Lecture I

Let us now turn our attention away from this people and direct it towards Europe. Let us consider the peoples of Europe before Christianity had affected European culture very much, when it had only begun to spread in the West. You all know that Christianity spreading into Europe from the East and South was confronted by the peoples of Europe, who possessed certain tendencies, a definite inner worth and definite forces. One who studies with spiritual means the history of the introduction of Christianity into Central Europe and also here in the North, knows at what cost the balance was struck between this or that Christian impulse and what was brought to meet it from Northern and Central Europe.