The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach.

The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity presents a series of related theses concerning the social and cultural evolution of Christianity during its first millennium. The most striking thesis is that contrary to the argument in several generations of Western Civilization texts, Latin Christiandom did not assimilate the German tribes, rather the German tribes succeeded in having their own cultural values accepted as those of the Latin Church. This thesis is supported not so much with new empirical findings or revised narrative analysis, but by a carefully constructed essay built upon broad reading in ancient and medieval European history, sociology and contemporary missiology. Central to Russell's case is a contrast between Latin Christianity as a "universalist" religion which through Judaic and Hellenic influences had become "world-rejecting," and the folk religions practiced by the Germanic tribes, which, as extensions of their communities, were essentially "world-accepting." World rejecting in this context has to do with a search for spiritual salvation, a search which, as institutionalized in the churches in the cities of the Roman Empire, offered psychic refuge from a world characterized by social and cultural disintegration. World accepting has to do with all celebration of cult which has as its goal some sort of advance in this world versus advance in the next. Most specifically with the Germanic tribes, it involved a religious glorification of war and the warrior status. To Russell's mind, the emergence of the idea of holy war, the incorporation of Germanic shrines and celebrations into the Roman liturgy, the propagation of Christianity through the development of an eigenkirchensystem or proprietary church system, the acquiescence of Christian missionaries with Germanic social values all indicate an appropriation and transformation of the early medieval Latin Church by the Germanic tribal warrior caste.

The strongest aspect of Russell's case is his argument for Germanic cultural resistance to assimilation into Latin civilization. While this is a point that has been made before, few have presented it with such systematic determination and with a concern to prove the vitality of Germanic values in the face of cultural contact. As Russell explains it, from the start the Latin need of Germanic military might far exceeded the German need for Latin civilization. The Germanic tribes were not barbarians with their noses pressed to the shop window looking in at the comforts of civilized life; the Romans were the proprietors of a "senescent" civilization from which "nascent" Germanic cultures took what they wanted. Among the things they did not want were the heterogeneous, anomic culture of late imperial Roman cities, and the religion (Christianity) which provided much of the sense of community which remained in those cities. Thus tribal leaders, while imitating the lifestyle of the Roman elite, consciously avoided educating their children in Roman values and, before Clovis, embracing Christianity themselves. Particularly intriguing is Russell's answer to the question of why Clovis turned Christian, an answer which emphasizes the degree to which the former's options were between a form of Christianity already ethnicized (Arianism) and a (Gallo-Roman) Latin Christian church quite eager to accommodate itself to his needs. Russell's point is that Clovis' motivation was entirely political, and that political considerations drove the conversion to Christianity of most tribal leaders.

Much less convincing is Russell's argument for the germanization of Christianity, at least for a reviewer who would expect such an argument to have some empirical demonstration instead of being a conclusion reached from a survey of secondary readings. Russell's construct of late Roman Christianity is something of a strawman given first that he provides a sociological definition for a phenomenon he wants to be understood in a cultural sense, second that he avoids discussion of Greek and Egyptian Christianity and the question of whether during the period under discussion Rome was an originator or a transmitter of Christian culture. Perhaps Rome was so accommodating to German sensibilities out of a need to create a constituency which recognized its authority versus that of Constantinople or Alexandria. Russell commits himself to validating the theories of Georges Dumezil on the nature of Indo-European consciousness. This commitment only confuses his case. Germanic tribal elites may have rejected cultural assimilation into a Latin world view, but he never demonstrates that there was something uniquely Indo-European about this rejection. Tribal elites in Asia, Africa and South America have found Christianity equally unsuited to their needs. Having insisted that there was something in Germans being Indo-Europeans which explains why they did not respond to the Christian message, Russell needed to indicate what this uniqueness was by reference to the reactions of other non-Indo-European warrior elites to Christianity.

This last criticism is especially pertinent in regards to literacy, the one aspect of the Latin cultural bequest to the Germanic tribes Russell did not discuss. Not to take away from his dichotomy between "world-rejecting" and "world-accepting," but how and why these categories were not in this historical instance reducible to the distinction between "literate" and "non-literate" needed to be considered. The issue was never one of whether warriors dismissed the importance of the Latin cultural legacy, but whether literate Germans did. And while one can appreciate Russell's point that looking at christianization during the earlier Middle Ages from the perspective of the debate between John Van Engen and Jacques Le Goff about christianization in the later Middle Ages obscures the cultural processes going on in the earlier era, it is still valid to inquire to what degree the syncretism occurring during the earlier time was a function of the absence of a Latin trained clergy concerned to inhibit it.

Russell begins his discussion by citing the recent (1988) schism from the Roman Catholic Church by the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre as an example of the alienation of contemporary Europeans from a religious institution which has consciously sought to de-ethnicize itself from its European roots, and ends it with the observation that the "disassociation" of Christian churches from their European "heritage" may account for the disassociation of many Europeans from those churches and "possibly from Christianity itself." Clearly he is conscious of a religious experience which he senses is dying and this essay is an effort to bring this development under sociological scrutiny. The problem with Russell's sensibility is that (Indo-)European intellectuals at least as far back as the Hussites have voiced frustration over the "disassociation" of Christianity with the needs and values of local communities. And at least from the time of the Hussites the response by Church intellectuals has been that their goal is to supply the spiritual needs of the more cosmopolitan among the laity. Perhaps the greatest fault of Russell's argument is that it does not come to grips with what happened next in the story it projects back to the dawn of European Christianity.

A. E. Barnes Carnegie Mellon University