s like Eloi (Eligius), Ouen,
and Arnulf. Through him we learn something of the religious life of
Southern Gaul. He died probably in 655, and thus he represented the
earlier part of the seventh century. His biographer gives a long list
of the holy bishops who were his contemporaries, and of the churches
and monasteries which were scattered thickly over the land. The whole
tone of his writing--earnest, biblical, spiritual, shows how the
Church, in spite of weakness and sloth and failure in some of her chief
men, yet held up a standard of right and justice, purity and devotion,
which penetrated all over the country, into castles and humble
homesteads, and profoundly affected the whole national life. And this
work was concentrated in the public eye in those good men who at court,
amid good and ill report, lived as servants of Him who went about doing
good.

But while the Church was thus entering into all the national life, as a
sharer in its interests of every kind, it was the monastic ideal, there
can be little doubt, which ultimately exercised the greatest influence
on the Franks. The saints who won reverence were for the most part
monks. The work of Columban passed into the work of Benedict, and when
Luxeuil accepted {59} the Benedictine rule, and when the Council of
Autun in 670 declared it to be the rule for all monks everywhere, a
great step was taken towards the intimate union of Gaul with the rest
of Christendom in the things on which they had begun to set most store.

[1] Bury, _History of the Later Roman Empire_, vol. i. p. 396.

[2] Greg. Tur., ii. 38 (Migne, _Patr. Lat._, p. 236).

[3] Bouquet, _Recueil_, tom. iv. p. 59, epist. 15: cf. Gasquet,
_L'Empire byzantin et la Monarchie franque_, p. 165.

[4] Greg. Turon., _Hist. Franc._, x. 29 (Migne, p. 560): cf. also his
_Vitae Patrum_, 17. Hontheim, _Historia diplomatica_, i. 47.

[5] Cf. Greg. Turon., v. 3, on the frightful cruelty of Rauching.

[6] Vol. v. p. 262.

[7] S. Greg., _Epp._ v. 58.

[8] F. H. Dudden, _Gregory the Great_, ii. 69.

[9] Cf. E. Lavisse, _Hist. de France_, tome ii. p. 219,

[10] M. Roger, _L'Enseignement des lettres classiques d'Ausone a
Alcuin_, p. 100.

[11] W. P. Ker, _The Dark Ages_, p. 125.

{60}

CHAPTER V

THE PONTIFICATE OF GREGORY THE GREAT

[Sidenote: Gregory the Great.]

About 540 was born in Rome, of a noble family, the great Pope Gregory,
whose work was to place the papacy at the head of I