Forced Christianization
Forced Christianization describes a Christianization of population groups carried out under duress or threat of violence . Mostly it also includes forced baptisms carried out on a large scale as individual, short-term processes, but is not limited to these.
The religious conversion of pagans or members of other monotheistic religions to Christianity was occasionally only a pretext for the pursuit of economic and political interests.
The term forced Christianization is mainly used in church-critical and neo-pagan contexts, but also in historical studies and in the cultural and religious history of the numerous peoples concerned.
Historical course
In late antiquity , during which there were riots on the part of both Christian and Pagan (pagan) sides, the Christian emperors passed various laws against pagans from the 4th century onwards. Theodosius forbade the practice of public cult practices. However, modern research has shown that the laws enacted by Theodosius were not strictly enforced in reality. In the 5th / 6th In the 19th century, the measures were partially tightened, but forced baptisms and the like. Not the rule, rather the pagan cults, which were already in decline, were deprived of their legal right to exist.
The largest Christianizations under duress in the Middle Ages include those of the Saxons by Charlemagne and the Prussians by the German order . On the part of the church, forced conversions were already criticized in the early Middle Ages . At the time of Charlemagne, for example, Alcuin criticized the royal procedure: a person could be driven to baptism, but not to believe.
literature
- Hans Bertuleit: The religious system of the old Prussians with Lithuanian-Latvian parallels. In: Meeting reports of the ancient society Prussia. Issue 25, 1924, ISSN 0259-787X , pp. 9-113 (At the same time: Königsberg, University, dissertation, from July 31, 1922).
- Karlheinz Deschner : Criminal history of Christianity (= digital library. 132). Volume 1-8. CD-ROM version. Directmedia, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89853-532-0 . (In particular the volumes on Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages; not subject-specific!).
- Simon Grunau's Prussian Chronicle (= The Prussian historians of the 16th and 17th centuries. Vol. 1–3). 3 volumes. Edited by Max Perlbach , Rudolf Philippi and Paul Wagner. Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876–1896, corrected version of the digitized material from Google Books .
- Johannes Hahn : Violence and Religious Conflict. Studies on the disputes between Christians, Gentiles and Jews in the east of the Roman Empire (from Constantine to Theodosius II) (= Klio . Supplements. NF Vol. 8). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-05-003760-1 (also: Heidelberg, University, habilitation paper, 1993).
- Hermann Hoffmann: The rural property in Warmia from the conquest of Prussia by the German order of knights up to the year 1375. In: Old Prussian monthly. Vol. 14, 1877, ISSN 0258-4077 , pp. 51-100, 193-250, (also: Jena, University, dissertation, 1877), digitized version (PDF; 28 MB) .
- Henryk Łowmiański: Beginnings and political role of the knightly orders on the Baltic Sea in the 13th and 14th centuries. In: Udo Arnold , Marian Biskup (Hrsg.): The German Order State Prussia in the Polish historiography of the present (= sources and studies on the history of the German Order. Vol. 30). Elwert, Marburg 1982, ISBN 3-7708-0732-4 , pp. 36-85, here p. 57.
- Karl Leo Noethlichs : Empire and Paganism in the 5th Century. In: Johannes van Oort, Dietmar Wyrwa (eds.): Heiden und Christians in the 5th century (= studies of the Patristic Working Group. Vol. 5). Peeters, Leuven 1998, ISBN 90-429-0711-8 , pp. 1-31.
- Lutz E. von Padberg : Forced conversion. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 34, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-018389-4 , pp. 586-589.
- Conrad Rethwisch : The appeal of the Teutonic Order against the Prussians. Moeser, Berlin 1868 (Göttingen, Georg August University, dissertation), digitized version .
- Otto A. Schneidereit: The Prussians and the German Order. Dietz, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-320-01865-5 .
- Wilhelm JA von Tettau , Jodocus DH Temme : The folk tales of East Prussia, Litthauens and West Prussia. Nicolai, Berlin 1837.
- Max Töppen : History of Prussian Historiography by P. v. Dusburg except for K. Schütz. Or evidence and criticism of the printed and unprinted chronicles on the history of Prussia under the rule of the German Order. Hertz, Berlin 1853.
supporting documents
- ↑ Arnolds Spekke: The Baltic Peoples in the first millennium of the Christian era. In: On the prehistory of the Prussians (= Tolkemita texts. No. 54, ZDB -ID 2368425-2 ). Prußenvereinigung, Dieburg 1998, pp. 19–41, (lecture given on March 3, 1938 at the Institute for Romance Studies in Rome).
- ↑ Alkuin, Epp. 110.