ern nations began. The battle with
heathenism was virtually over, Christianity being the unquestioned
conqueror; but the question, which of the many modifications of
Christianity devised by the subtle Hellenic and Oriental intellects
should be the victor, was a question still unsettled, and debated with
the keenest interest on all the shores of the Mediterranean. So keen
indeed was the interest that it sometimes seems almost to have blinded
the disputants to the fact that the Roman Empire, the greatest political
work that the world has ever seen, was falling in ruins around them.
When we want information about the march of armies and the fall of
States, the chroniclers to whom we turn for guidance, withholding that
which we seek, deluge us with trivial talk about the squabbles of monks
and bishops, about Timothy the Weasel and Peter the Fuller, and a host
of other self-seeking ecclesiastics, to whose names, to whose
characters, and to whose often violent deaths we are profoundly and
absolutely indifferent. But though a feeling of utter weariness comes
over the mind of most readers, while watching the theological sword-play
of the fourth and fifth centuries, the historical student cannot afford
to shut his eyes altogether to the battle of the creeds, which produced
results of such infinite importance to the crystallising process by
which Mediaeval Europe was formed out of the Roman Empire.

As I have just said, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, like almost all the great
Teutonic swarm-leaders, like Alaric the Visigoth, like Gaiseric the
Vandal, like Gundobad the Burgundian, was an Arian. On the other hand,
the Emperors, Zeno, for instance, and Anastasius, and the great majority
of the population of Italy and of the provinces of the Empire, were
Catholic. What was the amount of theological divergence which was
conveyed by these terms Arian and Catholic, or to speak more judicially
(for the Arians averred that they were the true Catholics and that their
opponents were heretics) Arian and Athanasian? As this is not the place
for a disquisition on disputed points of theology, it is sufficient to
say that, while the Athanasian held for truth the whole of the Nicene
Creed, the Arian--at least that type of Arian with whom we are here
concerned--would, in that part which relates to the Son of God, leave
out the words "being of one substance with the Father", and would
substitute for them "being like unto the Father in such manner as the