The Germans of the fourth century were a very simple race, who
comprehended little of natural laws, and who therefore referred phenomena
they did not understand to supernatural intervention. This intervention
could only be controlled by priests, and thus the invasions caused a rapid
rise in the influence of the sacred class. The power of every
ecclesiastical organization has always rested on the miracle, and the
clergy have always proved their divine commission as did Moses. This was
eminently the case with the mediaeval Church. At the outset Christianity
was socialistic, and its spread among the poor was apparently caused by
the pressure of servile competition; for the sect only became of enough
importance to be persecuted under Nero, contemporaneously with the first
signs of distress which appeared through the debasement of the denarius.
But socialism was only a passing phase, and disappeared as the money value
of the miracle rose, and brought wealth to the Church. Under the Emperor
Decius, about 250, the magistrates thought the Christians opulent enough
to use gold and silver vessels in their service, and by the fourth century
the supernatural so possessed the popular mind that Constantine, as we
have seen, not only allowed himself to be converted by a miracle, but used
enchantment as an engine of war.

The action of the Milvian Bridge, fought in 312, by which Constantine
established himself at Rome, was probably the point whence nature began to
discriminate decisively against the vested interest of Western Europe.
Capital had already abandoned Italy; Christianity was soon after
officially recognized, and during the next century the priest began to
rank with the soldier as a force in war.

Meanwhile, as the population sank into exhaustion, it yielded less and
less revenue, the police deteriorated, and the guards became unable to