When was the Christianization of Europe Complete?

In a different post, I talked about different ideas of what defines Europe, and whether it is a region or a continent. One idea I mentioned was what was historically called "Christendom", the contiguous area where Christianity was the dominant religion. That brought up the fact that Christendom's boundaries have changed dramatically, which brings up this question: When, if ever, was the area I defined as "Europe" completely dominated by Christianity, or which pagan group was the last to be Christianized in Europe?

There are interesting YouTube videos that show the progress of Christianity in Europe, including one by Ollie Bye. Christianity in Europe started in Greece and Rome, a fact anyone familiar with St. Paul would know. Generally, Christianity spread through various communities in the Roman Empire until the same empire that persecuted Christianity so heavily was itself converted to Christianity by the end of the 4th century. From there, Christianity spread northward by way of missionaries interacting with or confronting the Germanic tribes, who invaded the western Roman Empire, and the Slavic tribes, who invaded the northern Byzantine Empire.

By the time of the East-West Schism in 1054, there was just one large pagan region left, consisting of the Baltic countries, Finland, Karelia, and "Sapmi", the arctic homelands of the Sami people. The Northern Crusades finished off paganism in the Baltic countries during the 13th century, and Sweden just about Christianized Finland for the most part at the same time. This left only the Sami people. Southern Spain and southern Ukraine were Muslim at the time; the re-Christianization of Spain would be completed by 1500.

The Sami and Karelian peoples were interesting holdouts of paganism, indeed. When Columbus sailed the ocean blue, they were still pagan. When Luther broke from the Catholic Church, they were still pagan. That means parts of the Americas were Christianized before the Arctic region of Europe! This also means that the Sami and Karelian homelands never had a Catholic period, unlike most of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland, which were Catholic countries from roughly 1000 to 1530, and Finland from roughly 1300 to 1530.

Another screenshot from Ollie Bye's video, showing how much of America was Christian before that last pagan holdout. Southern Ukraine, meanwhile, was still under Muslim control.

The Karelian and Sami peoples finally began to convert in the 17th and 18th centuries as Sweden and Russia closed in the gap between the two countries. It's still unclear to me when exactly the partition of Sami and Karelian lands was complete; perhaps the northern border between Sweden and Russia was undefined for a while. Either way, Sweden was zealously Lutheran by this time, and Russia was zealously Orthodox. Both countries were also expanding their borders and were rising great powers in the 17th century. It seems that by that century Karelians were more or less Orthodox, leaving the Sami people as the very last pagans of Europe. With Lutheranism as the official religion of Sweden, which also started to spread Lutheranism by the sword during the Thirty Years' War and afterward, Swedes began to get rid of any pagan objects they saw, such as the Sami shaman drums. The Swedish government seemed to prefer Christianization by force, though there were also Swedish missionaries who were more amiable. Finally, by the turn of the 1800s, Sami people were Lutheran and saw their pagan religion as a thing of the past.

Meanwhile, in southern Ukraine, the Crimean Khanate was in trouble. The 18th century saw Russia reach the summit of its power, having defeated Sweden in the 1710s and expanding all the way to Alaska in the east. Finally, after hundreds of years of Tartar control, southern Ukraine and Crimea was annexed in 1783. Russia imposed Orthodoxy by force in this case, kicking out the Muslim Tartars and colonizing the land with Ukrainians and Russians. Therefore, with the exception of the Muslim areas in the Balkans that remain to this day, the European region was fully Christianized sometime in the 18th century.

The Legacy of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project

The Apollo-Soyuz crew, a mix of not only two countries but a few "generations" of astronauts. Deke Slayton, on left, waited 14 years for this chance to go to space.

This year is the 50th anniversary of the mission that I believe marked the end of the Space Race. Some think the Space Race ended when the United States "won" by putting the first astronauts on the Moon, but that was more so the "Moon Race", one aspect of the larger Space Race where the Soviet Union and United States tried to outdo each other in space exploration accomplishments. However, in 1975, amid the detente of the 1970s, the two countries decided to set their competition aside and dock each country's most familiar spacecraft together. The United States sent an Apollo spacecraft as a kind of encore of the program that ended three years prior, and the Soviets sent their old reliable, the Soyuz. The reason why it was called the Apollo-Soyuz "Test Project", apparently, was to see whether the two spacecraft could dock by means of an adapter.

Thomas Stafford and Alexei Leonov shake hands. This was not a mere gesture; the two became good friends over the course of the mission and for the rest of their lives.

The adapter worked, and the world witnessed the Apollo astronauts open the hatch to greet the cosmonauts on the other side. While the TV coverage was often dark and grainy, there were some significant moments. I could list many, but I will just choose a few. The cosmonauts and astronauts ate together in space, sharing the cosmonauts' borscht, bread, and apple juice as well as the astronauts' canned turkey, cranberry sauce, and strawberries in a pouch. After a few meals over the course of the mission, the Soviet press asked Alexei Leonov how he liked the Apollo spacecraft and the American food. He replied in English: "The best part of a good dinner is not what you eat, but with whom you eat!" I often think of this quote when I have dinner with family or friends.

Another significant moment during Apollo-Soyuz was a call from President Gerald Ford, where he congratulated the crew and said something that would ultimately come true: "I'm confident that the day is not far off when space missions made possible by this first joint effort will be more or less commonplace." Those words came true particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A cosmonaut traveled aboard the Space Shuttle in 1994, and an astronaut traveled aboard the Soyuz in 1995, marking the progress of the Shuttle-Mir program, where America's Space Shuttle could dock with Russia's Mir space station and each country could send each other's citizens to space on both the Space Shuttle and Soyuz. After the Space Shuttle was decommissioned but the International Space Station (ISS) was completed, American astronauts have ridden on Soyuz flights to the ISS every year. Likewise, since the start of SpaceX's Commercial Crew program in 2020, 6 of 10 flights so far have had a Russian cosmonaut or two, and that fraction is soon to be 7 of 11 when SpaceX Crew-11 launches, hopefully this week.

The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project might not have developed further cooperation between the Soviet Union and the United States, but its legacy really became strong with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the birth of the Russian Federation. Even during this new cold war with Russia since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine (or perhaps its 2014 annexation of Crimea), cooperation between Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts remains strong. Today, Russians, Americans, and space travelers of every nationality greet each other with big hugs when arriving at the ISS. They see the Earth not as 190-something countries but as one universal homeland, and the politics of their countries are left on the ground. It remains to be seen how much China will share its technology and taikonauts with the world. That being said, it would be cool to see an American Crew Dragon dock with a Chinese Shenzhou. If we could make room for international cooperation with our biggest rival last time, we can do it this time.

Caves and Christianity

Last Friday, July 11, was the feast of St. Benedict. He is a familiar saint to most Catholics, having founded one of the largest and oldest monastic orders. His monastic life started when he became a hermit at first. He needed a secluded, quiet place to pray and fast, and so he naturally chose a cave in the Italian countryside and lived there for three years, being fed occasionally by his friend, St. Roman, until St. Benedict finally composed his Rule and shared it with whoever would become his disciple and live as a monk. You can read about the cave he lived in here.

I start with St. Benedict because of his recent feast, but there is a lot more to caves relating to Christianity than hermits who like the seclusion. Caves are mentioned every now and then in the Old Testament, where prophets have lived and where David hid from Saul. The geography is fitting for this, since much of the central range of hills in the Holy Land is made of limestone, which is often where caves are found.

It seems that the limestone of Judea (and running north and south of it) was full of not just natural caves, but artificial ones as well. By the time of Christ, it seems that people dug into limestone quite a bit. This is where I begin my next point: when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, it seems that the manger He was laid in was, in fact, within a cave, natural or not. Justin Martyr and Origen, Church Fathers, both call the spot where Jesus was born a cave. Considering the widespread use of caves as shelter, it's entirely possible that the Holy Family was directed to a cave that was being used as a kind of barn. The Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, is in fact built above a cave, and it is that cave below the church where pilgrims venerate the exact spot where Jesus was born. Not far from the spot is another cave associated with Christianity, where St. Jerome lived as a hermit and was busy translating the Bible into Latin, which he finished in 405.

The Grotto of the Nativity, located within a cave where Jesus is said to have been born.

The same limestone of Judea contains a spot associated with the end of Jesus' life, namely His tomb. In Jerusalem, many ancient tombs exist that were carved in the limestone. One of them, of course, was one Joseph of Arimathea made and allowed to become the tomb for Jesus when He was crucified. When Jesus resurrected, that spot in the limestone became a very important site in Christianity too, if not the most important! Most Catholics and Orthodox agree that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre contains that tomb. A pilgrim might not see the natural limestone tomb today upon visiting the church, as a LOT has happened to the site in the past 2000 years, and, more to the point, a lot has been built, demolished, and rebuilt on top the original tomb. You can read Witnesses to Mystery: Investigations into Christ's Relics for more. Nonetheless, an archaeological investigation in 2016 was able to remove all the obstacles necessary to find the original, natural rock wall of the tomb. Again, you can refer to the book I just mentioned, or see this CBS news report on the investigation.

The Garden Tomb, an example of a "cave" of sorts that is similar to Christ's Tomb.

What an interesting thing that is: Christ's birth and resurrection both happened in a cave! Although I don't know if any theologian has noticed this or has written about the theological significance of this, I'd be surprised if no one who has ever written theological documents ever talked about it.

After the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ, numerous Christians, including priests and monks, have used caves or have been associated with them. I already mentioned Sts. Jerome and Benedict, but even in the United States we can see this connection. A cave in Kansas is said to have been the home of an Italian priest in 1863, and so it is called Hermit's Cave. My alma mater, University of Mary, is a Benedictine college with a small cave at the bottom of the bluff it sits on, though I don't know if any of the nuns there used the cave (and, weirdly, there were rumors of Satanists using the cave instead, and the cave was destroyed in the '80s from what I've heard from locals.) At Jewel Cave, Fr. Paul Wightman helped with cave radio work to help locate the spot for digging the elevator shaft there in 1964. You can read more about him here. 

Back on the topic of the Feast of St. Benedict last Friday, I was coincidentally researching other caves in the Black Hills when I came across some interesting history. There is a cave in the northern Black Hills that used to be a show cave from the late 19th century until 2003. Its original name was Mammoth Crystal Cave, but its owner in 1952 deeded the cave and the local area to a Benedictine abbey (interesting connection) and the Benedictines renamed it Bethlehem Cave (interesting name!) Fittingly, Father Gilbert, O.S.B., set up a chapel called the Shrine of the Nativity within the cave entrance. They ran the cave for the next 50 years or so, but by 2003 the Benedictines no longer ran the cave. That being said, the Benedictines offered daily mass at the chapel, which is pretty cool. You can read more about Bethlehem Cave here and here.

In conclusion, it seems that caves have a lot of significance to Christianity, more than I realized before working at one. The geology of the Holy Land is suitable for caves, important events in salvation history happened in caves, and caves have provided peace and quiet for hermits and others seeking prayer and isolation from the world.