laws of the commonwealth, without
which a commonwealth cannot exist. The Franks, in their original condition
one of the most savage northern tribes, in the end most completely accepted
Roman law, the offspring of a wisdom and equity far beyond their power to
equal or to imitate. And because they saw this, and acted on it most
thoroughly, they became a great nation. The Catholic faith made them. Thus,
when the boy Romulus Augustus was deposed at Rome, and power fell into the
hands of the Herule Odoacer, Pope Simplicius, directing his gaze over
Africa, Spain, France, Illyricum, and Britain, would see a number of
new-born governments, ruled by northern invaders, who from the beginning of
the century had been in constant collision with each other, perpetually
changing their frontiers. Wherever the invaders settled a fresh partition
of the land had to be made, by which the old proprietors would be in part
reduced to poverty, and all the native population which in any way depended
on them would suffer greatly. It may be doubted whether any civilised
countries have passed through greater calamities than fell upon Gaul,
Spain, Eastern and Western Illyricum, Africa, and Britain in the first half
of the fifth century. Moreover, while one of these governments was pagan,
all the rest, save Eastern Illyricum, were Arian. That of the Vandals,
which had occupied, since 429, Rome's most flourishing province, also her
granary, had been consistently and bitterly hostile to its Catholic
inhabitants. That of Toulouse, under Euric, was then persecuting them.
Britain had been severed from the empire, and seemed no less lost to the
Church, under the occupation of Saxon invaders at least as savage as the
Frank or the Vandal. In these broad lands, which Rome had humanised during
four hundred years, and of which the Church had been in full possession,
Pope Simplicius could now find only the old provincial nobility and the
common people still Catholic. The bishops in these several provinces were
exposed everywhere to an Arian succession of antagonists, who used against
them all the influence of an Arian government.

When he looked to the eastern emperor, now become in the eyes of the Church
the legitimate sovereign of Rome, by whose commission Odoacer professed to
rule, instead of a Marcian, the not unworthy husband of St. Pulcheria,
instead of Leo I., who was at least orthodox, and had been succeeded by his
grandson the young child Leo II., he fo