o Pontifice ipsoque primate Wulfila. The
last words, if they are not mere tautology, imply some temporal
jurisdiction.]

Their fiercer brethren, the formidable Visigoths, universally adopted
the religion of the Romans, with whom they maintained a perpetual
intercourse, of war, of friendship, or of conquest. In their long and
victorious march from the Danube to the Atlantic Ocean, they converted
their allies; they educated the rising generation; and the devotion
which reigned in the camp of Alaric, or the court of Thoulouse, might
edify or disgrace the palaces of Rome and Constantinople. [78] During
the same period, Christianity was embraced by almost all the Barbarians,
who established their kingdoms on the ruins of the Western empire; the
Burgundians in Gaul, the Suevi in Spain, the Vandals in Africa, the
Ostrogoths in Pannonia, and the various bands of mercenaries, that
raised Odoacer to the throne of Italy. The Franks and the Saxons still
persevered in the errors of Paganism; but the Franks obtained the
monarchy of Gaul by their submission to the example of Clovis; and
the Saxon conquerors of Britain were reclaimed from their savage
superstition by the missionaries of Rome. These Barbarian proselytes
displayed an ardent and successful zeal in the propagation of the faith.
The Merovingian kings, and their successors, Charlemagne and the Othos,
extended, by their laws and victories, the dominion of the cross.
England produced the apostle of Germany; and the evangelic light was
gradually diffused from the neighborhood of the Rhine, to the nations of
the Elbe, the Vistula, and the Baltic. [79]

[Footnote 78: At non ita Gothi non ita Vandali; malis licet doctoribus
instituti meliores tamen etiam in hac parte quam nostri. Salvian, de
Gubern, Dei, l. vii. p. 243.]

[Footnote 79: Mosheim has slightly sketched the progress of Christianity
in the North, from the fourth to the fourteenth century. The subject
would afford materials for an ecclesiastical and even philosophical,
history]

Chapter XXXVII: Conversion Of The Barbarians To Christianity.--Part III.

The different motives which influenced the reason, or the passions, of
the Barbarian converts, cannot easily be ascertained. They were often
capricious and accidental; a dream, an omen, the report of a miracle,
the example of some priest, or hero, the charms of a believing wife,
and, above all, the fortunate event of a prayer, or vow, which, in a
moment of dange