Life
Adalbert, possibly born in Alsace, was a German monk at the Benedictine Monastery of Saint Maximinus in Trier. He was consecrated a bishop and in 961 he was sent to Kievan Rus. Princess Olga of Kiev had asked Emperor Otto the Great to provide her with a missionary from the Church of Rome. Her son, Svyatoslav opposed her and took her crown from her as soon as Adalbert arrived in Kievan Rus. Adalbert's mission companions were slain and Adalbert was barely able to escape. Kievan Rus subsequently accepted conversion from Constantinople and Byzantine Christianity.
Upon escaping, Adalbert traveled to Mainz, where he became abbot of Wissembourg in Alsace. Once there, he worked to improve the education of the monks. He later became archbishop of Magdeburg, a city in Saxony-Anhalt.
The archbishoprics of Hamburg and Bremen had been created with the intent that they would act as bases for missionary activity in northern and eastern Europe. The Archbishopric of Magdeburg was now designated to provide missionary programs for the eastern European Slavs. Adalbert also established dioceses at Naumburg, Meissen, Merseburg, Brandenburg, Havelberg and Poznań in Poland. A student in Adalbert's time who went on to do important work among the Slavs was Vojtěch of Prague, later canonized as Saint Adalbert of Prague.
Read more about this topic: Adalbert (Archbishop Of Magdeburg)
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all.... I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To “see the light” too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)