ideas, and lead him to take a more elevated, a more
philosophical, and, therefore, more correct view of the course of
earthly affairs.

CHAPTER XII.

THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST.

_The Age of Faith in the West is marked by Paganism.--The
Arabian military Attacks produce the Isolation and permit the
Independence of the Bishop of Rome._

GREGORY THE GREAT _organizes the Ideas of his Age,
materializes Faith, allies it to Art, rejects Science, and
creates the Italian Form of Religion._

_An Alliance of the Papacy with France diffuses that
Form.--Political History of the Agreement and Conspiracy of
the Frankish Kings and the Pope.--The resulting Consolidation
of the new Dynasty in France, and Diffusion of Roman
Ideas.--Conversion of Europe._

_The Value of the Italian Form of Religion determined from the
papal Biography._

[Sidenote: The Age of Faith in the West.]

From the Age of Faith, in the East, I have now to turn to the Age of
Faith in the West. The former, as we have seen, ended prematurely,
through a metamorphosis of the populations by military operations,
conquests, polygamy; the latter, under more favourable circumstances,
gradually completed its predestined phases, and, after the lapse of many
centuries, passed into the Age of Reason.

If so many recollections of profound interest cluster round Jerusalem,
"the Holy City" of the East, many scarcely inferior are connected with
Rome, "the Eternal City" of the West.

[Sidenote: Is essentially marked by the paganization of religion.]

The Byzantine system, which, having originated in the policy of an
ambitious soldier struggling for supreme power, and in the devices of
ecclesiastics intolerant of any competitors, had spread itself all over
the eastern and southern portions of the Roman empire, and with its
hatred of human knowledge and degraded religious ideas and practices,
had been adopted at last even in Italy. Not by the Romans, for they had
ceased to exist, but by the medley of Goths and half-breeds, the
occupants of that peninsula. Gregory the Great is the incarnation of the
ideas of this debased population. That evil system, so carefully
nurtured by Constantine and cherished by all the Oriental bishops, had
been cut down by the axe of the Vandal, the Persian, the Arab, in its
native seats, but the offshoot of it that had been planted in Rome
developed spontaneously with unex