universal peace and the brotherhood of men, continued to haunt the
imagination of the Middle Ages as a lost possibility. But in this case,
as so often, what passed for a memory was in truth an aspiration; and
Europe was advancing towards a higher form of unity than that which had
been destroyed.




II

THE BARBARIAN KINGDOMS


The barbarian states which arose on the ruins of the Western Empire were
founded, under widely different circumstances of time and place, by
tribes and federations of tribes drawn from every part of Germany. We
expect to find, and we do find, infinite varieties of detail in their
laws, their social distinctions, their methods of government. But from a
broader point of view they may be grouped in two classes, not according
to affinities of race, but according to their relations with the social
order which they had invaded.

[Illustration: The Barbarian Kingdoms and Frankish Empire]

One group of kingdoms was founded under cover of a legal fiction; the
Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, and the Burgundians claimed to be the allies
of the Empire. At one time or another they obtained the recognition of
Constantinople for their settlements. Their kings accepted or usurped
the titles of imperial administrators, stamped their coins with the