the bounds of the
Empire, and for sway over the imperial institutions; the distant tribes
untouched by the message of Christ; and the growth, within the Church
itself, of new and great organisations, which were destined in great
measure to guide and direct her work. Politics, theology,
organisation, missions, had all their share in the work of the Church
from 461 to 1003. In each we shall find her influence: to harmonise
them we must find a principle which runs through her relation to them
all.

[Sidenote: The need of unity.]

The central idea of the period with which we are to deal is unity. Up
till the fifth century, till the Council of Chalcedon (451) completed
the primary definition of the orthodox Christian faith in the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ, Christians were striving for conversion,
organisation, definition. All these aims still remained, but in less
prominence. The Church's order was completed, the Church's creed was
practically fixed, and the dominant nations in Europe had owned the
name of Christ. There remained a new and severe test. Would the {3}
Church win the new barbarian conquerors as she had won the old imperial
power? There was to be a great epoch of missionary energy. But of the
firm solidity of the Church there could be no doubt. Heresies had torn
from her side tribes and even nations who had once belonged to her
fold. But still unity was triumphant in idea; and it was into the
Catholic unity of the visible Church that the new nations were to be
invited to enter. S. Augustine's grand idea of the City of God had
really triumphed, before the fifth century was half passed, over the
heathen conceptions of political rule. The Church, in spite of the
tendency to separate already visible in East and West, was truly one;
and that unity was represented also in the Christian Empire. "At the
end of the fifth century the only Christian countries outside the
limits of the Empire were Ireland and Armenia, and Armenia, maintaining
a precarious existence beside the great Persian monarchy of the
Sassanid kings, had been for a long time virtually dependent on the
Roman power." [1] Politically, while tyrants rise and fall, and
barbarian hosts, the continuance of the Wandering of the Nations, sweep
across the stage, we are struck above all by the significant fact which
Mr. Freeman (_Western Europe in the Fifth Century_) knew so well how to
make emphatic:--"The wonderful thing is how often the E