onoured as a lover of the poor.

Under him, as under Vigilius, the papacy had been compelled to submit
to the judgment of the East. "The Church of Rome," says Mgr. Duchesne,
"was humiliated." [9]

The lives of these two popes cover the most important period in the
ecclesiastical history of the sixth century. After the death of
Pelagius I., and up to the accession of Gregory the Great in 590, the
interest of Italian history is political rather than ecclesiastical.
The emperors tried to rule, through their exarchs at Ravenna, from
Constantinople. The papacy grew quietly in power. Then came the
Lombards and a new era began.

[1] So _Var._, i. 26, ed. Mommsen, p. 28.

[2] ii. 29, p. 63.

[3] _Italy and her Invaders_, vol. iii. p. 516.

[4] _Anonymus Valesii_.

[5] _Italy and her Invaders_, vol. vi. p. 528.

[6] Instances are collected by M. Diehl, _Etudes sur l'administration
byzantine dans l'exarchat de Ravenne_, p. 320.

[7] Et dum nou essent episcopi qui cum ordinarent, inventi sunt duo
episcopi, Johannes de Perusia et Bonus de Ferentino, et Andreas
presbiter de Hostis, et ordinaverunt eum.--_Liber Pontificalis_, i. 303.

[8] Migne, Patr. Lat., tom. lxix. p. 402.

[9] _Revue des Questions Historiques_, Oct. 1884, p. 439.

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CHAPTER IV

CHRISTIANITY IN GAUL FROM THE SIXTH TO THE EIGHTH CENTURY

A very special interest belongs to the history of Christianity in Gaul.
There is no more striking example of what the Church did to bridge over
the gulf between the old culture and the barbarians.

[Sidenote: Roman Gaul.]

Among early Christian martyrs few are more renowned than those who died
in Southern Gaul. Paganism lived on, concealed, in many country
districts, but the life and power and thought of the people became by
the time of Constantine, by the fourth century, entirely Christian. As
the state organised so did the Church. Gaul had seventeen provincial
governments; it came to have seventeen archbishops, and under them
bishops for each great city. On the Roman empire and the Christian
Church the foundations were laid; and they were laid firm.

[Sidenote: The barbarian invasions.]

At the beginning of the fifth century a terrible storm swept over the
land. It was the storm of Teutonic invasion. Vandals, Burgundians,
Alans, Suevi poured over the land; the Huns followed them, only to be
beaten back by a union of the other tribes. Then, after the Battle of
Chalons (451), there