The Papacy and Missionary Activity in the Early Middle Ages

Abstract

^ p H E era in Western European history extending from 590 to about 900 perhaps had no more prominent feature than the gains won by missionaries for the Christian faith. Beginning with the pontificate of Gregory the Great the Christian frontier was pushed steadily forward until new barbarian invasions, the collapse of the Carolingian empire, and the secularization of the church temporarily interrupted this progress at the end of the ninth century. These gains were made in the face of great odds. Gregory the Great, writing to the Emperor Maurice in 595, dramatically posed the following picture of the task facing the Christian world: “Behold, all things in Europe are given over to the rights of barbarians. Cities are destroyed; castles are tom down; provinces are without people. No farmers inhabit the land. The worshippers of idols rage and domineer in the murder of the faithful. And still priests who ought to throw themselves weeping onto the pavement and the cinders, seek vain names for themselves and glory in new and profane words.”1 Gregory did not live to witness great burdens heaped upon Christendom by the Moslems, the Avars, the Saxons, the Norsemen, the Bulgars, and the Magyars, all of whom sought and often succeeded in circum­ scribing the Christian realm. Neither did he witness an internal collapse of the western political and ecclesiastical structure so serious that one of his successors, John VIII (872-882), was forced to beg the rulers of the West to assist in protecting Rome herself against invasions by the infidel Saracens and their Christian allies.1 2 Nor did Gregory see the gradual bifurcation of what he seemed to think of as a single church into an eastern and a western church during the three centuries which followed his pontificate, creating a near schism which sometimes impeded missionary work.3 These developments only highlight the magnitude of the achievement of the missionaries of the early Middle Ages. The labor required to extend the Christian frontier during this era was shared by many groups. Among those was the papacy. In view of the repeated appearance of the papacy in the missionary record, certain questions arise, each having a bearing on missionary history and on the history of the papacy. How extensive was the papal contribution to the struggle against paganism? What was the exact nature of the papal contribution to the conversion of pagans? How