CHAPTER XII.
The Age of Faith in the West is marked by Paganism.—The Arabian military Attacks produce the Isolation and permit the Independence of the Bishop of Rome.
Gregory the Great organizes the Ideas of his Age, materializes Faith, allies it to Art, rejects Science, and creates the Italian Form of Religion.
An Alliance of the Papacy with France diffuses that Form.—Political History of the Agreement and Conspiracy of the Frankish Kings and the Pope.—The resulting Consolidation of the new Dynasty in France, and Diffusion of Roman Ideas.—Conversion of Europe.
The Value of the Italian Form of Religion determined from the papal Biography.
The Age of Faith in the West.
From the Age of Faith, in the East, I have now to turn to the Age of Faith in the West. The former, as we have seen, ended prematurely, through a metamorphosis of the populations by military operations, conquests, polygamy; the latter, under more favourable circumstances, gradually completed its predestined phases, and, after the lapse of many centuries, passed into the Age of Reason.
If so many recollections of profound interest cluster round Jerusalem, "the Holy City" of the East, many scarcely inferior are connected with Rome, "the Eternal City" of the West.