Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/155

 THE WEST: FROM CLOVIS TO CHARLEMAGNE 143 old time had conquered the world, and the added prestige of being the abode of the acknowledged spiritual head of Western Christendom. The papacy was not yet a dominant political force. Even the supremacy of Rome had never been acknowledged in the Eastern Empire ; but in the west, save in very The Holy remote regions, the authority of the Latin Church See. was acknowledged and the dignity of its head was recognised with awe by the fiercest barbarians. The popes Innocent and Leo had faced Alaric and Attila when the secular powers had failed before them. The influence of Rome was increased when Clovis, the true founder of the Frankish dominion, declared himself in favour of orthodox Christianity instead of the Arianism professed by the Goths. In course of time the Goths also became orthodox. The popes were by no means always remarkable for the faith, the courage, or the ability which distinguished Innocent and Leo ; but at the close of the sixth century, when the Lombard ascendency in Italy was establishing itself, the papal throne was occupied by one of the most remarkable of the whole series of Gregory the popes. This was Gregory 1., deservedly called the Great, 590-604. Great, with whom we are all familiar as the pope who sent Augustine to convert the English for the sake of the children whom he had seen in a slave market and called ' Not Angles but Angels.' Gregory was not only an organiser of great ability; his fervent zeal and eager faith reached to the whole body of the clergy, and roused a powerful missionary spirit which proved the real vitality of the Christian religion. A second Gregory defied the iconoclastic emperor a hundred years later; and these two may perhaps be said to have established the peculiar character of the Roman Church, its tremendous claims to authority, and its reliance on monasticism. It was certainly Gregory 1. who secured that the Missionary Christianity of the Teutons should be Latin z © al - Christianity which regarded the pope as its head. The Christians of Ireland who did not own the papal supremacy had already begun mission work among the English ; but Gregory's missionaries gained England for Latin, not Celtic Christianity;