hey actually gloried in it. They critically
distinguished between the downfall of the purple pagan harlot and the
untouched city of God. The vengeance of the Goth had fallen on the
temples, but the churches had been spared. Though in subsequent and not
very distant calamities of the city these triumphant distinctions could
scarcely be maintained, there can be no doubt that that catastrophe
singularly developed papal power. The abasement of the ancient
aristocracy brought into relief the bishop. It has been truly said that,
as Rome rose from her ruins, the bishop was discerned to be her most
conspicuous man. Most opportunely, at this period Jerome had completed
his Latin translation of the Bible. The Vulgate henceforth became the
ecclesiastical authority of the West. The influence of the heathen
classics, which that austere anchorite had in early life admired, but
had vainly attempted to free himself from by unremitting nocturnal
flagellations, appears in this great version. It came at a critical
moment for the West. In the politic non-committalism of Rome, it was not
expedient that a pope should be an author. The Vulgate was all that the
times required. Henceforth the East might occupy herself in the harmless
fabrication of creeds and of heresies; the West could develop her
practical talent in the much more important organization of
ecclesiastical power.

[Sidenote: The fate of the three great bishops.]

Doubtless not without interest will the reader of these pages remark how
closely the process of ecclesiastical events resembles that of civil. In
both there is an irresistible tendency to the concentration of power. As
in Roman history we have seen a few families, and, indeed, at last, one
man grasp the influence which in earlier times was disseminated among
the people, so in the Church the congregations are quickly found in
subordination to their bishops, and these, in their turn, succumbing to
a perpetually diminishing number of their compeers. In the period we are
now considering, the minor episcopates, such as those of Jerusalem,
Antioch, Carthage, had virtually lost their pristine force, everything
having converged into the three great sees of Constantinople,
Alexandria, and Rome. The history of the time is a record of the
desperate struggles of the three chief bishops for supremacy. In this
conflict Rome possessed many advantages; the two others were more
immediately under the control of the imperial government,