Among the German tribes it was the Goths who had first come under the civilizing influence of the Christian religion.

As some winged seed is wafted from a fair garden into a dark, distant forest, and there takes root and blossoms, so was the seed-germ of Christianity caught by the wind of destiny, and carried from Palestine to the heart of pagan Germany, where, strange to say, it found congenial soil.

The story is a romantic one. A Christian boy in Asia Minor, while straying on the shores of the Mediterranean, was captured by some Goths, who took their fair-haired prize home to their own land, and named him Ulfilas.

The boy, with his heart all aflame for the religion in which he had been nurtured, told his captors the story of Calvary of Christ and his gospel of peace and love; and lived to see the terrible sacrificial altars replaced by the Cross.

The Goths had no alphabet, so Ulfilas invented one, and then translated the Bible into their rude speech. A part of this translation is now preserved in Sweden and is the earliest extant specimen of the Gothic language. This Gothic version of the Lord’s Prayer, written by Ulfilas more than fifteen centuries ago, bears such close resemblance to the German and English versions that it can be easily read by us to-day; and makes us realize our own near kinship to those simple barbarians of the fourth century.

In the year 375, thirty-five years before the sacking of Rome, from the vast plains lying between Russia and China there had poured into Europe a terrible race of beings called Huns. They seemed more like demons than men. Insensible alike to fear, to hunger, thirst, or cold, they appeased their ferocious appetites upon wild roots and raw meat. These hideous men ate, drank, and slept on horseback, their no less hideous wives and children following them in wagons, as they ravaged through the Continent of Europe.

The Huns, under the leadership of Attila, swept everything before them; leaving a track of blood and ashes through Germany.

The Goths deserted their lands and homes on account of this brutish invasion and pressed down into Italy and Southern Gaul; the Ostro-Goths (or East Goths) becoming in time masters of Italy under King Theodoric, while the Visigoths (or West Goths), who were already in Southern Gaul, had overflowed the Pyrénées and established a Gothic empire in Spain (or Hispania, as it was then called).

It was not alone the Goths who were swept before Attila and his Hunnish hosts. The Vandals, the Burgundians, the Longobards were carried by the same tide into Southern Europe; the Vandals thence into northern Africa; while the Slavs from the northeast in turn pressed down after them, and, like the waters of the sea, occupied the lands which they had deserted.

So this Hunnish invasion was a tremendous upturning force in itself bearing no relation to the future result more than the plow to the future grain; but it was a terrible instrument, used in bringing the German race into contact with higher civilizations, where, in the alchemy of time, they were destined to survive not as a nation, but rather as an element, and where, in the great creative processes, they were intended to re-enforce the decaying races of Southern Europe with their rude but uncorrupted vitality.

Of the Huns themselves nothing remained in Europe after the defeat of Attila, excepting in Dacia, over which they had permanently spread, and which was later called Hungary.

During this process of re-creating the old races of Southern Europe, the Roman Empire was perishing. Its conversion to Christianity in the fourth century, under Constantine, was too late to save it. For three hundred years pagan Rome had been drenching the soil of Southern Europe with the blood of Christians. Then this zealous new convert not only espoused the religion of Christ, but determined by her Church Councils what that religion meant and what it did not mean, and made fierce war upon heretics like the Gothic Christians, who knew nothing about these strange doctrines of which Ulfilas had not told them, nor concerning which did their simple Gothic Bible say one word! (A conflict between Trinitarianism and Arianism.)

The Roman Empire was the “Holy Roman Empire,” now. When Constantine removed his capital to Byzantium, it required two Emperors, an Eastern and a Western, to govern the crumbling mass. But as the temporal power declined, there was at Rome a new and spiritual kingdom which was expanding and claiming an empire over all Christendom. The Bishops of Rome had become Popes. Gaul or France was now governed by the German Franks. And the Frankish Kings in France, and the Visigoth Kings in Spain, and Christians everywhere must bow to the will of the Pope.

But the Roman Emperors were becoming less and less able to protect their dominions. The Teuton Lombards had overrun Italy, and at last the lowest point of degradation seemed to be reached, when the Imperial Crown at Byzantium was grasped by Irene, who deposed and blinded her own son in order to reach the throne once occupied by Augustus.

Who could be more fit to fill this august position at the head of Christendom than Charlemagne, the great conqueror of men and defender of the Holy Faith?

The coronation of Charlemagne, King of France and Germany, at Rome, in the year 800, was a revolt of the West against the sluggard Emperors at Byzantium; just as his father Pepin’s had been, fifty years before, a revolt against the sluggard Kings of France.

Not for 800 years had there been such a commanding personality on the earth; not since Cæsar hurled his legions into Gaul and Britain had there been such a display of military genius and valor, and perhaps never before such a breadth of intelligence in controlling a vast and heterogeneous empire.

Thenceforth, Charlemagne and his successors (when crowned by the Pope) were the successors of the Caesars and the temporal heads of the Holy Roman Empire. Excepting in name the once great empire had ceased to be Roman. The rude barbarian race which, in the time of Julius Cæsar, was buried in the forests of Central Europe, was at the head of Christendom; and under Charlemagne, a map of the German Empire was a map of Europe.

Charlemagne acknowledged the Pope who crowned him as his spiritual sovereign, while, on the other hand, the Pope bowed before the Emperor who appointed him as his temporal sovereign. It was a magnificent, all-embracing scheme of empire, of which the spiritual head was at Rome, and the temporal at Aix-la-Chapelle.

It seemed as if, by this dual supremacy, Charlemagne had provided for all possible exigencies of human government. He rested content, no doubt thinking he had embodied a perfect ideal in creating a system which should thus co-ordinate and embrace both the spiritual and temporal needs of an empire. But as soon as his controlling hand was removed unexpected dangers assailed his work.

In less than fifty years from his coronation his three grandsons had quarreled and torn the empire into as many parts. With this event France commenced a separate existence as a kingdom and the Imperial title belonged alone to Germany (treaty of Verdun, 843).

It was the strong, rough arm of the Goth which had hammered in pieces the Roman Empire and brought these tremendous results for the Teuton race; but it was the Frank which had survived as the governing power.

These Franks established a new system of land tenure, which combined the two opposing systems prevailing in North and South Germany. They proclaimed that the land belonged to the Crown. But the Crown, upon certain conditions, bestowed it upon landholders who were called barons. These barons might hold their land from generation to generation, so long as these conditions were fulfilled. They, in like manner, parceled out their lands into farms, which were held by the class below them upon like conditions of submission and fealty to them. The people bound themselves to furnish military service and food, and to work for their barons a specified number of days in the year, and to receive in return a certain protection, and a refuge within the castle of their chief. The baron was responsible to the count who was his superior, and the count to the King.

This was the feudal system, which was a net-work of reciprocal duties. No man, be he peasant or count, could call anything his own unless he discharged his obligations and responsibilities.

The system met great opposition for a time in South Germany; especially from Welf, Count of Bavaria, from whom the historic Guelphs are descended. But it survived, as we know, increasing in oppressive weight and rigidity, until for centuries it crushed the life out of Europe.