POLITICAL THOUGHTS ON THE CHURCH 201
forms, and succeeded in animating the political institutions as well as the social life of the nations. The facility with which the Teutonic ideas of Govern- ment shaped themselves to the mould of the ne\v religion, was the second point in which that race was so pecuJiarly adapted for the position it has ever since occupied towards Christianity. They ceased to be barbarians only in becoming Christians. Their political system was in its infancy, and was capable of being developed variously, according to the influences it might undergo. There \vas no hostile civilisation to break down, no traditions to oppose which were bound up with the recollections of the national greatness. The State is so closely linked with religion, that no nation that has changed its religion has ever survived in its old political form. In Rome it had proved to be impossible to alter the system, \vhich for a thousand years had animated every portion of the State; it \vas incurably pagan. The conversion of the people and the outward alliance with the Church could not make up for this inconsistency. But the Teutonic race received the Catholic ideas wholly and without reserve. There \vas no region into which they failed to penetrate. The nation was collectively Catholic, as wen as individually. The union of the Church with the political system of the Germans was so complete, that when Hungary adopted the religion of Rome, it adopted at the same time, as a natural consequence, the institutions of the empire. The ideas of Government \vhich the barbarians carried with them into every land \vhich they conquered were always in substance the same. The Respublica Christiana of the IVI iddle Ages, consisting of those States in \vhich the Teutonic element combined with the Catholic system, \vas governed by nearly the same laws. The mediæval institutions had this also in common, that they gre\v up every\vhere under the protec- tion and guidance of the Church; and whilst they subsisted in their integrity, her influence in every nation, and that of the Pope over all the nations, attained their utmost height. In proportion as they have since degenerated or
