eutonic tribes the character of a national religion, and added a
theological incitement to their animosity against the Romans. The Arian
tribes, to whom the work of destruction was committed, did it
thoroughly. But they soon found that their own preservation depended on
their submission to the Church. Those that persisted in their heresy
were extirpated. The Lombards and Visigoths saved themselves by a tardy
conversion from the fate with which they were threatened so long, as
their religion estranged them from the Roman population, and cut them
off from the civilisation of which the Church was already the only
guardian. For centuries the pre-eminence in the West belonged to that
race which alone became Catholic at once, and never swerved from its
orthodoxy. It is a sense of the importance of this fidelity which
dictated the well-known preamble of the Salic law: "Gens Francorum
inclita, Deo auctore condita, ad Catholicam fidem conversa et immunis ab
haeresi," etc.[318]

Then followed the ages which are not unjustly called the Dark Ages, in
which were laid the foundations of all the happiness that has been since
enjoyed, and of all the greatness that has been achieved, by men. The
good seed, from which a new Christian civilisation sprang, was striking
root in the ground. Catholicism appeared as the religion of masses. In
those times of simple faith there was no opportunity to call forth an
Augustine or an Athanasius. It was not an age of conspicuous saints, but
sanctity was at no time so general. The holy men of the first centuries
shine with an intense brilliancy from the midst of the surrounding
corruption. Legions of saints--individually for the most part obscure,
because of the atmosphere of light around them--throng the five
illiterate centuries, from the close of the great dogmatic controversies
to the rise of a new theology and the commencement of new contests with
Hildebrand, Anselm, and Bernard. All the manifestations of the Catholic
spirit in those days bear a character of vastness and popularity. A
single idea--the words of one man--electrified hundreds of thousands. In
such a state of the world, the Christian ideas were able to become
incarnate, so to speak, in durable forms, and succeeded in animating
the political institutions as well as the social life of the nations.

The facility with which the Teutonic ideas of Government shaped
themselves to the mould of the new religion, was the second point in
which