martyrs made truly fruitful seed for her victories; and
later, facing paganism of another, wilder race, she triumphed more
peacefully in the one supreme conversion of Clovis; and the devotion and
interest which from that day grew between Church and King, gradually
made her the greatest power of the country. After the decline of Roman
culture the Church was the one intellectual, almost peaceful, and
totally irresistible force. The great lords scorned learning. An Abbot,
quaintly voicing the Church's belief, said that "every letter writ on
paper is a sword thrust in the devil's side." When there was cessation
of war, the occupation of men, from Clovis' time throughout Mediaevalism,
was gone. They could not read; they could not write; the joy of hunting
was, in time, exhausted. They were restless, lost. The justice meted out
by the great lords was, too often, the right of might. But at the
Council of Orleans, in 511, a church was declared an inviolable refuge,
where the weak should be safe until their case could be calmly and
righteously judged. The beneficent care of the Church cannot be
overestimated. Between 500 and 700 she had eighty-three councils in
Gaul, and scarcely one but brought a reform,--a real amelioration of
hardships.

Something of the general organisation of her great power in those rude
times deserves more than the usual investigation. Even in its small
place in the "Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France," it is an
interesting bit of Church politics and psychology.

The ecclesiastical tradition of France goes back to the very first years
of the Christian era. Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, Martha, and Mary the
Mother of James, are only a few of those intimately connected with
Christ Himself, who are believed to have come into Gaul; and in their
efforts to systematically and surely establish Christianity, to have
founded the first French Bishoprics. This is tradition. But even the
history of the II century tells of a venerable, martyred Bishop of
Lyons, a disciple of that Polycarp who knew Saint John; and in the III
century Gaul added no less than fourteen to the Sees she already had.
Enthusiastic tradition aside, it is evident that the missionary ardour
of the Gallic priests was intense; and the glory of their early
victories belongs entirely to a branch of the Church known as "the
Secular Clergy."

[Illustration: THE TOWER OF AN EARLY MARITIME CATHEDRAL.--AGDE.]

The other great branch, "the Rel