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| Leif Eriksson |
"And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." Matthew 24:14
The next few months of this blog will look at the lives of missionaries through the ages. It is my hope that you will be encouraged and strengthened in your faith as you see God's hand working through the lives of ordinary people as they followed the will of an extraordinary God.
We will next look at Christian missions from 1000 to 1499 AD. Christianity continued to spread throughout Europe, in Asia and into Africa where it already had historical roots. This time also saw the Bible translated into more languages, including English, and the printing of the Gutenberg Bible.
1000 - Christianity accepted by common consent in Iceland. Leif Eriksson introduces the Gospel to Greenland and possibly Vinland (Newfoundland)
1008 - Sigfrid (or Sigurd), English missionary, baptizes King Olof of Sweden
1015 - Russia is said to have been "comprehensively" converted to the Orthodox faith
Olaf II Haroldsson, first king of the whole of Norway, sees Norway convert to Christianity
1200 - The Bible is now available in 22 different languages
1219 - Francis of Assisi presents the Gospel to the Sultan of Egypt
1266 - Mongol leader Kublai Khan sends Marco Polo's father and uncle, Niccolo and Matteo Polo, back to Europe with a request to the Pope to send 100 Christian missionaries (only two responded and one died before reaching Mongol territory) to China
1321 - Jordanus, a Dominican monk, arrives in India as the first resident Roman Catholic missionary
1323 - Franciscans make contacts on Sumatra, Java, and Borneo
1368 - Collapse of the Franciscan mission in China as Ming Dynasty abolishes Christianity
1382 - Bible translated into English from Latin by John Wycliff
1389 - Large numbers of Christians march through the streets of Cairo, denouncing Islam and lamenting that they had abandoned the religion of their fathers from fear of pesecution. They were beheaded, both men and women, and a fresh persecution of Christians followed
1408 - Spanish Dominican Vincent Ferrer begins a ministry in Italy in which it is said that thousands of Jews and Muslims were won to faith in Christ
1410 - Bible is translated into Hungarian
1450 - Franscian missionaries accompany Portuguese expedition to the Cape Verde Islands
1462 - Johannes Gutenberg begins printing the Bible with his movable-type printing process
1486 - Dominicans become active in West Africa, notably among the Wolof people in Senegambia.
1491 - The Congo sees its first group of missionaries arrive. Under the ministry of these Franciscan and Dominican priests, the king would soon be baptized and a church built at the royal capital.
1493 - Pope Alexander VI commands Spain to colonize the New World with Catholic missions; Christopher Columbus takes Christian priests with him on his second journey to the New World
1496 - First Christian baptisms in the New World take place when Guaticaba along with other members of his household are baptized on the island of Hispaniola
1498 - First Christians are reported in Kenya
The missionaries/missions that will be highlighted during this era are:
Leif Eriksson
Marco Polo and Kublai Khan (this blog has already been completed)
John Wycliff
Leif Eriksson (Leif the Lucky)
Vikings, Norsemen...a name that caused fear to reign in the hearts of much of Europe. The Vikings would create a second period of at least semi-darkness to last 250 years. While the tribal invaders of Rome, who created the First Dark Ages, were rough forest people, they were, for the most part, nominally Arian Christians. The Vikings, by contrast, were neither civilized nor even lightly Christian.
They were men of the sea which meant that many of the Christian mission outposts/monasteries came under their attack. The mission centers would be pillaged and destroyed while their occupants were slaughtered or sold off as slaves. It seems unquestionable that the Christians of Charlemagne’s empire would have fared far better had the Vikings had at least the appreciation of the Christian faith that the earlier barbarians had when they overran Rome. The very opposite of the Visigoths and Vandals who spared the churches, the Vikings seemed attracted like magnets to the monastic centers of scholarship and Christian devotion. They took a special delight in burning churches, in putting human life to the sword right in the churches, and in selling monks into slavery.
A contemporary’s words give us a graphic impression of their carnage in “Christian” Europe:
"The Northmen cease not to slay and carry into captivity the Christian people, to destroy the churches and to burn the towns. Everywhere, there is nothing but dead bodies— clergy and laymen, nobles and common people, women and children. There is no road or place where the ground is not covered with corpses. We live in distress and anguish before this spectacle of the destruction of the Christian people." Winning the Vikings
But, in God's infinite goodness, the conquerors became conquered by the faith of their captives. Usually it was the monks sold as slaves or Christian girls forced to be their wives and mistresses who eventually won these savages of the north. After 250 years of savagery, the Vikings converted to Christianity. One of their most well-known leaders, Leif Eriksson or Leif the Lucky, became a missionary himself.
The second son of Erik the Red, as a young man Leif Eriksson visited Norway. There he was converted to Christianity by the Norwegian king Olaf I Tryggvason. The following year Leif was commissioned by Olaf to share Christianity with the Greenland settlers. He sailed off course on the return voyage and landed on the North American continent, at a region (possibly Nova Scotia) he called Vinland—perhaps because of the wild grapes and fertile land he found there. Thus, Eriksson is believed to have reached North America long before Columbus. On returning to Greenland, he shared his Christian faith with many, including his mother, who built the first Christian church in Greenland, at Brattahild. (Britannica)
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