Saraceni, Carlo: The Martyrdom of St. CeciliaThe Martyrdom of St. Cecilia, oil on canvas by Carlo Saraceni, c. 1610; in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 135.89 × 98.425 cm.Photograph by Beesnest McClain. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of The Ahmanson Foundation, AC1996.37.1
By 315 many who saw advantage in belonging to Constantine’s new faith poured into the churches. The result was striking: small congregations of convinced Christians serving God’s outreach in the world became large churches with many nominal members whose instruction and needs had to be met. As multitudes entered the churches, the need for outreach to others was much reduced, and most churches shifted from an outward thrust to an inward focus upon themselves. Mission and service became the province of priests, deacons, and, increasingly, monks.
At the same time, mission beyond the frontiers of the empire continued. Ulfilas (c. 311–c. 382), Arian bishop and apostle to the Goths, translated the Bible into their tongue. St. Martin of Tours (c. 316–397) served in Gaul, and Patrick (c. 389–c. 461) laboured in Ireland. In Malabar, South India, a church of ancient tradition, demonstrably present since the 3rd century, held the apostle Thomas" class="md-crosslink">St. Thomas to be its founder. Frumentius" class="md-crosslink">St. Frumentius (died c. 380) from Tyre evangelized in Ethiopia and became the first patriarch of its church. In the 5th century Nestorians pushed into Central Asia and began a mission that eventually reached the capital of China.
In its first 500 years Christianity achieved remarkable missionary and theological acculturation. Through the first four ecumenical councils (325–451), and in the Nicene Creed (on the Trinity) and Definition of Chalcedon (on Christology), the church had stated its faith with meaning for the Greek and Latin worlds.
By the close of the period St. Jerome’s Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate, had appeared, and Christianity had become the official religion of the empire. The first great transition of the Christian mission—from Judaic Palestine to the Mediterranean world—had ended. Second transition, to ad 1500
Rome’s urban and literate world quickly disappeared under the barbarians’ westward onslaught. These conquerors established themselves as the new ruling elite. However, they recognized in missionary monks the bearers of a new faith and preservers of a higher civilization. The mission thrust of these monks contrasted sharply with that of the tiny persecuted church in the first three centuries. Then, except for the conversions of the city-state of Edessa, in ad 200, and Armenia, declared a Christian nation in ad 300, people joined the new faith individually. In this second transition whole peoples followed their sovereigns into the new faith.
Christianity expanded in the Byzantine Empire as well as in the remnants of the Western Empire, but it experienced a widening breach, and a split of the Eastern and Western churches occurred in 1054. Yet the major result of this 1,000-year mission was the creation of European civilization. Its emergence marked the second great transition of the faith. Western mission
The medieval mission began with the baptism of Clovis I, king of the Franks, and his soldiers, traditionally dated to 496 though it may have occurred as late as 508. The first Germanic king to be baptized by a Catholic bishop rather than an Arian one (through the influence of St. Clotilda, Clovis’s Catholic wife, according to St. Gregory of Tours), he helped to turn the tide against the Arians.
Irish Celtic Christianity differed from that on the Continent. It was organized into communalized groups under an abbot and nurtured intense missionary conviction and outreach. It did not recognize Rome’s authority. The abbot Columba (c. 521–597) built a monastery on Iona, off Scotland’s western coast, as a base for mission to Scotland and northern England. From it Aidan (died 651) traveled to Lindisfarne, off England’s northern coast, where he and a successor, Cuthbert (634/635–687), helped evangelize Northumbria. Moving southward, the Celtic monks might have evangelized all of Britain, but midway they met Roman missionaries. Other Celtic peregrini, or “wanderers,” evangelized on the Continent. Papal mission
Pope Gregory the Great (reigned 590–604), who possessed the mind of both a statesman and a theologian, greatly magnified papal spiritual power and temporal involvement. In 596 he sent Augustine of Canterbury" class="md-crosslink">St. Augustine of Canterbury and some 40 monks on a mission to England—the first papally sponsored mission. Augustine’s missionaries reached England’s southern coast in 597. King Aethelberht of Kent and his wife, Bertha, a Christian, enabled them to make their base at Canterbury. Within the year the king and 10,000 subjects had received baptism. Roman missionaries moving northward met the Celts, and at the Synod of Whitby in 664 the Celts accepted Roman jurisdiction and religious practices, including the method of determining the date of Easter each year.
Inspired by Irish missionary enthusiasm, the English Christians evangelized northern Europe. Outstanding in this effort were Willibrord" class="md-crosslink">St. Willibrord (658?–739), “Apostle to the Frisians” (Friesland, Holland, and Belgium), and Wynfrid, renamed St. Boniface (c. 675–754), one of the greatest of all Roman missionaries. In central and southern Germany Boniface established Benedictine monasteries for evangelization. With full papal trust and Carolingian support he strengthened and reformed the Frankish church.
Boniface, St.St. Boniface baptizing converts into the German church, detail from a manuscript from Fulda Abbey, 10th–11th century; in the Bamberg State Library (MS. Lit. 1).Courtesy of the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg
Boniface also saw the need for women in mission. From England he recruited Lioba (died 782) and entrusted her with developing Benedictine monasteries for women. Despite her outstanding and unique achievements, the movement ended with her death, and Roman Catholic women reentered mission service only in the 19th century. But the Christian wives of pagan kings, who led their husbands into the faith and through them hastened the Christianizing of whole peoples, also contributed to its spread.
In the 8th and 9th centuries, Carolingian rulers mixed military conquest and missionary activity, establishing the faith in pagan territories as they expanded the boundaries of their empire. Charlemagne imposed Christianity and his political authority over numerous peoples, including the Avars and Saxons. His son, Louis the Pious, sent a mission to the Danes in 826, and later emperors built upon this precedent.
In 955 the Holy Roman emperor Otto I defeated the Magyars and brought them to Christian faith. Later, Hungary’s first king, Stephen (reigned 1000–38), made the country a Christian land. From the Holy Roman Empire, Catholic outreach into Bohemia took root under King Wenceslas I (c. 907–929), with evangelization complete by about ad 1000. In Poland, Mieszko I, under the influence of his wife, accepted baptism in 966 or 967. His reign saw the beginning of the evangelization of the country, which continued under his able son, Boleslaw.
Early attempts at evangelization in Denmark and Sweden were made by a German monk, Ansgar (801–865). Canute I (died 1035), Danish king of England, of Denmark, and of Norway, was probably raised as a Christian and determined that Denmark should become a Christian country. The archbishop of Canterbury consecrated bishops for him, and he saw his goal realized before he died. Olaf I Tryggvason (reigned 995–c. 1000) was baptized by a Christian hermit, returned to Norway and was accepted as king, and sought to make his realm Christian—a task completed by King Olaf II Haraldsson (reigned 1016–30), later St. Olaf. Olaf I also presented Christianity to a receptive Iceland. Leif Eriksson took the faith to Greenland’s Viking settlers, who quickly accepted it. After several efforts Sweden became Christian during the reign of Sverker (c. 1130–56). Sweden’s Eric IX controlled Finland and in 1155 required the Finns to be baptized, but only in 1291, with the appointment of Magnus, the first Finnish bishop, was evangelization completed. Eastern and Nestorian missions