Loss caused by the coming of the barbarians regained during Middle Ages.
It required about a thousand years to educate the new race; but at last Europe, including districts never embraced in the Roman Empire, caught up once more with antiquity. When, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, first Italy, and then the rest of Europe, awoke again to the beauty and truth of the classical literature and began to emulate the ancient art, the process of educating the barbarians may be said to have been completed. Yet the Middle Ages had been by no means a sterile period. They had added their part to the heritage of the West. From the union of two great elements, the ancient civilization, which was completely revived at the opening of the sixteenth century, and the vigor and the political and social ideals of the Germans, a new thing was formed, namely, our modern civilization.
General Reading.—By far the most exhaustive work in English upon the German invasions is Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders,—very bulky and costly (8 vols., $36.50). The author has, however, given some of the results of his work in his excellent Dynasty of Theodosius (Clarendon Press, $1.50), and his Theodoric the Goth (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $1.50). Sergeant, The Franks (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $1.50), gives more than is to be found on the subject in either Emerton or Oman.
CHAPTER IV
THE RISE OF THE PAPACY
The greatness of the Church.
17. While the Franks were slowly developing the strength which Charlemagne employed to found the most extensive realm that has existed in Europe since the Roman Empire, another government, whose power was far greater, whose organization was far more perfect, and whose vitality was infinitely superior to that of the Frankish empire, namely, the Christian Church, was steadily extending its sway and establishing the foundations of its later supremacy.