200
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
to whom the work of destruction was committed, did it thoroughly. But they soon found that their own preserva- tion depended on their submission to the Church. Those that persisted in their heresy were extirpated. The Lombards and Visigoths saved thelTIselves by a tardy conversion from the fate with \vhich they were threatened so long, as their religion estranged them from the Roman population, and cut them off from the civilisation of which the Church \vas already the only guardian. For centuries the pre-eminence in the West belonged to that race which alone became Catholic at once, and never swerved from its orthodoxy. I t is a sense of the importance of this fidelity which dictated the well-known preamble of the Salic law: "Gens Francorum inclita, Deo auctore condita, ad Catholicam fidem conversa et immunis ab haeresi," etc. 1 Then followed the ages which are not unjustly called the Dark Ages, in which were laid the foundations of an the happiness that has been since enjoyed, and of all the greatness that has been achieved, by men. The good seed, from which a new Christian civilisation sprang, was striking root in the ground. Catholicism appeared as the religion of masses. In those times of simple faith there was no opportunity to call forth an A ugustine or an Athanasius. It was not an age of conspicuous saints, but sanctity \vas at no time so general. The holy men of the first centuries shine with an intense brilliancy from the midst of the surrounding corruption. Legions of saints- individually for the most part obscure, because of the atmosphere of light around them-throng the five illiterate centuries, from the close of the great dogmatic controversies to the rise of a new theology and the commencement of new contests with Hildebrand, Anselm, and Bernard. All the manifestations of the Catholic spirit in those days bear a character of vastness and popularity. A single idea-the words of one man-electrified hundreds of thousands. I n such a state of the world, the Christian ideas were able to become incarnate, so to speak, in durable
1 "The noble people of the Franks, founded by God, converted to the Catholic faith, and free from heresy,"
