ty of the Catholic faith, that is, of the Four holy
Councils, may by God's protection be carefully preserved; and that, if any
contention should arise between our brethren and fellow-bishops, he may, by
virtue of his authority, as holding the place of the Apostolic See, reduce
it by discreet moderation. We have also enjoined him, that if any contest
should arise requiring the presence of others, he should collect a
sufficient number of our brethren and fellow-bishops, discuss the matter
equitably, and determine it in conformity with the canons. But if, which
the divine power avert, contest should arise on a matter of faith, or some
business emerge about which there is great hesitation, and which for its
magnitude requires the judgment of the Apostolic See, after diligent
examination of the facts, he is to make report to us, that we may terminate
all doubt thereon by a fitting sentence."[201]

In this letter we are at a hundred years after the conversion of Clovis.
The Catholic kingdom has swallowed up its Arian competitors whether at
Toulouse or at Lyons, and over it stands the protecting vigour of Gregory,
as a hundred and fifty years before that of Leo strove to support the
falling empire. Arles receives the pallium for the Frankish kingdom, as it
held it for the Theodocian empire, from Rome. Leo saw the imperial line
expire at Rome; from Rome Gregory places the bishops "of his most
illustrious son Childebert" under the old primacy of Arles. This is the
"solidity" of the rock of Peter in which Gregory recommends the queens
Theodelinda and Brunechild to place themselves.

We know how Gregory, while yet a Roman deacon and monk, walking one day
from the palace which he had made a monastery, scarcely more than a
stone's-throw to the forum in which a slave-market was held, was moved to
pity at the sight of the fair-haired Angles; how he was minded to leave
Rome himself on a mission to convert them; how he was kept back by the
affection of the Romans; how Pope Pelagius suddenly died of the plague, and
Gregory, in spite of all his efforts, was made to succeed him; how from the
See of Peter he sent out Augustine and his forty monks to the lost island
in the Atlantic, where, since Stilicho withdrew the Roman armies, every
cruelty had revelled, and every pagan abomination had been practised by the
Saxon invaders. To many, no doubt, the subsequent success of Gregory's
venture to convert the Anglo-Saxon England has served to disgu