Civilization begins to advance with increasing stride.


THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY

Of all the influences that through these wandering and desolate ages had
sustained humanity and helped it onward, the mightiest has been left to
speak of last. It was Christianity, a Christianity which had by now
taken definite form as the Roman Catholic Church. Strongest of all the
institutions bequeathed by the ancient empire to her conquerors was this
Church. Indeed, it has been said that Rome had influenced Christianity
quite as much as Christianity did Rome. The legal-minded Romans insisted
on the laying out of exact doctrines and creeds, on the building of a
definite organization, a priesthood, a hierarchy. They lent the weight
of law to what had been but individual belief and impulse. Thus the
Church grew hard and strong.

In the same manner that the early emperors had ordered the persecution
of Christianity, so the later ones ordered the persecution of
heathendom, nor had the Church grown civilized or Christian enough to
oppose this method of conversion. Luckily for all parties, however, the
heathen were scarce sufficiently enthusiastic to insist on martyrdom,
and so the persecuting spirit which man ultimately imparted to even the
purest of religions remained latent.

With the downfall of Rome there came another interval in which the
Church was weak, and was trampled on by barbarians, and was heroic. Then
the bishops of Rome joined forces with Pépin and Charlemagne.
Christianity became physically powerful again. The Saxons were converted
by the sword. So, also, in Henry the Fowler's time, were the Slavic