The Forge of Christendom (34 page)

A longship takes to the seas, while in the scene above it a horseman is mounted on an eight-legged stallion. The rider is almost certainly Odin, the Scandinavian king of the gods. Not all the labours of Christian missionaries could serve to banish the “All-father” entirely from the imaginings of the Northmen. In Normandy, for instance, tales of a ghostly hunt, led by a huntsman very like Odin, would endure well into modern times. (Werner Forman Archive)

Across the Channel from France, the tenth century had been characterised, not by a collapse in royal authority, but by its spectacular consolidation. Edgar, shown here piously offering up the foundation charter of a new cathedral to Christ, was the unchallenged ruler of a newly united kingdom: England. (British Library)

A gold coin issued by Edgar’s son, Ethelred. England was easily the richest kingdom in western Europe, and the ability of its rulers to manage a single currency reflected a precocious degree of centralisation. Wealth, however, as Ethelred himself would find out, was not always a guarantee of security. (British Museum)

The Jelling stones in Denmark. The larger, on the left, was deliberately placed between the twin tumuli of his pagan parents by Harald Bluetooth, a king notorious for his opportunism and taste for bragging. Carved on to the runestone, Harald described himself as the man “who won all Denmark and Norway, and made the Danes to be Christian.” The boast, while not entirely accurate, has come to be commemorated as “the baptism of Denmark.” (Author photo)

Canute, despite having waded through blood to seize the rich prize of England from its native dynasty, was eager to change his public image from that of terrorist to Christian king. Here he is shown posing as the heir of Edgar, while Christ looks on approvingly from above. Facing Canute is Aelfigu, the English wife he refused to divorce even when he married Emma, widow of the deposed Ethelred. (British Library)

Christ is shown returning in glory at the end of time. To men and women living through the three decades that constituted the millennial anniversary of their Saviour’s life, marks of the imminent end of the world appeared everywhere. That it was sternly forbidden to speculate as to the precise hour of Christ’s return did little to dampen the mingled anxiety and hope felt by many of the Christian people at the prospect of witnessing the hour of judgement. (British Library)

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem marked the precise spot where Christ was believed to have been crucified and buried. Its destruction in 1009 by the Caliph al-Hakim provoked horror across Christendom. Only the speed with which it was rebuilt under the sponsorship of Constantinople served to ease the mood of shock. (Corbis)

A crypt looking like a public lavatory, set amid the concrete bleakness of a 1960s municipal square, is all that remains of the one-time jewel of Limoges: the abbey of St. Martial. It was here, in 1010, that the young Adémar saw a vision of the crucified Christ weeping tears of blood over the city; and here too, nineteen years later, that he was publicly branded a fraudster, and forced to flee in disgrace. (Author photo)

Christ as a pilgrim, carved in a cloister in a monastery in Spain. The first decades of the new millennium witnessed a startling upturn in the number of pilgrims taking to the roads. In 1033, in particular, the flood of people who descended upon Jerusalem appeared to one chronicler “an innumerable multitude, gathered from across the whole world, greater than any man before could have hoped to see.” (AISA)

The notion of “fastening to Christ’s Cross the picture of a dying man” had traditionally struck Christians as a repulsive one. Nevertheless, the decades either side of the Millennium witnessed a startling and enduring innovation: the portrayal of Christ in all his human suffering. The so-called “Gero Crucifix,” which hangs in Cologne Cathedral, dates from the late tenth century, and shows Jesus not merely dying, but actually dead. (Author photo)

Bruno of Toul, who in 1048 was crowned in Rome as Pope Leo IX. The illustration shows him (on the left) consecrating a single monastery church; but it was Leo’s ultimate ambition to see the whole Church reconsecrated. The energy, ability, and hard-headedness that he brought to this task ensured that his reign would subsequently be commemorated as the starting point of the papal revolution. (Burgerbibliothek, Bern)