. Another notable example from the
same period is the church of San Vitale at Ravenna.

In the mosaics which adorn these and other structures of the time are to
be seen the traces of a Christian Hellenistic school of painting which
gave pictorial expression to the whole biblical narrative. These mosaics
and the miniature paintings employed in the illuminated manuscripts
survived as prominent features of Byzantine art.

EPILOGUE

*The Lombard and Slavic invasions.* In 568 A. D., three years after the
death of Justinian, the Lombards descended upon Italy from Pannonia and
wrested from the empire the Po valley and part of central Italy. The
Romans were confined to Ravenna, Rome, and the southern part of the
peninsula. Towards the close of the sixth century (after 581 A. D.)
occurred the migrations of the Bulgars and Slavs across the Danube which
resulted in the Slavic occupation of Illyricum and the interposition of a
barbarous, heathen people between the eastern empire and western Europe.
Early in the seventh century the Roman possessions in Spain were lost to
the Goths.

*The papacy and the Holy Roman Empire.* The weakness of the imperial
authority in the West led to the strengthening of the papacy and its
acquisition of political power in Italy. It was the papacy also which kept
alive in western Europe the ideal of a universal imperial church, for the
whole of western Christendom came to acknowledge the supremacy of the
Roman see. Nor was the conception of a reestablished western empire lost
to view; and it was destined to find realization in the Holy Roman empire
of Charlemagne and his successors. Of great importance for the future
development of European civilization was the fact that the western part of
the Roman empire had passed under the control of peoples either already
Christianized or soon to become so, and that the church, chiefly through
the monasteries, was thus enabled to become the guardian of the remnants
of ancient culture.

*The Byzantine empire.* The loss of the western provinces and Illyricum
transferred the center of gravity in the empire from the Latin to the
Greek element and accelerated the transformation of the eastern Roman
empire into an essentially Greek state--the Byzantine empire. The Byzantine
empire inherited from the Roman its organization and the name _Romaioi_
(Romans) for its citizens, but before the close of the sixth century Greek
had s