talian politics, and
to lay the lines on which papal action for many centuries was to be
based. When he was a child it might well have seemed that Italy under
a strong Gothic rule would submit to the Arian teaching which the State
supported. Theodoric endeavoured to make an united Italy; but the
Church knew that there could be no compromise on the doctrine of the
perfect Godhead of the Lord Jesus, and her attitude preserved Italy
both for Catholicism and for the Empire. Gregory was taught as a
Catholic, but he was taught also in classical grammar, composition,
rhetoric, and the writings of the great Romans--pre-Christian, as well
as of later days. He began his life's work as a Roman official, and by
the year 573 he is found as prefect of the city. A year later, it
would seem, he became a monk, giving up all his property, all his signs
of rank and wealth, all his power and place. Soon, if not at once, he
came to serve under the rule of S. Benedict, whose life he afterwards
wrote, in the monastery dedicated to S. Andrew on the Caelian hill.

{61}

[Sidenote: The Lombard invasion, 568.]

It was the time when Italy was again at the feet of the barbarians.
The Lombards, the last of the Teutonic nations to settle in the West,
established at Pavia a kingdom which lasted for two centuries
(568-774), and which again rent away much of the fair Italian lands
from the unity of the Empire, leaving the Exarchate at Ravenna in a
state half isolated and wholly perilous.

[Sidenote: The effect on Italy.]

Gradually the onward sweep of the new barbarians, who called themselves
Arians, but were not strongly bound by any creed, swept away all power
save their own and the pope's. The destruction of Monte Cassino was
typical of one side of their work--the turning aside from Rome at
Gregory's intercession of another. The Empire struggled to retain its
hold on Italy and to govern the Western world from Ravenna, with
instructions from the New Rome; but it failed. The papacy studied to
be quiet. And the close of the sixth century showed that power would
return in the end to the city which had founded the Empire, and to the
Church which was now claiming to teach and to unite the nations.

A period of papal insignificance was gradually ended by the progress of
new ideals for the papacy. This came about in three ways.

[Sidenote: The popes and the exarchate.]

1. It was the aim of each pope to set up his power against that of th