Moravia

Moravia in europe map

Moravia was an independent Slavic kingdom that ruled the middle Danube in the ninth century c.e.. Very few historical records exist to document its history, and the precise origin and territorial extent of the kingdom of Moravia are not known.

Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos in his political geography De administrando imperio (c. 950) identified the kingdom as consisting of the territories surrounding Morava, referring either to the Morava River in present-day Moravia or to a so-far unidentified city of Morava, perhaps near the Sava River in northern Serbia.

Slovak historians consider the kingdom of Great Moravia to have included lands along the Morava and Danube Rivers and stretching across modern-day Slovakia. Other historians have placed the center of the kingdom farther south, in Hungary and Croatia. The earliest known inhabitants of the region were Celts, who were joined and ultimately displaced by Slavs arriving sometime before the sixth century.


Historical sources mention the brief existence of an independent Slav kingdom along the Frankish border in central Europe in the second quarter of the seventh century. Following the defeat and destruction of the Avar empire by Charlemagne at the end of the eighth century two political centers emerged in the region, the principalities of Nitra and Morava.

In 828 Prince Pribrina of Nitra invited the archbishop of Salzburg to send missionaries to the principality and establish the first Christian church. Five years later Prince Mojmir I of Moravia defeated Pribrina and forced him into exile in the Frankish kingdom. Mojmir then united Nitra and Morava to form Great Moravia.

In 863 or 864 Mojmir’s successor Prince Rastislav asked the Byzantine emperor to send missionaries to Moravia. By turning to Byzantium for support, Rastislav hoped to strengthen his position and secure independence from the Frankish kingdom.

Moravia coat of arms

The emperor sent the brothers Cyril and Methodios, Byzantine church officials who were conversant in Slavic languages. To promote Christianity in Moravia, Cyril developed an alphabet for the Slavs and translated the Gospel into their language.

The written form he introduced, Old Church Slavonic, served as the basis for subsequent Slavic literary development. The Cyrillic alphabet he invented is used in many Slavic languages, including Russian, Bulgarian, and Serbian.

Between 871 and 894 Prince Svätopluk I led Great Moravia, successfully resisting Frankish attacks and defending Methodios’s missionizing efforts (Cyril died in 869) from interference by the archbishop of Salzburg.

In 880 Pope John VIII recognized Methodios as the head of an independent archbishopric in Great Moravia, appointed a bishop for Nitra, and sanctioned the use of Old Church Slavonic as a fourth liturgical language, alongside Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Great Moravia reached its height at the end of Svätopluk’s reign, controlling Bohemia and parts of Hungary and southern Poland, as well as present-day Slovakia.

Following Svätopluk’s death, his sons Svätopluk II and Mojmir II fought each other for control of the kingdom. Their struggle weakened the state and left it vulnerable to the attacks of Magyar raiders entering the region from across the Carpathian Mountains.

Both princes were killed in battles with the Magyars sometime between 904 and 907. The defeat of the Bavarians by the Magyars near Bratislava in 907 marked the permanent setlement of Magyar tribes in the middle Danube and the clear end of Great Moravia as an independent force in the region.

Cyril and Methodios

Saint Cyril and Saint Methodios

The brothers Saint Cyril and Saint Methodios were born around 827 and 825, respectively, in the bilingual (Greek and Slav) city of Thessalonika to a prominent Byzantine family. They were educated in Constantinople, where Cyril was a professor at the patriarchal school, and Methodios entered the religious life, rapidly becoming an archimandrite (abbot) of one of the city’s monasteries.

Their first missionary endeavor, to the Khazars northeast of the Black Sea, was a failure, with many of the Khazars converting to Judaism. In 862 Prince Rostislav of Great Moravia asked the Byzantine emperor Michael III for missionaries and Photius the Great, patriarch of Constantinople, sent Cyril and Methodios.

Immediately the brothers set to translating the Byzantine liturgy and New Testament into a language later called Church Slavonic, even developing an alphabet based on the Greek alphabet for the Slavic tribes. In 863 the brothers arrived in Great Moravia and achieved extensive success.


This led to conflict with German bishops who claimed authority over the Moravian territory. Because of this dispute, the brothers were invited to Rome, where Pope Adrian II accepted the brothers’ work and authorized the Slavonic liturgy. Cyril died in Rome on February 14, 869.

Methodios returned to Great Moravia as the pope’s representative and archbishop of Sirmium. Unfortunately this did not end the abuse from the German bishops, who tried him for heresy and imprisoned him until he was ordered released by Pope John VIII.

In 880 he again traveled to Rome, where the pope again approved the liturgical innovations. After an 882 trip to Constantinople to attend a church council called to support the missionary effort, he returned to Moravia, where he died on April 6, 885.

After Methodios’s death Pope Stephen V forbade the use of the Slavic liturgy, and the disciples of the brothers were forced into exile outside Great Moravia. These disciples spread Byzantine Christianity to the Carpathian Mountains, Poland, and eventually distant Kiev in modern-day Ukraine, using the Slavonic language of Cyril and Methodios.

The Cyrillic alphabet, developed by the brothers, continues to be the basis of the alphabets used in a number of traditionally Byzantine Catholic and Orthodox countries. The original alphabet contained 44 letters. Today the modern languages of Russian, Ukrainian, Carpatho-Rusyn, Serbian, and Bulgarian have used modified versions of the Cyrillic alphabet. The Byzantine Church rapidly canonized the brothers for their missionary work and created their principal feast day on May 11. In 1880 the Roman Catholic Church began to celebrate their feast on February 14.

Bohemia

Bohemia

Bohemia was a kingdom in central Europe, a vassal from the 10th century and later an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire. The earliest known historical inhabitants of the country were the Boii, a Celtic tribe, from whom Bohemia derives its name. By the first century Slavic tribes, including the Czechs, arrived, becoming predominant in the region from the sixth century.

The only early Slavic rulers known by name are Samo, who defeated the neighboring Avars and Franks and established the first strong Slavic kingdom in Bohemia in the early seventh century, and the semimythical Krok, whose daughter Libusa, according to legend, married a plowman named Premysl, founding the Premyslid dynasty.

In the ninth century the still-pagan Bohemians were subject to increasing political and religious pressure from the Christianized Franks active in southwest Germany. Resistant to the missionary efforts of the German bishoprics, the Bohemians were more receptive to the Christian message delivered through Moravia by the Greek monks Cyril and Methodios.


In 873 Methodios baptized the Bohemian duke Borioj, leading to the rapid conversion of the Bohemians to Christianity. Continued disagreement in the Bohemian court about the degree of German influence led to the murder of Duke Václav (St. Wenceslas) by his brother Bolesław I in 935.

Under Bolesław I and his son, Bolesław II, Bohemian rule expanded to include Moravia, Silesia, and part of southeastern Poland. The establishment of the bishopric of Poland.

In 1003–04, with Bohemian support, the Polish king briefly established his brother Vladivoj in Prague and consented to his vassalage to the German emperor as duke of Bohemia. This arrangement continued after Vladivoj’s death, though Premyslid rule of Bohemia was restored.

Under Bretislav I (1037–55), Bohemia recovered Moravia and Silesia, and the Bohemian nobles accepted hereditary rule in the Premyslid dynasty. Bretislav’s son Vratislav supported Henry IV in the investiture struggle with Pope Gregory VII, obtaining recognition as king of Bohemia in return (1086).

Bretislav I

Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa made the title hereditary in 1156 as a condition for Vladislav (Ladislaus) II’s participation in his Italian campaigns. Vladislav II’s abdication in 1173 was followed by an extended struggle for the crown.

In this conflict, the nobles gained power at the expense of the contesting royal candidates, who were obliged to extend new privileges in exchange for continued support. German influence, too, increased in the absence of a strong and independent Bohemian monarch. In 1197 Otokar I defeated his rivals and emerged as the unchallenged ruler, reestablishing the sovereignty of the Bohemian king.

The medieval kingdom of Bohemia reached a height of power under Premysl Otokar II. Otokar II’s rule began with a brief struggle against his father, Václav I, followed by a reconciliation and orderly succession. During his reign he sought to reduce the influence of the nobles by encouraging the immigration of German settlers to towns to which he gave legal privileges.

Premysl Otokar II

Otokar II also extended Bohemian rule over much of central Europe, through possession of the Austrian archduchies and the counties of Carinthia, Istria, and Styria. In 1260 he defeated Hungarian King Béla IV, his most serious rival. Otokar faced a stronger enemy in the first Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph I, who reclaimed for the empire most of Otokar’s possessions outside Bohemia.

At Dürnkrut in 1278 Rudolph’s army defeated the Bohemian and Moravian forces; Otokar II was killed in the battle, leaving the kingdom to his seven-year-old son, Václav II. After a troubled regency during which the nobles again asserted their independence from the central authority of the crown, Václav II assumed personal rule in 1290.

Under his rule, order was restored in the countryside and Bohemia regained a measure of its earlier power, subjugating Poland and intervening in the succession struggle that followed the death of András III of Hungary. Václav II died in 1305 while preparing for war with Archduke Albrecht of Austria (later Holy Roman Emperor), and his son Václav III was assassinated the following year, ending the Premyslid dynasty.

A brief succession of royal candidates followed, with the Bohemian estates insisting on their right to elect the king, over the objections of Emperor Al brecht who declared the throne vacant and awarded the crown to his son Rudolf.

The new king died within the year, followed by his father, but the Bohemian candidate, Duke Henry of Carinthia, proved to be unpopular and after a short reign was deposed by the estates in 1310. His replacement was John of Luxemburg, the husband of Václav II’s daughter Elizabeth and the son of the new emperor, Henry VII.

John spent little time in the kingdom during his long reign, preferring to involve himself in wars throughout western Europe. In his absence, the power of the wealthiest nobles and the church increased, leading to frequent feuds among the Bohemian nobles and towns. In 1346, aged and blind, John died fighting for France in the Battle of Crécy.

His son, Emperor Charles IV, succeeded him. Unlike his father, Charles devoted considerable attention to his Bohemian possessions, making Prague his chief residence. He founded the University of Prague and built the landmark bridge across the Vltava River, both of which bear his name.

Charles’s extended presence in the country restored order, though the king was ultimately unsuccessful in reforming the kingdom’s laws in the face of powerful resistance by the nobility. He rejected his father’s support of France and opened closer relations with England, leading to scholarly exchanges between Prague and Cambridge. Charles promoted the early activities of religious reformers, including the popular preacher Ján Milíc of Kromeríž, laying the groundwork for subsequent theological debate.

The reign of Charles’s son Václav IV was marked by a gradual decline in the authority of the crown and increasing tensions between the church and nobles on the one hand and religious reformers, lesser nobility, and townsmen on the other. Václav’s weak efforts to retain his authority provoked further disputes, leading to the formation of a baronial party led by his cousin Jobst of Moravia.

The barons twice captured the king and forced him to renounce his centralizing policies, which he quickly restored under pressure from the towns and gentry. Relations with the church were threatened by the execution of John Huss, a master of theology at the University of Prague.

Huss and his colleagues and followers condemned the immorality of the clergy and the worldliness of the church authorities. Called by the church to recant certain of his teachings, Huss refused and was brought before the Council of Constance under a safe passage granted by Václav’s brother, Emperor Sigismund.

The trial and execution of Huss by the council in 1415 provoked popular unrest in the kingdom In July 1419 a public procession of Huss’s adherents in Prague led to a riot in which the magistrates of the new town were thrown from the windows of the town hall (the Defenestration of Prague). Václav died soon after, and Sigismund claimed the crown, leading a crusade against the Hussites in 1420.

Emperor Sigismund

Sigismund failed in this and in a second attempt in 1422. In subsequent crusades the Hussites easily defeated their enemies and even took the offensive, launching raids into Hungary and neighboring German states. Convinced of the impossibility of conquering Bohemia by force, Sigismund agreed to negotiations with the Hussites at the Council of Basel in 1431.

A split within the Hussite movement between moderates and radicals ended in 1434 with the victory of the moderate party at the Battle of Lipany. This opened the path to a settlement with Sigismund and the church, by which the emperor was recognized by the Hussites as king of Bohemia. Hussites were granted religious concessions by the council in return, ending the Hussite wars. Sigismund died in 1437, ending the reign of the Luxemburg dynasty in Bohemia.

John Huss

John Huss

John Huss was a forerunner of the Reformation. He was born into a prosperous peasant family in the small southwestern Bohemian town of Husenic (Goosetown), close to the Bohmerwald and not far from the Bavarian frontier. Little is known of Huss’s early life except that his parents died while he was young. He was first educated at Husenic and then later in the neighboring town of Prachaticz.

Huss entered the University of Prague around 1388. In 1392 he received his bachelor of arts degree and, in 1394 a degree for a bachelor of theology. He was granted his master’s degree in 1396. In 1398 Huss was chosen by the Bohemian “nation” of the university to hold the post of examenership for the bachelor’s degree. In that same year he began to lecture on philosophy.

Huss was ordained a priest in the Roman Catholic Church in 1400 and in 1401 he was appointed dean of the philosophical faculty. From October 1402 to April 1403 he held the office of rector of the university. In 1402 he was appointed rector or curate (capellarius) of the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague. The chapel had been erected and endowed in 1391 by citizens in Prague in order to provide preaching in Czech.


It was also a place of congregational singing with the music of several tunes painted on the walls for all to see and to use for singing. Preaching at the Bethlehem Chapel deeply influenced the religious life of Huss, leading him to a study of the Bible. From it he developed the deep conviction of its value for the life of the church. It also taught him a deeper respect for the philosophical and theological writings of John Wycliffe.

The study of scripture and its proclamation in a vernacular tongue had been condemned in England by opponents to Wycliffe’s teaching and to their spread by his Lollard supporters. Huss’s sympathy with Wycliffe did not immediately involve him in any conscious opposition to the established doctrines of Catholicism or with church authorities. He translated Wycliffe’s Trialogus into Czech and promoted its reading.

Huss probably became aware of Wycliffe’s teachings when Czech students who had studied at Oxford University under Wycliffe returned to Prague. Anne of Bohemia was at the time the wife of King Richard II. She had scholarly interests of her own, which may have encouraged Czech students to study in England.

Eventually Czech students copied all of Wycliffe’s works and took them to Bohemia. Persecution against Wycliffe would eventually leave the only surviving copies of some of his works in Bohemia. Wycliffe was very controversial in England because his teaching called for the translation of the Bible, then only available in versions of the Latin Vulgate, into the vernacular.

In addition Wycliffe was a severe critic of the corruption of the clergy. Wycliffe died at home; however after his death his body was exhumed and burned along with his books. In addition, his lay supporters, the Lollards, were persecuted. The same thing was to happen in Bohemia and Moravia despite the preaching of Huss for reforms.

In 1409 the king of Bohemia reorganized the voting control of the University of Prague. The university was governed by the nations. The Germans had the most votes, but the Czechs were more numerous. The king’s reform gave the Czechs representation in proportion to their numbers, and also effective control.

However, the move so angered the Germans that most of them quit the university at Prague and moved to other German universities in other cities with one group founding the University of Leipzig. They also engaged in a slander campaign against Huss because of the change. Among the slanders was the charge that Huss was a heretic.

Huss wrote a number of philosophical and theological works, including De ecclesia. The book was critical of many medieval church practices. He charged that the lucrative but unbiblical practice of granting forgiveness through the issuing of indulgences was harmful to the souls of innocent Christians. Because of his attack on indulgences Huss was excommunicated in 1412. In 1414 Huss went to the Council of Constance that met in Constance, Germany, under the safe conduct protection of the Holy Roman Emperor.

After an unfair trial in which Huss was not allowed to present a proper defense, he was condemned to death for heresy despite the pledge of safe conduct. The most damning charge against Huss in the eyes of his judges was his claim that Christ is the head of the church and not Saint Peter.

Before Huss was taken to the place of execution, he was subjected to ceremonial degradation. He was stripped of his clerical vestments and his tonsure was erased. He was then defrocked to revoke his ordination as a minister of the Gospel. Then his books were burned in front of the cathedral. Finally he was led to a place outside of Constance where he was martyred by being burned at the stake on July 6, 1415.

When the news of the martyrdom of Huss reached Prague the people of Prague rose up against the religious rule of the Roman Catholic Church. Soon all of Bohemia and Moravia were united in support of the teachings of Huss as the true Gospel. In a movement of nationalistic and religious fervor the Hussites reformed the church on the basis of Huss’s teachings. Among the many changes in liturgical and ecclesiastical practices was the giving to the people in Eucharist the elements of both the bread and wine as sub utraque specie.

The medieval practice of the Latin Church was to give only bread to the people. The desire among the Bohemians and Moravians for this change has been traced to Saints Cyril and Methodios, who had been the first missionaries to convert the Bohemians and Moravians during the 800s at the time of the Great Moravian Empire. They were missionaries of the Eastern Orthodox Church, where the elements were served in both kinds.

The Hussites quickly developed into three groups: the Ultraquists, the Bohemian Brotherhood, and the Taborites. All were in favor of taking communion in both kinds, that is, both the bread and wine as sub utraque specie. The Ultraquists or Calixtines (calix, the communion cup) leaned toward the Roman Catholic communion. The Bohemian Brotherhood, influenced by Peter (Petr) Chelcický, was scattered and pacifist.

The Taborites were the most reformist and did much of the fighting. The Hussites defeated all the Roman Catholic armies sent to suppress their Christian beliefs. On July 14, 1420, the Hussites led by John Ziska of Trocnov, then aged 61 and blind in one eye, defeated the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund’s army numbering more than 100,000 at Vysehrad (now Ziska Hill).

A second crusade was sent against the Hussites in 1421 and a third in 1422. Both were defeated. However, on October 11, 1424, Ziska was killed in battle. Andreas Propok replaced him (Procopius the Great, and in Czech, Prokop Veliky [Holý]). He soon defeated an army of 130,000 sent against the Hussites.

Hussite religious zeal disciplined the Czechs. The whole country was organized into two lists of parishes. Men from one list were called to battle while those from the other would remain at home to protect, farm, and aid the lands of their warring brethren.

The Hussites, led by John Ziska of Trocnov, were able to defeat the German and Hungarian knights and infantry sent against them. Ziska had fought against the Teutonic Knights in the ranks of the Polish army. There he had learned of Russian noblemen who often circled the wagons of the baggage trains into defensive forts called a moving fortress (goliaigorod).

At first the Hussites put men with muskets into farm carts and wagons. Eventually they developed specially constructed war wagons that could be chained together. These war wagons had thick wooden sides to provide some protection to the men inside.

The Hussite war wagons were placed in circles on hillsides in a defensive position. In order to attack them, the imperial knights had to attack uphill, charging on horses that soon wearied of the uphill exertion of carrying a heavily armored knight. Hussite musket blasts cut down the knights as they drew near. Dead and wounded knights and horses hampered renewed attacks.

The Hussite soldiers’ use of musket and cannon fire to defend themselves against heavily armored knights on horseback was similar to the English longbow men and the Swiss pike men of the time. The Hussites also prepared the way for new forms of military tactics and arms of the age of gunpowder. Using pikes or muskets in combination with cannons the Hussites were able to develop offensive tactics that could defeat the old armies of knights.

Eventually Hussite forces raided the German areas of Bavaria, Meissen, Thuringia, and Silesia. They then returned to their mountain fortresses in Bohemia and Moravia. The more radical Hussites gathered into strongly fortified towns like Tabor.

John Huss being burned at the stake

However strife between the Ultraquists and the Taborites led to war between them. The strife arose from the diplomatic success of the Roman Catholics in dividing the Ultraquists and the Taborites. The Hussites agreed to attend the Council of Basel with the Roman Catholic Church.

The outcome was the Compacta of Basel. It pulled the Ultraquists away from Hussite reforms. The Taborites however refused to accept the Compacta. They were defeated in the Battle of Lipany (Battle of Cesky Brod) on May 30, 1434, by a combined Ultraquist-Catholic army. Procopius was killed and the Taborite army was destroyed on the field.

The defeat was due to a tactical error that occurred when the Ultraquists retreated and the Taborites left the safety of their war wagons to pursue. The Battle of Lipany ended the Hussite Wars; however, in 1618 the Thirty Years’ War began in Prague when fighting broke out between Hussites and their opponents.

At the end of the Thirty Years’ War most of the Hussites had fled or were dead. Scattered Hussite elements or Unity of the Brethren (Unitas Fratrum) continued to exist in both Bohemia and Moravia after the Thirty Years’ War. Living in remote locations they secretly practiced their faith despite persecution.

Early in the Thirty Years’ War, Johannes Amos Comenius, a famous educator and Hussite bishop, was forced to flee Moravia. As he departed he called the Hussite remnant the “hidden seed.” Beginning in the early 1720s many of the “hidden seed” fled to Saxony, where they found refuge on lands of Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf. Founding the village of Herrnhut near Zittau they became the revived Moravian Church in 1722.

Anabaptism

Anabaptism

Anabaptism refers to a series of Reformation-era movements that was a part of what is commonly called nobles (an aberration of Christian teaching that that at the end time, God would judge the unrighteous). This eventually led to armed conflict that was put down in April 1525.

For his part in it, Müntzer was tortured and killed. In January 1525, Zwingli and Grebel held a disputation in Zürich to debate Baptism, with Zwingli prevailing. Grebel left Zürich, and by October he was imprisoned for his beliefs. He escaped in March 1526 and died of the plague that summer.

In 1527, a group of Anabaptists, whose followers were called the Swiss Brethren, met in Schleitheim, Switzerland, and adopted the Schleitheim Confession. In it, seven articles described the basic theology of the Anabaptist movement—adult baptism, the “ban” (expulsion from the church of unfaithful believers), a definition of the Lord’s Supper, separation from the world, a definition of the office of the pastor, refusal to take part in military service, and refusal to swear an oath. The author, Michael Sattler, was subsequently put to death for his beliefs. Many of his fellow participants were eventually killed.


Later that year, in Augsburg, Germany, a different group of Anabaptists connected with Zwickau, led by Hans Hut, Hans Denck, and Melchior Hoffmann, met in Augsburg. This so-called Martyrs Synod (of the 60 attendees, only two were alive five years later) emphasized the imminent return of Christ (some thought in 1528), along with a communal sharing of goods.

Heretics

In the coming years, many Anabaptists were executed as heretics for their beliefs. Both their view on baptism and their view on refusing military arms were grounds for punishment. Some were drowned as a mockery of their view of baptism (which the Anabaptists defined as full immersion).

Many fled to nearby Moravia, where a substantial community was established under the leadership of Jacob Hutter. Hutter was captured and burned at the stake in Austria in 1536 for refusing to renounce his faith.

The culmination of the extreme wing of Anabaptism was the rise of the Münster Commune in 1534–35. Followers of Melchior Hoffman made their way to this German city and in a series of bizarre episodes, took over the city, forcibly converting townspeople to Anabaptism and eventually instituting polygamy and the “Kingdom of Münster” until the city was conquered in 1535.

After 1536, there were fewer violent episodes, though Anabaptists were persecuted by Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed alike. Anabaptists found new leaders, most notably Menno Simmons, a former Catholic priest who became an Anabaptist in 1536 in the Netherlands. His followers were called Mennonites.

The followers in Moravia, called Hutterites (after Jacob Hutter), were led by Peter Riedeman. By 1600, there were over 15,000 Hutterites in Moravia. The Amish were a group of Mennonites who, under the leadership of Jacob Amman in 1693, separated from the other Mennonite churches in Switzerland. Many migrated to Pennsylvania in the early 1700s.

While some Baptist denominations can trace their origins to Anabaptist influence, most Baptist denominations trace their origins to the English Reformation and the Puritan movement in the later 1500s and early 1600s. While both Baptist and Anabaptist would practice adult or “believer’s” baptism, Baptists would not have the same emphasis on nonviolence or separation from the world.

Today, the largest grouping of Anabaptists is the Mennonites, with around 1,250,000 followers throughout the world. The Amish number around 120,000 and are located primarily in the United States with a small number in Canada. The Hutterites number around 10,000 and are located in the United States and Canada.

All of these groups share the foundational beliefs and characterizations of the Anabaptists, being separate from the world around them, not serving in the military, and refusing to take oaths. The Amish and Hutterites still practice a strong communal approach to possessions.

Schism of 1054

Schism of 1054

The Schism of 1054 marks the official breach that separated Roman Catholic Christianity from Orthodox Christianity. It occurred when delegates of Pope Leo IX (1049–54) excommunicated Michael Keroularios, patriarch of Constantinople (1043–58), and his associates. The patriarch, in turn, excommunicated the papal delegates.

These mutual condemnations tore Christendom into its Catholic and Orthodox branches. The ecclesiastical division became permanent in the following decades, particularly because of the effect of the Crusades and their impact on Orthodox-Catholic relations.

The quarrel that led to these events surfaced by the ninth century when Byzantium was emerging from the long controversy called iconoclasm and was engaging in a new period of missionary activity in eastern Europe (and elsewhere).


At the same time Western Christians were expanding, moving Latin Christianity farther east into the Slavic kingdoms of eastern Europe. Missionaries bearing their respective forms of Christianity (Greek and Latin) met in the kingdoms of Moravia and Bulgaria. During this interaction certain differences in practice became evident.

The two forms of Christianity used different languages in their liturgy (Latin in the West and Greek in the East, though the Eastern Christians also supported the use of native languages for worship and Scripture and developed the Cyrillic alphabet for this purpose among the Slavs); they had different rules on fasting; they differed in their eucharistic practice with leavened bread used by Eastern Christians and unleavened by Western. Another distinction was the official acceptance of married priests among the Eastern Christians, though bishops could not be married.

Furthermore the two forms of Christianity were at odds over their understanding of papal leadership. From the Eastern perspective the pope received the primacy of honor among the bishops, since his was the church diocese of St. Peter, but he was simply one of the five great regional leaders called patriarchs who were all needed to hold an ecumenical council (churchwide) to decide doctrine.

From the Western perspective, however, the bishop of Rome was also the heir of St. Peter, and the supreme voice in Christendom. Finally another important distinction was a small difference in the profession of the Nicene Creed by Western Christians. This creed was established by the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 and augmented by the Second Ecumenical Council in 787.

This creed was used as a simple definition of faith, professing belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, “which proceeds from the Father.” In the West the term filioque (and the son) was added to the latter phrase to exclude heretics from professing it.

This addition received official sanction by the papacy in the early 11th century. Eastern Christians viewed this as a mistake both theologically (arguing that it confuses the proper understanding of the Trinity) and ecclesiastically (arguing that only an ecumenical council could change the creed).

In addition to these matters the breach in 1054 is connected to other historical developments in the 11th century. This period witnessed the development of the papacy as an institutional entity freed from lay control and able to assert its authority in Italy and abroad.

One 11th-century pope, for example, asserted that he had the power to depose and reinstate bishops and emperors and that he was above any earthly judge. At the same time, the Byzantine Empire had reached its political apogee and its church was led by one of its strongest willed patriarchs, Michael Keroularios. The revived papacy and the powerful patriarchate crashed together in the summer of 1054.

A simpulan factor influencing the breach was the arrival of the Normans in Italy in the 11th century. The Normans (from Normandy in France) passed through Italy en route to the Holy Land for pilgrimage and, because of their renowned military skills, were hired as mercenaries by rulers in southern Italy.

The Normans soon took advantage of this situation and seized southern Italy. This brought them into conflict with both the papacy, whose lands were threatened, and Byzantium, which also had holdings in southern Italy.

The Byzantine emperor wanted to maintain good relations with the papacy to ensure an alliance against the Normans, but the patriarch of Constantinople was little concerned with this political perspective.

Furthermore the Normans closed churches in their territory that used the Greek ritual, while the patriarch of Constantinople did likewise for those of non-Greek ritual in his territory.

When the legates of Pope Leo IX arrived in Constantinople in 1054, they demanded that the Eastern Church accept the Western view on the papacy and certain other practices. When this failed, they excommunicated (cut off from communion) the patriarch and his associates.

Keroularios, in turn, anathematized (condemned) the authors of the excommunication. There had been numerous schisms before between Constantinople and Rome that had been mended afterward, but the Schism of 1054 became permanent.

Schism map

Historical circumstances in the following decades transformed the theological condemnations into a seemingly permanent cultural divide between Catholic and Orthodox. The first change occurred shortly after the schism when the papacy shifted its policy toward the Normans from one of hostility to one of support.

The Normans now acted with the support of the papacy as they finished off the Byzantine possessions in southern Italy and seized Sicily. With these positions the Normans began to eye the Byzantine Empire as their next goal for conquest.

This threat to the Orthodox empire was augmented by new challenges from the north (a pagan, Turkic tribe called the Pechenegs) and a massive challenge from the east in the Muslim Seljuk dynasty, who took control of Anatolia as well as much of the Muslim world.

The emperor Alexios I Komennos (1081–1118) appealed to Pope Urban II for military assistance. Pope Urban called for a massive undertaking, not simply to assist Byzantium, but to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims.

Thus the First Crusade was born. Tens of thousands of Western soldiers as well as clerics passed through Byzantium. This movement of Westerners, including the Normans who were already actively hostile to Byzantium, increased tension between Orthodox and Catholic.

The emperors were concerned that crusaders might not simply move through the empire, but conquer parts of it. This fear greatly increased during the Second and Third Crusades in the 12th century and was fully realized when the Fourth Crusade was diverted to Constantinople.

In 1204 Western crusaders sacked this city and conquered the Byzantine Empire. A Catholic patriarch was installed at Constantinople (until 1261). These events, most particularly the last, transformed the Schism of 1054 from a theological dispute to a near permanent cultural divide between East and West, Orthodox and Catholic.

Poland

kingdom of Poland map

The history of the kingdom of Poland is traditionally dated from 966, when the 31-year-old Mieszko I, of the Piast dynasty of the Polans tribe, was baptized into Christianity. The country derived its name from his tribe. He was married to Dobrawa, the daughter of Bolesław (Boleslas) I of Bohemia, a strategic nuptial alliance that brought him a relationship with the Holy Roman Empire in his feuding with the Wieletes and Volinians.

Wichman, count of Saxony, who was also a noble of the empire, backed them. Thus Mieszko’s marriage gave him a strong counterweight to his enemies. Most likely his conversion to Christianity was a prerequisite to the marriage.

In a move designed to cement his diplomatic position, Mieszko I also swore allegiance to Emperor Otto I the Great. This was essential to his plans for expansion of Piast lands. In 955, 10 years before Mieszko I’s conversion, Otto had cemented his primacy throughout central and eastern Europe.


In 955 he decisively defeated the invading Magyar tribe at the Battle of the Lechfeld, near Aubsburg in Bohemia. As David Eggenberger writes in An Encylopedia of Battles, “the Germans crushed the Magyars with heavy losses in a tenhour battle. The decimated barbarians fell back across modern Austria.”

They settled in what became Hungary, which still recalls its heritage on its postage stamps with the inscription Magyar Posta. By his death in 992 Mieszko I had considerably expanded his realm, including not only what was then known as Little and Greater Poland, but also Pomerania and Silesia.

Throughout his reign, he assured himself of at least the quiet complicity of the Holy Roman Empire, by swearing allegiance, after Otto I, to the emperors Otto II and III. As a loyal vassal he supplied troops to Otto III in his campaign against the Polabians, Slavic tribesmen who lived along the Elbe River.

Mieszko I was succeeded by his son Bolesław the Brave, his son by Dobrawa. (He also had children by his second consort, Oda, three sons: Mieszko, Lambert, and Swietopełk.) Bolesław continued his father’s wars for Piast aggrandizement. In 999 he seized Moravia and next conquered Slovakia. When in 1002 Otto III died prematurely at the age of 22, Boleslas took the ultimate gamble and attacked the Holy Roman Empire while it was in a succession crisis for the throne. Emperor Henry II, duke of Bavaria, was ultimately crowned emperor in the place of his deceased cousin in June 1002.

Bolesław’s aggression against the empire set off a series of struggles between him and Henry II, which would eventually lead to a compromise peace in 1018. Bolesław was compelled to return Bohemia to the empire, although the empire was recognizing Bolesław’s strength, and Henry did not contest Bolesław’s keeping Lusatia and Misnia. He wisely pledged allegiance to the emperor. But in 1025 a year after Henry II’s death, Bolesław crowned himself the first king of Poland and freed himself of any feudal obligation to serve the emperor.

His son Mieszko II, who had already gained experience by ruling the city of Kraków for his father, succeeded Bolesław. Mieszko II, seven years after he became king of Poland, resumed his father’s assault on the empire. The duchy of Kiev, under Yaroslav the Wise, not forgetting Bolesław’s intervention, made common cause with the Emperor Conrad II, so that Poland was invaded from both the east and west.

First forced to flee to Bohemia, Mieszko II eventually reconquered his kingdom and, after swearing allegiance to Conrad, was able to resume the kingship. He was assassinated in 1034, most likely the victim of a plot by the Polish nobility.

Casimir (Kazimierz) I succeeded his father as king and, unlike his father and grandson, followed a policy of peace and reconciliation. A peasant revolt followed the murder of his father and, taking advantage of the turmoil, the Czechs invaded in the south.

What was then known as Greater Poland was so devastated that the royal capital became Kraków in Little Poland, which apparently was considered loyal to Casimir and to his father before him. Prior to the choice of Kraków, the kingdom had had no real center of administration.

The new Emperor Henry III, however, feared the growing anarchy in Poland and eastern Europe, concerned that the unrest could spread to Imperial lands. Consequently he negotiated a peace among the belligerents, which confirmed Casimir as king of Poland in the first year of his reign, 1046. Confirmed by the emperor, Casimir served as king of Poland until 1058.

Upon the death of Casimir, Poland entered a period of instability, a condition that would appear throughout much of the country’s history. Casimir’s son Bolesław II ruled as duke from 1058 and was only crowned king in 1076. Three years later he was forced into exile. His brother Ladislas (Władysław) I Herman succeeded him; however he soon resigned the kingship.

Bolesław III, the son of Ladislas, was able to restore the royal authority in Poland, and effective government was restored. Bolesław III reigned from 1102 to 1138 and even succeeded in defeating the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V twice in battle. However out of diplomatic expediency, he later swore allegiance to the Emperor Lothair II, Henry’s son.

Mongol Invasions

Mongol Invasions

The death of Bolesław in 1138 signaled the beginning of almost 200 years of domestic strife, as rival members of the Piast dynasty struggled for supremacy. Poland, which under Miesko I had been a dominant power in eastern Europe, was reduced to a small player in international affairs.

The explosion of the Mongols into Europe in 1240 destroyed the entire strategic balance in eastern and central Europe. In 1223 during the reign of Genghis Khan, the Mongol warlord Subotai had smashed the Kievan army in the Battle of the Kalka River.

In December 1237 the Mongols took Riazan and began a systematic campaign of crushing the Russian city-states. On December 6, 1240, according to Eggenberger, the Mongols stormed into Kiev, “plundering and killing at will. Kiev was burned to the ground.”

This time, rather than making a large raid as the invasion of 1223 really had been, the Mongols had come to stay. While Subotai and Batu Khan continued west, directly threatening weakened Poland, the khanate of the Golden Horde was established on the “lower Volga,” according to Eggenberger. “For most of two centuries, most of Russia south of Novgorod lay under Asiatic suzerainty.”

After the conquest of Russia Subotai and Batu headed directly into Poland and Hungary, having divided their army into three parts. Fighting for Ogotai Khan, who had succeeded Genghis Khan in 1227 as the great khan in 1241, the Mongols virtually crushed the military power of eastern Europe, leaving Piast Poland in serious jeopardy. During the Mongol (or Tatar) assault on Poland, they headed toward the city of Kraków. There one of the truly heroic episodes of military history took place.

On the Rynek Glowny, or Main Market Square, stood St. Mary’s Church. According to Polish legend, an elderly watchman saw the Mongols approaching and sounded the trumpet call of the Hejnal to alert the town. Since the trumpet was played regularly, nobody was alarmed at first. But when he played it over and over, the townspeople became alarmed. Suddenly, the trumpeter stopped playing.

They saw the Mongols coming closer, and volleys of arrows from Polish archers drove them back. After the battle, somebody climbed up to the tower and found the old watchman dead, a Mongol arrow through his throat. In honor of his saving the city, the Hejnal is played every hour.

The Order of Teutonic Knights

Teutonic Knights

The power vacuum created by the implosion of Piast Poland also faced another threat from the west, a condition that would mark Polish history. In 1190 the Teutonic Knights, an order of crusaders, was established. Pope Celestine III confirmed the order as a religious order of knights in 1196, as did Innocent III in 1199. Yet unlike the Knights Templars and the Knights Hospitallers, the Teutonic Knights would not make a name for themselves in the Holy Land.

Instead, as H. W. Koch writes in Medieval Warfare, the Teutonic Knights “remained a purely German movement ... particularly in the context of its long-term development of the German east.” The Teutonic Knights’ drive to the east became a permanent threat to the stability of Poland and the Lithuanian princes to the east.

Conrad (Konrad) of Masovia, son of Casimir II of Poland, asked the Teutonic Knights for their aid against the fierce and pagan Prussian tribes. In order to bring the Teutonic Knights to accept his offer, he ceded to them Polish territory around Kulm on the Vistula River. As crusaders, the order was happy enough to take on the Prussians at the request of the Polish ruler.

Pope Honorius III in 1226 issued the Bull of Rimini to give papal backing to the coming war against the Prussians, in fact raising it to the status of a crusade. But, along with the crusade against the Prussians, the Bull of Rimini gave the order rights to make its first expansion into Polish territory.

The land around Lobau and Kulm was speedily converted by 1230, and Conrad of Masovia, apparently seeing no threat to Polish sovereignty, obligingly handed it over to the Teutonic Knights. By the time that the grand master of the order, Hermann von Salza, died in 1239, Koch notes, “the Order controlled more than a hundred miles of the Baltic coast.”

A Prussian uprising took the order by surprise in 1261, and it was not until 1271 that the order gained the upper hand. But when it did, the Teutonic Knights again focused on their expansion eastward. Danzig became part of the realm of the knights, and in 1309 Grand Master Siegfried von Feuchtwangen made the expansion a definite war aim of the Teutonic Order, while Ladislas Łokietek (Elbow-high) was the king of Poland.

Ironically it was under Wladyslaw that Poland began to regain its unity and strength. The first open clash between the Poles and the order came in 1311, when the order supported John of Luxembourg, the king of Bohemia, in his bid for the crown against Ladislas.

John and the order were defeated, but the war marked the onset of almost a constant state of tension and intermittent fighting between the Teutonic Order, the Ordenstaat, and the Polish monarchy. Casimir III of Poland began to rebuild his country’s military position in the 1340s for what began to look like an ultimate reckoning with the Teutonic Knights.

In 1385 Jogaila (Jagiello), the grand duke of Lithuania, married Queen Jadwiga of Poland, converting to Christianity. He ruled Poland as Ladislas (Władysław) II. In 1226 Lithuania had become united when the Lithuanians under their leader, Mindaugas, had defeated the Livonian Knights of the Sword (allies of the Teutonic Knights), at Siaulai.

This marriage, the result of the Union of Krewo, established the Jagiello dynasty and became the foundation of Polish resistance to the territorial expansion of the order. Meanwhile the rule of the order had grown more oppressive, through both taxation and demands on military service, to persecute the war against the Poles and their Lithuanian allies. Both Prussians and Pomeranians looked to their former enemies, the now united Poles and Lithuanians, for relief against the Ordenstaat.

In 1407 his brother Ulrich, who showed contempt for the abilities of the Poles and Lithuanians to confront the Ordenstaat, succeeded Grand Master Konrad von Jungingen. In 1410 the order’s grand master Ulrich von Jungingen decided to force the issue before Wladislaus II and a Polish-Lithuanian force could reach the order’s headquarters at Marienberg in Prussia.

On July 15 the Teutonic Knights met the combined Polish and Lithuanian forces at Tannenberg, or Grunwald. Wladislaus’s cousin, the grand duke Vytautas of Lithuania, commanded the actual Polish field army.

In the fierce combat that followed, as Koch writes in Medieval Warfare, “the Poles concentrated their attack at one point of the German front, broke through and then with their numerical superiority of 3:1 engulfed the army of the Teutonic Order and defeated it.”

Although Tannenberg was the decisive battle of the war, the knights did not surrender or cede their territory, and the struggle was continued by Ulrich’s successor Heinrich von Plauen, the 24th grand master of the Teutonic Order. For over 50 years hostilities continued between Poland and the order.

At the same time among the Prussians and Pomeranians, resentment continued against the exactions of the Ordenstaat. Finally the situation became untenable for the Teutonic Knights. In 1454 the Prussians directly approached King Casimir IV of Poland for aid in throwing off the order’s rule.

In what became known as the Thirteen Years’ War, the Prussian Confederation fought with Casimir IV against the Teutonic Order. Lithuania, the ally of Tannenberg, was also at war with Poland but did not side with the order.

In one of the first battles of the war at Chojnice in April 1454, Casimir IV was defeated in his attempt to take the city by the order and mercenaries under Bernard Szumborski in its pay. Eventually, however, the prolonged struggle outstripped the ability of the order to continue the fight.

Pope Paul II, with both warring parties being Roman Catholics, stepped in to help negotiate a settlement. By the terms of the Treaty of Thorun in 1466, the order ceded control of Prussia. Prussia became a vassal state of the Polish Crown under King Casimir IV, who now ruled a unified Poland, which would emerge as the strongest state in eastern Europe.

Ogotai Khan

Ogotai Khan

Ogotai Khan was the third son of Genghis Khan and spent most of his early life campaigning. Realizing the implacable enmity between his first and second sons, Juji and Chagatai Khan, Genghis decided in 1219 to bypass both for supreme leadership of the Mongols after his own death in favor of Ogotai.

He reconfirmed this decision before his death in 1227. Ogotai was confirmed as the Mongols’ second khaghan (grand khan) by the khuriltai of Mongol leaders in 1229 and established Karakorum on the upper reaches of the Orkhon River as his capital, surrounding it with a defensive wall.

True to his martial heritage Ogotai began his reign with massive campaigns to expand the Mongol empire, amassing four armies. One marched westward to conquer the steppelands of central Eurasia and the Russian principalities, across the Ural Mountains, and the Volga River.


Led by the old warrior Subotai and Batu (Juji’s son), its goal was to secure and enlarge the inheritance of the sons of Juji (who had predeceased Genghis Khan).

A second army’s goal was to complete the conquest of Khwarazm, which includes modern Iran, then onto the Middle East and Asia Minor. A third army took on Korea, which had been conquered earlier but had revolted against the unbearable conditions of Mongol rule.

Finally Ogotai and his younger brother Tului Khan led a force to finish the conquest of the Jin (Chin) dynasty in northern China. They took the Jin capital Kaifeng (K’ai-feng) in 1233; the last Jin emperor committed suicide in 1234 and all northern China came under Mongol rule.

Subotai’s army had the most spectacular success, conquering the Turkish tribes of the Russian steppes, all the Russian principalities except Novgorod, the Ukraine, Poland, Moravia, and Hungary. They were at the gates of Vienna before withdrawing in 1241 on the news of Ogotai’s death. The army sent to conquer the Middle East added western Persia and the Caucasus to Mongol control.

Coronation of Ogotai Khan

Korea submitted in 1259. Ogotai also made administrative reforms to centralize the administration to ensure his control over the Mongol lords and the efficient gathering of taxes and tribute from his sedentary subjects.

Thanks to a remarkable non-Mongol adviser Yelu Chucai (Yeh-lu Ch’u-ts’ai) reforms were begun in northern China that ended the brutal looting and massacre of the population on the premise that working people paid more taxes than expeditions could gather.

After the campaign against Jin, Ogotai returned to Karakorum and abandoned himself to a life of pleasure, hunting and drinking so heavily that an official was appointed to count the amount of wine he drank daily.

Ogotai Statue

His second wife, Toregene, moved quickly to consolidate her authority even before he died while on a hunting trip; he was buried in Jungaria in his personal appanage (fief).

According to Mongol custom his widow, Toregene, became regent until the khuriltai elected a new ruler. Her goal was to ensure the election of her son Guyug as the next khaghan, despite much opposition by other branches of the Mongol royal house. After four and half years she succeeded.