90 FOURTH PEKIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
French, Scotch-Irish, English, and Greek. It began at the close of the second century, when Irenseus spoke of Christian congregations in the two Germanics,1 i. e. Germania prima and secunda, on the upper and lower Rhine ; and it was substantially completed in the age of Charlemagne in the eighth century. But nearly the entire North-Eastern part of Germany, which was inhabited mostly by Slavonic tribes, remained heathen till the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.
We must distinguish especially three stages: 1) the prepara tory labors of Italian, French, and Scotch-Irish missionaries ; 2) the consolidating romanizing work of Boniface of England and his successors; 3) the forcible military conversion of the Saxons under Charlemagne. The fourth and last missionary stage, the conversion of the Prussians and Slavonic races in North -Eastern Germany, belongs to the next period.
The light of Christianity came to Germany first from the Roman empire in the Roman colonies on the Rhine. At the council of Aries in 314, there was a bishop Maternus of Cologne with his deacon, Macrinus, and a bishop of Treves by the name of Agrocius.
In the fifth century the mysterious SEVERINUS from the East appeared among the savages on the banks of the Danube in Bavaria as an angel of mercy, walking bare-footed in mid-winter, redeeming prisoners of war, bringing food and clothing with the comfort of the Gospel to the poor and unfortunate, and won by his self-denying labors universal esteem. French monks and hermits left traces of their work at St. Goar, St. Elig, Wulfach, and other places on the charming banks of the Rhine. The efficient labors of COLTJMBANUS and his Irish companions and pupils extended from the Vosges to South Germany and Eastern Switzerland. WILLEBKOKD, an Anglo-Saxon, brought up in an Irish convent, left with twelve brethren for Holland (690), became the Apostle of the Friesians, and was consecrated
al ev raZf Tepfiaviai^ Idpvuevat eKntyoiai. Adv. hczr. I. 10, 2.
224. GERMAN MISSIONARIES BEFORE BONIFACE. 91
by the Pope the first bishop of Utrecht (Trajectum), under the name of Clemens. lie developed an extensive activity of nearly fifty years till his death (739).
When Boniface arrived in Germany he found nearly in all parts which he visited, especially in Bavaria and Thuringia, missionaries and bishops independent of Rome, and his object was fully as much to romanize this earlier Christianity as to convert the heathen. He transferred the conflict between the Anglo-Saxon mission of Rome and the older Keltic Christianity of Patrick and Columba and their successors from England to German soil, and repeated the role of Augustin of Canterbury. The old Easter controversy disappears after Columbanns, and the chief objects of dispute were freedom from popery and cleri cal marriage. In both respects, Boniface succeeded, after a hard struggle, in romanizing Germany.
The leaders of the opposition to Rome and to Bonifacius among his predecessors and contemporaries were ADEI.BKRT and CLEMENS. We know them only from the letters of Boniface, which represent them in a very unfavorable light. Adelbert, or Aldebert (Eldebert), was a Gaul by nation, and perhaps bishop of Soissons ; at all events he labored on the French side of the Rhine, had received episcopal ordination, and enjoyed great popularity from his preaching, being regarded as an apostle, a patron, and a worker of miracles. According to Boniface, he was a second Simon Magus, or immoral impostor, who deceived the people by false miracles and relics, claimed equal rank with the apostles, set up crosses and oratories in the fields, consecrated buildings in his own name, led women astray, and boasted to have relics better than those of Rome, and brought to him by an angel from the ends of the earth. Clemens was a Scotchman (Irishman), and labored in East Franconia. He opposed eccle siastical traditions and clerical celibacy, and had two sons. He held marriage with a brother's widow to be valid, and had pecu liar views of divine predestination and Christ's descent into Hades. Aldebert and Clemens were condemned without a