The conversion of Pomerania was first attempted by the Poles, who, on obtaining possession of the country at the end of the tenth century, founded a bishopric at Colberg, A.D. 1000. It was not, however, until their more complete subjection to Poland about a hundred years later, that any marked result was obtained. Otho, Bishop of Bamberg, who placed himself at the head of the Pomeranian mission A.D. 1124, was at last enabled to overcome the fierce opposition which the heathen natives offered to the work of the Church, and by A.D. 1128 Christianity had gained a firm footing amongst them.
From Pomerania the Church extended itself eastward to Prussia Proper, about A.D. 1210. Here, too, Christianity was very distasteful to the natives, partly as being the religion of their enemies the Poles. About A.D. 1230, the "Order of Teutonic Knights" was instituted for the purpose of subjugating Prussia; and, after a depopulating warfare of fifty years' duration, the remaining inhabitants embraced Christianity. Before the end of the thirteenth century, the German element had quite superseded the Sclavonic in Prussia, as well as in Pomerania, and in what had formerly been the kingdom of the Wends.
[Sidenote: Extent of Roman influence in Germany.]
The Church in Germany, taken as a whole, was very much under Roman influence, partly, perhaps, on account of the early connexion between the emperors of the West and the see of Rome, and partly from the constant state of civil warfare into which Germany was plunged from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. In these contests the near neighbourhood of the Popes to the Italian possessions of the Western Empire gave them a hold on the affairs of Germany which they were not slow to use, and the turbulent German nobles were disinclined to resent an interference which was so often exerted in their behalf against an unpopular sovereign. The temporal power of the Popes was, however, much weakened by the great Schism; and though the Church of Germany acknowledged the true Pope, there was, amongst its members, a very widespread sense of the urgent need of some searching reformation. To this feeling may be traced, not only the unhappily disappointed expectations with which so many persons looked to the Councils of Constance and Basle, but also the unsound and exaggerated teaching of such men as John Huss and Jerome of Prague.