LV.

due reverence to the superior majesty of the purple.75 In CHAP. the sacrament of baptism, she received the venerable name of the empress Helena; and her conversion might be preceded or followed by her uncle, two interpreters, sixteen damsels, of an higher, and eighteen of a lower rank, twentytwo domestics or ministers, and forty-four Russian mer, chants, 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 propa gation 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 examples 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 baptise; 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 hea- Of Wolo. ven to join in the devotion of the Christians. But the con- A. D. 988. version 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 cele

75 See the Ceremoniale Aule Byzant. tom. ii. c. 15. p. 343..345: the style of Olga, or Elga, is Apxovzicon '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 car of Demosthenes.

76 See an anonymous fragment published by Banduri (Imperium Orientale, tom. ii. p. 112, 113), de Conversione Russorum.

VOL. VII.

domir.

LV.

CHAP. brated 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.77 At his despotic command, Peroun, the god of thunder, whom he had so long adored, was dragged through the streets of Kiow; and twelve sturdy Barbarians battered with clubs, the mishapen 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 sacra

Christianity of the North,

...1100.

ment.

In the ninth, tenth, and eleventh, centuries of the Christian æra, the reign of the gospel and of the church was exA. D. 800 tended over Bulgaria, Hungary, Bohemia, Saxony, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, and Russia.78 The triumphs of apostolic zeal 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 testimo

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 peninsula with a new city of the same name, which has arisen near the mouth of the Borysthenes, and was lately honoured by the memorable interview of the empress of Russia with the emperor of the West. 78 Consult the Latin text, or English version, of Mosheim's excellent his'tory of the church, under the first head or section of each of these centuries.

ny

LV.

of their conscience and the respect of a grateful people; CHAP. 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 mis. sionaries; 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 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 libera! piety of the Russian princes engaged in their service the most skilful of the Greeks, to decorate the cities and instruct the inhabitants:

79 In the year 1000, the ambassadors of St. Stephen received from pope Sylvester 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).

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 jandudum 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 Situ Daniæ, &. p. 40, 41. edit. Elzeivir: a curious and original prospect of the north of Europe, and the introduction of Christianity).

470072

LV.

CHAP. 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 Jeroslaus. 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." 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.

81 The great princes removed in 1156 from Kiow, which was ruined by the Tartars in 1240. Moscow became the seat of empire in the fourteenth century. See the first and second volumes of Levesque's History, and Mr. Coxe's Travels into the North, tom. i. p. 241, &c.

82 The ambassador, 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. i. p. 304. 346. 360, &c).

CHAP. LVI.

The Saracens, Franks, and Greeks, in Italy....First Adventures and Settlement of the Normans....Character and Conquests of Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia....Deliverance of Sicily by his Brother Roger.... Victories of Robert over the Emperors of the East and West....Roger, King of Sicily, invades Africa and Greeece....The Emperor Manuel Comnenus........Wars of the Greeks and Normans....Extinction of the Normans.:

LVI.

cens, La

THE three great nations of the world, the Greeks, the CHAP. Saracens, and the Franks, encountered each other on the theatre of Italy.' The southern provinces, which now com- Conflict of pose the kingdom of Naples, were subject, for the most the Sarapart, to the Lombard dukes and princes of Beneventum ; 2 tins, and so powerful in war, that they checked for a moment the ge- Greeks, in Italy, A.D. nius of Charlemagne; so liberal in peace, that they main- 840...1017. tained 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

1 For the general history of Italy in the ninth and tenth centuries, I may properly refer to the fifth, sixth, and seventh books of Sigonius de Regno Itaha (in the second volume of his works, Milan, 1732); the Annals of Baronius, with the criticism of Pagi; the seventh and eighth books of the Istoria Civile del Regno di Napoli of Giannone; the seventh and eighth volumes (the octavo edition) of the Annali d'Italia of Muratori, and the second volume of the Abregé Chronologique of M. de St. Mark, a work which, under a superficial title, contains much genuine learning and industry. But my long accustomed 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 Rerum Italicarum.

2 Camillo Pellegrino, a learned Capuan of the last century, has illustrated the history of the dutchy of Beneventum, in his two books, Historia Principur Longobardorum, in the Scriptores of Muratori, tom. ii. pars i. p. 221... 345. and tom. v. p. 159...245.