ght a Christian bishop Frederic from
Saxony, who wrought some conversions and left a body of baptized
Christians behind him. In the year 1000 came a priest Thormod and
several chiefs back from the Norse court of Olaf, and in a meeting of
the Althing--the great assembly of the people--preached to them the One
God in Trinity. The whole people became Christian, and the few heathen
{133} customs that still lingered, as it were by permission, after the
great baptism, soon fell away like raindrops in the bright sun. Among
the last news that came to Olaf Trigvason was that his distant people
had fulfilled the wish of his heart.

[1] According to the chronicle of Kristian.

[2] The Saturday fast was still observed in many parts of Christendom.

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CHAPTER XII

PROGRESS OF THE CHURCH IN GERMANY

[Sidenote: The Lombards in Italy.]

The acceptance of Christianity and of Catholicism by the barbarian
tribes which conquered Europe was a slow process. The conversion of
the Lombards, for example, whom we have seen as Arians, sometimes
tolerant, sometimes persecuting, was gradual. The Church always held
its own, in faith though not in possessions, in Italy; and from the
pontificate of Gregory the Great the moral force of the Catholic
Society began to win the Lombards to its fold. It was proved again and
again that heresy was not a unifying power. The Catholic Church held
together its disciples in the Catholic creed. It is possible that
Agilulf, the husband of the famous Catholic queen Theodelind, himself
became a Catholic before he died. Paul the Deacon says that he "both
held the Catholic faith and bestowed many possessions on the Church of
Christ, and restored the bishops, who were in a depressed and abject
condition, to the honour of their wonted dignity." Whatever may be the
meaning of this, it certainly expresses the fact that before the middle
of the seventh century the Lombards were passing almost insensibly into
the Catholic fold, and Italy had practically become united in one faith
though far from united in one government.

{135}

[Sidenote: The Church in the Frankish kingdoms.]

With Germany it was different. As the Merwing kingdoms decayed, the
Eastern one, Austrasia, with its capital, Metz, was but a poor bulwark
against heathen tribes on its borders, which were yet, it might seem at
times, little more barbarous than itself. The kingdom of Austrasia
stretched eastwards from Rheims "spre