mediæval and modern Europe. Roman law stands only second to Christianity as a moulding influence of European civilisation. This system was so firmly established by the time of the transference of the chief seat of government to the East, that the world was saved from what might have been total ruin, from the submerging of the stern Roman sense of justice and the swamping of personal as well as public right beneath a flood of Oriental customs.
The founding of Constantinople profoundly affected both the Western and the Eastern branches of the Catholic Church, but in very different ways. To the West it brought ecclesiastical liberty, and it made the papacy possible. Now, while the papacy became a tyranny within the Church, it secured a measure of freedom from the tyranny of the imperial Government over the Church. At Rome the pope soon assumed a position which would have been impossible to him if the emperor had been residing there. While other cities—Trêves, Milan, Ravenna—subsequently became centres for the empire in the West, Rome was left severely alone, with the consequence that the pope was the first citizen and even came to take the place of the emperor as the chief centre of power and influence in the city. It would be grossly unfair to attribute the enormous power that has accreted to the papacy to nothing but the rapacity of popes. At more than one crisis of European peril the pope proved to be the saviour of society. When the arm of the empire was paralysed, the power of the Church came to the rescue of civilisation, in face of barbarian invasions. Leo i. was able to protect Italy as effectually as though he had been a powerful prince, although his only weapons were persuasion and diplomacy. Gregory the Great was a potent influence for the saving of civilisation in the Old World, as well as for the missionary work of the Church among the new rising races of the West. Hildebrand may be regarded in the light of a champion of the spiritual power in opposition to the brute force of mediæval tyranny. The Middle Ages saw the long duel between the popes and
