Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/156

 120 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE. of the old Roman senatorial class remained wealthy and powerful. Our information is vague as to how much land the Germans took for themselves, from whom they took it, and how it was distributed among them. The religion of the Germans in all these states except the Frankish Kingdom was either pagan or Arian, and the ver- nacular language was used in the service. After the conversion of Clovis in 496 the Franks, hitherto pagan, became orthodox Roman Catholics. The conquered population, however, was predominantly Roman Catholic in all the kingdoms and usually little effort was made to convert them to Arianism. In Africa, however, Catholics were expelled wholesale from the two provinces which the Vandals themselves settled, and Theodoric perse- cuted Catholics fiercely in the last three years of his reign because the Byzantine emperor at that time was ill-treating the Arians in the East. The German kings controlled the calling of church councils in their kingdoms except in Italy, where the pope lived, and Theodoric was careful not to interfere much in ecclesiastical affairs. Once he refused to decide a disputed papal election, telling the clergy, "It is your duty to settle this question." Most of the kings, how- ever, were inclined to exert considerable control over the election of bishops within their realms. The Visigothic Kingdom became Roman Catholic toward the close of the sixth century. The conquest of their new homes had been made possible for the invaders by entrusting the military leadership to Kingship some one man and by combining into larger aggregations of peoples than the tribal organiza- tions of the early Germans. When they had settled down on the new soil, it depended largely on the personality of the leader whether he could convert his office into a perma- nent, absolute, territorial monarchy, or whether the king- ship would dwindle before the local independence of the other great landowners — the king, of course, took a lion's share of confiscated lands. Gaiseric, who founded the Vandal state in Africa and continued to rule it vigorously until 477,