§ 93.9. Among the numerous =Wendish Races= in Northern and North-Eastern Germany the chief tribes were the Obotrites in what is now Holstein and Mecklenburg, the Lutitians or Wilzians, between the Elbe and the Oder, the Pomeranians, from the Oder to the Vistula, and the Sorbi, farther south in Saxony and Lusatia. Henry I., A.D. 919-936, and his son Otto I., A.D. 936-973, in several campaigns subjected them to the German yoke, and the latter founded among them in A.D. 968 the archbishopric of Magdeburg besides several bishoprics. The passion for national freedom, as well as the proud contempt, illtreatment, and oppression of the German margraves, rendered Christianity peculiarly hateful to the Wends, and it was only after their freedom and nationality had been completely destroyed and the Slavic population had been outnumbered by German or Germanized colonists, that the Church obtained a firm footing in their land. A revolt of the =Obotrites= under Mistewoi in A.D. 983, who with the German yoke abjured also the Christian faith, led to the destruction of all Christian institutions. His grandson Gottschalk, educated as a Christian in a German monastery, but roused to fury by the murder of his father Udo, escaped from the monastery in A.D. 1032, renounced Christianity, and set on foot a terrible persecution of Christians and Germans. But he soon bitterly repented this outburst of senseless rage. Taken prisoner by the Germans, he escaped and took refuge in Denmark, but subsequently he returned and founded in A.D. 1045 a great Wendish empire which extended from the North Sea to the Oder. He now enthusiastically applied all his energy to the establishment of the church in his land upon a national basis, for which purpose Adalbert of Bremen sent him missionaries. He was himself frequently their interpreter and expositor. He was eminently successful, but the national party hated him as the friend of the Saxons and the church. He fell by the sword of the assassin in A.D. 1066, and thereupon began a terrible persecution of the Christians. His son Henry having been set aside, the powerful Ranian chief Cruco from the island of Rügen, a fanatical enemy of Christianity, was chosen ruler. At the instigation of Henry he was murdered in his own house in A.D. 1115. Henry died in A.D. 1127. A Danish prince Canute bought the Wendish crown from Lothair duke of Saxony, but was murdered in A.D. 1131. This brought the Wendish empire to an end. The Obotrite chief Niklot, who died in A.D. 1161, held his ground only in the territory of the Obotrites. His son Pribizlaw, the ancestor of the present ruling family of Mecklenburg, by adopting Christianity in A.D. 1164, saved to himself a part of the inheritance of his fathers as a vassal under the Saxon princes. All the rest of the land was divided by Henry the Lion among his German