanding, by any misgivings, he 
 started on his mission, duly attended by an inter- 
 preter supplied by Boleslav, and a chaplain. But his 
 appearance at Julin, barefooted, and in the attire 
 of a humble mendicant, was greeted with unsparing 
 ridicule. The contempt of the astonished Pomera- 
 nians was unbounded. 
 
 When Bernard solemnly declared that he was God's 
 messenger, they scornfully retorted that the Lord of 
 all power and might, Whom he described, was not 
 likely to send a beggar as His representative. It was 
 obvious they with one accord declared, that God's 
 
Il8 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 glory was only a convenient cloak assumed to hide 
 the real object of their visitor, which was relief in his 
 poverty-stricken state. Bernard had better retrace his 
 steps as quickly as possible, for they would not tolerate 
 such imposition. But the Spaniard persisted. He was 
 willing, he proudly asserted, to be flung into a blazing 
 fire, to furnish proof of his Divine credentials. If he 
 issued from it unsinged, as other servants of God had 
 been permitted to do before him, he presumed that the 
 haughty Pomeranians would abandon their incredulity. 
 This proposal, however, served only to confirm the 
 impression of his audience that he was insane. Again 
 they bade him begone. But Bernard, in his hasty 
 zeal, struck down one of the native idols, upon 
 which an uproar arose, from which he was only too 
 thankful to escape by sea. The parting taunt which 
 reached his ears was, that his taste for preaching 
 might now be freely indulged. He could address 
 the fish and the sea-birds at his leisure. 
 
 Greatly discomfited, he now retreated to Bamberg, 
 where he fell in with the bishop of that see, who 
 immediately struck him as peculiarly fitted for the 
 undertaking which he had himself just relinquished 
 in despair. 
 
 Otho, bishop of Bamberg, was a Suabian of high 
 birth. His education had been liberal, and he had 
 lived in Poland in the capacity of chaplain to duke 
 Ratislav. * 
 
 As the successful conductor of v several negotiations 
 
 1 Or Radislav. 
 
POLAND AND POMERANIA. 
 
 II 9 
 
 at the German court, he had rendered many services 
 to his patron, whose marriage with a daughter 
 of the purple he was indeed instrumental in con- 
 tracting. 
 
 During these embassies, his character and bearing 
 had drawn upon him the favourable notice of the 
 emperor, who appointed him his secretary, and 
 ultimately bestowed upon him the bishopric of Bam- 
 berg. In this position Otho soon became a man of 
 mark. He was a zealous supporter of religion and of 
 culture, an indefatigable redresser of grievances, and 
 indeed an active labourer in every department of the 
 Church's work. Nor did his personal standard fall 
 below the mark at which he urged others to aim. 
 His integrity, charity, and austerity were well and 
 widely known. He had won very naturally the regard 
 and gratitude of several popes. 
 
 Such a man was sure to be interested in the 
 Pomeranian mission, and when Otho heard that 
 Bernard was in Bamberg, he invited him to an inter- 
 view, and listened carefully to the story of his defeated 
 hopes. 
 
 Bernard pressed the bishop to address himself to 
 the work in which he had failed, dwelling upon the 
 effect likely to be produced on the Pomeranians by 
 the splendid accessories which he had at his com- 
 mand. Boleslav, moreover, seconded these entreaties, 
 pledging himself to provide whatever might be deemed 
 necessary for the enterprise, and engaging to bear the 
 expense it would entail. 
 
 Otho yielded at last to the solicitations of his 
 
120 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 friends, being further encouraged by solemn bene- 
 dictions from Rome, besides the dignity of papal 
 legate, bestowed by Calixtus II. 
 
 His mind once made up, he lost no time in making 
 extensive preparations. 
 
 He took care to provide himself with costly presents, 
 such as the Pomeranian chiefs would be likely to 
 covet. He appointed seven ecclesiastics, besides 
 Ulric, 'his favourite chaplain, to the mission, and 
 secured the services of suitable attendants. Nor did 
 he omit to take with him abundant ecclesiastical 
 paraphernalia wherewith to furnish and embellish the 
 churches which he meant to build. In this provision 
 something of the man's characteristic determination 
 reveals itself. 
 
 On the 25th of April, a.d. 1124, the bishop and his 
 party started. 
 
 As long as they were in Bohemian territories they 
 trod on friendly ground. After a week's travelling 
 they reached Breslau, and thence passed on, by way 
 of Posen, to Gnesen, where they were received by 
 Boleslav himself. Many bystanders threw themselves 
 at the feet of the bishop, imploring his blessing. 
 The sovereign and the legate now conferred together 
 as to the course to be pursued, and a week was 
 spent by the outward-bound party in making final 
 arrangements. On the eighth day after reaching 
 Gnesen, all was ready. Waggons were laden with 
 the baggage and provisions, a store of Pomeranian 
 money was provided, interpreters, well acquainted 
 with the German and Slavonic languages, were in 
 
POLAND AND POMERANIA. 121 
 
 attendance, and an armed escort was drawn up under 
 the command of an officer named Paulicius. 
 
 The cavalcade advanced into the dense forest which 
 lay on the border-land between Poland and Pome- 
 rania. Once before only, when some of Boleslav's 
 troops, bent on plunder, had braved its intricacies, 
 had this forest been penetrated from the Polish side. 
 The trees then cut down were the only guide to the 
 present travellers, for there was no track or pathway 
 of any kind ; and so difficult was progress found, 
 that six days passed before the bishop and his people 
 reached the open country. They then found them- 
 selves on the banks of the river Netze, and in the 
 presence of the Pomeranian duke Ratislav, who was 
 attended by five hundred soldiers. The hearts of the 
 Polish ecclesiastics died within them at the aspect 
 of these warriors, who, nourishing their formidable 
 knives, hinted unmistakably at flaying suitable vic- 
 tims, or burying them in the ground up to their 
 necks. Night was rapidly advancing, and the whole 
 scene was calculated to intimidate the wayfarers, who 
 were however reassured after a time by the discovery 
 that no real harm was intended. After some dis- 
 cussion, the duke granted his sanction to Otho's pro- 
 posed attempt at evangelizing the Pomeranians, and 
 without more ado, the party pressed forward again. 
 
 Pyritz was now their aim, to which town the road 
 lay across a district so devastated during the recent 
 struggles with Poland, that out of all its villages 
 only thirty inhabitants survived. These peasants 
 were interrogated on the subject of baptism, to which 
 
 i 
 
122 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 they hastened to submit, being greatly alarmed at the 
 soldiers who escorted the legate. Otho derived much 
 satisfaction from the thought that though in this 
 handful of peasants he contributed but a scanty first- 
 fruits of his mission to the Church, yet their actual 
 number, thirty ', was a mystical one. For it was pro- 
 duced by multiplying the number of the Trinity by 
 the number of the Decalogue. 
 
 On his arrival at Pyritz, one of the native religious 
 festivals was in progress, and the town was thronged 
 with visitors. The missionary party, therefore, de- 
 cided on encamping for the night outside the walls. 
 It was considered prudent to abstain from kindling a 
 fire, or making any movement likely to attract attention, 
 and the hours of darkness were most uneasily spent. 
 
 When daylight reappeared, the captain of the 
 guard, accompanied by the ducal envoys, boldly 
 entered Pyritz, and called a meeting of the leading 
 inhabitants. He announced that a papal legate of 
 rank and power, accompanied and escorted as be- 
 came his position, awaited admission into the town. 
 Persuasion and threats were adroitly mingled in his 
 address, and the people, cowed by the show of autho- 
 rity, at length consented to receive the bishop. A 
 procession, as imposing as Otho's resources permitted, 
 was accordingly drawn up, and the Polish embassy 
 marched into the town. The bishop no sooner 
 reached a central position, where he could be heard 
 with ease and to advantage, than he stepped forward, 
 arrayed in his most splendid vestments, and disarmed 
 all suspicion by an eloquent and affectionate address. 
 
POLAND AND POMERANIA. 123 
 
 The people listened attentively, for this at least was a 
 person widely different from Bernard the mendicant, 
 of whose adventure at Julin they had heard. Yet, 
 grand as he was, and stately as the retinue at his 
 command, he seemed, by his own account, to have 
 come a long and weary way for their sakes. It 
 might be well to hear what he had to say. 
 
 For some little time the bishop and his clergy con- 
 fined themselves to the work of teachers, but when 
 the minds of the people were somewhat prepared for 
 what was to follow, a fast of three days was proclaimed, 
 and purification, by all available means, urged upon 
 them. Baptism was then administered to more than 
 seven thousand candidates, 1 to whom the nature of 
 the vows which they were about to take upon them 
 was clearly and impressively explained. Twenty days 
 in all were devoted to Pyritz. The bishop then with- 
 drew, leaving behind him some of his clergy. 2 
 
 1 For the details of this administration, and the decorum 
 observed on the occasion, see Herbordi, Vita, ii. 15; cf. also 
 
 ii. 19, 35- 
 
 2 "All ye, my brethren," said this 'apostle of the Pomera- 
 nians,' in his farewell sermon, "who have believed in Christ, 
 and have been baptized, have put on Christ. Ye are cleansed 
 and pure, not through any deed of your own, but through the 
 operation of Him into Whose Name ye have been baptized, for 
 He has washed away the sins of the whole world in His 
 Blood. Beware, then, of all contamination with idolatry ; put 
 your trust in God, Who is your Creator, and worship no created 
 thing, but rather seek to advance in faith and love, that His 
 blessing may come upon you and upon your children, and that, 
 believing in Him, and adorning your faith by your works, ye 
 may have true life through Him Who has called you out of 
 darkness into His marvellous Light. " 
 
 I 2 
 
124 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 Cammin was the next halting-place. Here the efforts 
 of the missionaries were much assisted by the wife 
 of duke Ratislav, and forty days were spent in the 
 work of evangelization. The duke himself renounced 
 polygamy, — an example which produced a marked 
 effect upon the people, — a church was built, and 
 baptism administered as at Pyritz, only on a still 
 larger scale. So far the earnestness of Otho had been 
 his most effective weapon against paganism. It 
 carried weight which equalled, if it did not exceed, 
 the influence of the Polish soldiery behind him. But 
 the way now grew rougher. 
 
 The baggage of the missionaries having been trans- 
 ferred from waggons to boats, they proceeded next 
 to Julin, where Bernard had so injudiciously roused 
 the fury of the inhabitants by assaulting one of their 
 idols. The place was a very stronghold of pagan 
 idolatry. 
 
 The boatmen respectfully advised Otho to anchor 
 at some little distance from the town, and to avoid all 
 possible stir, lest attention should be attracted, and 
 entrance forbidden, before he had time to approach. 
 They suggested that he should seek shelter for the 
 night in a fort which had been built specially as a 
 place of refuge or sanctuary for those hardly pressed 
 by enemies. Creeping accordingly into this building 
 in the dusk, Otho awaited the morning with no little 
 anxiety. And indeed the day had scarcely broken 
 before the fort was surrounded by an enraged mob, 
 who threatened the whole party with death if they 
 did not immediately depart. Argument was unavail- 
 
POLAND AND POMERANIA. 1 25 
 
 ing ; the people had lashed themselves into a fury 
 which had no ear for reason, and it was only with 
 much difficulty and peril that Otho and his suite 
 contrived to escape. They were compelled, as it 
 was, to break the bridge behind them, or they could 
 not have regained their boats safely. Otho now 
 withdrew to a prudent distance, and messages passed 
 to and fro, in which the inhabitants learnt that the 
 wrath of the duke might be expected on account of 
 their behaviour, and after some consequent recon- 
 sideration they at last agreed that the bishop should 
 be admitted within their walls, if Stettin first opened 
 its gates to him. More than this promise to follow 
 Stettin's lead was not to be extracted from the people 
 of Julin, and the good legate accordingly resolved to 
 try his fortunes at the place indicated. 
 
 At Stettin a landing was effected, but the inhabi- 
 tants disdained both the missionaries and their errand. 
 They did not scruple to hurl reproaches at Otho, de- 
 claring that they had seen many Christians who were 
 both dishonest and untruthful, and that they preferred 
 their own creed. 
 
 For two months the bishop vainly strove to remove 
 the unfavourable impressions of Christianity enter- 
 tained at this place. Gentle measures were of no 
 avail. At last he resolved to report the conduct of 
 the people to Boleslav, and a rumour of his inten- 
 tions having spread through Stettin, they, like the 
 townsfolk at Julin, began to reconsider their position. 
 Finally they, as well as Otho, sent an ambassador to 
 Poland, promising to accept Christianity if permanent 
 
126 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 peace might be granted to them and their tribute- 
 money diminished. 
 
 Meanwhile the legate persevered. A cross was 
 erected in the market-place, and he continued his 
 exhortations in spite of discouragement and resist- 
 ance. Now and then, but very rarely, he was cheered 
 by a sign of success. Two young men of good posi- 
 tion in Stettin, for instance, after listening with 
 reverent attention to the bishop's teaching with refer- 
 ence to the " Resurrection of the body and the Life 
 of the world to come," presented themselves volun- 
 tarily as candidates for baptism. After their ad- 
 mission to the Church, their mother encountered 
 them in their white baptismal garments, seated at 
 the feet of the bishop. To the intense surprise 
 of all spectators, she fell at once on her knees, and 
 thanked God that she had lived to see that blessed 
 day. Otho himself, who was sitting at the time on a 
 mossy bank outside the town, teaching, as was his 
 wont, by the wayside, was profoundly impressed. 
 And the conformity of this leading family to the 
 new faith was instrumental in inducing others, of 
 lower rank, to embrace it. 
 
 The messengers now returned from Gnesen, bringing 
 help to Christianity in the shape of letters from Bole- 
 slav, which very soon wrought a change in the general 
 attitude of the townspeople. His command was 
 positive. They must accept Christianity and abjure 
 paganism. When that was done, he, for his part, 
 would grant them the petitions they had urged. 
 
 The next step was the destruction of the idols. 
 
POLAND AND POMERANIA. 127 
 
 Otho and his clergy assailed them right and left, 
 with axes and with clubs, and at first the natives 
 of Stettin watched the audacious proceedings with 
 awe and trepidation. But as temple after temple 
 was demolished, and one image after another hewn 
 in pieces, and still no harm befel the missionaries, 
 their courage began to revive. It really seemed 
 that these gods of theirs were incapable of striking a 
 blow in their own behalf ! how then, should they be 
 expected to defend their worshippers ? And so the 
 people also fell to with a will, and soon four of the 
 largest temples were destroyed, and their materials 
 used for fuel One of them, consecrated to Triglav 
 the triple-headed, was rich in treasures. It con- 
 tained bulls' horns tipped with gold, goblets of silver 
 and gold, spoil of all kinds seized in battle. And all 
 were tendered to the bishop by the people. But he, 
 who, as they knew, was generous to prodigality, de- 
 clined to receive, while he revelled in the pleasure of 
 giving. He directed that all the valuables should be 
 distributed among the inhabitants of the town, with 
 the exception of Triglav's own triple head. This 
 curiosity he sent to the pope. 
 
 Against every form of Slavonic superstition Otho 
 waged war. The sacred horse, the holy oak, the 
 spring of supernatural properties, all long revered by 
 the people of Stettin, were stripped of their preten- 
 sions, and reduced to the level of ordinary animals, 
 trees, and brooks. The only person of position who 
 to the last remained obdurate, notwithstanding all that 
 he heard and saw, was the heathen priest whose 
 
128 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 place it had been to attend to the sacred horse. He 
 refused absolutely to change his creed. 
 
 A church crowned the market-place before Otho 
 left Stettin, and when he again appeared before Julin, 
 having paused on his way to preach and baptize at 
 Garz and Lubzin, he found the people ready to meet 
 him almost with open arms. They were quite aware 
 of what had taken place at Stettin, and amply fulfilled 
 their promise to be guided by it. Baptism was largely 
 administered, and Julin was converted into a bishopric, 
 to which Adalbert, one of the duke's chaplains, who 
 had attended Otho on his expedition, was afterwards 
 appointed. The chancels of two churches, moreover, 
 were consecrated at Julin by the legate, who then 
 repaired to Clotkowe, to Colberg, and to Belgrade, in 
 succession. At all these places his efforts were 
 blessed with considerable success. But winter was 
 coming on, and after rapidly re-visiting the various 
 scenes of his labours, and endeavouring to strengthen 
 the newborn faith of the converts, whom he earnestly 
 besought to aim at holiness of life, he turned his steps 
 homewards, and arrived at Bamberg in February, 
 a.d. 1125, after nearly ten months' absence. 
 
 The next two years found the good bishop absorbed 
 in the manifold cares and labours of his own diocese. 
 But he never ceased to be solicitous about the Pome- 
 ranians, and as soon as he could be spared from his 
 post at home, he started again to visit them. This 
 time, although his preparations were as elaborate and 
 as costly as before, he bore their expense himself, in- 
 stead of laying it to Boleslav's account. It is supposed 
 
POLAND AND POMERANIA. 1 29 
 
 that reports had reached him of a pagan reaction in 
 Pomerania. 1 But whether he was prepared for any 
 falling off, or not, he was soon confronted by a spec- 
 tacle which could not fail to distress him. His point 
 of entrance into Pomerania on this occasion was at 
 Demmin. And here he met duke Ratislav returning 
 triumphantly from a war against the Leuticians, accom- 
 panied by a gang of prisoners, all destined to the 
 ignominy and suffering of slavery. Otho however 
 expostulated earnestly with the duke, nor did he 
 plead in vain. 
 
 Still greater disappointments awaited him. But 
 at present he concentrated his energies on one 
 important point. A diet was held at Usedom on 
 Whitsunday, at which Ratislav — penitent, perhaps, for 
 his own backsliding in the matter of the slaves, — pre- 
 sided. He argued at great length in favour of Chris- 
 tianity, and of the bishop as its representative, after 
 which Otho himself addressed the assembled chiefs, 
 expounding the doctrines associated with the day, 
 from the first Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit, to 
 the indwelling of His blessed, secret influence, through 
 all time, in the hearts of men. After this gathering, 
 where a great impression was produced, and a decree, 
 permitting the propagation of the true faith, was 
 passed, the clergy in attendance on the bishop were 
 sent forth, two and two, in different directions, as 
 heralds of the approaching episcopal visitation. 
 
 The public sanction accorded to Christianity at 
 
 1 Hardwick, p. 225. 
 
130 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 the diet of Usedom enraged the pagan priests even 
 beyond anticipation. 
 
 Foreseeing that their present overweening influence 
 with the people must inevitably wane, many of them 
 determined at any rate to exert it to the utmost while 
 it lasted, and they did not hesitate to threaten with 
 death all those who Should venture to receive the 
 clerical representatives of the bishop. 
 
 Out of this resolutely hostile attitude of the priests 
 grave difficulties soon arose, of which a single instance 
 shall here be cited. 
 
 The districts to be traversed by Otho's messengers 
 having been carefully distributed and assigned, the 
 clergy started on their travels. Two of them, by 
 name Ulric and Albin, arrived, in obedience to their 
 instructions, at the town of Wolgast. 
 
 The hospitality of the Pomeranians was proverbial, 
 and the arrangements of every house included, as a 
 matter of course, a room kept in constant readiness 
 for the accommodation of any guests who might 
 present themselves without notice. As strangers, 
 Ulric and Albin were accordingly welcomed with 
 great cordiality by the wife of the burgomaster. But 
 no sooner did the object of their visit transpire, than 
 their hostess betrayed much agitation, and assured 
 them that the present mood, not only of the priests, 
 but of the people of Wolgast, was one with which it 
 would be perilous to trifle. A special reason was 
 found to exist for this unusual unanimity of adverse 
 feeling. 
 
 One of the leading local priests had worked upon 
 
POLAND AND POMERANIA. 131 
 
 the superstitious credulity of the inhabitants of the 
 town, for his own purposes, with a success altogether 
 disproportionate to the ingenuity of the artifice em- 
 ployed. Disguised, with the help of his white robes 
 of office, as a spectral figure, he hid himself in a 
 forest whose trees overhung and darkened the road 
 into Wolgast. A lonely peasant on his way home 
 was startled by the sudden appearance of a ghostly 
 figure just within the border of the wood, which 
 called to him in an unearthly voice, commanding 
 him to pause and listen. The soft gloom of a sum- 
 mer night favoured the design of the impostor. Far 
 from recognizing him, the terrified wayfarer firmly 
 believed that he beheld an apparition from another 
 world, and halted as he was desired, in a state of 
 abject alarm which effectually cancelled such reason- 
 ing powers as he possessed. 
 
 " Stand ! " muttered the spectre, from the leafy 
 shadows, " stand ! and hearken to what I say. I 
 am thy god ! I am he that clothes the fields with 
 grass, and arrays the forests with leaves ; without me 
 the fruit-tree cannot yield its fruit, nor the field its 
 corn, nor the cattle their increase. These blessings 
 I bestow on them that worship me, and from them 
 that- despise me I take them away. Tell the people 
 of Wolgast, therefore, that they think not of serving 
 any other god but me, for no other can profit them, 
 and warn them that they suffer not these preachers 
 who are coming to their town to live." 
 
 The voice ceased, and to the relief of the un- 
 fortunate countryman the figure vanished into the 
 
132 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 heart of the forest. More than ever convinced that 
 he had been harangued by one of the supernatural 
 beings believed by the Slavonians to haunt the woods, 
 the peasant made the best of his way into the town. 
 Here his story soon attracted a crowd, and was un- 
 hesitatingly accepted as genuine by every hearer. 
 The priest who had played the spectre so impress- 
 ively presently himself slipped into the wondering 
 throng, and — affecting intense curiosity — plied the 
 man with question upon question, observing that 
 every fresh detail thus extracted served to deepen 
 the impression already produced. 
 
 Then, turning to the people, he exclaimed re- 
 proachfully, " Is not this what I have been telling 
 you all the year long ? What have we to do with 
 any other god? Is not our own god justly angry 
 with us? How can we, after all his benefits, un- 
 gratefully desert him for another ? If we would not 
 have him in righteous anger strike us dead, let us 
 put to death these men who would seduce us from 
 our faith ! " 
 
 Thus stimulated, the excitement of the population 
 rose to fever-heat, and Ulric and Albin soon found 
 that the burgomaster's wife had by no means 
 exaggerated the danger of their position. In spite of 
 her fears, however, their kind hostess provided them 
 with a safe hiding-place in her house for two days, 
 after which Otho himself, numerously attended, and 
 escorted by a detachment of troops large enough to 
 intimidate the people, came to the rescue. More 
 than one chief who had assisted at the Usedom diet 
 
POLAND AND POMERANIA. 1 33 
 
 accompanied him, and in the face of such a retinue 
 no enemy in Wolgast dared to lift a hand. 
 
 The customary mission-work accordingly began, 
 but proof was very soon furnished of the still dan- 
 gerously sensitive state of the popular temper. Some 
 of the clergy in the episcopal train thought fit to dis- 
 regard all warnings, and paid a visit of curiosity to 
 the pagan temples of the place. An angry crowd 
 followed them, threatening mischief if they persisted, 
 and the majority of the offenders at once retraced 
 their steps to the legate's quarters. One, however, 
 walked fearlessly into the temple of Gerovit, the god 
 of war, and before the mob had time to act he 
 reappeared, brandishing the sacred sword which no 
 mortal might touch and live. At this amazing 
 temerity the crowd fell back in horror, but a dis- 
 turbance followed, in which the pent-up enmity of 
 the pagans found vent. 
 
 But Otho, supported and assisted as he was, 
 proved too formidable a personage to defy. The 
 people receded by degrees from their hostile posi- 
 tion, and their ignorant prejudices gave way, after a 
 while, to the new influence. Before the bishop took 
 leave of Wolgast, many came forward to receive 
 baptism, and the foundations of a church were ac- 
 tually laid. 
 
 Gutzkow was the next scene of the episcopal visita- 
 tion. Here Otho met messengers from Albert the 
 Bear, who offered his sword in support of the mis- 
 sion. But the bishop declined his services, being 
 accustomed steadily to avoid the employment of 
 
134 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 force whenever it was possible. At Giitzkow stood 
 a pagan temple renowned for its size and its splen- 
 dour, and the people pleaded long that this imposing 
 building might be left standing, suggesting its conver- 
 sion into a Christian church. Otho, however, feared 
 the power of the law of association, especially in future 
 and quieter times, when the excitement of novelty 
 would have passed away. He therefore hardened 
 his heart against the petitioners, and gave the word 
 for the demolition of the temple, but he tempered 
 his apparent severity by a promise to build in its 
 place a church so beautiful as to supersede its at- 
 tractions in every respect. This undertaking was 
 duly carried out, and at the consecration of the new 
 church the bishop preached an impressive sermon 
 on the necessity of self-dedication to God, and the 
 futility of all external offerings, however choice, 
 unless the life brought forth fruit in the shape of 
 such sacrifices as alone are well-pleasing to Him. 
 Mercy, charity, forgiveness, truth, — these, he assured 
 his hearers, must testify to the state of a man's heart 
 before God, and every habit running counter to the 
 free play "of such virtues must be absolutely and finally 
 abandoned. " Remember these words of the Lord's 
 Prayer," said the earnest preacher, by way of illustra- 
 tion, " forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" 
 The appeal wholly overpowered the governor of 
 the district, Mizlav by name, who was' present. He 
 had been baptized at Usedom, and he now re- 
 sponded to the charge of the bishop by a prac- 
 tical proof of his own sincerity. He announced 
 
POLAND AND POMERANIA. 1 35 
 
 that he would at once release all his debtors then in 
 confinement. " Here, then," said he, " in the Name 
 of the Lord Jesus I give these men their liberty, 
 that, according to thy words, my sins may be for- 
 given, and that dedication of the heart of which thou 
 hast spoken may be fulfilled in me." One prisoner, 
 however, probably detained under peculiar circum- 
 stances, was not set free with the rest. He was a 
 Dane of noble birth, held by the governor as security 
 for a personal debt of his father's, amounting to 
 five hundred pounds. When the bishop heard that 
 this single reservation marred the governor's noble 
 act of emancipation, he became anxious for its re- 
 moval, but he dreaded overtaxing the conscience of 
 so fresh a convert, lest a reaction should set in. He 
 contrived, nevertheless, that gentle and indirect re- 
 commendations should reach the ear of Mizlav, who, 
 after no slight struggle, yielded. The captive was 
 brought forth, and conducted to the altar of the 
 newly-built church. Here Mizlav bestowed upon 
 him his freedom, and uttered a devout hope that as 
 he had remitted the debt of the Dane, his own sins 
 might be forgiven him by his Father in heaven. This 
 affecting scene was not without lasting effect on many 
 among its spectators. 
 
 Space fails us to describe in detail all the adven- 
 tures of the intrepid cross-bearers. But one of 
 Otho's chief disappointments during his second visit 
 to Pomerania, which must have gone far towards 
 outweighing his many causes for encouragement, 
 deserves a short notice. For it occurred at Stettin, 
 
136 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 where, in spite of the original obstinacy of the in- 
 habitants, so much good work, as we saw, had been 
 done. Paganism was found to have reasserted itself 
 here with a virulence which not only grieved the 
 bishop to the heart, but also so alarmed the clergy 
 who attended him, that when, notwithstanding the 
 discouraging reports which were afloat, he declared 
 his intention of revisiting the place, not one volun- 
 teered to accompany him. The brave prelate there- 
 upon resolved to go alone. Having committed him- 
 self to God in prayer, he accordingly started for 
 Stettin. But he had no sooner actually moved in 
 the perilous direction than some of his clergy, con- 
 science-smitten for their cowardice, hastened after 
 him, assuring him that, whatever might betide, they 
 would indeed cast in their lots with his. 
 
 The town was found to be in commotion. A pesti- 
 lence was raging, which the pagan party — who were 
 doing their utmost to fan the heathen reaction into a 
 still fiercer blaze — averred to be a sign of the wrath 
 of their justly-incensed gods. The church built by 
 Otho on his previous visit was attacked, and would 
 have been remorselessly destroyed, but that one of 
 the pagan ringleaders was suddenly disabled by a 
 fit. This judgment was referred by the man himself, 
 on his recovery, to the displeasure of the God of the 
 Christians, and he prevailed upon his excited friends 
 to leave the sacred building unmolested. In order, 
 however, to be secure from all supernatural anger 
 whatsoever, a pagan altar was reared within the 
 church, and so the matter rested. 
 
POLAND AND POMERANIA. 137 
 
 Bishop Otho appeared in the town during a lull in 
 the general frenzy, which was due to the immediately 
 previous arrival, from the island of Riigen, of a 
 Pomeranian magistrate who had been baptized by 
 him more than two years before, and had since 
 been languishing in a Danish prison. This chiefs 
 return was singularly opportune. For the burden 
 of the tale which he eagerly poured into the ears of 
 the Stettin people was, that having fallen asleep in 
 his dungeon one night, after a piteous prayer for 
 deliverance, he dreamt with great vividness that 
 Otho drew near to him, and signified that his peti- 
 tion was granted. Awaking, he found the door of 
 his cell open, and immediately effected his escape as 
 far as the sea-shore. Here he met with no hindrance. 
 A boat lay on the beach, as if awaiting him, and in 
 it he had safely accomplished his return to Stettin. 
 Overwhelmed with thankfulness, he hung up the 
 boat like a trophy at the entrance of the town, and 
 so repeatedly and emphatically attributed his merciful 
 liberation to the Christian's God, that his sentiments 
 produced a marked effect upon the volatile and wa- 
 vering townspeople. 
 
 The heathen faction, notwithstanding, made ano- 
 ther desperate attempt. Through the agency of its 
 leaders, the church, within which the bishop and his 
 following had mustered, was suddenly surrounded, 
 and instant death was threatened to those within. 
 But Otho's self-possession did not for a moment 
 forsake him. Placing himself at the head of his 
 clergy, he ordered the church-door to be opened, 
 
138 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 and moved quietly out, bearing the uplifted cross, 
 and chanting Psalms, into the midst of his assailants. 
 His courageous demeanour no doubt preserved his 
 life. Compelled to admire his manliness in spite of 
 themselves, the pagans drew aside and let him pass, 
 and danger was thus once more averted. 
 
 Witstack, the chief who had so lately eluded the 
 Danish grasp, now urged Otho to make the most of 
 the temporary advantage he had won, and to fix the 
 following Sunday for a public address to the people. 
 In the mean time he exerted himself, by every means 
 in his power, to bespeak a large attendance and a 
 general interest in the promised discourse. 
 
 Sunday came, and the bishop kept his word. 
 Mounting the steps in the market-place whence 
 magisterial proclamations were customarily issued, 
 he delivered a powerful sermon to the assembled 
 multitude, and was so far fortunate that a patient 
 hearing was granted him. But he had barely ended 
 his address, when a pagan priest, sounding an alarm 
 upon a trumpet, loudly adjured the people at once 
 to destroy this man who presumed to set their gods 
 at defiance. The danger was urgent. Ready spears 
 were instantly pointed, and the last moment of the 
 bishop's life seemed indeed to have come. But 
 again the would-be murderers were mysteriously im- 
 pressed by the majestic and unbroken calmness of 
 his demeanour. The spears were not launched. As 
 Otho quietly confronted his foes without the shadow 
 of a sign of fear, a spell fell over the assembly, and 
 no man moved. The significant pause was only 
 
POLAND AND POMERANIA. 1 39 
 
 broken by the movement of the bishop himself; he 
 went straight to the church, and there destroyed the 
 heathen altar which defiled its precincts. It was a 
 severe test of the power he wielded over the popular 
 mind. But the issue was triumphant. A rapid 
 revulsion of feeling took place in favour of so brave 
 a man, and the tide of fanaticism turned in good 
 earnest. After a long debate, it was finally agreed 
 never again to hinder the advance of Christianity. 
 
 The Pomeranians were indebted to bishop Otho 
 for temporal as well as spiritual benefits. Their 
 audacity had sorely provoked duke Boleslav, of 
 whose leniency in the matter of the reduced tribute- 
 money they had taken unworthy advantage. Twice, 
 since the yielding of that knotty point, had they con- 
 spired afresh against the Polish rule, and twice the 
 duke collected an army, and prepared to take sum- 
 mary vengeance on his incorrigible subjects. But on 
 both occasions Otho interposed, and succeeded in 
 averting the impending punishment. Thus, per- 
 sistently as the Pomeranians had clung to their 
 idolatry, and weakly as they had returned to it, they 
 could not withhold their admiration and their grati- 
 tude from their noble benefactor. They always felt 
 — and at last were proud to feel — themselves the 
 objects of his affectionate solicitude. 
 
 In the year a.d. 1128, Otho concluded a final 
 round of ecclesiastical inspection in Pomerania, and 
 after attending the imperial diet in Germany, he 
 returned once more to his own diocese. With the 
 exception of the island of Riigen, of whose stubborn 
 
 k 2 
 
140 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 devotion to paganism more will be said hereafter, no 
 feature in the programme of evangelization which he 
 had originally drawn up had been omitted. And 
 even in the case of that obdurate island he would 
 have risked any amount of personal danger, had a 
 landing been found possible. He was only beaten 
 back by the insurmountable barrier of absolute im- 
 practicability. l 
 
 Until his death, which occurred in the year 
 a.d. 1 139, the bishop's anxious care for his Pome- 
 ranian converts never flagged. Though unable to 
 revisit the scenes so interesting to him, he con- 
 tinued at a distance to be the support and comfort, 
 as he had been the originator, of the Pomeranian 
 church. One of his last acts was a deed of kindness 
 to some of its members. A band of Pomeranian 
 Christians having been made prisoners during a 
 sudden raid of foreign pagans, a quantity of valuable 
 cloth was sent to their countrymen by the conside- 
 rate bishop, with instructions that part of it should 
 be applied to the purpose of securing the goodwill 
 of the heathen chiefs — cloth being an article highly 
 prized, — and the rest converted into money where- 
 with to ransom the unfortunate prisoners. 
 
 The figure of the zealous Otho stands out in 
 strong and bright relief against the dark background 
 of the times in which he lived. His character was 
 one which would have been an ornament to an age 
 of far riper civilization, and were he the type of the 
 Slavonic missioners in general, instead of the remark- 
 1 See page 145. 
 
POLAND AND POMERANIA. 141 
 
 able exception to their rule, the conversion of the 
 Slavs might truly have been sketched in fairer 
 colours. For in him we find strength fused in 
 gentleness, zeal tempered with discretion, courage 
 illuminated by humility, and an earnestness of pur- 
 pose by which all personal and worldly considera- 
 tions were completely eclipsed. 
 
142 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CONVERSION OF THE WENDS AND LIEFLANDERS. 
 
 The first attempts to illuminate the heathen darkness 
 of Wendland date from the earlier half of the ioth 
 century. 
 
 The tribes known as the Wends had found a home 
 in the districts watered by the Elbe, the Oder, and 
 the Saale, and were, even at this early period, tri- 
 butary appendages to the German Empire. But they 
 cherished an undying hope of escaping from this 
 dependent position. Living constantly, as they did, 
 on the watch for a chance of successful insurrection, 
 they were not likely to regard a religion introduced 
 and recommended by their conquerors, with a favour- 
 able eye. From their hatred of their masters sprang 
 a violent prejudice against their masters' creed, and 
 the Christian missionary was an object of suspicion, 
 because he was always associated with the political 
 machinery behind him. The clergy who visited 
 Wendland, moreover, were, almost without exception, 
 ignorant of the Slavonic language, so that a bridge- 
 less gulf lay between them and the people with whom 
 they attempted to deal. Rightly or wrongly, they 
 were also believed to be less anxious for the spiritual 
 
THE WENDS AND LIEFLANDERS. 1 43 
 
 welfare of the Wends than for their own pecuniary- 
 interests. 1 Every now and then, the smouldering 
 disaffection among the people broke into open flame, 
 and while their brief triumph lasted they indulged 
 themselves in slaughtering the clergy, and in de- 
 molishing all the churches within reach. 
 
 In the year a.d. 936, the death of the emperor 
 Henry I., who had conquered the Wends, took place. 
 With the accession of his successor, Otho I., the 
 general aspect of affairs in Wendland brightened 
 considerably. Bishoprics were created there, to which 
 the emperor was careful to appoint zealous eccle- 
 siastics, already experienced in missionary work 
 elsewhere. These sees were gradually founded, 
 at Havelburg, at Aldenburg, at Brandenburg, 
 at Meissen, at Cisi, and at Merseburg, respect- 
 ively. Agreeably to the decision of the Council of 
 Ravenna, a.d. 967, they were all subjected to the 
 archiepiscopal authority of Magdeburg, where one 
 Adelbert, who had received his education in a 
 monastery at Treves, was installed as the first primate. 
 The pall was bestowed upon him in a.d. 968. " One 
 object of the emperor in urging the foundation of 
 this new archbishopric appears to have been a wish 
 to abridge the inordinate power of the see of May- 
 ence." 2 
 
 Boso, the bishop of Merseburg, who had been one 
 of the emperor's chaplains, applied himself to the 
 
 1 Robertson's 'History of the Christian Church,' iv. p. 90. 
 
 2 Mansi. Quoted by Hardwick, ' Church History ' [Middle 
 Age], p. 128, note. 
 
144 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 study of the Slavonic language, and mastered it suffi- 
 ciently to be able to preach in it. His labours were 
 rewarded by the conformity of many hearers to 
 Christianity ; and, encouraged by his success, he pro- 
 ceeded to translate a few passages from the Liturgy 
 into Slavonic, but in this experiment he was some- 
 what disappointed, the people failing altogether to 
 apprehend its drift. 
 
 The German clergy, who, as we have seen, were 
 men of a stamp vastly inferior to Adelbert and his 
 bishops, continued to tax and to irritate the Wends, 
 who were also becoming increasingly restive under 
 the political yoke of the Empire. At last, in the 
 year a.d. 983, long pent-up fury broke loose from all 
 restraints, and the people rose against their rulers 
 with terrible purposes of vengeance. So far was this 
 rising from a pagan demonstration, that it was headed 
 by Mistewoi, a chief who had fully embraced Chris- 
 tianity. Inflamed with anger on account of personal 
 grievances, he threw himself vehemently into the 
 insurrectionary movement. At Rethre, the centre of 
 a markedly heathen district, he rallied his ready 
 countrymen around him, and they fell savagely upon 
 Northern Germany, burning, slaughtering, and destroy- 
 ing, on the right hand and on the left. Wherever 
 Christianity had in any degree established itself, there 
 the rebels delighted to give freest play to their bar- 
 barity. It was long before the Church recovered 
 from the havoc wrought. 
 
 The time came when Mistewoi lamented with con- 
 trition the unworthy part he had played on this 
 
THE WENDS AND LIEFLANDERS. 145 
 
 occasion ; and although reparation was beyond his 
 power, he was called upon to atone for his relapse by 
 exile from his home. He died at Bardevik, while 
 thus paying the penalty of his misdeeds. 
 
 The Christian principles of Gottschalk, the grand- 
 son of Mistewoi, were, in like manner, swept away 
 for a time by a sudden flood-tide of passion. He 
 had been educated, indeed, in a Christian school at 
 Luneburg. 1 But the murder of his father, Udo, 
 infuriated him. Forgetting everything except a wild 
 craving for revenge, he called the Wends to arms, 
 and ravaged Hamburg and Holstein. Having gratified 
 his undisciplined passion, however, Gottschalk, like his 
 grandfather, repented. He is said to have been struck 
 and overwhelmed with remorse at the sight of one 
 particular expanse of country which had been wasted 
 by his own hand. Desolation brooded where once fair 
 churches had graced the landscape, and suffering 
 reigned in the stead of the industrious peace it had 
 displaced. 
 
 Gottschalk solemnly vowed on the spot that he 
 would thenceforward support and promulgate the 
 religion against which he had sinned so grievously. 
 
 He is noted as the founder of the Wendish empire, 
 which arose in the year a.d. 1047. Bent upon its en- 
 enlightment, he collected ecclesiastics from various 
 parts, but chiefly from Bremen, which appears to have 
 been a great clerical rendezvous, and " the point of de- 
 parture for the northern missions." 2 The kindness 
 
 1 Hardwick, ' Middle Age,' p. 128. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 129, note. 
 
146 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 and hospitality of its archbishop, Albrecht, converted 
 it into a real city of refuge, where ecclesiastics, whose 
 lives in those wild times were always precarious, might 
 confidently calculate on finding encouragement and 
 welcome. 
 
 In inviting clergy to settle in his kingdom, 
 Gottschalk by no means intended that their labours 
 should supersede his own. He rather sought their 
 co-operation and assistance. He himself, now an 
 eager champion of Christianity, was instant in season 
 and out of season, preaching, expounding, interpret- 
 ing, and, in short, consecrating the intensity of his 
 energetic character to the work of redeeming his 
 subjects from their spiritual darkness. For nearly 
 twenty years he toiled steadily on. 
 
 But it was in vain. The Wends loved their 
 darkness better than their sovereign's light. They 
 betrayed no inclination to espouse the religion 
 for which he condescended to plead with them. 
 To them it was offensive, if for no other reason, 
 because it was ineffaceably tinged with the German 
 element which they abhorred. So, with true Slavonic 
 obstinacy, they clung to their idols. Against Gott- 
 schalk as a man, indeed, they could with difficulty 
 find aught to allege ; but as the contractor of an 
 alliance with German princes, they hated him. 
 The Wendish converts were too inconsiderable 
 in number to resist the sullen wave of paganism 
 which, seeming to gather strength every time it 
 was forced to retreat, began at length to rise 
 visibly higher and higher in opposition to the king. 
 
THE WENDS AND LIEFLANDERS. 1 47 
 
 It broke at last, and Gottschalk himself was one of 
 the first victims swept away by its fury. He died 
 under torture. 1 Ebbo, the priest at Lutzen, was 
 murdered at the altar, and numbers of the clergy 
 were stoned. These deeds of violence were the in- 
 auguration of a general rebellion. The wildest dis- 
 order soon prevailed, while the extirpation of Chris- 
 tianity was the aim, the hope, and the watchword of 
 all malcontents, and perhaps the only object which 
 they all with one accord agreed to pursue. 
 
 The life of John, bishop of Mecklenburg, was one 
 of the many forfeited in this persecution. He was 
 an Irish missionary who, after visiting Saxony, had 
 been courteously received at Bremen by archbishop 
 Albrecht, and by him introduced to king Gottschalk. 
 This led to his nomination to the see of Mecklen- 
 burg. Bishop John had been one of the most suc- 
 cessful toilers in the unfruitful vineyard of the Wends. 
 But martyrdom crowned his labours. He was bar- 
 barously beaten with clubs, and derisively exhibited 
 in town after town as a laughing-stock. At Rethre 
 he was called upon to abjure Christianity. His re- 
 fusal was absolute and unhesitating, upon which his 
 tormentors cut off both his hands and his feet. De- 
 capitation ended his sufferings, but his persecutors 
 were not even yet satisfied. Casting his body igno- 
 miniously into the street, they mounted his head on 
 a pole, and bearing it aloft to the temple of Rade- 
 gast the god of war, they solemnly offered it to that 
 deity. 
 
 1 Hardwick, p. 129. 
 
148 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 And now paganism reigned triumphant. Under 
 Cruko, a chief whose detestation of Christianity was ex- 
 travagantly bitter and relentless, almost every trace of 
 missionary work vanished. Scarcely an echo was to be 
 heard of the chorus of earnest voices which, despite 
 discouragement and difficulty, had for so many years 
 proclaimed glad tidings of great joy in Wendland. 
 The anarchy was political as well as religious ; the 
 kingdom established by Gottschalk was a thing of 
 the past. After some fifty years had elapsed, indeed, 
 his son made an attempt to reinstate it on its former 
 footing, as well as some efforts to revive downtrodden 
 Christianity. But the Wendish Church owed its 
 eventual re-settlement to the very influences which 
 were fatal to the independence of the kingdom. 
 
 Albert the Bear and Henry the Lion — duke of 
 Saxony — succeeded at last in subduing the country, 1 
 and under their auspices German colonists settled 
 in the districts which had been exhausted and de- 
 populated during the long years of tumult just past. 
 Among these were many clergy, and most of the 
 Wendish bishoprics were restored to existence. 
 
 But idolatry was still only very slowly displaced. 
 The more northerly of the Wendish tribes adhered with 
 more or less tenacity to their ancient creed, until the 
 year a.d. 1162, when Henry the Lion utterly crushed 
 the independence of the Obotrites, 2 whose resistance 
 
 1 a.d. 1 125 — 1 162. 
 
 2 "The former inhabitants of the present duchies of Meck- 
 lenburg, and the adjacent country, west, north, and south." — 
 Talvi's ' Languages and Literature of the Slavic nations,' 
 p. 3°°- 
 
THE WENDS AND LIEFLANDERS. 1 49 
 
 was the last among this division of the Slavonians, and 
 with other imperious conditions of peace dictated to 
 them the acceptance of Christianity. 
 
 Prior to this, however, these tribes were visited by 
 a missionary whose piety, courage, and nobility of 
 character endeared him, in spite of themselves, to 
 many who were far from friendly to his creed. 
 
 Vicelin — for such was his name — was born in a 
 village on the banks of the Weser, called Quernheim, 
 and educated at Paderborn. For three years he 
 "studied biblical and other literature at the university 
 of Paris." 1 Shortly after his ordination he heard of the 
 lack of zealous labourers in the Wendish mission-field, 
 and on applying in the year a.d. i i 25 to the archbishop 
 of Bremen, he received a commission to preach the 
 gospel there. His first effort was at Lubeck, but the 
 political commotions there forbad either success or 
 perseverance. He then made the border-town of 
 Neumiinster — formerly Faldera — his head-quarters, 
 and addressed himself to the work of enlightening 
 the districts north of the Elbe. The people with 
 whom he came in contact were demoralized by long- 
 endured misery. The country was wasted by con- 
 tinually-recurring war, and idolatry was the solitary 
 possession remaining to the inhabitants. Vicelin, 
 however, did not despair. Before long, he was the 
 head and centre of a religious fraternity, comprising 
 lay as well as clerical members, the avowed object of 
 whose lives was personal consecration to good works. 
 For nine years this devoted brotherhood strove with 
 1 Hardwick, p. 226, note. 
 
150 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 the surrounding heathenism. They prayed, they ex- 
 horted, they gave alms, they visited the sick, they 
 whispered of the Power of the Cross in the ears of the 
 dying. In evil report and good report Vicelin was con- 
 stant to his post, and when the emperor Lothaire II. 
 visited Holstein in the year a.d. 1134, he testified his 
 appreciation of the work that had been accomplished 
 by appointing the indefatigable pastor to the charge 
 of the churches of Lubeck and Segeburg. This 
 important commission was accompanied, moreover, 
 by warm and gratifying words of encouragement. 
 
 But only three years afterwards, the Wends, 
 recognizing in the death of the emperor a favourable 
 opportunity for revolt, again took up arms. Churches 
 and monasteries were attacked once more, and no 
 Christian priest's life was safe. Vicelin was driven from 
 his work, and was obliged to return to Neumiinster, 
 where he did his utmost to rally his distressed converts, 
 whom he literally upheld by his cheerful hopeful- 
 ness and faith. And, in fact, a break in the clouds 
 did gladden his brave spirit after a few patient years. 
 Adolph, count of Holstein, succeeded at last in bridling 
 the irrepressible Wends, and Vicelin's church at Sege- 
 burg was once more his own. Fearing, however, that 
 fresh commotions might at any moment arise, he re- 
 moved his monastic community to Hogelsdorf. Here 
 he was helped by the cordial sympathy of Dittmar, 
 a canon of Bremen, and found himself in a position 
 to resume the many charitable works which had 
 been so rudely suspended. The gates of his monas- 
 tery stood open when a severe famine was at one 
 
THE WENDS AND LIEFLANDERS. 151 
 
 time afflicting the people of the district. And as he 
 dispensed the loaves and other kinds of charity for 
 which the hunger-stricken sufferers clamoured, this 
 servant of God took occasion to urge their acceptance 
 of the Living Bread Who came down from heaven. 
 Nor was he without hope that he had touched the 
 hearts of some whose bodily wants he had relieved. 
 
 In the year a.d. i 148, Vicelin became bishop of Old- 
 enburg, on the nomination of the archbishop of Bre- 
 men. A disagreement ensued between his patron and 
 Henry the Lion, who would seem to have objected to 
 the revival of this particular bishopric. Conceding 
 that point, however, the duke insisted on his right to 
 grant investiture to the freshly-appointed bishop. The 
 archbishop demurred, considering that such a change 
 in the position of the prerogative would involve a slight 
 to the Church which he ought not to countenance. 
 This dispute was very trying to Vicelin, who, as far as 
 he was concerned, waived the matter in deference to 
 the duke. But his chief attention was concentrated, 
 as it had ever been, upon his work. 
 
 The pagan god Prone 1 was the special object of 
 adoration among the unconverted in the neighbour- 
 hood of Oldenburg. Vicelin persevered in strenuous 
 endeavours to wean its worshippers from their super- 
 stition, until he had the gratification of observing not 
 only that their numbers were considerably diminished, 
 but that their faith was fundamentally shaken. A 
 church was built, and many new subscribers to Chris- 
 tianity flocked to it. 
 
 1 Probably synonymous with Perim. 
 
152 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 The pious bishop had at length the happiness of 
 presiding over a steadily increasing community of 
 the faithful, after his many toils, until his death, 
 which took place in a.d. 1154. 
 
 And now the original Wends were by degrees dis- 
 placed by German colonists, and the profession of 
 Christianity became the rule rather than the exception, 
 throughout the territories once known as Wendland. 
 
 The paganism of the Wends did not, as we have 
 seen, gradually melt away in the genial warmth and 
 light of Christianity. It was remarkable for its per- 
 sistency, and when it finally did, after desperate 
 struggles, succumb, it was to hard blows only. As 
 the political power of the Wendish empire was broken 
 up into fragments incapable of reunion, so the strength 
 of its ancient faith was literally hacked and cut to 
 pieces. And we cannot but notice that, when at last 
 the remnants of its heathenism were too scattered and 
 too insignificant ever to coalesce again, the people 
 themselves were fast disappearing, and making room 
 for races of a more pliable temperament. 
 
 We must now turn to another instance of deter- 
 mined hostility to innovation in matters of faith. 
 
 Otho of Bamberg, ultimately so successful in his 
 Pomeranian crusades, had been completely baffled in 
 one quarter, which from a distance had attracted his 
 observation and kindled his enthusiastic desires to 
 visit it. This as we have seen, l was the island of 
 Riigen ; the Mona, as it has been called, of the Baltic 
 Slavonians. Here, as in a fortress, Slavonic paganism 
 1 Cf. pp. 131, 132. 
 
THE WENDS AND LIEFLANDERS. 1 53 
 
 seemed to have intrenched itself, with a dogged 
 resolution never to be dislodged. 
 
 So great was the dread inspired by the current re- 
 ports of the ferocity of the Riigen heathen, that when 
 Otho with his usual intrepidity proposed and pre- 
 pared to visit the island, only one among all his party 
 of attendants was to be found who was willing to 
 share the peril. Storm after storm prevented their 
 landing, and during the delay ominous rumours of 
 the pagan attitude in Riigen stole across the water. 
 The bishop's friends among the Pomeranian chiefs 
 then interfered. They assured the zealous missionary 
 that to land on the island would be to rush into the 
 arms of certain death. 
 
 Then Otho reluctantly gave way, and Riigen was 
 left to its paganism. 
 
 The towns of Stettin and Juiin, scenes — as we saw 
 them to be — of some of the bishop's most effective 
 ministrations, were denounced as apostate by the 
 bigoted islanders, who never ceased to terrify their 
 inhabitants by threats of the severest vengeance. 
 
 The quarrel became permanent, and the Danes, 
 
 after a time, took part in it. In the year a.d. 1168, 
 
 Waldemar, king of Denmark, made common cause 
 
 with the Pomeranian chiefs, and the island was at last 
 
 subdued. 
 
 Thus, nearly forty years after the bishop of Bam- 
 berg had been obliged, in the interests of common 
 prudence, to abandon his hopes of converting its in- 
 habitants, a path was cut by the Danish sword for the 
 tardy entrance of Christianity. 
 
 L 
 
154 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 Riigen is at the present day one of the largest 
 
 islands belonging to Germany. Its area comprises 
 
 440 square miles, and a strait, which at its narrowest 
 
 point is a mile and a half wide, divides it from the 
 
 . mainland 
 
 Its greatest beauty consists in luxurious forests of 
 beech-trees, which must have been celebrated in very 
 early times for the richness of their verdure. Tacitus 
 mentions the " sacred grove " in which the ancient 
 inhabitants of the island worshipped Hertha, the 
 goddess of the earth. 1 In the eastern part of Riigen 
 various memorials of heathenism survive in the shape 
 of granite slabs, generally supposed to have been 
 altars. A "sacrificial stone" is also in existence there, 
 in which a groove is bored for the purpose, it is 
 conjectured, of carrying off the blood of the victims. 
 
 The time, then, had come for the admission of the 
 light of truth to this fair island, nestling in its beech- 
 woods, and shaded by the grave pine forests which 
 darkly crowned its heights. 
 
 Bishop Absalom of Roeskilde, " a luminary of the 
 Danish Church," 2 took charge of the mission. He 
 engaged to establish a Christian community in Riigen, 
 and he kept his word. The island was in consequence 
 eventually annexed to his diocese. 
 
 Arcona, the capital, only yielded after a long and 
 stubborn siege. But the inhabitants, finding themselves 
 
 1 It is however believed by many that Tacitus refers to Alsen, 
 an island as large as Riigen, or larger, acquired by Germany in 
 the Schleswig-Holstein war. 
 
 2 Hardwick, p. 228. 
 
THE WENDS AND LIEFLANDERS. 1 55 
 
 overmatched by the Danish soldiery, made a virtue of 
 necessity at last, and announced their readiness to 
 adopt Christianity. They expressed at the same time 
 a preference almost amounting to a stipulation, for 
 the usages and forms of the Church of Denmark. 
 
 At Arcona stood the temple of Svantovit, already de- 
 scribed. 1 It enshrined a colossal image of the deity, 
 which was shrouded from the gaze of visitors by purple 
 curtains, now worn with age. Bishop Absalom knew 
 well that an exhibition of the impotence of Svantovit 
 would speak more forcibly to the islanders than many 
 sermons. He therefore lost no time, after entering 
 Arcona, in bending his steps to the temple, accom- 
 panied by a picked band of axe-bearers, previously 
 instructed in their duty. 
 
 An immense concourse of pagans attended the 
 iconoclasts, expecting and hoping that their profane te- 
 merity would bring swift destruction upon their heads. 
 
 Absalom and his party, however, making very 
 light of the majesty of Svantovit, hastily tore away 
 the venerable curtains that screened him, and forth- 
 with belaboured him about the feet with such vigour, 
 that after a few strokes of their axes, a crash was 
 heard, and the much-dreaded idol reeled, and fell 
 heavilv to the ground. 
 
 The spectators believed that they saw — their ima- 
 ginations being prepared to see — the demon which 
 had haunted the temple rush from the shrine at 
 the moment of the idol's downfall, in the form of a 
 
 1 See p. 23. 
 L 2 
 
156 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 small black animal, which vanished as mysteriously 
 as it had appeared. 
 
 Svantovit now indeed lay low. But even in the 
 horizontal position he was appalling to the people of 
 Riigen, among whom none could be found to give a 
 helping hand in removing his prostrate figure. 
 
 They looked on in shivering fear, while ropes were 
 attached to him, and he was dragged, amid derisive 
 laughter, into the Danish camp. Here a speedy end 
 was put to him, and the natives could not but draw 
 their own conclusions, as they watched their vaunted 
 god submitting unresistingly to be chopped in pieces 
 for fuel. 
 
 And the last remnants of their awe died away 
 when they beheld the Danish soldiers dining cheer- 
 fully on harmless food, which had nevertheless been 
 cooked over fires kindled by the mutilated remains 
 of Svantovit ! 
 
 Bishop Absalom did not rest until all the other 
 pagan temples in Riigen were destroyed, together with 
 the images they inclosed. These idols were in some 
 cases gigantic. One of them possessed seven heads, 
 another five, and a third, four. And the height of 
 one figure was so great, that when the energetic bishop 
 took his stand upon its feet, his upstretched axe 
 barely touched its chin. 
 
 The false gods being destroyed, root and branch, the 
 foundations of Christian churches were next laid, and 
 Danish clergy were summoned to Riigen, and posted 
 in different parts of the island. No ecclesiastical 
 levies were permitted to vex the people, and their 
 
THE WENDS AND LIEFLANDERS. 157 
 
 hearty assent to the religion which they had so long 
 resisted was finally secured. 
 
 The Lieflanders were a division of the Slavonic 
 race which had freely intermingled with other branches 
 of the Indo-European family, and with the Ugrian 
 tribes of Fins. 1 They occupied the east coast of the 
 Baltic as far as the gulf of Finland, and appear to 
 have remained plunged in the darkness of ignorant 
 superstition until late in the 12th century. They 
 worshipped trees, they sacrificed human victims, they 
 were spell-bound by the witcheries of sorcery, and 
 altogether presented a most hopeless spectacle to the 
 longing eyes of such missionaries as at last came in 
 contact with them. 
 
 In the year a.d. 1186, a pious canon named 
 Meinhard, who had been educated in Vicelin's 
 monastery at Segeberg, sailed up the river Diina in 
 a trading vessel from Bremen. At Yxkull the mer- 
 chants had built a fortress to protect their commercial 
 interests, and here Meinhard began his work. He 
 earned the good graces of the people in the first 
 instance, by assisting them in temporal matters. 
 
 1 "Of the Fins on the Baltic, the most western locality is 
 Courland, for thus far do Fins or Ugrians extend in the direc- 
 tion of Prussia. In Courland, however, the undoubted natives 
 are Letts of the Lithuanian family, and the name that these 
 Lithuanian Letts give to the Fins under notice is Lief. No 
 definite account can be given of their origin ; for, though Lief 
 is a name which we may reasonably expect to find in Livonia 
 (or Lie/lava), it is not the one we look for in Courland." The 
 Liefs gave the name Livonia to that country. — Dr. Latham's 
 ' Russian and Turk,' p. 244. 
 
158 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 Helped by his advice when suddenly attacked by 
 some crafty foe, and taught by him how to build a 
 stronger and better fort to defend their trade, they 
 conceived a respect for the venerable ecclesiastic's 
 talents, and listened so tractably to the spiritual 
 injunctions with which he ventured to accompany his 
 worldly wisdom, that Meinhard was overjoyed. He 
 administered baptism to several of his new friends, 
 and founded at Yxkull the first Livonian church. 
 
 On announcing his success to Hartwig, the arch- 
 bishop of Bremen, he was rewarded by appoint- 
 ment to the see of Yxkull, which " was secured 
 to the province of Hamburg by the grant of Pope 
 Clement III., in the year a.d. 1188." 1 
 
 But the joy of the sanguine Meinhard was short- 
 lived. During his visit to Bremen, which was under- 
 taken expressly to report the satisfactory condition of 
 his converts, the people of Yxkull lightly forsook the 
 vows which they had lightly taken, and on the return 
 of the newly-created bishop, he found, to his chagrin, 
 that paganism had recovered its full force, and that 
 scarcely a vestige of his work had stood its ground. 
 Nor did the charm of his personal presence reclaim the 
 backsliders. They were now as devoted to their ancient 
 deities as if they had never heard of a purer faith. 
 
 The efforts of Meinhard were presently seconded 
 by Theodoric, a Cistercian monk, but he was unfor- 
 tunate enough to excite the ill-feeling of the Lief- 
 landers by most unexpected and innocent means. 
 
 1 Hard\rick, p. 229, note. 
 
THE WENDS AND LIEFLANDERS. 1 59 
 
 He cultivated some land near Yxkull so successfully 
 that the inhabitants were childishly indignant at the 
 superiority of his crops to their own. In a fit of 
 jealousy they vowed to sacrifice him to their gods. 
 But when they sought oracular sanction, the omens 
 were unfavourable, and on that account Theodoric's life 
 was spared. The superstitious fancies of the people, 
 however, were soon set in motion again. They next 
 suspected him to be mysteriously connected with 
 powers beyond their ken, and he was declared to be 
 responsible for an eclipse of the sun which disturbed 
 their equanimity. Finally, he left the country, de- 
 spairing of success, at any rate, by gentle means. 
 Meinhard, also deeply dejected, died at his trying post 
 in the year a.d. 1196. 
 
 Berthold, an abbot from Lower Saxony, was the 
 next volunteer. He began by a prodigal distribution 
 of presents, hoping so to ingratiate himself with the 
 flippant Lieflanders. But their toleration of him 
 lasted only while his gifts lasted, and he was insulted 
 as menacingly as Bernard had been at Julin. He 
 withdrew in resentment, but only to return at the 
 head of an army which Innocent III. had placed 
 at his disposal, wherewith to quell the insolence of 
 these remote heathen. An engagement took place, in 
 which Berthold fell, but the Lieflanders were compelled 
 to submit to a military force against which they felt 
 they had no power. Again they promised to be 
 Christians, and many received baptism in apparent 
 sincerity. But no sooner had the crisis passed, and 
 the soldiery departed, than the mantle of dissimula- 
 
l6o CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 tion was again flung aside. The clergy who had been 
 left in charge of the mission fell victims to the ven- 
 geance of the fickle populace, and not a few of the 
 freshly baptized Lieflanders threw themselves frantic- 
 ally into the Diina, in the wild hope that its waters 
 might obliterate the effects of their baptism. 
 
 But these obdurate tribes were not long left to their 
 headstrong heathenism. 
 
 The next Livonian crusader was a priest from Bre- 
 men, Albert von Apeldern by name. He came with a 
 considerable army at his back, and attended by a fleet 
 of twenty-three ships. Deeming Yxkull too insecure a 
 spot to be the seat of a bishopric, he made preparations 
 for building the city of Riga, to which place the see 
 was transferred in the first year of the 13th century. 
 
 The success of Albert among the Lieflanders was so 
 indifferent and so fluctuating, that he came before long 
 to a conclusion of some importance, which he forthwith 
 dutifully communicated both to the emperor and to 
 the pope. This opinion was, that no permanent effect 
 would ever be produced in the country until the people 
 were overawed by resident military. Desultory armed 
 descents upon them, however authoritative, produced 
 no lasting results, for as soon as the armies were with- 
 drawn they abandoned themselves to their habitual 
 reckless persecution of all that was good. But if the 
 force they feared dwelt continually among them, their 
 periodical excesses would be impossible. Moreover, 
 if well-conducted soldiers could be introduced into 
 the country and incorporated with the inhabitants, 
 some benefit might be gleaned from a moral example 
 
THE WENDS AND LIEFLANDERS. l6l 
 
 combined with physical power. The soundness of 
 this advice was proved in the sequel. It took 
 practical shape in the establishment of a knightly 
 order, whose chivalry, purity, and courage did, to a 
 great extent, accomplish what Albert desired. This 
 brotherhood was known as The Order of the Sword. 
 Its members, who recognized the Virgin as their special 
 protectress, were bound to celibacy, chastity, and 
 sobriety, as well as to regularity in attendance at mass, 
 and they swore to resist and break down heathenism 
 with swords for ever drawn in defence of the Cross. 
 
 Such lands as they conquered in fair fight with the 
 pagans they were entitled to keep. And to the cru- 
 sade against heathendom they were committed so 
 long as a single heathen remained unsubdued. 
 
 For more than twenty years the struggle went 
 on. But the pagan resistance grew gradually fainter. 
 German settlers and German influence worked here, 
 though so tardily, as they had worked elsewhere. 
 
 The exertions of " The Order of the Sword " ex- 
 tended into Esthonia, 1 Semgallen, and Courland. 
 How far the "conversions" proudly recounted by 
 these valiant defenders of the faith were more than 
 superficial cannot indeed be said. But, at all events, 
 nominal Christianity was widely planted by their 
 swords. And they were able to point to the bishop- 
 
 1 "Estonia being but a Latin form of Est land, i.e. 'the 
 Eastern Land.' Like Courland and Liefland, it was conquered 
 by the Knights of the Sword. The serfs— in Estonia— were 
 almost wholly Fin."— Dr. Latham's 'Russian and Turk,' 
 pp. 245, 246. 
 
1 62 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 rics of Revel, of Dorpat, and of Pernau, as strong- 
 holds of truth, whose creation, support, and defence 
 were entirely due to the wholesome and respectful 
 awe inspired by their name. 
 
 Four years after the removal of the original Livonian 
 see to Riga, an effort was made to awaken the interest 
 of the ignorant people in Scriptural history by means 
 of a Miracle Play. The Lieflanders, however, though 
 much impressed by the adventures of such heroes as 
 David and Gideon on the stage, were not without a 
 suspicion that mischief to spectators might lurk behind 
 the fascinations of the drama. When on one occa- 
 sion, the army of Gideon was represented in the act of 
 assailing the Midianites, the performers found them- 
 selves suddenly deserted by the public. Believing 
 that the assault on Midian was but a prelude to an 
 attack on themselves, the assembled beholders fled 
 in a body, nor was it found practicable to reassure 
 them. 
 
 The following winter, archbishop Andreas of Lund 
 occupied himself in expounding to the people, in their 
 own language, the book of Psalms. He was encour- 
 aged by various signs of interest among his audience, 
 and a hope sprang up, which proved to be well founded, 
 that the worst was over, and that the scenes of the 
 past would never repeat, though they might for some 
 little time reflect, themselves. 
 
 Every inch of the way which the Cross had made 
 had been disputed, lost, recovered, and forfeited again, 
 times without number. So anxious had Innocent III. 
 been as to the result of the Livonian mission, that 
 
THE WENDS AND LIEFLANDERS. 1 63 
 
 when Berthold was collecting an army for his second 
 expedition, the pope recommended the volunteers 
 for a pilgrimage to Rome to change their course, 
 and turn their steps to these northern wilds. Great, 
 therefore, were the general gratitude and relief when 
 the long-hardened Lieflanders could at last be 
 reckoned among the inhabitants of Christendom. 
 
164 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CONVERSION OF PRUSSIA AND LITHUANIA. 
 
 " It was the area between the rivers Vistula and 
 Niemen," writes Dr. Latham, "that constituted the 
 old Prussian domain." The language spoken there 
 in the 13th century "was a form of the Lithuania 
 We know this, because it survived the independence 
 of the nation ; and a kind of catechism in it, of the 
 date of the Reformation, has come down to us. 
 Moreover, there is the account of, at least, one traveller 
 who visited the country, and came in contact with the 
 native old Prussians. What proportion it bore to 
 the rest he does not say. But he tells us that he 
 heard them converse in their own mother tongue, 
 and that he was present at a ceremony, which he 
 describes, of a purely pagan character, a statement 
 which we may readily believe ; for the obstinacy with 
 which the Lithuanians in general held to their original 
 creed was a notable characteristic of the race." 1 
 
 The italics are not Dr. Latham's, but some em- 
 phasis seems appropriate on an observation which, 
 though it bears particularly on a division of the 
 Slavonic race not yet noticed in this treatise, yet 
 tallies so completely with our experience, so far as we 
 have examined them, of the national characteristics. 
 
 1 ' Russian and Turk,' p. 321. 
 
PRUSSIA AND LITHUANIA. 1 65 
 
 From the same writer we learn that the two traditionary 
 founders of the Prussian nation were Wundewat and 
 Brut, or Bruten. In alluding to the eleven or twelve 
 subdivisions of the Prussia of the 13th century, he 
 remarks that " nearly all these had their eponymus in 
 the twelve sons of Wundewut," their primeval priest- 
 king. The ancient Prussians were devout worshippers 
 of the powers of nature, and besides a variety of 
 minor deities, they held three gods in profound and 
 especial veneration. These were Perkunos} the lord 
 of the thunder, Potrimpus, the god of corn and fruit, 
 and Pikullos, the president of the infernal regions. 
 The name of Perkunos " may be found in the Lithu- 
 anic songs of the present time ; while, even in West 
 Prussia, ' PakuV is the name for the devil." 2 In all 
 representations of Perkunos, the head was wreathed 
 in flame, while the expression of the face was fierce 
 and stern. Potrimpus, on the other hand, was pic- 
 tured as a smooth-faced youth, crowned with wheat- 
 ears and green leaves. Pikullos was of solemn aspect. 
 His beard was snow-white, his countenance was pale, 
 and his eyes downcast. 3 
 
 1 Perun, again, under another name. 
 ' Russian and Turk,' p. 321. 
 
 3 Prof. Max Miiller observes, with regard to the plurality of 
 pagan divinities [in his ' Lecture on the Vedas '], that one god 
 was not considered to be limited in power by the pretensions of 
 another, and that the idea of superiority or inferiority in rank 
 was in total abeyance. "Each god is felt" to be "a real 
 divinity, supreme and absolute, without a suspicion of those 
 limitations which, to our mind, a plurality of gods must entail 
 on every single god.' ? — 'Chips from a German 1 Workshop,' 
 vol. i. pp. 27, 28. 
 
1 66 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 No town or village was unprovided with a temple 
 of greater or less pretension. But the national centre 
 of the faith was at Romove, where the sacred oaks 
 grew, and veiled statues of the several deities were 
 placed. Romove was also the dwelling-place of the 
 chief pontiff, a personage held in such extraordinary 
 reverence, that for his sake, not only all his relations 
 and connections, but even his officials, were accounted 
 sacred. The subordinate members of the priesthood 
 also ruled the minds of the people with an absolute 
 and unquestioned sway. They were all celibates, and 
 they had both the power and the will to require 
 periodical human sacrifices, usually in the service of 
 the gods Potrimpus and Pikullos. 
 
 Three wives were allowed to each native Prussian, 
 but they were regarded purely in the light of slaves, 
 and self-immolation was expected of them in the case 
 of their husband's death. Human life, indeed, was but 
 lightly esteemed. All the daughters in a family ex- 
 cept one, were destroyed in infancy, or sold ; and the 
 aged and infirm, the sick and the deformed, both 
 young and old, were unhesitatingly put to death. Not 
 only were the wives of a man required to die because 
 he was dead, but his slaves, his horses, hounds, hawks, 
 and armour, were burnt in the flames which consumed 
 his corpse. 
 
 Thus the paganism of the Prussians was regularly 
 systematized, and planted so firmly among them that 
 its roots were intertwined with their deepest affections, 
 and they did not scruple to display the most rancorous 
 hatred to the new faith, of which, from time to time, 
 rumours floated to their ears. 
 
PRUSSIA AND LITHUANIA. 1 67 
 
 One of the first missionaries who had ventured to 
 land in this hostile country was Adelbert of Prague, 
 of whom we have already spoken. 1 
 
 He arrived at Dantzic in the year a.d. 997, es- 
 corted by a detachment of Polish soldiers furnished 
 by Boleslav I. Presuming on the passive attitude 
 of the Prussians, who did not prevent his landing, he 
 dispensed — prematurely, as the event proved — with 
 the protection of the ship in which he had arrived. 
 Accompanied by a priest called Benedict and a pupil 
 of his own, he started in a small boat, at the mouth 
 of the river Pregel, to make the most of the footing 
 he had gained in the country. 
 
 But while he was preparing to land, after a while, 
 on the river-banks, a sudden attack was made by 
 the natives, and Adelbert was struck so violently 
 with an oar, while in the act of chanting the 
 Psalms, that he fell, completely stunned, to the 
 bottom of the boat. Escaping across the river, the 
 missionaries eventually succeeded in effecting a land- 
 ing on the opposite shore. But it was in vain that 
 they appealed to the inhabitants of this district to grant 
 them at least a hearing. Though one of the native 
 chiefs himself called upon Adelbert for an explanation 
 of his appearance and his errand, the bishop's address 
 was speedily cut short by derisive shouts of defiance. 
 . " These are the fellows," cried one man, speaking for 
 the rest, " who cause our crops to fail, our trees to 
 decay, our herds to sicken. Depart ! or expect in- 
 stant death ! n 
 
 1 See pp. 69, 73, 74, 75. 
 
1 68 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 Much discouraged, the missionary party withdrew, 
 and turned their steps reluctantly towards the coast. 
 Adelbert, however, indulged a hope that the prejudices 
 of the people might in time be overcome, particularly 
 if the clerical dress, which seemed to give great offence, 
 were abandoned, and the direct work of evangeliza- 
 tion postponed awhile. After living among the people 
 as industrious laymen long enough to disarm their 
 suspicions, he thought that a way might gradually be 
 opened for the Gospel by indirect means. But these 
 fond schemes were never realized. The bishop and 
 his friends were surprised in a dark wood, where they 
 had paused for refreshment and sleep, by a band of 
 angry Prussians, and before Adelbert had time to 
 defend himself, he died, pierced by seven lances, but 
 endeavouring to the last to rally the fortitude of his 
 companions. 
 
 Eleven years after this tragic conclusion of the first 
 attempt to carry the Word of Life into Prussia, a second 
 was made by Bruno, a chaplain of the emperor 
 Otho III. A picture of St. Boniface, the apostle of 
 Germany, which he saw at Rome, was said to have 
 inspired him with a longing to preach the Gospel to 
 the Prussians. 
 
 Pope Silvester II. having duly commissioned him 
 accordingly, and sanctioned his consecration as re- 
 gionary bishop of Magdeburg, Bruno set out for 
 Prussia. But before a single year had passed, he and 
 his whole party, which consisted of eighteen persons, 
 fell a prey, like the zealous bishop of Prague, to the 
 vindictive hatred of the people. 
 
PRUSSIA AND LITHUANIA. 1 69 
 
 Nearly 200 years now passed away, during which 
 the struggles with Poland deepened and strengthened 
 the Prussian antipathy to Christianity. Identifying 
 the sacred cause with the pressure of a yoke which 
 they resisted desperately and loathed intensely, the 
 people could not be induced even to tolerate a re- 
 hearsal of its pleadings. In the year a.d. 1207, in- 
 deed, a Polish abbot named Gottfried, seconded by a 
 monk who sympathized in his anxiety for the salva- 
 tion of all men, did succeed in catching the atten- 
 tion of a few Prussians. But he was of the hated 
 race of Poles, and his voice was soon silenced. Con- 
 vinced by the revengeful murder of his friend the 
 monk, that the passion of the people was only thinly 
 veiled, and ready at any moment to break upon his 
 own head, he sadly concluded that the work of winning 
 them was hopeless, and ceased to expostulate with them. 
 
 Three years afterwards, however, in a.d. 12 10, a 
 zealous monk called Christian arrived in Prussia from 
 a Pomeranian monastery not far beyond Dantzic. 
 
 Pope Innocent III. authorized his mission, which 
 for four years was conducted, if not successfully, at 
 all events in comparative freedom from molestation. 
 At the end of that time Christian presented himself 
 in Rome with two converted Prussian chiefs, to 
 whom he pointed as the firstfruits of a stubbornly 
 unproductive field, garnered only after much toil and 
 almost incredible difficulty. 
 
 Much gratified, the pope raised Christian to the 
 episcopacy, and assigned to him a diocese in the 
 arena of his late labours. 
 
 M 
 
170 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 Papal admonitions were at the same time delivered 
 to the dukes of Poland and Pomerania, in whose 
 oppressive administration Innocent III. did not fail 
 to discern a grave hindrance to the spread of Chris- 
 tianity in Prussia. 1 
 
 The new bishop now returned eagerly to his 
 work. But before long his hopes were heavily over- 
 clouded. 
 
 The pagan faction of the opponents to Polish in- 
 fluence in Prussia, roused by some fresh provocation, 
 burst once more into overt fury, all the more deadly 
 for its recent suppression. The courage of the very 
 converts failed them under the burden of taxation 
 which, in spite of the pope's injunctions, grew heavier 
 and more irritating every day. A general rising took 
 place. The pagans, unable to distinguish between 
 Christianity itself and the political system which un- 
 worthily degraded it into a mere tool for the com- 
 passing of ambitious ends, rushed upon all outward 
 and visible signs of the alien creed. Converts were 
 put to death, the seats of missionary effort were 
 ravaged, and nearly 300 churches and other sacred 
 buildings were destroyed. 
 
 The territories of Conrad, duke of Massovia, having 
 been wasted by the infuriated Prussians, he exerted 
 himself, with the important support of the pope, to 
 bring crusaders upon the scene. The " Order of 
 Knights Brethren of Dobrin " first strove to reduce 
 the rebels to order. But this body was found unequal 
 
 1 Hard wick, ' Middle Age,' p. 231, note 13. 
 
PRUSSIA AND LITHUANIA. 171 
 
 to - the task. The "Order of Teutonic Knights," 
 allied or amalgamated with the " Order of the 
 Sword," whose work we watched in Liefland, then 
 addressed themselves to the arduous undertaking. 
 This fraternity had been originally organized for the 
 purpose of defending German pilgrims on their 
 way to the Holy Land. But now that the general 
 enthusiasm for the old crusades had considerably 
 abated, a new channel for the energies of brave 
 adventurers was found in the Prussian intrenchments 
 of heathenism. 1 For fifty years the sword was scarcely 
 sheathed. Though violently opposed by the people, 
 and detested by those who had hitherto enjoyed a 
 monopoly of authority over them, the military Orders 
 proved ultimately irresistible. Slowly and steadily 
 they cut their way into the very heart of Prussia, 
 marking and guarding their onward road by strongly- 
 built castles, round which clustered communities of 
 German settlers. Such were the towns of Culm, 
 Thorn, Marienwerder, and Elbing. 
 
 1 "In the midst of this misery — the pestilence which raged 
 during the siege of Acre — a few German merchants, from the 
 coasts of the Baltic, sought to mitigate suffering by running up 
 the sails of their ships as tents for the sick and dying. The 
 happy results which followed their work led to an organization 
 similar to that of the Orders of the Temple and the Hospital. 
 Like those Orders, the Teutonic Knights rose to power and dis- 
 tinction. With the failure of the Crusades in the East, the 
 Order was transferred to the more forbidding regions which had 
 sent forth its founders, and their crusade was turned against 
 the heathen of the Lithuanian, Prussian, Esthonian, and other 
 tribes. They preached the Gospel with the sword." — Cox's 
 ' Crusades,' p. 122. 
 
 M 2 
 
172 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 The authority of the Teutonic Knights was prac- 
 tically unlimited. They deemed themselves the repre- 
 sentatives of the pope, and for the compliance of 
 Germans and Prussians alike they laid down rules, 
 from which the slightest deviation was absolutely for- 
 bidden. 
 
 Within the territories which they commanded, bap- 
 tism was literally the solitary passport to freedom. 
 The convert might indeed call himself a freeman as 
 soon as the baptismal waters had bedewed him, without 
 further impediment. But the pagan who, fondly 
 clasping his ancient idols to his heart, refused to be 
 baptized, was a mere item among his master's goods 
 and chattels. Some of the obdurate fled into Lithu- 
 ania, 1 but the majority remained, to be crushed and 
 coerced by slow degrees. In the year a.d. 1243, the 
 pope partitioned the heathen countries thus laboriously 
 acquired, into the bishoprics of Culm, Pomerania, and 
 Ermeland. Each of these was again distributed into 
 three parts, one of which was under the control of 
 the bishop as its feudal lord, while the other two 
 acknowledged the authority of the knights of the 
 Order. 2 
 
 Churches and religious houses now rapidly multi- 
 plied, and before the general diffusion of light the 
 dark customs of paganism began to retire, to all 
 appearance, finally discomfited. 
 
 Polish laws were put into force in Prussia, and 
 the popes were urgent in their recommendation of 
 
 Ilardwick, p. 232, note 4. 2 Ibid., p. 232. 
 
PRUSSIA AND LITHUANIA. 1 73 
 
 gentler measures than those hitherto employed. The 
 country was divided into parishes. A careful pro- 
 vision was made for the education of Prussian chil- 
 dren, and pious Dominican monks devoted them- 
 selves to the consolidation of the work of conversion, 
 which in a large majority of instances had been 
 equally superficial and arbitrary. 
 
 But even yet, though hunted nnd tortured, dis- 
 abled and subdued, the spirit of paganism lived. 
 Eight or nine years passed by, and then its crippled 
 existence was suddenly announced to those who had 
 believed it to be extinct. In a struggle with the 
 Lithuanians in the year a. d. 1260, the Teutonic Knights 
 were beaten ignominiously back, and eight brethren 
 of the Order were captured. These prisoners were 
 burned alive, as an act of homage to the heathen 
 divinities. 
 
 The encouragement was enough. Prussian paganism 
 instantly revealed itself again. With such strength 
 as it possessed it fell once more upon the clergy, 
 murdering and plundering them, and upon all the 
 churches and monasteries within reach. These 
 buildings were remorselessly destroyed. 
 
 But the knights took terrible vengeance. All the 
 favours which had been extended to the Prussians 
 on their submission to Christianity were revoked. 
 The offending chiefs were degraded to the posi- 
 tion of serfs ; hosts of crusaders poured into Prussia 
 to the assistance of the knights, and for twenty- 
 two years no quarter was shown to any remnant 
 of heathenism. At last, bathed in blood, the 
 
174 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 country surrendered an undivided allegiance to 
 Christianity, as personified by the Teutonic Knights. 
 
 The Order now reigned supreme. Its members 
 took precedence of the bishops in all matters of 
 authority. The episcopal sees, indeed, were usually 
 filled from its ranks, which embodied a threefold 
 power, — military, political, and ecclesiastical. 
 
 A passing reference has just been made to the wild 
 rebellion in Lithuania against the encroachment of 
 the Teutonic Knights. That the inhabitants of this 
 country were formidable warriors we may infer from 
 the remark of Henry, the early historian of Lierland, 
 " that his countrymen were as lambs to wolves in 
 respect to the Lithuanians." 1 
 
 We find, as has been anticipated on an earlier 
 page, 2 that they offered a more solid, if not a more 
 dogged, resistance to Teutonic influences, than any 
 of their neighbours. " Lithuania and Samogitia are, 
 as they were always, Russian or Polish, rather than 
 Teutonic." 3 Longer even than the other branches 
 of the Slavonic family, they gloried in the gloom of 
 paganism. It was also, perhaps, in their case, of a 
 deeper and more baleful shade than elsewhere. In 
 Lithuania the idolatrous instinct did not content 
 itself with revering the heavenly bodies, or the deities 
 in which here, as among the Prussians, the forces of 
 nature were believed to enshrine themselves. A 
 much less restricted form of worship was prevalent. 
 
 1 'Russian and Turk,' p. 326. 
 
 2 See page 156. 
 
 3 ' Russian and Turk,' p. 327. 
 
PRUSSIA AND LITHUANIA. 175 
 
 Lizards and serpents were not only venerated, but 
 actually propitiated by human sacrifices. Thus a 
 mission among the Lithuanians was likely to be 
 baffled by a grosser idolatry, and by a bolder defence 
 of it, than had been found in other countries. 
 
 About the time when schools were beginning to be 
 established in Prussia, and during the delusive lull in 
 the heathen activity of that land already noticed, a 
 son of a Lithuanic chieftain seems to have come in 
 contact with Christianity, and to have embraced it 
 heartily. His name was Mindove, and a Dominican 
 monk, called Vitus — perhaps one of the many 
 labourers in Prussia — repaired to Lithuania, by the 
 desire of Pope Innocent IV., in the hope of doing 
 something towards dispelling the dense spiritual 
 darkness of its people. The undertaking failed, 
 however, and for nearly one hundred and thirty years 
 there is no record of any missionary work in this 
 benighted region. 
 
 But in the year a.d. 1386, the Lithuanian chief 
 Jagal, who had inspired the Poles with a dread of 
 his very name, agreed to become their ally instead 
 of their enemy. He attached a single condition to 
 each side of the contract ; the young queen of 
 Poland, Hedwige, should be espoused to him ; and 
 he, on his part, would bring Lithuania within the 
 fold of the Church. 
 
 To this proposal the Poles made no objection, and 
 Jagal was accordingly baptized at Cracow, and re- 
 ceived the name of Vladislav. He then proceeded 
 to Wilna with his queen, attended by a band of 
 
176 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 Polish missionaries under the direction of Vasillo, a 
 Franciscan monk. 
 
 Christianity having been solemnly accepted as the 
 national creed, these ecclesiastics, in conjunction 
 with the archbishop of Gnesen and the bishop 
 appointed to the newly created see of Wilna, exerted 
 themselves to extinguish the grossest and most repul- 
 sive of the pagan practices. 
 
 Images were broken to pieces, sacred groves cut 
 down, holy fires quenched, and the serpents and 
 lizards hitherto held divine publicly destroyed. The 
 Lithuanians looked on, awestruck at first, and ac- 
 quiescing only by compulsion in the high-handed 
 proceedings of Vladislav. He personally took the 
 lead in all missionary work, for which his ac- 
 quaintance with the native dialects qualified him to 
 a degree unattainable by the Polish clergy. He 
 translated the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and other 
 instructive elementary formulas into the language of 
 the people, and, in many cases, beguiled his subjects 
 to baptism by the present of a white woollen gar- 
 ment, which appears to have been highly valued. 1 
 
 As at Kief, the candidates were assembled on 
 the banks of rivers, and there immersed or sprinkled 
 in large companies, a single name, such as Peter 
 or Paul, being often assigned to an entire division of 
 converts. 
 
 The Christianity thus administered by prescription 
 was not more deeply implanted in the hearts of the 
 
 1 Dollinger, iii. 286. 
 
PRUSSIA AND LITHUANIA. 1 77 
 
 Lithuanians than it had been among other quondam 
 pagans, by a similar method. 
 
 In spite of the orders of the grand duke, they 
 remained in many quarters secretly addicted to the 
 superstitious habits which they had formally re- 
 nounced. As late as "the middle of the 15th cen- 
 tury serpent-worship was still dominant in many 
 districts. And traces of heathenism are recorded 
 even in the 16th century. " l 
 
 In the year a.d. 1413, a Lithuanian ecclesiastic 
 named Withold, though but slenderly informed himself, 
 endeavoured to carry such light as he possessed into 
 the darkness enveloping the Samaites. 2 These tribes 
 had already been the object of missionary solicitude, 
 during the ascendency of the Teutonic Knights. But 
 the efforts then made to reach them had languished 
 and expired without visible fruit. 
 
 Withold, however, backed by the approval and 
 assistance of the grand duke, succeeded in winning 
 at least a foothold for Christianity. 
 
 The town of Wornie, or Miedniki, which had been 
 recently built, became the seat of a bishopric, to which 
 the energetic priest was elevated. He was sorely tried 
 by the tendency to total relapse which prevailed 
 among his people. Much obscurity clouds the actual 
 results of his labours, nor can the date of the real 
 and final conversion of these tribes be accurately 
 fixed. 
 
 1 Hardwick, p. 337, note II. See his references therein. 
 
 2 Perhaps identical with the wild Samoeids, "a section of 
 the Ugrian race." — Hardwick, p. 338, and note 2. 
 
178 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 It remains to glance at the Laps, in whose dwelling- 
 place on the confines of the Arctic circle Chris- 
 tianity was very tardily welcomed. 
 
 So far from comparing unfavourably, in point of 
 natural characteristics, with less remote and more 
 civilized nations, the inhabitants of Lapland have 
 been found, by those who cared to interest them- 
 selves in them, to possess not a few sterling qualities, 
 and in consequence have earned a fair reputation 
 among the travellers whose curiosity has led them to 
 brave the rigours of so unkind a climate. 
 
 Theirs, for example, is the conspicuous honesty 
 which we have seen also characterizing the early 
 Pomeranians. Even at the present day, scarcely any 
 precautions are taken for the protection of their 
 houses or property, and a general spirit of trust 
 appears to prevail among themselves. This is the 
 more noteworthy, because the Laplanders are natu- 
 rally by no means either incautious, or disposed to 
 confide in strangers. The reverse, rather, is the fact. 
 For so few visitors find any inducement to land on 
 their shores, that the normal attitude of the natives 
 towards foreigners is one of somewhat marked dis- 
 trust, based, to all appearance, on wonder and doubt 
 as to the possible object of their visit. It has even 
 been observed, with reference to the noticeable 
 absence of crimes of violence among these people, 
 that fear, begotten by suspicion of a stranger, is 
 almost the only operating motive to which any excep- 
 tional deed of bloodshed has ever been traced. It 
 is probably also to this distrustful feeling that the 
 
PRUSSIA AND LITHUANIA. 1 79 
 
 neglect of the virtue of hospitality, of which Lap- 
 landers are often accused, may be referred. 
 
 Rarely carried to excess either in sentiment or in 
 practice, we find the Lap free alike from what my be 
 called the graces and the failings of enthusiasm. 
 This negative peculiarity may doubtless be safely 
 ascribed, in some degree, to the ungenial atmosphere 
 and the monotonous conditions in which his life is led. 
 But it is impossible to overlook the thread of con- 
 nection between the natural traits of the Laplander, 
 even of modern times, and the features of the general 
 Slavonic character, as roughly sketched in the pre- 
 liminary pages of this volume. It was there stated, 
 that although under pressure the early Slav showed 
 himself capable of considerable bravery, yet his 
 courage was more passive than active, requiring to be 
 roused into movement rather than kindling spon- 
 taneously from instinctive warmth of temperament. 
 And attention was drawn in the same place to the 
 great powers of endurance with which the Slavic races 
 were justly entitled to be accredited. 
 
 Side by side with these remarks it will be interest- 
 ing to place the following reflections of a traveller in 
 Lapland, bearing date about fifty years ago. 
 
 " The Laplanders are, without doubt, of a very 
 peaceable and inoffensive disposition, rarely engaging 
 in quarrels, or hurried to any extremes by excess of 
 passion. A proof that their general tempers are not 
 violent or sanguinary, may be adduced from the cir- 
 cumstance that they never make use of their knives 
 for revengeful purposes, and that, though constantly 
 
l8o CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 provided with these formidable weapons, which are 
 worn round their waist, no instance occurs of their 
 drawing them when they happen to fight. 
 
 " The Laplander of the present age is no soldier • 
 but it ought not to be asserted, though he may be 
 deficient in the qualities requisite to constitute one, 
 that he is utterly destitute of courage. Courage 
 comes and goes ; shows itself in one thing and not 
 in another ; owes its birth in very many instances to 
 custom and habits of life ; and is frequently mistaken 
 for insensibility. If passive courage consists in the 
 patient endurance of hardships, the Laplander has a 
 just claim to it ; and if undaunted exposure to danger 
 constitutes active courage, he is not the less entitled 
 to the possession of this also." l 
 
 Missions to Lapland were organized in the first 
 half of the 14th century, nor were they by any means 
 unproductive of effect. 2 But Christianity was not 
 generally received until two hundred years later. 
 
 Among these simple people, engrossed in their 
 fishing expeditions and their breeding and hunting 
 of reindeer, legend in some of its quaintest forms was 
 early rife. Here and there it presents a groundwork 
 
 1 'A Winter in Lapland and Sweden.' A. De Capell 
 Brooke, pp. 163, 164, 165. 
 
 2 The paganism of ancient Lapland was of a complexion too 
 similar to the superstitions already noticed in other Slavonic 
 countries, to need any separate description. Witchcraft en- 
 slaved the population here, as elsewhere ; and numerous 
 deities were propitiated by periodical sacrifices. Mountains 
 were always chosen as the sites for altars, and were conse- 
 quently held in great veneration. 
 
PRUSSIA AND LITHUANIA. l8l 
 
 into which we fancy, as we read, that not a few of 
 the aspirations of Christianity would readily weave 
 themselves. 
 
 One of these fables may here with some advantage 
 be inserted, for in it we catch a distant and feeble 
 echo of more than one truth most familiar to our 
 own ears from childhood onwards. 
 
 "A long time ago there lived a Tadibi, whose 
 name was Urier. He was a Tadibi of the Tadibis, 
 and the wisest of all wise men. He was a soothsayer 
 of soothsayers. There had been no such master of 
 the craft since or before. If any man lost a rein- 
 deer, whom but Urier did he seek ? 
 
 " He had many reindeer of his own, and had visited 
 many countries. But he grew old, and perceived 
 that all was vanity, and that the world was growing 
 worse and worse. ' The reindeer,' said he, ' fall 
 off in numbers. The moss dies, or ceases to grow. 
 The game decreases. There is nothing but avarice 
 and deceit. I will live no longer in this wicked 
 world, but will go up to heaven !' So he told his 
 two wives to get things ready for a journey, and to 
 harness his reindeer. But he ordered that everything 
 should be new} and that no single piece of old stuff 
 was to be either used or packed up. So they got 
 themselves ready for the journey, and harnessed the 
 reindeer to a sledge. 
 
 "When all was prepared, he mounted aloft, and 
 drove through the air up into the sky. There were 
 
 1 The italics are not in the work emoted. 
 
152 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 four male reindeer in each sledge — one sledge for 
 Urier, one for his wives, who followed. 
 
 " They had scarcely got half-way when Urier's rein- 
 deer fell sick, and could go no further. There was no 
 need to tell him what had been done. He knew it. 
 His second wife had not obeyed his orders, but had 
 put the band of an old jacket in the harness. 
 
 " She would rather live on earth with her children, 
 than go to heaven with her husband. So he let 
 her go down. But the other went to heaven with 
 him." 1 
 
 We have been considering both the earliest rela- 
 tions of the Slavonic tribes to Christianity, and their 
 condition before it crossed their path at all. In 
 ending the survey, let us draw a little forward — from 
 the pale shadows of its icy home — the picture of 
 humanity framed in this old Lap legend. 
 
 We shall find in it very decided outlines of those 
 passionate yearnings which only the Peace of God 
 can hush. We shall detect in it the very prayer which 
 the tidings of Calvary came to answer. 
 
 With all his experience, and his wisdom, and his 
 proficiency in magic, poor Urier, though the master of 
 many reindeer, had discovered the hollowness of the 
 world. Nothing lasted, nothing satisfied, nothing 
 could be confidently relied on. His very strength and 
 faculties were becoming warped by age. " Vanity of 
 vanities ! all is vanity," he cried, echoing, though he 
 knew it not, the exclamation of one who, like himself, 
 
 1 'Russian and Turk,' p. 302. 
 
PRUSSIA AND LITHUANIA. 1 83 
 
 had tasted the most luscious draughts that prosperity 
 could offer. " Behold, all was vanity and vexation of 
 spirit, and there was no profit under the sun." 
 
 In the voice of Urier we hear the sighs of heathen- 
 dom, perplexed by the mysteries of life, and sorrow, 
 and death, and confounded by the discernment ot 
 something within every man which nothing without 
 could quiet or appease. 
 
 But if earth was unsatisfactory, there was a heaven, 
 where disappointment was unknown. Thither a wise 
 man should obviously betake himself. Thus Urier 
 the Lap issued orders that preparations for departure 
 from this world should be made. But perceiving with 
 a dim uneasiness that, to approach heaven with any 
 hope of admission, a man must be invested with 
 purity unsullied by earth, he declared that everything 
 tisedfor the journey must be new. Nevertheless, there 
 was, after all, a flaw in the arrangements. Some linger- 
 ing relic of the old life below marred the whole, and 
 arrested the upward progress. The earthly element 
 was, however, at last expunged, and fell back into the 
 world which Urier had left behind, after which his 
 ascent was uninterruptedly triumphant. 
 
 In the thoughts onwhich this and similar legends 
 were built, paganism " in the ends of the earth " was 
 blindly stretching out her hands towards an unknown 
 God. " Without holiness no man shall see the 
 Lord : " this was virtually her signal of distress. For 
 Who and where the Lord was, and whence the holiness 
 He demanded was to be derived, she knew not. Old 
 things were to pass away, — so far her instinct taught 
 
184 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 her. But that through the grave and gate of death, — 
 by the Humility of Bethlehem, the Obedience of 
 Nazareth, the Anguish of Gethsemane, the Sacrifice 
 of Calvary, — that thus alone were all things to be- 
 come new, — this was what she did not know, and 
 could not guess. The great problem of life she saw, 
 but its solution lay beyond her range of vision. 
 
CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 1 85 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 We have watched Christianity slowly creeping, like 
 a thread of lambent light, around and among the 
 Slavonic group of nationalities. After many inter- 
 ruptions and many fitful flickerings, the luminous 
 circle is complete. And all that remains is to cast a 
 briefly retrospective glance over the space which we 
 have been traversing. 
 
 The remark must be repeated, that the prominent 
 feature in the story now told is the peculiarly per- 
 sistent opposition encountered by Christian mission- 
 aries on Slavonic ground. 
 
 To the characteristics and the surroundings and 
 the history of the people, all already dwelt upon at 
 large, this remarkably obstinate antagonism may in a 
 great degree be traced. But this being freely granted, 
 it must also be conceded that no inconsiderable 
 amount of the difficulty which dogged the steps of 
 the missionaries and their supporters was due to their 
 own attitude. They generally failed to see that the 
 always essential qualities of patience and tact were 
 most imperatively needful here. And these graces 
 were consequently in too many instances conspicuous 
 by their absence. 
 
 N * 
 
1 86 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 Our grasp of the subject, however, would be very 
 defective, if we omitted to refer the mistakes, the 
 shortcomings, aye, and the crimes which disfigured 
 both those who would convert, and those who would 
 not be converted, to the complexion of the times in 
 which they lived. Allowances based on such a 
 reference must indeed be accorded in every similar 
 case, but their liberality should run parallel, not with 
 a chronological table, but with the particular degree 
 of darkness prevalent in the period under considera- 
 tion. 1 Pleas which may be urged in extenuation of 
 the barbarism of the earliest ages hold good likewise 
 with respect to the gross ignorance of a much later 
 date. 2 The gloom of the centuries before the Chris- 
 tian era was the gloom also of the Slavs and other 
 heathen nations, who played their part at a stage later, 
 by many hundreds of years, of the world's history. 
 
 1 "If we want to understand the religions of antiquity, we 
 must try, as well as we can, to enter into the religious, moral, 
 and political atmosphere of the ancient world. We must be- 
 come ancients ourselves, otherwise we shall never understand 
 the motives and meaning of their faith." — ' Chips from a Ger- 
 man Workshop,' vol. i. p. 57. 
 
 2 Note the remark of a great novelist upon the ignorance of 
 some English country districts in the last generation. " Strange 
 lingering echoes of the old demon-worship might perhaps 
 even now be caught by the diligent listener among the grey- 
 haired peasantry ; for the rude mind with difficulty associates 
 the ideas of power and benignity. A shadowy conception of 
 power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain from 
 inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by the sense of 
 the Invisible in the minds of men who have always been pressed 
 close by primitive wants."—' Silas Marner,' p. 5. 
 
CONCLUSION. 187 
 
 But it may be objected that the Christian princes 
 and potentates who encouraged, directed, and some- 
 times personally conducted the missionary enterprises, 
 were in possession of the Light as yet unknown to 
 the pagans, and that their violence, their fury, their 
 contempt for human life, and their indifference to the 
 rights of every human being, were therefore wholly 
 inexcusable. 
 
 To this it can only be replied that the action of 
 Christianity has been always very gradual, and usually 
 very slow. 
 
 The history of its missions in all parts of the 
 world exemplifies this fact on almost every page. In 
 its progress among nations, it was hindered, and 
 impeded, and compelled over and over again to halt, 
 if not to recede. Similarly, in its contact with indi- 
 viduals, it has won — shall we not say that it still usually 
 wins — its way to empire over the heart of man, not by 
 an impetuous leap, but step by step, here a little and 
 there a little, often checked, often chilled, but never 
 despairingly impatient of ultimate success. 
 
 Christian precepts ran counter to all the instincts 
 of such men as the chieftains of Bulgaria and Bohemia, 
 of Poland, and Russia, and Pomerania, in whose veins 
 the wild blood of Scythia was still coursing. The 
 time was not ripe for the imposition of the restraining 
 and tranquillizing hands of Christianity, though her 
 rites were widely administered and accepted. Life was 
 not valued as we value it, and the rights of personality 
 were barely perceived, much less worked into the 
 foundations of a creed. 
 
 N 2 
 
1 83 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 "When we examine the ancient mind all the world 
 over," it has been well said, " one very remarkable want 
 is apparent in it, viz., a true idea of the individuality 
 of man ; an adequate conception of him as an inde- 
 pendent person, a substantial being in himself, whose 
 life and existence were his own. Man always figures 
 as an appendage to somebody, the subject to the 
 monarch, the son to the father, the wife to the hus- 
 band, the slave to the master. He is the function or 
 circumstance of somebody else. The slave was a piece 
 of property, Krij^ia efi^vxov, and the old Hindu 
 law divided "cattle into bipeds and quadrupeds." 
 The laws of Manu insert the persons of the wife and 
 the son in the person of the head of the family, as if 
 they were absorbed and incorporated in it, just as the 
 several members are absorbed and embraced in the 
 unity of the body" " We see, both in the political 
 institutions and superstitions of antiquity, regulations 
 and practices which obviously imply, as the necessary 
 condition of their existence, a totally different idea of 
 human individuality, and of human rights, from that 
 with which modern society, and Christian society, 
 is animated. — A lawgiver cannot act against the 
 universal opinion of mankind in his day ; if he insti- 
 tutes any particular infringement of human rights, 
 there must be a premiss for that infringement in an 
 universal defective conception of mankind at that 
 day. Thus, the law of Lycurgus for the destruction 
 of weakly infants in Sparta at the very birth, would 
 have been impossible had there not been all over the 
 world, then, a very different conception of the right 
 
CONCLUSION. 189 
 
 of the human being with respect to his own life, from 
 what exists now. With us, the rights of man com- 
 mence with his very birth, and an infant an hour old 
 has an independent right and property in his own life 
 which the whole world cannot take away from him. 
 Had that been the received idea in the age of Lycur- 
 gus, he could not have founded this Spartan rule ; 
 but it was not. Mankind had not embraced, as yet, 
 the true notion of human individuality ; man was an 
 appendage to some man or some body. That the 
 infant was treated as the pure property of the State in 
 Sparta, was a result which rose upon an universal 
 defective assumption regarding man in that stage of 
 human progress ; it was a harsh and cruel use of that 
 assumption, but it could not have arisen without 
 that assumption as its condition/' — "The same 
 defective idea of human individuality, and the rights 
 of life, is shown in a fact which has a horrible 
 prominence in the history of ancient religions, viz., 
 the prevalence of human sacrifice. It is impossible 
 to suppose that any superstition, however strong, could 
 have so trampled upon the natural right of life, as the 
 custom of human sacrifice did, had there been at the 
 time that idea of the natural right of life existing in 
 the human mind ; that is to say, if that idea had 
 existed in any definite shape. The very selfishness of 
 man, and the very instinct of self-preservation, would 
 in that case have made him stand up for his own life, 
 against the claims of a monstrous and cruel power. 
 If we suppose such a strict and accurate sense of the 
 right of the individual to his own life as we have now, 
 
I go CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 no superstition, however ferocious, could possibly have 
 had force enough to withstand that sense, and sacrifice 
 individuals wholesale. There could not, therefore, 
 have been then that strict sense of the right and 
 property of the individual in his own life that there is 
 now ; and the institution of human sacrifice thus im- 
 plied, as the condition of its own establishment, the 
 defective idea of the rights of the individual man. 
 With these facts before us, we may understand how 
 deeply fixed in the mind of ancient society was the 
 idea of one man belonging to another ; how long a 
 time it must have required to uproot that idea, and 
 how, in truth, nothing but a new religion could do it. 
 Even Rome, with all her later material civilization, 
 could never completely embrace the notion, which lies 
 at the bottom of all modern law and religion, that 
 every man is himself, an individual being with an in- 
 dependent existence of his own, and independent 
 rights. The jus naturale of the individual is indeed 
 so self-evident now that we can hardly conceive so- 
 ciety without it ; and we are apt to suppose that it 
 must have been equally self-evident to any human 
 being, in any age, who had the simple exercise of his 
 reason. - But all history shows that, so far from this 
 idea having been always obvious to the human under- 
 standing, it has, on the contrary, been the slow and 
 gradual growth of ages. 
 
 Nor, perhaps, is the consideration valueless, that in 
 the early stages of society, before civil government 
 was formed, and before man had become a trained 
 and disciplined being, as — in a degree — he is now,, 
 
CONCLUSION. 191 
 
 some strong idea, such as that contained in saying, 
 "You belong to another, you are the property of 
 another," may have been necessary to control and 
 keep in bounds the native insolence and wild pride, 
 the obstinacy, the fierceness, the animal caprice, the 
 rage, the spite, the passion, of the human creature. 
 When man was rude, and government was weak, there 
 was wanted, for the control of man, some ideawhich 
 could fasten upon him and overcome him, and be in 
 the stead of government and civilization. Such an 
 idea was this one. The nature that can be turned by 
 nothing else can be turned by an idea. Instil from 
 his earliest infancy into man the idea that he belongs 
 to another, is the property of another, let everything 
 around proceed upon this idea, let there be nothing 
 to interfere with it, or rouse suspicions in his mind to 
 the contrary, and he will yield entirely to that idea. 
 He will take his own deprivation of right, the neces- 
 sity of his own subservience to another, as a matter 
 of course. And that idea of himself will keep him 
 in order. He will grow up with the impression that 
 he has not the right of ownership in himself, in his 
 passions, any more than he has in his work. He will 
 thus be coerced from within himself, but not by him- 
 self; i.e., not by an active faculty of self-command, 
 but by the passive reception of an instilled notion 
 which he has admitted into his own mind, and which 
 has fastened upon him so strongly that he cannot 
 shake it off." 1 
 
 1 Prof. Mozley's 'Ruling Ideas in Early Ages,' pp. 38, 39, 
 and 41, 42, 43. 
 
I92 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 No apology is needed for the transcription of these 
 passages at length, since it would be impossible to 
 express in more forcible or appropriate words, the 
 considerations which must be duly marshalled and 
 weighed if we would arrive at a correct estimate of the 
 people, to the record of whose words and ways this 
 little volume has been devoted. 
 
 The period and its people must be balanced to- 
 gether, for the first ruled the possibilities of the second. 
 Here and there, in almost every age, it is true, the 
 attention is caught by some exceptional character, 
 the avant courier of a progressive enlightenment, the 
 standard-bearer whose ensign is foreign to the eyes of 
 his fellow-men. But the main body of humanity can 
 only be expected to be abreast, and not ahead, of 
 their day. 
 
 That the outward profession of Christianity is com- 
 patible with conduct of a most defective, not to say 
 contradictory, description, our daily observation amply 
 testifies. But even when the change is inward and 
 real, it is not announced to us by the sudden and 
 brilliant effects of a transformation-scene. Into how- 
 soever " good " ground the seed has fallen, it is for 
 the most part silently, by slow degrees, and under 
 manifold difficulties, that the hundred-fold, or the 
 sixty-fold, or even the thirty-fold, is brought forth. If 
 the biographies of saints of every type are to be 
 allowed as evidence, it is plain that the spiritual life, 
 despite its secret joys, expands with tears, and toils, 
 and struggles. 
 
 Thus reflecting, we shall perhaps cease to marvel 
 
CONCLUSION. 193 
 
 that the characters of the turbulent princes and 
 excitable priests, whose swords gleamed above 
 the baptismal waters as an alternative too well 
 understood by the unbaptized, were not trans- 
 figured in their own passage from paganism to 
 Christianity. 
 
 That more might have been done, and that what 
 was accomplished would have been more durable, had 
 a holy life, instead of a drawn sword, been the method 
 of appeal, cannot well be doubted. Proofs of this, 
 indeed, are furnished in the occasional exceptions to 
 the rule of coercion which relieve the picture. 
 
 It must not, however, be forgotten, that apart 
 from the imperfect civilization and the slender 
 knowledge of the period, another source of the 
 fierceness which we deprecate in the Slavonic mis- 
 sioned, is to be found in the then prevalent influence 
 of the Crusades. 
 
 Into the current of this mighty movement, together 
 with much that was truly noble and self-renouncing, 
 every species of fanaticism, violence, and impetuosity 
 had flung itself. 
 
 The passionate impulse spread and deepened until 
 it inflamed alike soldiers and monks, citizens and 
 ecclesiastics, princes and peasants. 
 
 In the heterogeneous medley of devotees the tares 
 and the wheat were indiscriminately confused. Motives 
 were mingled, objects obscured, judgment distorted, 
 personal vehemence unchained, — and as this vast 
 complex influence swept like a torrent across Chris- 
 tendom, it infected, inevitably, every spring of mis- 
 
194 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 sionaiy effort. 1 Against its impetus, such milder 
 modes of conversion as were moulded upon Apostolic 
 models could not preserve their equilibrium. 
 
 The attractive power of the Cross thus disclosed 
 itself rather in spite of the system which enforced 
 external Christianity, than on the strength of it. How 
 singular, as they unfolded themselves by degrees be- 
 fore pagan eyes, the Christian doctrines must have at 
 first appeared to heathendom, is instructively brought 
 home to us in the subjoined words of a writer already 
 laid under contribution in the earlier pages of this 
 book. 
 
 " Let us begin with that which we found to be 
 characteristic of the Asiatic mind, — the reverence for 
 physical strength. 
 
 " Nothing can be more clear on the very surface 
 of the Gospel narrative than that the standard of 
 heroism there contemplated is precisely of the opposite 
 nature. 
 
 "The individuality of the Brahmin has sunk into 
 nothingness before his admiration of that active power 
 which he beheld in the world of nature ; the indi- 
 viduality of the Christian rose into moral significance 
 in the presence of a contrary thought, the belief that 
 the highest strength was that passive power which 
 could sustain physical weakness. 
 
 1 ' ' Much as they — the Crusades — subserved the interest of the 
 papacy, entangled the relations of the Greek and Latin Church, 
 united nations and parts of nations by one great idea, and 
 modified in many ways the general spirit of the times, they 
 wrought no lasting changes in the area of the Christian fold." 
 — Hardwick's 'Middle Age,' p. 236. 
 
CONCLUSION. 195 
 
 " The object which the Christian idealized was not 
 so much a life that could do great things, as a life 
 that could bear great things ; not so much a power to 
 work, as a power to suffer ; not so much a strength 
 that shone forth in outward majesty, as a strength 
 that manifested itself in supporting outward meanness. 
 
 " This is, indeed, the distinctive and characteristic 
 element in the Christian ideal ; it permeates the whole 
 narrative like an atmosphere. The eye, in the fourth 
 Gospel, is summoned to rest upon One Who, volun- 
 tarily and deliberately, exchanges a Divine for a 
 human form, — refuses to grasp the empire of God- 
 head, in order that He may wear the garb of a 
 servant, divests Himself of an element of Life which 
 is natural to Him, in order that He may incorporate 
 an element of death which is foreign to His nature, 
 — empties His omniscience into a human knowledge, 
 His infinitude into a finite form, His eternity into 
 a temporal duration, His power of universal dominion 
 into a power of absolute service. 
 
 " The narrative is constructed in such a way, that 
 in proportion as the human limitations cluster around 
 the Life of the Master, the reader is made more and 
 more conscious of the Master's essential majesty, sees 
 His strength just where He is physically most weak, 
 and beholds His spiritual triumph precisely on that 
 field where He is physically vanquished, — the Death 
 of the Cross." 
 
 Further. The worship of His disciples is that 
 of " a strength which is strong by becoming weak ;" 
 their reverence, that of " a Life which is individually 
 
196 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 great by losing its own individuality, and living in the 
 lives of others. They find heroism precisely in those 
 qualities whose opposites had been the worship of 
 the Asiatic intellect. They assign a kingdom to 
 poverty of spirit, an increase of knowledge to the 
 increase of sorrow, an earthly empire to the power of 
 gentleness, a perfect satisfaction to the hungering 
 and thirsting of the soul. They see a higher triumph 
 in the peace-maker than in the war-maker, a superior 
 strength in the power of forgiveness to that which 
 dwells in the capacity for vengeance. They find the 
 most promising subjects of the new kingdom precisely 
 in those whom the Asiatic intellect would have passed 
 over, — in the labouring, the heavy-laden, the con- 
 sciously weak, and poor, and needy." 
 
 Once more. " The common assent of Christen- 
 dom" had been indicated by St. Paul "to a new 
 association of the beautiful, — an association which, to 
 the heathen mind, appeared the wildest of paradoxes, 
 — the union of glory and pain. Christ was Himself 
 the personification of the new aesthetic ideal. He 
 unites in one act the hitherto opposite elements of 
 glory and of shame. He looks forward to the hour of 
 deepest human frailty, as the hour in which the Son 
 of Man should be glorified. He declares on the 
 road to Emmaus, that the disharmony was an essen- 
 tial part of the beauty, that Christ must needs have 
 suffered, that He might enter into His glory. He 
 stands under the shadow of the Cross, and bequeaths 
 to the world His Peace, — He confronts the spectacle 
 of death, and speaks of the fulness of His Joy." — 
 
CONCLUSION. 197 
 
 " He proposed to conquer the heart of the world, 
 and to conquer it by the exhibition of His own 
 Heart. The founders of previous kingdoms had 
 sought to rule by placing in the foreground the 
 display of their personal superiority : the Founder of 
 Christianity resolved to subjugate mankind by the 
 sacrifice of Himself. The kings of former time had 
 fought their way to empire by shedding the blood of 
 their enemies; the Aspirant to this new kingdom 
 determined to secure dominion by shedding His 
 own." l 
 
 The foregoing reflections possess a double value 
 for us as we review the history of the evangelization 
 of the Slavs. For, first, they collect, and present in a 
 sharp and concise antithesis, the numerous points on 
 which the heathen and the Christian ideals clashed. 
 
 And secondly, they throw into strong relief the 
 winning combination of those very characteristics of 
 our Blessed Redeemer, which could not but appeal 
 to the feelings of such early Slavonians as were con- 
 fronted with the Divine Portrait. The participation 
 of their race in the power and grandeur of this world 
 was, in most instances, very small. They had long 
 been schooled, on the contrary, in the endurance for 
 which we noticed them at the outset to be naturally 
 qualified. 3 
 
 1 ' The Originality of the Character of Christ.' — Contemporary 
 Review, November, 1878. 
 
 2 Cf. ' Silas Marner,' p. 5, again. " To them pain and mis- 
 hap present a far wider range of possibilities than gladness or 
 enjoyment : their imagination is almost barren of the images 
 that feed desire and hope, but is all overgrown by recollections 
 
198 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 But in those cases — unhappily too few — where the 
 Divine Picture was suffered to plead Its own cause, 
 where a Voice, crying in the wilderness, bespoke 
 attention, instead of a sword flashing to command 
 submission, — what an effect must again and again 
 have been produced ! 
 
 For here was another and a glorious side to the lot 
 which these men had learnt to bear in sullen, stolid 
 apathy. 
 
 Here was One Who had spontaneously incurred the 
 verv conditions which rendered their own lives well- 
 nigh unendurable. And further — if, indeed, the Story 
 was not too sweet to be quite true — it was for their 
 sakes that He had stooped so low ! If this was 
 the Shepherd who came to seek and to save those 
 who were lost, what a home must His fold be for the 
 weary and the heavy-laden ! 
 
 But we have marked that, save in the ministra- 
 tions of bishop Otho of Bamberg, and of such as 
 he, the "green pastures and the still waters" were 
 not put prominently forward among the inducements 
 to a change of creed. They could be known, we 
 must never forget, to but few among the propa- 
 gandists themselves. 
 
 In the dying words of Vladimir Monomachus, 1 
 
 that are a perpetual pasture to fear." Spoken of illiterate 
 English peasants in their old age, these words are not less 
 pointedly applicable to the people of Slavonic birth and ex- 
 perience, whose characters it has been our endeavour to analyse. 
 The Pomeranians, it will be remembered, displayed a quite 
 exceptional gaiety of demeanour. — P. 109. 
 1 Or, 'The second,' A. D. 1113. 
 
CONCLUSION. T99 
 
 addressed to his sons, an echo remains to us of the 
 genuine, practical piety occasionally to be found 
 among the rough princes of the dimly-lighted ages 
 into which we have been peering. A few sentences 
 may here be given. 
 
 " O, my children," said this Russian Christian, 
 conscious that his life was drawing rapidly to an end, 
 "praise God, and love man. For it is not fasting, 
 nor solitude, nor monastic life, that will procure you 
 eternal life, but only doing good. Forget not the 
 poor, nourish them ; remember that riches come 
 from God, and are given you only for a short time. 
 Do not bury your wealth in the ground ; this is 
 against the precepts of Christianity. Be fathers to 
 orphans. Be judges in the cause of widows, and do 
 not let the powerful oppress the weak. Put to death 
 neither innocent nor guilty, for nothing is so sacred 
 as the life and the soul of a Christian. Never take 
 the Name of God in vain, and never break the oath 
 you have made in kissing the crucifix." 
 
 " My brethren said to me, ' Help us to drive out 
 the sons of Rostislav, or else give up our alliance.' 
 But I said, I cannot forget that I have kissed the 
 cross. I opened then the Book of Psalms, and read 
 there with deep emotion, ' Why art thou so vexed, 
 O my soul ? and why art thou so disquieted within 
 me? Put thy trust in God. I will confess my 
 faults, and He is gracious.' 
 
 "Be not envious at the triumph of the wicked, 
 and the success of treachery. Fear the lot of the 
 impious. Do not desert the sick; do not let the 
 
2 0O CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 sight of dead corpses terrify you, for we must all 
 die. Receive with joy the blessing of the clergy; 
 do not keep yourselves aloof from them ; do them 
 good, that they may pray to God for you. Drive 
 out of your heart all suggestions of pride, and 
 remember that we are all perishable — to-day full of 
 hope, to-morrow in the coffin. Abhor lying, drunken- 
 ness, and debauchery. Love your wives, but do 
 not suffer them to have any power over you. En- 
 deavour constantly to obtain knowledge. Without 
 having quitted his palace, my father spoke five lan- 
 guages ; a thing which wins for us the admiration of 
 foreigners." 1 
 
 The discourse then goes on to exhort to prudence 
 and vigilance in war, recommending ejaculatory prayer 
 when on horseback, should fuller devotions be im- 
 practicable. Princely mercy and hospitality are 
 earnestly inculcated, and the duties of activity and 
 diligence strongly urged upon the attention of the 
 hearers. 
 
 The devotional aspirations of the dying king are 
 quaintly intermingled with complacent memories of 
 his exploits in war and in the chase. He recapitu- 
 lates instances of his industry, his charity, his con- 
 quests, his intrepidity, his justice, and dwells with 
 especial satisfaction on his capabilities as a traveller. 
 " No one," says he, " has ever travelled more rapidly 
 than I have done ! Setting out in the morning from 
 Tchernigof, I have arrived at Kief before the hour 
 of vespers." But beneath the whole of this curious 
 1 Stanley's 'Eastern Church,' p. 313. 
 
CONCLUSION. 20 1 
 
 monologue there runs an under-current of thankful 
 recognition of the Hand Which had upheld him in so 
 many adventures, and delivered him from so many 
 and great dangers. " Oh ! my children," he ex- 
 claims, — and these are his last words, as he lay in full 
 view of that shadowy " under world," which to his 
 ancestors was a mere outlet from the domain of visible 
 phenomena, as fearful as it was vague, — " Oh ! my 
 children ! fear neither death nor wild beasts. Trust in 
 Providence; it far surpasses all human precautions." 1 
 
 The Russian primate had commended to the atten- 
 tion of this Vladimir Monomachus — probably on his 
 accession to the throne — the 101st Psalm, as a suit- 
 able framework for a monarch's meditation, as well as 
 a model on which he might with advantage shape his 
 life and his administration. 
 
 The king committed it to memory. 
 
 Let its injunctions, which a prince of the type and 
 times of Vladimir II. believed himself able to carry 
 out from beginning to end, close our examination of 
 the Conversion of the Slavs. 
 
 I. I will sing of mercy and judgment : unto Thee, 
 O Lord, will I sing. 
 
 II. / will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O 
 when wilt Thou come unto me ? I will walk within 
 my house with a perfect heart. 
 
 III. / will set no wicked thing before mine eyes : I 
 hate the work of them that turn aside ; it shall not 
 cleave to me. 
 
 1 Karamsin, ii. 202, quoted in Stanley's 'Eastern Church, 
 P- 3H- 
 
202 CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS. 
 
 IV. A frotvard heart shall depart from me ; I will 
 not know a wicked person. 
 
 V. Whoso privily sla7idereth his neighbour, him will 
 I cut off : him that hath an high look and a proud heart 
 will not I suffer. 
 
 VI. Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful in the land, 
 that they may dwell with me : he that walketh in a 
 perfect way, he shall serve me. 
 
 VII. He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within 
 my house : he that telleth lies shall not tarry in ??iy 
 sight. 
 
 VIII. / will early destroy all the wicked of the 
 land ; that I may cut off all wicked doers from the city 
 of the Lord. 
 
 Jhe End. 
 
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