A most curious and question-ridden Denizen of Our Belovèd Forum asks a decent question! And Alexis Jacobi answers! Remember: we are (or I am) discussing the processes by with Mediterranean Christianity was brought into the uncivilized Germanic world. And also remember that Northern Europe “had issues” with the demands that a Pauline Christianity
imposed. True, the history in the book I cite from starts in the 9th century more or less, but you know what I always say: We are outcomes of long causal chains.
Curious Gary wrote:Can you give a comparison of the meaning of Christianity as seen through a "warrior" society versus as seen through an "agrarian" society? What does Christianity mean to a warrior society that is different from an agrarian society? What is the fundamental difference between the two interpretations? What parts of Scripture do warriors stress, and what parts of Scripture do farmers stress?
The Germanization of Christianity was not the civilizing of the Germans, but the Germanizing of Christ.
When Roman Christianity met the Germanic tribes of the north — Franks, Saxons, Goths, Anglo-Saxons — it met a culture that had almost nothing in common with the Mediterranean world that produced the Gospels. Rome was a world of cities, law, bureaucracy and universal ethics. The Germanic world was a world of blood kinship, warbands, and personal loyalty. Its highest values were courage, honor, revenge for insult, and undying loyalty to one's lord. Its lowest vice was cowardice. A religion that preached turn the other cheek, love your enemy, and blessed are the meek made no sense in that world. A god who died passively on a cross looked like a failed chieftain.
So missionaries, often without meaning to, translated Christianity into Germanic language in the deepest sense.
The clearest example is the
Heliand, a Saxon paraphrase of the Gospels written around 830 for the Saxons whom Charlemagne had just converted by the sword. In it, Jesus is not a wandering teacher but a mighty warlord, a ring-giver who rewards his followers with treasure. His disciples are not fishermen and tax collectors but gesiths [a wellborn companion or attendant of an Anglo-Saxon king : THANE], sworn warriors of his comitatus [a body of wellborn men attached to a king or chieftain by the duty of military service] who have pledged to die for him. The Sermon on the Mount is delivered as advice from a lord to his retainers before battle. When Christ goes to the cross, the poet describes him as a battle-hardened king choosing his fate.
This was not just poetry. It was how conversion actually worked. Germanic peoples did not have a concept of religion as a private belief. Religion was tribal luck. You worshiped the gods who gave your people victory. So kings converted in the Germanic way. Clovis, king of the Franks, reportedly called on Christ in the middle of the Battle of Tolbiac in 496, promising that if Christ gave him victory he would follow him. He won, so he and his warband were baptized. It was a bargain with a stronger patron.
Once inside the Church, Christianity was reshaped to fit Germanic ideas of law and kinship. Romans thought of sin as guilt before a divine judge. Germans thought of wrongdoing as a debt that must be paid to the injured party through
weregild [the value set in Anglo-Saxon and Germanic law upon human life in accordance with rank and paid as compensation to the kindred or lord of a slain person], a “man-price”. The Church adapted by creating penitentials, which were essentially price lists for sin: steal a cow, do forty days on bread and water; kill a priest, do seven years; ask too many questions of Alexis Jacobi in one post, pay an extraordinary fine.
This is the direct ancestor of the medieval indulgence system that Luther would later protest. Sin became a quantifiable debt you could pay off.
Baptism itself became a new kind of blood adoption. To be baptized was to leave your old kin and be grafted into Christ's tribe. Your godfather became not a spiritual metaphor but a real kinsman bound to avenge you and pay
weregild if you were harmed. Saints became new tribal ancestors. Just as each German tribe had its patron ancestor, now each kingdom had its patron saint in heaven — Saint Denis for the Franks, Saint Wenceslas for the Czechs, Saint Olaf for the Norwegians — who fought for their people as a heavenly warlord.
Even the Church's organization changed. A Roman bishop was an urban magistrate. A Germanic bishop became a lord with a fortress, vassals, and armed men. An abbey became a fortified manor. The abbot was no longer just a spiritual father but a territorial chieftain who could lead knights into battle, as the abbots of Fulda and St. Gall often did.
What emerged by the year 1000 was a new kind of Christianity. For early Christians, war was a tragic necessity to be regretted. For Germanized Christians, war could be the highest act of devotion. To die fighting for Christ, as in the Crusades, became a form of martyrdom. Heaven was no longer imagined as a city of peace, but as a great hall where Christ the victorious king feasted his loyal warriors. The image of Christ himself shifted from the suffering servant to
Christus Victor, the conquering hero trampling the devil underfoot, much like Odin defeating his enemies.
Churchmen like Alcuin complained about this and warned that faith must come by persuasion, not force, and that German customs should not corrupt the Gospel. But the compromise worked. By making Christ a Germanic lord, the Church survived the fall of Rome. It created a faith that a Saxon warrior could understand and die for, but it was a faith that Paul of Tarsus would have hardly recognized.
