Cover illustration of James C. Russell’s book is Warrior Christ
from a terracotta funerary plaque of central Gaul circa fifth/sixth centuries
from a terracotta funerary plaque of central Gaul circa fifth/sixth centuries
This post is for those who speak of "Christendom" as an epithet for the "Christian West" which happens to be facing the "Monolith of Islam," so they tell us.
On the cover of the book above is the image of the Christ according to those who became the "Christianized and Civilized Barbarians" of the Holy Roman Empire--which was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire, as Voltaire once said -
Please note the sword and what looks like something dangling from his left arm, plus the other things -
So, do you think they got Christianity right?
How about their descendants? - Did they get Christianity right?
The following is from a review of Russell's book that may help give a clue to the right answer:
That the Germanic peoples had an impact on the Christian
faith to which they became "converted" in the early middle ages
has long been recognized. Like many other peoples in different
times and different places, the Germans reshaped their Christian
heroes and beliefs in an image substantially their own. The
staunchly heroic warrior-Christ whose comitatus gathers beneath
the blood-stained rood is a far cry indeed from the gentle
beardless aristocrat of the Hinton St. Mary mosaic.
Traditionally, however, scholarly accounts of the development of
Christianity have acknowledged the Germanic contribution without
according too much prominence to it. Historians have tended
instead to stress more obviously confrontational or institutional
sources of religious change, most associated usually with the
high middle ages: doctrinal debates, papal pronouncements, and
the like.
James C. Russell's new book, *The Germanization of Early
Medieval Christianity*, argues by contrast for a degree of
Germanic influence on church doctrine and practice far greater
than has previously been acknowledged. So profoundly in his view
did the Germans transform the faith they had supposedly adopted
by Boniface's death in 754 that he is reluctant even to term it
unequivocally "Christianity".
Only if "a relativist or subjectivist definition of Christianity is adopted,
in which the essence of Christianity is not considered immutable,
or in which religious affiliation is determined primarily by
self-identification" may it "be argued that the Germanic peoples
were Christianized by this time". And even so, "it would be
necessary to specify that the form of Christianity with which
they became affiliated was a Germanized one" (p. 214). The
Germans had as much impact on their new religion as their
religion had on them, and it was their radically reinterpreted
version of the faith that was transmitted to western Christendom
under the influence of the Ottonians.
* * *
The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach
By James C. Russell
While historians of Christianity have generally acknowledged some degree of Germanic influence in the development of early medieval Christianity, Russell goes further, arguing for a fundamental Germanic reinterpretation of Christianity.
This first full-scale treatment of the subject follows a truly interdisciplinary approach, applying to the early medieval period a sociohistorical method similar to that which has already proven fruitful in explicating the history of Early Christianity and Late Antiquity.
The encounter of the Germanic peoples with Christianity is studied from within the larger context of the encounter of a predominantly "world-accepting" Indo-European folk-religiosity with predominantly "world-rejecting" religious movements.
While the first part of the book develops a general model of religious transformation for such encounters, the second part applies this model to the Germano-Christian scenario. Russell shows how a Christian missionary policy of temporary accommodation inadvertently contributed to a reciprocal Germanization of Christianity.
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