Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- List of maps
- Acknowledgements
- Note
- List of common abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 From paganism to Christianity in medieval Europe
- Chapter 3 The kingdom of Denmark
- Chapter 4 The kingdom of Norway
- Chapter 5 The kingdom of Sweden
- Chapter 6 Bohemia and Moravia
- Chapter 7 The Kingdom of Poland, with an Appendix on Polabia and Pomerania between paganism and Christianity
- Chapter 8 The kingdom of Hungary
- Chapter 9 Rus'
- Index
- References
Chapter 1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 June 2009
By
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- List of maps
- Acknowledgements
- Note
- List of common abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 From paganism to Christianity in medieval Europe
- Chapter 3 The kingdom of Denmark
- Chapter 4 The kingdom of Norway
- Chapter 5 The kingdom of Sweden
- Chapter 6 Bohemia and Moravia
- Chapter 7 The Kingdom of Poland, with an Appendix on Polabia and Pomerania between paganism and Christianity
- Chapter 8 The kingdom of Hungary
- Chapter 9 Rus'
- Index
- References
Summary
THE PROJECT
This book is the product of a year-long research project I organized, conducted in collaboration with the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Bergen, and with scholars from several countries. Together, we agreed on a set of questions to be addressed, read each other's rough drafts and held a series of workshop discussions in common, so that the book is not a collection of articles, but a coherent whole where all chapters address the same issues. We worked as a team and all the participants contributed more than their particular chapter in this volume; in a way the entire book, including this introduction, is the result of our common work.
The extension of Christendom's frontiers by the Christianization of Scandinavia and central-eastern Europe, a process also linked to the formation of new principalities and kingdoms, was one of the most fundamental stages in the formation of Europe. It resulted in the incorporation of large swaths of land into a political system that eventually gave rise to the European states as we know them. In the medieval ‘making of Europe’, one can distinguish between several regions: areas that joined Christian Europe under the leadership of their own elite, and those that either remained outside Christendom or were subjugated by force. We focused on the first, where two developments coincided in time: as Christianity was introduced, local rulers also consolidated their power over these areas.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Christianization and the Rise of Christian MonarchyScandinavia, Central Europe and Rus' c.900–1200, pp. 1 - 46Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
References
Adamska, A. 1999, ‘The Introduction of Writing in Central Europe (Poland, Hungary and Bohemia)’, in New Approaches to Medieval Communication, ed. , Turnhout, 165–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1936, The Medieval Missionary: A Study of the Conversion of Northern Europe, ad 500–1300, New York and London.Google Scholar
Althoff, G. 1999, ‘Saxony and the Elbe Slavs in the Tenth Century’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. III, ed. , Cambridge, 267–92.Google Scholar
Axtmann, R. 1993, ‘The Formation of the Modern State: The Debate in the Social Sciences’, in National Histories and European History, ed. , London, 21–45.Google Scholar
1985, ‘The Conversion of a Pagan Society in the Middle Ages’, History 70, 185–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1993, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950–1350, London, repr. 1994.Google Scholar
Bede, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and , Oxford Medieval Texts, Oxford, 1969.Google Scholar
2003, ‘Défense de la Chrétienté et naissance d'une identité: Hongrie, Pologne et péninsule Ibérique au Moyen Âge’, Annales HSS (septembre octobre 2003/5), 1009–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1973, The Social Reality of Religion, Harmondsworth (first published in 1967 as The Sacred Canopy).Google Scholar
ed. 1998, Culture Clash or Compromise? The Europeanisation of the Baltic Sea Area 1100–1400 ad, Visby.Google Scholar
2005, The Discovery of the Baltic: The Reception of a Catholic World System in the European North (ad 1075–1225), Leiden and Boston.Google Scholar
1992, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire, Madison, WI.Google Scholar
1995, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World, Cambridge.Google Scholar
and , eds. 2003, The Anthropology of Religious Conversion, New York, Toronto and Oxford.Google Scholar
ed. 2003, The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, ad 300–1300, York.Google Scholar
1997, The Northern Crusades: The Baltic and the Catholic Frontier 1100–1525, 2nd edn, London.Google Scholar
Colpe, C. 1987, ‘Syncretism’, in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. , vol. XIV, London and New York, 218–27.Google Scholar
, and , eds. 2003, The Construction of Communities in the Early Middle Ages: Texts, Resources and Artefacts, Leiden and Boston.Google Scholar
Coviaux, S. 2005, ‘Baptême et conversion des chefs scandinaves du Ⅸe au Ⅺe siècle’, in Les Fondations scandinaves en Occident et les débuts du duché de Normandie: Colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle (25–29 septembre 2002), ed. , Caen, 67–80.Google Scholar
1999, The Rise of Christianity in Northern Europe, 300–1000, London and New York (first published in 1998 as Conversion among the Germanic Peoples).Google Scholar
2002, ‘The State: Tyranny of a Concept?’, Journal of Historical Sociology 15/1, 71–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2003, ‘The State: Tyranny of a Concept?’, Journal of Historical Sociology 16/2, 280–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duggan, L. G. 1997, ‘“For Force is Not of God”? Compulsion and Conversion from Yahweh to Charlemagne’, in Muldoon 1997, 49–62.
1972, ‘Processes of State Formation and Nation Building’, in Transactions of the 7th World Congress of Sociology 1970, vol. III, Sofia, 274–84.Google Scholar
2000, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, rev. edn, Oxford and Malden, MA (first published in two separate volumes, The History of Manners 1978 and State Formation and Civilization 1982; first combined edn 1994).Google Scholar
1983, The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
1989, Otto Ⅲ und Boleslaw Chrobry. Das Widmungsbild des Aachener Evangeliars, der ‘Akt von Gnesen’ und das frühe polnische und ungarische Königtum. Eine Bildanalyse und ihre historischen Folgen, Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. 1966, ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. , London, 1–46.Google Scholar
1997, L'Europe nouvelle autour de l'an mil: la papauté, l'empire et les ‘nouveaux venus’, Rome.Google Scholar
Gimbutas, M. 1989, ‘The Pre-Christian Religion of Lithuania’, in Rabikauskas 1989a, 13–25.
Gräslund, A.-S. 2003, ‘The Role of Scandinavian Women in Christianisation: The Neglected Evidence’, in Carver 2003, 483–96.
Gregory of Tours, Gregorii episcopi Turonensis historia Francorum, ed. , Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptorum rerum Merovingicarum, vol. I/1, Hanover, 1884, 1–450.Google Scholar
2004, ‘Les Enjeux de Constantinople et de Rome dans la conversion des Slaves méridionaux et orientaux’, in Cristianità d'Occidente e cristianità d'Oriente (secoli Ⅵ–Ⅺ), Settimane di studio della Fondazione Centro Italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo 51, Spoleto, 171–204.Google Scholar
ed. 1993, Conversion to Christianity: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives on a Great Transformation, Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heimskringla, or The Lives of the Norse Kingsby Snorre Sturlason, ed. and tr. and , New York, 1990 (repr. of Cambridge, 1932).Google Scholar
Homza, M. 1997, ‘The Role of Saint Ludmila, Doubravka, Saint Olga and Adelaide in the Conversions of their Countries (The Problem of Mulieres Suadentes, Persuading Women)’, in Urbańczyk 1997, 187–202.
Howe, J. M. 1997, ‘The Conversion of the Physical World: The Creation of a Christian Landscape’, in Muldoon 1997, 63–78.
Jensen, C. S. 2001, ‘The Nature of the Early Missionary Activities and Crusades in Livonia 1185–1201’, in Medieval Spirituality in Scandinavia and Europe: A Collection of Essays in Honour of Tore Nyberg, ed. , , and , Odense, 121–37.Google Scholar
1999, ‘Late and Peaceful: Iceland's Conversion through Arbitration in 1000’, Speculum 74/3, 621–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Jong, M. 2001, ‘Religion’, in The Early Middle Ages: Europe 400–1000, ed. , Short Oxford History of Europe, Oxford, 131–64.Google Scholar
Kajackas, A. 1989, ‘History and Recent Investigation of Vilnius Cathedral’, in Rabikauskas 1989a, 263–84.
1986, ‘Pagan Survivals and Syncretism in the Conversion of Saxony’, The Catholic Historical Review 72/4, 553–72.Google Scholar
, eds. 2004, Der Ostseeraum und Kontinentaleuropa 1100–1600. Einflußnahme, Rezeption, Wandel, Culture Clash or Compromise Ⅷ, Schwerin.Google Scholar
and 1989, ‘Paradigm Conflict, Types of Conversion, and Conversion Theories’, Sociological Analysis 50/1, 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kłoczowski, J. 1989, ‘La Pologne et la christianisation de la Lituanie’, in Rabikauskas 1989a, 137–57.
Kłoczowski, J. 1993, ‘La Nouvelle Chrétienté du monde occidental: la christianisation des Slaves, des Scandinaves et des Hongrois entre le Ⅸe et le Ⅺe siècles’, in Histoire du Christianisme des origines à nos jours, vol. IV, Évêques, moines et empereurs (610–1054), ed. et al., Paris, 869–908.Google Scholar
Kraft, C. H. 1992, ‘Conversion in Group Settings’, in Malony and Southard 1992, 259–75.
Leyser, K. 1994a, ‘The Ascent of Latin Europe’, in Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries, ed. , London, 215–32.Google Scholar
Leyser, K. 1994b, ‘Concepts of Europe in the Early and High Middle Ages’, in Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries, ed. , London, 1–18.Google Scholar
Lind, J. H. 2004, ‘The Concept of “Europeanisation” on the Baltic Rim as Seen from the East’, in The European Frontier: Clashes and Compromises in the Middle Ages, ed. (International symposium of the Culture Clash or Compromise project and the Department of Archaeology, Lund University, held in Lund, 13–15 October 2000), Lund, 41–4.Google Scholar
Lindkvist, T. 2004, ‘Christianization and State-Building in the Baltic Sea Area’, in Kattinger, Olesen and Wernicke 2004, 127–30.
1993, Les Slaves et leurs voisins dans l'Antiquité et au Moyen Âge, Wrocław, Warsaw and Cracow.Google Scholar
1984–8, Regesten zur Geschichte der Slaven an Elbe und Oder (vom Jahr 900 an), 5 vols., Giessener Abhandlungen zur Agrar- und Wirtschaftsforschung des europäischen Ostens 131, 133, 134, 152, 157, Berlin.Google Scholar
Lübke, C. 1997a, ‘Forms of Political Organisation of the Polabian Slavs (until the 10th Century ad)’, in Origins of Central Europe, ed. , Warsaw, 115–24.Google Scholar
Lübke, C. 1997b, ‘Heidentum und Widerstand. Elbslawen und Christliche Staaten im 10.–12. Jahrhundert’, in Urbańczyk 1997, 123–8.
Lübke, C. 2000, ‘Die Elbslaven – Polens Nachbarn im Westen’, in The Neighbours of Poland in the 10th Century, ed. , Warsaw, 61–77.Google Scholar
Lübke, C. 2001, ‘The Polabian Alternative: Paganism between Christian Kingdoms’, in Urbańczyk 2001, 379–89.
Lübke, C. 2002, ‘Zwischen Polen und dem Reich. Elbslawen und Gentilreligion’, in Polen und Deutschland vor 1000 Jahren. Die Berliner Tagung über den ‘Akt von Gnesen’, ed. , Europa im Mittelalter. Abhandlungen und Beiträge zur historischen Komparatistik 5, Berlin, 91–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mägi, M. 2004, ‘From Paganism to Christianity: Political Changes and their Reflection in the Burial Customs of 12th–13th Century Saaremaa’, in Kattinger, Olesen and Wernicke 2004, 27–34.
1986, The Sources of Social Power, vol. I, A History of Power from the Beginning to ad 1760, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Markus, R. A. 2002, ‘The Papacy, Missions and the Gentes’, in Integration und Herrschaft. Ethnische Identitäten und soziale Organisation im Frühmittelalter, ed. and , Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Denkschriften 301; Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 3, Vienna, 37–42.Google Scholar
1994, Two Conversions to Christianity: The Bulgarians and the Anglo-Saxons, The Stenton Lecture 1993, Reading.Google Scholar
Mažeika, R. 1989, ‘The Relations of Grand Prince Algirdas with Eastern and Western Christians’, in Rabikauskas 1989a, 63–84.
1994, ‘Of Cabbages and Knights: Trade and Trade Treaties with the Infidel on the Northern Frontier, 1200–1390’, Journal of Medieval History 20, 63–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mažeika, R. 1997, ‘Bargaining for Baptism: Lithuanian Negotiations for Conversion, 1250–1358’, in Muldoon 1997, 131–45.
Mažeika, R. 2001, ‘When Crusader and Pagan Agree: Conversion as a Point of Honour in the Baptism of King Mindaugas of Lithuania (c. 1240–63)’, in Murray 2001, 197–214.
and , eds. 2003, Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Seeing and Believing, Rochester, NY.Google Scholar
1933, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo, Oxford.Google Scholar
Noonan, T. S. 2000, ‘Why Orthodoxy Did Not Spread among the Bulgars of the Crimea during the Early Medieval Era: An Early Byzantine Conversion Model’, in Armstrong and Wood 2000, 15–24.
Paravicini Bagliani, A. 1994, ‘Il papato medievale e il concetto di Europa’, in P. Anderson, M. Aymard, P. Bairoch, W. Barberis and C. Ginzburg, dir., Storia d'Europa, vol. III, Il Medioevo (secoli Ⅴ–ⅩⅤ), ed. , Turin, 819–45.Google Scholar
2000, ‘Les États d'Europe centrale et Byzance, ou l'oscillation des confins’, Revue Historique 302/4, 827–68.Google Scholar
Pluskowsi, A. and Ph. Patrick 2003, ‘“How to Pray to God?” Fragmentation and Variety in Early Medieval Christianity’, in Carver 2003, 29–57.
Rabikauskas, P. 1989b, ‘La Cristianizzazione della Samogizia’, in Rabikauskas 1989a, 219–33.
Rambo, L. R. 1992, ‘The Psychology of Conversion’, in Malony and Southard 1992, 159–77.
1999, ‘Theories of Conversion: Understanding and Interpreting Religious Change’, Social Compass 46/3, 259–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ravid, B. 2000, ‘The Forced Baptism of Jews in Christian Europe: An Introductory Overview’, in Armstrong and Wood 2000, 157–67.
Reynolds, S. 1997a, ‘The Historiography of the Medieval State’, in Companion to Historiography, ed. , London and New York, 117–38.Google Scholar
2003, ‘There were States in Medieval Europe: A Response to Rees Davies’, Journal of Historical Sociology 16/4, 550–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rimbert, ‘Vita Anskarii’, ed. , in Quellen des 9. und 11. Jahrhunderts zur Geschichte der Hamburgischen Kirche und des Reiches, Darmstadt, 1961 (Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters XI), 1–133.Google Scholar
1992, ‘A Pagan's Word: Lithuanian Diplomatic Procedure 1200–1385’, Journal of Medieval History 18, 145–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1994, Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-Central Europe, 1295–1345, Cambridge.Google Scholar
1994, The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation, New York and Oxford.Google Scholar
Ryan, J. D. 1997, ‘Conversion vs. Baptism? European Missionaries in Asia in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, in Muldoon 1997, 146–67.
2000, Conceptualizing Religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives, and Unbounded Categories, 2nd edn, New York and Oxford.Google Scholar
1999, Social Transformations: A General Theory of Historical Development, expanded edn, Lanham, MA, Boulder, CO, New York and Oxford.Google Scholar
2004, Power and Conversion: A Comparative Study of Christianization in Scandinavia, Uppsala.Google Scholar
, and , eds. 1987, The Christianization of Scandinavia: Report of a Symposium Held at Kungälv, Sweden, 4–9 August 1985, Alingsås.Google Scholar
Shepard, J. 1992, ‘Byzantine Diplomacy, ad 800–1204: Means and Ends’, in Byzantine Diplomacy: Papers from the Twenty-Fourth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Cambridge, March 1990, ed. and , Aldershot, 41–71.Google Scholar
Shepard, J. 1999, ‘Bulgaria: The Other Balkan “Empire”’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. III, c. 900–c. 1024, ed. , Cambridge, 567–85.Google Scholar
Shepard, J. 2001a, ‘Europe and the Wider World’, in The Early Middle Ages: Europe 400–1000, ed. , Short Oxford History of Europe, Oxford, 201–42.Google Scholar
2001b, ‘Otto Ⅲ, Boleslaw Chrobry and the “Happening” at Gniezno, ad 1000: Some Possible Implications of Professor Poppe's Thesis Concerning the Offspring of Anna Porphyrogenita’, Byzantina et Slavica Cracoviensia 3, Cracow, 27–48.Google Scholar
Shepard, J. 2002, ‘Spreading the Word: Byzantine Missions’, in The Oxford History of Byzantium, ed. , Oxford, 230–47.Google Scholar
Skocpol, T. 1985, ‘Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research’, in Bringing the State Back In, ed. , and , Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and 1984, ‘The Sociology of Conversion’, Annual Review of Sociology 10, 167–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staecker, J. 2003, ‘The Cross Goes North: Christian Symbols and Scandinavian Women’, in Carver 2003, 463–82.
and 1968, American Piety: The Nature of Religious Commitment, Berkeley and Los Angeles, repr. 1970.Google Scholar
2000, Byzantium's Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strzelczyk, J. 2001, ‘The Church and Christianity about the Year 1000 (the Missionary Aspect)’, in Urbańczyk 2001, 41–67.
1994, ‘Khan Boris and the Conversion of Bulgaria: A Case Study of the Impact of Christianity on a Barbarian Society’, in Christian Missionary Activity in the Early Middle Ages, Aldershot, no. IV.Google Scholar
Thacker, A. 2000, ‘Peculiaris Patronus Noster: The Saint as Patron of the State in the Early Middle Ages’, in The Medieval State: Essays Presented to James Campbell, ed. and , London and Rio Grande, 1–24.Google Scholar
Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, ed. , Berlin, 1957 (Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters IX).Google Scholar
Tilly, C. 1985, ‘War Making and State Making as Organized Crime’, in Bringing the State Back In, ed. , and , Cambridge, 169–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1992, Coercion, Capital, and European States, ad 990–1992, 2nd rev. edn, Cambridge, MA and Oxford.Google Scholar
1996, ‘Saint Olaf's “Cruelty”: Violence by the Scandinavian King Interpreted over the Centuries’, Journal of Medieval History 22/3, 285–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tippett, A. R. 1992, ‘The Cultural Anthropology of Conversion’, in Malony and Southard 1992, 192–205.
1969, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure, London (repr. Harmondsworth, 1974).Google Scholar
1989a, The Samogitian Crusade, Chicago.
Urban, W. 1989b, ‘The Teutonic Order and the Christianization of Lithuania’, in Rabikauskas 1989a, 105–35.
Urbańczyk, P. 2003, ‘The Politics of Conversion in North Central Europe’, in Carver 2003, 15–27.
Urbańczyk, P. 2004, ‘“Europe” around the Year 1000 as Seen from the Papal, Imperial and Central-European Perspectives’, in The European Frontier: Clashes and Compromises in the Middle Ages, ed. (International symposium of the Culture Clash or Compromise project and the Department of Archaeology, Lund University, held in Lund, 13–15 October 2000), Lund, 35–9.Google Scholar
Valk, H. 1998, ‘About the Transitional Period in the Burial Customs in the Region of the Baltic Sea’, in Blomkvist 1998, 237–50.
2000, The Christianization of Iceland: Priests, Power, and Social Change 1000–1300, Oxford, repr. 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wasilewski, T. 1997, ‘L’Église de la Bulgarie Danubienne en 863–1082’, in Urbańczyk 1997, 47–52.
Wolfram, H. 2001, ‘New Peoples around the Year 1000’, in Urbańczyk 2001, 391–408.
2001, The Missionary Life: Saints and Evangelisation of Europe 400–1050, London and New York.Google Scholar
- 17
- Cited by