nning in the Christian faith
coincides with ours in the pontificate. For the See of Peter, on such an
occasion, cannot but rejoice when it beholds the fulness of the nations
come together to it with rapid pace, and time after time the net be filled,
which the same Fisherman of men and blessed Doorkeeper of the heavenly
Jerusalem was bidden to cast into the deep. This we have wished to signify
to your serenity by the priest Eumerius, that, when you hear of the joy of
the father in your good works, you may fulfil our rejoicing, and be our
crown, and mother Church may exult at the proficiency of so great a king,
whom she has just borne to God. Therefore, O glorious and illustrious son,
rejoice your mother, and be to her as a pillar of iron. For the charity of
many waxes cold, and by the craftiness of evil men our bark is tossed in
furious waves, and lashed by their foaming waters. But we hope in hope
against hope, and praise the Lord, who has delivered thee from the power of
darkness, and made provision for the Church in so great a prince, who may
be her defender, and put on the helmet of salvation against all the efforts
of the infected. Go on, therefore, beloved and glorious son, that Almighty
God may follow with heavenly protection your serenity and your realm, and
command His angels to guard you in all your ways and to give you victory
over your enemies round about you."[71]

Towards the end of the sixth century, the Gallic bishop, St. Gregory of
Tours, notes how wonderfully prosperity followed the kingdom which became
Catholic, and contrasts it with the rapid decline and perishing away of the
Arian kingdoms. And, indeed, this letter of the Pope may be termed a divine
charter, commemorating the birthday of the great nation, which led the way,
through all the nations of the West, for their restoration to the Catholic
faith, and the expulsion of the Arian poison. No one has recorded, and no
one knows, the details of that conversion, by which the Church, in the
course of the sixth century, recovered the terrible disasters which she had
suffered in the fifth; a conversion by which the sturdy sons of the North,
from heretics, became faithful children, and by which she added the Teuton
race, in all its new-born vigour and devotion, to those sons of the South,
whose conversion Constantine crowned with his own. St. Gregory of Tours
calls Clovis the new Constantine, and in very deed his conversion was the
herald of a second trium