nce reached, as in the north of France, in
Germany, and in Britain. The rulers of broad western lands, with the
conquering host which they led, had become the victims first, and then the
propagators, of the same fatal heresy. The conquered population alone
remained Catholic. The conversion of Clovis was the first light which arose
in this darkness. And now, a hundred years after that conversion, Paris and
Bordeaux, and Toulouse and Lyons, Toledo and Seville, were Catholic once
more, and Gregory, a provincial captive in a collapsing Rome, was owned by
all these cities as the standard and arbiter of their faith, and the king
of the Visigoths thankfully received a few filings from the chains of the
Apostle Peter as a present which worthily celebrated his conversion.

It is to be observed that this absolute defeat of the Arian heresy in
several countries is accomplished in spite of the power which, in all of
them, was wielded by Arian rulers. In vain had Genseric, Hunnerich,
Guntamund, and Thrasimund oppressed and tortured the Catholics of Africa,
banished their bishops, and set up nominees of their own as Arian bishops
in their places for a hundred years. No sooner did Belisarius land on their
soil than the fabric reared with every possible deceit and cruelty fell to
the ground. The Arian Vandal king was carried away in triumph, as the spoil
of a single battle, to Constantinople, and the Catholic bishops, while they
hailed Justinian as their deliverer, met in plenary council, acknowledging
the Primacy of Peter, as in the days of St. Augustine. In vain had the
powerful Visigoth monarchy, seated during three generations at Toulouse,
persecuted with fraud and cruelty its Catholic people. A single blow from
the arm of Clovis delivered from their rule the whole country from the
Loire to the Pyrenees. In vain had Gondebald and his family in Burgundy
wavered between the heresy which he professed and the Catholic faith which
he admired. The children of Clovis absorbed that kingdom also. But the
strongest example of all remains. In vain, too, had Theodorick, after the
murder of his rival Odoacer when an invited guest in the banquet of
Ravenna, covered over the savage, and governed with wisdom and moderation a
Catholic people, whom he soothed by choosing their noblest--Cassiodorus,
Symmachus, and Boethius--for his ministers. He had formed into a family
compact by marriages the Arian rulers in Africa, Spain, and Gaul. His
moderation ga