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256 was to be one metropolitan see, York the other, each with the pallium and with twelve suffragan sees. Neither bishop was to be primate of all England by right, but the senior in consecration was to be the superior, according, it seems, to the custom of the Church in Africa of which he had experience, but restricted as his wisdom shewed to be desirable. It may be that Gregory had already heard of the position of the British Church: if so, he provided for its subjection to a metropolitan. Certainly he judged acutely according to the knowledge he possessed.

The beginnings of the English mission had brought the pope into closer observation than before with the kings and bishops of peoples but recently converted to the faith. In Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy reigned a race of kings whose wickedness was but slightly tempered by the Christianity they had accepted. In Spain there was more wisdom and more reality of faith.

From Britain we pass naturally to the country through which Gregory's envoys passed on their way to new spiritual conversion: from Gaul we may pass to Spain. So far did Gregory's interests extend: of his power it may not be possible to speak with so much certainty. In truth the Church in Europe was not yet a centralised body, and local independence was especially prominent among the Franks. Even in doctrine there are traces of divergence, though these were kept in check by a number of local councils which discussed and accepted the theological decisions which came to them from East and West. But the real power resided in the bishops, as administrators, rulers, shepherds of men's souls. Christianity at this period, and notably Frankish Christianity, has been described as a federation of city churches of which each one was a little monarchy in itself. If no one doubted the papal primacy, it was much further away than the arbitrary authority of the kings, and in nothing were the Merovingians more determined than in their control of the Church in their dominions. If in the south the bishop of Arles, as vicar of the Gauls, maintained close relations with the Roman see, the episcopate as a whole held aloof, respectful certainly but not obedient. The Church in Gaul had been engulfed in a barbarian conquest, cut off from Italy, severed from its ancient spiritual ties. The conversion of Clovis gave a new aspect to this separation. The kings assumed a powerful influence over the bishops, and asserted their supremacy in ecclesiastical matters. Whatever may have been the theory, in practice the interference of Rome in Gaul had become difficult, and was consequently infrequent: it had come to be considered unnecessary: the Church of the Franks had outgrown its leading-strings. But in practice? The special privileges of the see of Arles are evidence of a certain submission to the Papacy on the part of the Merovingian kings, though the monarchs were autocrats in matters of religion as well as in affairs of state, and did not encourage resort to the Holy See. It fell to Gregory, here as elsewhere, to inaugurate an era of defined authority.