the mother of God: and the image of the Virgin Mary, with the divine infant in her arms, was placed on a triumphal car, adorned with the spoils of war and the ensigns of Bulgarian royalty. Zimisces made his public entry on horseback; the diadem on his head, a crown of laurel in his hand; and Constantinople was astonished to applaud the martial virtues of her sovereign.72 Conversion of Russia, A.D. 864. Photius of Constantinople, a patriarch whose ambition was equal to his curiosity, congratulates himself and the Greek church on the conversion of the Russians.73 Those fierce and bloody barbarians had been persuaded, by the voice of reason and religion, to acknowledge Jesus for their God, the Christian missionaries for their teachers, and the Romans for their friends and brethren. His triumph was transient and premature. In the various fortune of their piratical adventures, some Russian chiefs might allow themselves to be sprinkled with the waters of baptism; and a Greek bishop, with the name of metropolitan, might administer the sacraments in the church of Kiow to a congregation of slaves and natives. But the seed of the Gospel was sown on a barren soil : many were the apostates, the converts were few, and the baptism of Olga may be fixed as the æra of Russian Christianity." A female, perhaps of the basest origin, who could revenge the death and assume the sceptre of her husband Igor, must have been endowed with those active virtues which command the fear and obedience of barbarians. In a moment of foreign and domestic peace she sailed from Kiow to Constantinople, and the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus has described, with minute diligence, the ceremonial of her reception in his capital and palace. The steps, the titles, the salutations, the banquet, the presents, were exquisitely adjusted to gratify the vanity of the stranger, with due reverence to the superior majesty of the purple.75 In the sacrament of baptism she received the venerable name of the empress Helena; Baptism of 72 In the narrative of this war Leo the Deacon (apud Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. A.D. 968-973) is more authentic and circumstantial than Cedrenus (tom. ii. p. 660-683) and Zonaras (tom. ii. p. 205-214). These declaimers have multiplied to 308,000 and 330,000 men those Russian forces of which the contemporary had given a moderate and consistent account. 73 Phot. Epistol. ii. No. 35, p. 58, edit. Montacut. It was unworthy of the learning of the editor to mistake the Russian nation, rò 'Pas, for a war-cry of the Bulgarians; nor did it become the enlightened patriarch to accuse the Sclavonian idolaters s 'Eλλnvixñs xaì àdiov dogns. They were neither Greeks nor atheists. M. Levêque has extracted, from old chronicles and modern researches, the most satisfactory account of the religion of the Slavi and the conversion of Russia (Hist. de Russie, tom. i. p. 35-54, 59, 92, 93, 113-121, 124-129, 148, 149, &c.). 75 See the Ceremoniale Aula Byzant. tom. ii. c. 15, p. 343-345: the style of Olga, or Elga, is 'Agxotira Parias. For the chief of barbarians the Greeks whimsically borrowed the title of an Athenian magistrate, with a female termination, which would have astonished the ear of Demosthener. and her conversion might be preceded or followed by her unc.c, two interpreters, sixteen damsels of an higher, and eighteen of a lower rank, twenty-two domestics or ministers, and forty-four Russian merchants, who composed the retinue of the great princess Olga. After her return to Kiow and Novogorod, she firmly persisted in her new religion; but her labours in the propagation of the Gospel were not crowned with success; and both her family and nation adhered with obstinacy or indifference to the gods of their fathers. Her son Swatoslaus was apprehensive of the scorn and ridicule of his companions; and her grandson Wolodomir devoted his youthful zeal to multiply and decorate the monuments of ancient worship. The savage deities of the North were still propitiated with human sacrifices: in the choice of the victim a citizen was preferred to a stranger, a Christian to an idolater; and the father who defended his son from the sacerdotal knife was involved in the same doom by the rage of a fanatic tumult. Yet the lessons and example of the pious Olga had made a deep, though secret, impression on the minds of the prince and people: the Greek missionaries continued to preach, to dispute, and to baptize; and the ambassadors or merchants of Russia compared the idolatry of the woods with the elegant superstition of Constantinople. They had gazed with admiration on the dome of St. Sophia the lively pictures of saints and martyrs, the riches of the altar, the number and vestments of the priests, the pomp and order of the ceremonies; they were edified by the alternate succession of devout silence and harmonious song; nor was it difficult to persuade them that a choir of angels descended each day from heaven to join in the devotion of the Christians.76 But the conversion of Wolodomir was determined, or hastened, by his desire of a Roman bride. At the same time, and in the city of Cherson, the rites of baptism and marriage were celebrated by the Christian pontiff: the city he restored to the emperor Basil, the brother of his spouse; but the brazen gates were transported, as it is said, to Novogorod, and erected before the first church as a trophy of his victory and faith." At his despotic command Peroun, the of Wolodomir, A.D. 988. 76 See an anonymous fragment, published by Banduri (Imperium Orientale, tom. ii. p. 112, 113), de Conversione Russorum. 77 Cherson, or Corsun, is mentioned by Herberstein (apud Pagi, tom. iv. p. 56) as the place of Wolodomir's baptism and marriage; and both the tradition and the gates are still preserved at Novogorod. Yet an observing traveller transports the brazen gates from Magdeburg in Germany (Coxe's Travels into Russia, &c., vol. i. p. 452), and quotes an inscription which seems to justify his opinion. The modern reader must not confound this old Cherson of the Tauric or Crimean penins ila with a new city of the same name which has arisen near the mouth of the Borysthenes, and wet lately honoured by the memorable interview of the empress of Russia with the emperor of the West. god of thunder, whom he had so long adored, was dragged through the streets of Kiow, and twelve sturdy barbarians battered with clubs the misshapen image, which was indignantly cast into the waters of the Borysthenes. The edict of Wolodomir had proclaimed that all who should refuse the rites of baptism would be treated as the enemies of God and their prince; and the rivers were instantly filled with many thousands of obedient Russians, who acquiesced in the truth and excellence of a doctrine which had been embraced by the great duke and his boyars. In the next generation the relics of paganism were finally extirpated; but as the two brothers of Wolodomir had died without baptism, their bones were taken from the grave and sanctified by an irregular and posthumous sacrament. of the North, 78 In the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries of the Christian æra the Christianity reign of the Gospel and of the church was extended over Bulgaria, Hungary, Bohemia, Saxony, Denmark, Norway, A.D. 800-1100. Sweden, Poland, and Russia. The triumphs of apostolic zea. were repeated in the iron age of Christianity; and the northern and eastern regions of Europe submitted to a religion more different in theory than in practice from the worship of their native idols. A laudable ambition excited the monks both of Germany and Greece to visit the tents and huts of the barbarians: poverty, hardships, and dangers were the lot of the first missionaries; their courage was active and patient; their motive pure and meritorious; their present reward consisted in the testimony of their conscience and the respect of a grateful people; but the fruitful harvest of their toils was inherited and enjoyed by the proud and wealthy prelates of succeeding times. The first conversions were free and spontaneous: an holy life and an eloquent tongue were the only arms of the missionaries; but the domestic fables of the pagans were silenced by the miracles and visions of the strangers; and the favourable temper of the chiefs was accelerated by the dictates of vanity and interest. The leaders of nations, who were saluted with the titles of kings and saints,79 held it lawful and pious to impose the Catholic faith on their subjects and neighbours: the coast of the Baltic, from Holstein to the gulf of Finland, was invaded under the standard of the cross; and the reign of idolatry was closed by the conversion of Lithuania in the fourteenth century. Yet truth and candour must acknowledge that the conversion of the 78 Consult the Latin text, or English version, of Mosheim's excellent History of the Church, under the first head or section of each of these centuries. 79 In the year 1000 the ambassadors of St. Stephen received from Pope Silvester the title of. King of Hungary, with a diadem of Greek workmanship. It had been designed for the duke of Poland; but the Poles, by their own confession, were yet too barbarous to deserve an angelical and apostolical crown. (Katona, Hist. Critic. Regum Stirpis Arpadianæ, tom. i. p. 1-20.) North imparted many temporal benefits both to the old and the new Christians. The rage of war, inherent to the human species, could not be healed by the evangelic precepts of charity and peace; and the ambition of Catholic princes has renewed in every age the calamities of hostile contention. But the admission of the barbarians into the pale of civil and ecclesiastical society delivered Europe from the depredations, by sea and land, of the Normans, the Hungarians, and the Russians, who learned to spare their brethren and cultivate their possessions, 80 The establishment of law and order was promoted by the influence of the clergy; and the rudiments of art and science were introduced into the savage countries of the globe. The liberal piety of the Russian princes engaged in their service the most skilful of the Greeks to decorate the cities and instruct the inhabitants: the dome and the paintings of St. Sophia were rudely copied in the churches of Kiow and Novogorod: the writings of the fathers were translated into the Sclavonic idiom; and three hundred noble youths were invited or compelled to attend the lessons of the college of Jaroslaus. It should appear that Russia might have derived an early and rapid improvement from her peculiar connection with the church and state of Constantinople, which in that age so justly despised the ignorance of the Latins. But the Byzantine nation was servile, solitary, and verging to an hasty decline: after the fall of Kiow the navigation of the Borysthenes was forgotten; the great princes of Wolodomir and Moscow were separated from the sea and Christendom; and the divided monarchy was oppressed by the ignominy and blindness of Tartar servitude.8 81 The Sclavonic and Scandinavian kingdoms, which had been converted by the Latin missionaries, were exposed, it is true, to the spiritual jurisdiction and temporal claims of the popes; 82 but they were united, in language and religious worship, with each other and with Rome; they imbibed the free and generous spirit of the European republic, and gradually shared the light of knowledge which arose on the western world. 80 Listen to the exultations of Adam of Bremen (A.D. 1080), of which the substance is agreeable to truth: Ecce illa ferocissima Danorum, &c., natio.... jamdudum novit in Dei laudibus Alleluia resonare. Ecce populus ille piraticus. . . . suis nunc finibus contentus est. . . . . Ecce patria horribilis semper inaccessa propter cultum idolorum ... prædicatores veritatis ubique certatim admittit, &c. &c. (de Sitû Daniæ, &c., p. 40, 41, edit. Elzevir [c. 251, p. 161, ed. Maderi]: a curious and original prospect of the north of Europe, and the introduction of Christianity). SI The great princes removed in 1156 from Kiow, which was ruined by the Tartars in 1240. Moscow became the seat of empire in the xivth century. See the 1st and 2nd volumes of Levêque's History, and Mr. Coxe's Travels into the North, tom. i. p. 241, &c. The ambassadors of St. Stephen had used the reverential expressions of regnum oblatum, debitam obedientiam, &c., which were most rigorously interpreted by Gregory VII; and the Hungarian Catholics are distressed between the sanctity of the pope and the independence of the crown (Katona, Hist. Critica, tom. i. p. 20-25 tom. ii. p. 304, 345, 360, &c.). CHAPTER LVI. FIRST ADVENTURES AND THE SARACENS, FRANKS, AND GREEKS, IN ITALY. Conflict of Latins, and Greeks, in Italy, THE three great nations of the world, the Greeks, the Saracens, and the Franks, encountered each other on the theatre of Italy. the Saracens, The southern provinces, which now compose the kingdom of Naples, were subject, for the most part, to the Lombard A.D.840-1017. dukes and princes of Beneventum 2-so powerful in war, that they checked for a moment the genius of Charlemagne-so liberal in peace, that they maintained in their capital an academy of thirty-two philosophers and grammarians. The division of this flourishing state produced the rival principalities of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua; and the thoughtless ambition or revenge of the competitors invited the Saracens to the ruin of their common inheritance. During a calamitous period of two hundred years Italy was exposed to a repetition of wounds, which the invaders were not capable of healing by the union and tranquillity of a perfect conquest. Their frequent and almost annual squadrons issued from the port of Palermo, and were entertained with too much indulgence by the Christians of Naples: the more formidable fleets were prepared on the African coast; and even the Arabs of Andalusia were sometimes tempted to assist or oppose the Moslems of an adverse sect. In the revolution For the general history of Italy in the ixth and xth centuries I may properly refer to the vth, vith, and viith books of Sigonius de Regno Italiæ (in the second volume of his works, Milan, 1732); the Annals of Baronius, with the Criticism of Pagi; the viith and viiith books of the Istoria Civile del Regno di Napoli of Giannone; the viith and viiith volumes (the octavo edition) of the Annali d'Italia of Muratori, and the 2nd volume of the Abrégé Chronologique of M. de St. Marc, a work which, under a superficial title, contains much genuine learning and industry. But my longaccustomed reader will give me credit for saying that I myself have ascended to the fountain-head as often as such ascent could be either profitable or possible; and that I have diligently turned over the originals in the first volumes of Muratori's great collection of the Scriptores Kerum Italicarum. Camillo Pellegrino, a learned Capuan of the last century, has illustrated the history of the duchy of Beneventum, in his two books, Historia Principum Longobardorum, in the Scriptores of Muratori, tom. ii. pars i. p. 221-345, and tom. v. p. 159-245. |