Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/251

A Century of Disorder 179 his Christian successors favored the Christians and began to abolish all other religions. Before long the Christians began to persecute those who refused to accept their doctrines. The Christian Church became more and more powerful and in time rivaled the State in its influence. The officers of the Church came to be looked upon as occupying a distinguished position and were called clergy, while the members of the Church were called the laity. Those in charge of the smaller country congregations were called presbyters, a Greek word (meaning "elder") from which our word "priest" is derived. Over all the churches in each city a leading priest was appointed as bishop. In the larger cities arch- bishops, or head bishops, were appointed. They had a certain measure of authority over the bishops in the surrounding cities of the province. Thus Christianity, once the faith of the weak and the despised, became a powerful organization, and the Church began to play a great part in public affairs. 283. Summary of Ancient History. The stone fist-hatchets lie deep in the river gravels of France ; the furniture of the pile- villages is submerged in the Swiss lakes ; the majestic pyramids and temples announcing the dawn of civilization rise along the Nile ; the silent and deserted city-mounds by the Tigris and Euphrates shelter their myriads of clay tablets ; the palaces of Crete look out toward the sea they once ruled ; the noble temples and sculptures of Greece still bear witness to the world of beauty and freedom first revealed by the Greeks ; the splendid Roman roads and aqueducts assert the supremacy and organized control of Rome; and the early Christian churches proclaim the new ideal of human brotherhood. We shall now see in the succeeding chapters how the ancient civilization transmitted from the Orient through Greece to Rome was never wholly lost, in spite of the dark times of disorder through which Europe passed, and how it is this ancient civili- zation on which we are still building today.