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THE INCLUSION OF ARYANISM (RELIGIOSITY OF WAR) INTO CHRISTIANITY

—“However, such reluctance among Christians may be somewhat ironic, since, were it not for its Germanization, Christianity might never have spread throughout Northern and Central Europe.

One of the most obvious examples of the Christian accommodation of Germanic religiocultural attitudes may be found in the medieval Church’s attitude toward warfare. In a study of this subject, J. M. Wallace-Hadrill has noted: Germanic pagan peoples had a clear sense that war was a religious undertaking, in which the gods were interested. At once one thinks of Woden as a God peculiarly, though not exclusively, connected with warfare Pagan and pagan-transitional warfare, then, had its religious facet. Not surprisingly, Christian missionaries found this ineradicable, though not unadaptable to their own purposes. Christian vernacular makes considerable use of the terms of pagan warfare…. Why, then, did the men who converted the Anglo-Saxons differ so sharply [in their apparent indifference toward the warrior code] from Wulfila? The Anglo-Saxons were not less bellicose than the Goths. The answer may lie in the prudent spirit of accommodation shown by Gregory the Great. More than that, the pope was an ardent supporter of warfare to spread Christianity and convert the heathen, and this last is, I think, the more important consideration. So far from rejecting the Germanic war-ethos the pope means to harness it to his own ends, and the evidence is that he succeeded. The barbarians may fight to their heart’s content in causes blessed by the Church, and this is made clear not only in the matter of vocabulary. It is the position of the Church rather than of the Germans that had undergone modification. As Erdmann showed, the Church subsumed and did not reject the warlike moral qualities of its converts. Who shall say that St. Michael of later days was not Woden under fresh colors?71

The apotheosis of the Christian assimilation of the Germanic warrior code may be found in St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s “recruitment tract” for the military order of the Knights Templars, De laude novae militiae, in which the killing of non-Christians in battle is justified, if not encouraged.72″–