German mission

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As a German mission is called the Christian missionary of the Germans in the late antiquity and the early Middle Ages .

Late Antiquity and Migration Period

In the course of the Constantinian turning point at the beginning of the 4th century and the subsequent rise of Christianity to the state religion under Theodosius I in the late 4th century, missionary activity increased both inside and outside the empire. The first encounter with Christianity was with the Goths , who settled on the Balkan island north of the lower reaches of the Danube. They met prisoners of war who carried out missions in their captivity. Soon there were small Christian communities among the Goths, which were won over to Arianism by the Germanic bishop Wulfila († 383) . With his translation of the Bible he made the Christian message accessible to the Goths. The Goths and Germanic tribes in particular, who settled on the soil of the Roman Empire during the migration of peoples , often converted to Christianity as one group; however, usually to Arianism, which later led to problems with the Roman majority population who were Catholic. The baptism of Clovis I and a not entirely certain number of Franks - probably (but not certain) in the year 498 for the Catholic Confession was of historical importance . Here the king played an important role, since with his conversion a large part of the tribe passed over. in the Visigoth Empire, on the other hand, King Rekkared I implemented the conversion of the Visigoths from the Arian to the Catholic creed in 589. Mission activity outside the Roman Empire was sporadic and hardly targeted until the fall of the Western Roman Empire .

Early middle ages

Until the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Christianity could only gain a foothold outside the imperial borders in Europe in Celtic Ireland . The Irish-Scottish mission from parts of Central Europe by wandering monks began in the 6th century. Similarly, with the loss of the emperor as a possible missionary master, a state mission in the formerly Roman-controlled area was no longer possible. Only Carolingian rulers - it is disputed whether possibly since the last important Merovingian Dagobert I - resolutely resumed missionary work. The Roman Church first appeared under Gregory the Great as a mission leader in Anglo-Saxon England . Forced proselytizing was out of the question from a church perspective in the early Middle Ages, although Gregor also considered the possibility of using armed force against a pagan authorities who hindered proselytizing. Ideas that inspired the later Crusades to Eastern Europe came from later times.

Charlemagne's violent mission to Saxony led to the expansion of the Frankish Empire to the north and east. The Northern Germans, especially the Svear (eponymous for Sweden), partially escaped Christianization in Scandinavia until the 12th century.

See also

literature

credentials

  1. ↑ Martin Heimgartner: Mission , in: Der Neue Pauly , Vol. 8 (2000), Col. 266-268
  2. ↑ Ludwig Hödl: Mission: B. Latin Church Occident . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 6, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-7608-8906-9 , Sp. 670-674.