Quite similar in motive and process, but infinitely different in result, is the conversion of those Germanic peoples who did not aban don their ancient homes, but remaining rooted there sent out branches to overspread the more or less Romanized lands of Gaul and Britain. The Anglo-Saxons, coming over into England from about 450 onward and striking upon a Christianized Keltic population not greatly supe rior to them in culture; early developed a race antagonism which prevented any effective re action upon themselves. It was not until the close of the 6th century that they were visited by missionaries sent out directly from Rome by Pope Gregory I and converted to Christianity under the Roman form. Their attitude toward it seems to have been the same as that of their brethren of the lower Danube two centuries be fore. They accepted it at the bidding of chief tains who saw in it a means of sharing in the larger life represented to them by the name of Rome. A generation later Anglo-Saxon Chris tianity was undoubtedly promoted by Keltic missionary activity in the North. The Anglo Saxons appear to have been quite uninfluenced by their Teutonic neighbors and kinsfolk across the Channel, the Franks, whose conversion had taken place almost a century before.
The elements of the story in the case of the Franks are again much the same: a heathen king (Clovis) married to a Christian Germanic wife, to whom freedom of worship has been guaranteed, a series of persuasions all based on the superiority of Christianity as a working religion and finally a dramatic event, the vic tory of the Frankish host over a heathen enemy, and then a tribal conversion with wholesale baptism. In the account of these events writ ten a hundred years later by the bishop Gregory of Tours, the gods of Clovis are described in Roman terms as Jupiter, Hercules, etc., so com pletely had the sense of distinction among heathen religious systems disappeared from the Christian consciousness.
The decisive incident in these two northern conversions was that they were made into the fellowship of the Roman Catholic Church and thus determined for the future the religious allegiance of those two Germanic races which were destined to survive or to incorporate the rest. In the furious struggles for power among the Merovingian successors of Clovis, the Church appears as the one civilizing and human izing agency in a society that seems to be on the verge of complete disintegration. Yet even its influence was fitful and ineffective. The Roman bishopric, involved in a life and death struggle with German Arian invaders and with the re vived activity of the Eastern empire in Italy, was unable to offer to the West the unifying force it needed. The great efforts of Gregory
I in this direction do not seem to have had permanent results in placing the Church of Gaul on a solid basis. It was reserved for the newly established power of the Carolingian Mayors Domus, especially the sons of Charles Martel, about the middle of the 8th century. to reorganize the Frankish Church on the twofold foundation of national control and papal super vision.
This alliance of the Frankish state with the Roman power was strengthened by the effective work of the Anglo-Saxon Winfried, who under his Latinized name of Boniface became the active agent of both irt the definite establish ment of the Roman Church system in Germany. He was made first Archbishop of Mainz and was the founder of the monastery of Fulda in Hessen, long to be the most important outpost of Franco-Roman Christianity toward the still heathen Saxons and Frisians lying in The vast lowlands of the North from Rhine to Elbe.
The contemporary accounts of the long con flict of Charlemagne with the Saxons shoivs them at practically the same stage of civiliza tion as were their kinsfolk in the narrative of Tacitus 700 years earlier. Still almost un touched by Roman influences, they resisted with heroic courage every attempt to impose upon them Frankish supremacy and Roman religion.
Their final defeat and incorporation into the political scheme of Charlemagne was by far the most important contribution yet made to ward the upbuilding of a distinctively German Christianity. So complete was this process of assimilation that when, about a hundred years later, one of their own historians tells the story of their conquest, the tribal point of view is almost. wholly forgotten in the pride of the writer over the delivery of his people from the bonds of a degrading superstition. Epis copal centres were established at Minden, Paderborn, Verden, Bremen, Osnabruck, and Halberstadt, and were henceforth maintained as bulwarks of the Church against the still rampant heathenism of Scandinavia and of the Slavic peoples beyond the Elbe. From an early day the bishoprics of Germany shared with other landholding interests the character of territorial lordships. closely identified with the soil, loyal to the vast Roman ecclesiastical system of which they formed a noteworthy part, but primarily German in character and sentiment. In the struggles for power in the 9th century among the local chiefs the support of the great bishops was indispensable, and they came out in the 10th century firmly established as the equals of the highest among the lay lords, and even superior to many of those in the wide range of their influence and the security of their landed revenues.