OF THE ROMAN EMPIEE 165 the testimony of their conscience and the respect of a grateful people ; but the fruitful harvest of their toils was inherited and enjoyed by the proud and wealthy prelates of succeeding times. The first conversions were free and spontaneous : an holy life and an eloquent tongue were the only ai*ms of the missionaries ; but the domestic fables of the pagans were silenced by the miracles and visions of the strangers ; and the favourable temper of the chiefs was accelerated by the dictates of vanity and interest. The leaders of nations, who Avere saluted with the titles of kings and saints,^'^^ held it lawful and pious to impose the Catholic faith on their subjects and neighbours : the coast of the Baltic, from Holstein to the gulf of Finland, Avas invaded under the standard of the cross ; and the reign of idolatrj^ Avas closed by the conversion of Lithuania in the fourteenth century. Yet truth and candour must acknoAvledge that the conversion of the North imparted many temporal benefits both to the old and the new Christians. The rage of Avar, inherent to the human species, could not be healed by the evangelic precepts of charity and peace ; and the ambition of Catholic princes has reneAved in every age the calamities of hostile contention. But the admission of the barbarians into the pale of civil and ecclesiastical society delivered Europe from the depredations, by sea and land, of the Normans, the Hungarians, and the Russians, Avho learned to spare their brethren and cultivate their posses- sions.^^* The establishment of laAv and order was promoted by the influence of the clergy ; and the rudiments of art and science were introduced into the savage countries of the globe. The liberal piety of the Russian princes engaged in their service the most skilful of the Greeks, to decorate the cities and instruct the inhabitants ; the dome and the paintings of St. Sophia Avere rudely copied in the churches of KioAV i' and NoA'ogorod; the writ- 1"^ In the year looo, the ambassadors of St. Stephen received from pope Sylvester the title of King of Hungary, with a diadem of Greek workmanship. It had been designed for the duke of Poland ; but tiie Poles, by their own confession, were yet too barbarous to deserve an angelical and apostolical crown (Katona, Hist. Critic. Regum Stirpis Arpadianas, tom. i. p. 1-20). 1"'* Listen to the exultations of Adam of Bremen (a.d. 1080), of which the sub- stance is agreeable to truth : Ecce ilia ferocissima Danorum, &c. natio . . . jamdudum novit in Dei laudibus Alleluia resonare . . . Ecce populus ille pirati- cus . . . suis nunc finibus contentus est. ICcce patria iilla) horribilis semper inaccessa propter cultum idolorum . . . prasdicatores veritatis ubique certatim admittit, &c. &c. (de Situ Daniae, &c. p. 40, 41, edit. Elzevir [c. 42": : a curious and original prospect of the north of Europe, and the introduction of Christianity). 105 [The great monument of Yaroslav's reign is the church of St. Sophia at Kiev, built by Greek masons. A smaller church, also dedicated to the Holy Wisdom,
