A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

590 A Source Book for Ancient Church History[540]influenced by the completely changed political organization ofwhat had been the Roman Empire of the West, but was nowparcelled out among new Germanic nationalities. The Churchin the various kingdoms, in spite of its adherence to the see ofRome as the centre of Catholic unity, came, to no small extent,under the secular authority, and Christianity in Ireland, in Spain,among the Franks, Anglo-Saxons, and even among the Lombardsin Italy assumed a national character, coming largely under thecontrol and subject to the laws and customs of the nation. Inthis period were laid the foundations of the leading ecclesiasticalinstitutions of the Middle Ages, as the Church, although stillunder the influence of antiquity, adapted itself and its institutionsto the changed condition due to the political situation and tookup its duty of training the rude peoples that had come within itsfold.The seventh and eighth centuries saw the completion of therevolution in the ecclesiastical situation. In the East, in the territoriesin which the national churches of the Monophysites wereestablished, the Moslem rule protected them from the attemptsof the orthodox emperors to enforce uniformity. The attemptsmade to recover their allegiance before they succumbed to Islamhad only ended in a serious dispute within the Orthodox Church,the Monothelete controversy, which ended in the Sixth GeneralCouncil of 681. In Italy the Arian Lombards were gradually wonto the Catholic faith, but the Roman see soon found itself embarrassedby the too near secular authority. Accordingly, when thecontroversy with the East over Iconoclasm broke out, the RomanChurch became practically independent of the Eastern imperialauthority, and in its conflict with the Lombards came into alliancewith the rising Frankish power. With this, the transition to theMiddle Ages may be said to have been completed. It was,however, only the last of a series of acts whereby the Churchwas severing itself from the ancient order and coming into closeralliance with the new order in the life of the West. Henceforth