Germanic Christianity

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The Germanic peoples underwent gradual Christianization in the course of the Early Middle Ages, resulting in peculiarly Germanic brands of Christianity.

1 Timeline
2 Characteristics
3 List of missionaries
4 See also

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Timeline

In the 4th century some Germanic tribes, notably the Goths, adopted Arianism. From the 6th century, Germanic tribes were converted (and re-converted) by missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church, firstly among the Franks, after Clovis I convert to Catholicism in 496. The Lombards adopted Catholicism as they entered Italy, also during the 6th century.

Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England began around AD 600, influenced by the Roman Catholic Church from the south-east and the Hiberno-Scottish mission from the north-west. The first Archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine took office in 597. The Alamanni became Christians after a period of syncretism during the 7th century, by gradual emulation of the new religion of the Merovingian elite.

In the 8th century, the Franks became standard-bearers of orthodox Catholicism in Western Europe, waging wars on its behalf against Arian Christians, Islamic invaders, and heathen Germanic peoples such as the Saxons and Frisians. Until 1066, when the Danes and the Norse had lost their foothold in Britain, theological and missionary work in Germany was largely organized by Anglo-Saxon missionaries, with mixed success. In the political and military sphere, however, the Saxons were the object of intense military pressure by Charlemagne and the Franks, culminating in the defeat and massacre of Saxon leaders at the Blood court of Verden in 787 and the annexation of the tribe.

From the High Middle Ages, the territories of Northern Europe were successfully converted to Christianity under German leadership, and made into nation states under the Church's guidance, finalized in the Northern Crusades. As a result, German and Scandinavian noblemen extended their power to also Finnic, Samic, Baltic and some Slavic peoples.

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Characteristics

Unlike the history of Christianity in the Roman Empire, conversion of the Germanic tribes took place "top to bottom", in the sense that missionaries aimed at converting Germanic nobility first, which would then impose their new faith on the general population. Consequently, Christianity had to be made palatable to these Migration Age warlords as a heroic religion of conquerors, a rather straightforward task, considering the military splendour of the Roman Empire compared to the comparatively primitive Germanic armies, and the legendary victory of Constantine the Great under the sign of the Labarum.

Consequently, early Germanic Christianity was presented as an alternative to native Germanic paganism and elements were syncretized, for examples parallels between Woden and Christ. A fine illustration of these tendencies is the Anglo-Saxon poem Dream of the Rood, where Jesus is cast in the heroic model of a Germanic warrior, who faces his death unflinchingly and even eagerly. The Cross, speaking as if it were a member of Christ's band of retainers, accepts its fate as it watches its Creator die, and then explains that Christ's death was not a defeat but a victory. This is in direct correspondence to the Germanic pagan ideals of fealty to one's lord. This tie between the Christian religion and Germanic nobility is perceptible in the German Holy Roman Empire of the High Middle Ages, and the division from Roman Christianty was latent in the chronic power-struggle between the Emperor and the Pope.

From the 16th century this tension erupted in the Protestant Reformation (the last German Emperor to be crowned by the Pope was Maximilian I in 1493), which took hold almost exclusively of territories where Germanic languages are spoken (Germany, Scandinavia, Britain), while Romance speaking territories remained Catholic (with the exception of Geneva, where Calvinism originated).

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