Landmarks of History Author:Charlotte Mary Yonge Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. GROWTH OP THE PAPAL POWER. 970-1116. PART I. SCHISM OF THE EASTERN AND WESTERN CtlUBOIlBS. 970-1056. In the beginning of the tenth and el... more »eventh centuries, the Christian faith was making great progress. The rulers of the wild and remote Sclavonic race in Muscovy were converted by teachers from Constantinople, and their prince, Vladimir, caused their idols to be broken to pieces. Bohemia, a small Sclavonic State shut in by a belt of high hills, and Poland, another small State, were converted about the same time; and Geysa, Waiwode of Hungary, was baptized in 970. His son Stephen was the first King, and the great saint of Hungary, where his crown was long preserved with great reverence. The Northmen for the most part continued heathens; but when Knute the Dane, after conquering England, embraced the religion of the Saxons, sonic progress was made in spreading it in his own country; about the same time Olaf of Norway, a sea-king who had come to the aid of Ethelred the Unready, had been shipwrecked on the coast of Jersey, and there met with a hermit who converted him to the true faith, He was baptized in London, confirmed at Rouen, and afterward returning to Norway, did all in his power to spread the knowledge of Christianity. His heathen subjects rebelled, and Knute, though himself a Christian, assisted them. Olaf was killed in battle, and Norway united to Denmark, but the good seed he had sown grew and increased, and the whole of Scandinavia was, in name at least, a Christian land by the beginning of the eleventh century. In the mean time, it is sad to see how much corruption and division there was at the centre of Christendom. In the year 1024, St. Heinrich died, the last German emperor of the House of Saxony; and the House of Franconia was raised to...« less