HYPOCRISY AS A SOCIAL ELEVATOR. 605 



leisure intervals as they could gain amid their swiftly following 

 intrigues, accessions, assassinations, insurrections, invasions, and 

 dethronements, to wholesale baptisms of Jews, pagans, and other 

 non-Christians, so that the Church grew in numbers though the 

 empire fell to pieces. 



In the eighth century Charlemagne set about the work of 

 evangelization on a grand scale, and for thirty-two years devoted 

 the major part of the military resources of his empire to spreading 

 the gospel among the heathen Saxons. He killed off possibly one 

 hundred thousand of them slaying forty-five hundred in cold 

 blood at one time and deported thousands of those he did not 

 kill to other lands. Finally, their king and leading warriors had 

 to bow before his puissant sword, and receive the rite of bap- 

 tism. He also converted great numbers of Huns, Danes, Wends, 

 Swedes, and Czechs. 



Still a large portion of northern Europe was left under the 

 control of the priests of Odin, and for several centuries the work 

 of rounding up these pagans, and chasing them with blade and 

 brand into the bosom of the Church, was a favorite occupation of 

 princes and knights. At the end of the tenth century Olaf I suc- 

 ceeded in converting the Norwegians at the point of the lance, 

 and his son followed up pagan-killing with such enthusiasm as to 

 win himself canonization from the Church. Sweden was brought 

 into the fold about the same time and by the same means ; but it 

 was not until the beginning of the thirteenth century that the 

 Christianization of Denmark was completed by a grand raid 

 of Valdemar II into Esthonia. Then the Teutonic Knights did 

 some very successful missionary work, accompanied with much 

 slaughter, in securing the supremacy of the Cross among the hea- 

 then of Prussia, Courland, and Livonia. 



While mailed hands were thus persistently hammering the 

 heathen of northern Europe into practicing Christian rites, the 

 evangelization of Russia was brought about with less attrition 

 the Muscovites being a more submissive people. Toward the end 

 of the tenth century Vladimir the Great decided that it was neces- 

 sary to have a state religion. He studied the Jewish, Mohamme- 

 dan, Roman Catholic, and Greek forms, and gave the preference to 

 the latter. He had sixty thousand of his people baptized in one 

 day, and the rest accepted the ordinance as fast as his agents could 

 reach them and communicate his will. 



Everywhere the result was the same. Outward compliance 

 begat inward conviction, and the peoples whose stubborn necks 

 were bent with most difficulty to the yoke of the Church became 

 in time its sturdiest upholders. Hudibras says : 



"The man enforced against his will 

 Is of the same opinion still." 



