THE MEDIEVAL MIND 67 



tendency to much greater lengths. In their hands, 

 history became a branch of Christian apologetic, and 

 the lives of the saints, the characteristic form of 

 early mediaeval literature, became simply a means of 

 edification. Any legend which accorded with the 

 author's conception of the holiness of his subject was 

 received unhesitatingly. 



The power of patristic theology was increased 

 indefinitely by the ecclesiastical organization which 

 grew up to enshrine it. And when, with the conversion 

 of the Empire, that organization had the decaying 

 but still overwhelming strength of Roman tradition 

 behind it, it became irresistible. The Roman Empire 

 died, but its soul lived on in the Catholic Church, 

 which took over its framework and its universalist 

 ideals. It was immeasurably easier for the Bishop 

 of Rome to acquire the primacy of the world, and 

 gradually to tighten the bands of uniformity, because 

 even barbarians had come to look on Rome as 

 their metropolis, their Holy City, and the Emperor 

 as their suzerain. Hence probably came the triumph 

 of the more legally minded and intolerant Latin 

 theologians over the less rigid and more philo- 

 sophical Fathers of the East. The great Council of 

 Nicaea met in 325, with characteristic modesty, to 

 " determine the true nature of God," and thereafter, 

 although St Gregory of Nazianus had declared that 

 he never knew a Council of the Church to end well, a 

 series of Councils defined doctrine more and more 

 accurately, and anathematized more and more forcibly 

 those who differed from their findings. 



Thus, although some of the Northern nations were 

 converted to Christianity by Arian teachers, and 



