The first attempts to plant the Church in Moravia were made by German missionaries in the ninth century. [Sidenote: Eastern missionaries in Moravia] These do not appear, however, to have been very successful, and about A.D. 860, two Greek monks, Cyril and Methodius, entered upon the same sphere of labour. Methodius was afterwards consecrated Metropolitan of Pannonia { 129} and Moravia by the Pope; but there was considerable jealousy on the part of the Latinized Germans towards their Eastern fellow-labourers, and eventually the Moravian Church was subjected to the Bishops of Bohemia.
The first Christian Duke of Bohemia was converted about A.D. 871, whilst staying at the Moravian court, probably by Methodius; but the Church made very slow progress in Bohemia until after the conquest of that country by Otho the Great (A.D. 950), and the foundation of the Bishopric of Prague by King Boleslav the Pious (A.D. 967-A.D. 999). In Bohemia, as well as in Moravia, the influence of the Greek missionaries made itself felt in the impress it left upon the ritual and usages of the two Churches, especially in the fact that the native Sclavonic language was used in Divine Worship; but in the end German influences prevailed in both countries, and the national "use" gradually made way for the Latinized ritual common in Germany.
Until towards the middle of the tenth century, the Church made but very small progress in the northern portion of what is now the kingdom of Prussia. These regions were then occupied by a Sclavonic race called Wends, who yielded an unwilling submission to the Western emperors, and disliked Christianity as being the religion of their conquerors. Between A.D. 964 and A.D. 968, several bishoprics were founded in this country by Otho the Great, and amongst them the metropolitan see of Magdeburg. A revolt of the Wends frustrated for the time the success of the emperor's plans, but in the next century Gottschalk, who became king of the Wends A.D. 1047, and was himself a Christian, did all in his { 130} power to aid the missionary work of the Church among his people. He was martyred by his subjects, A.D. 1066, and heathenism triumphed once more. During the twelfth century, the Wendish kingdom was dissolved, and its territories divided amongst different German princes, after which the Church gradually regained and extended its hold on the country. The northern Wends, who obstinately adhered to their Pagan superstitions, were at last converted chiefly by the labours of St. Vicelin, who became Bishop of Oldenburg, A.D. 1148.