Patriarchate. So they sent their missionaries to Gaul, Germany, and Britain. Forests were cleared, monasteries and then cities arose, where once wild tribes had barely defended themselves against the wolves; the Western barbarians became the great Christian nations of Europe. So the centre of gravity of civilization gradually shifted to the West. For, while Rome was converting our Fathers, the East was sinking into stagnation.
The Eastern bishops must bear at least a part of the responsibility of this. Except for some late movement on the part of Russia, the East has never shown the missionary zeal which is characteristic of Rome and the West. The Eastern bishops, too, had savage pagans at their doors. There were the Arabs, for instance; but they allowed these to remain pagan, while they quarrelled over abstruse points of theology, and intrigued for the Emperor's favour at the court.[1] That illusion about the unchangeable splendour of the Roman court on the Bosphorus, the typically Eastern idea that nothing could ever alter the position of their Empire as the centre of the world, the complacency with its own state which is so characteristic of Byzantine history, all these things were really mighty causes of the decay of the East, while the despised West was becoming stronger, was educating itself to become the dominant factor in Christian Europe. Then, just when the West had become strong enough to carry on the tradition of Europe, Islam came, and with it the final ruin of Eastern civilization.
Through such causes as these the Roman Patriarchate, from being the least splendid in Christendom, became enormously the most important. As far as Catholics are concerned, another cause greatly helped this development. First the Nestorians, then the various Monophysite sects, lastly the great mass of Christians of the Byzantine rite fell away from the unity of the Church. This fact alters nothing of the canonical position of those who remained; but it helped further to shift the centre of gravity. At one time, indeed, it must have seemed almost as if the Catholic Eastern Patriarchates had finally disappeared, leaving only Latins as the whole Catholic Church. Happily that never quite happened. There have always been a few, though sometimes very few, Catholics of Eastern rites left, and now there are many more. But it is not surprising that within the Catholic Church the vast and
- ↑ How different the history of the world might have been if the Eastern bishops had built up a strong Christian Church among the Arabs before Mohammed was born, as the Popes had built up churches in Gaul, England, Germany!
