val times, it may be well to remark that from the
year 500 the Christian history of Asia and Africa is almost a blank.
Arianism, partly imported into Africa by the Vandals, who crossed
thither from Spain, and partly of native growth, as well as the
opposite error, Eutychianism, took from the African Church all
spiritual life and vigour, so that the apostasy of Mahomet met with no
formidable obstacles when in the seventh century it swept like a flood
over what had been Christian Africa. It is true that the Copts in
Egypt and the native Christians of Abyssinia appear to have preserved
the Apostolic Succession, but both these Churches are in a state of
great depression, and the Faith they profess is mingled with much
ignorance and superstition, as well as with positive error.

A similar process took place in Asia. Arianism, chiefly in its later
development of Nestorianism, with Eutychianism and other errors, ate
out the heart of the Church, faith grew weak, and love grew cold, and
{121} Mahometanism once more triumphed almost unchecked. Although the
Churches of Asia are not all utterly extinct, yet they share more or
less in the state of ignorance, superstition, and depression which is a
natural consequence of the serious errors with which their profession
of Christianity is intermixed, as well as of the way in which the few
despised Christians are mingled with their richer and more numerous
Mahometan neighbours.

Section 1. _The Church of Italy._

[Sidenote: Lombard kingdom in Italy.]

The kingdom of the Goths in Italy was not of long duration, and their
successors and fellow-Arians, the Lombards, only obtained possession of
the northern portion of the Peninsula, whilst Rome and Southern Italy
became once more subject to the emperors of the East. Gregory the
Great (A.D. 390-A.D. 604) began the work of converting the Lombards to
the Catholic Faith, and in the middle of the seventh century Arianism
had disappeared from Italy. [Sidenote: Renewal of the tie between East
and West.] The renewal of the connexion between the Eastern and Western
Empires, and the attempt of the Emperor Justinian to subject the see of
Rome to that of Constantinople, placed Gregory under the necessity of
vindicating the independence of the Church of Italy, and of denying the
right of any one Patriarch to assume authority over another. St.
Gregory's holiness and learning, and the wisdom of his endeavours to
reform corruptions, were most b