The key to all modern history is in
the mutual struggles of these two constitutions and the interests
respectively associated with them, which created two societies on
the same territory, and, for the most part, under the same
national denomination. The barbaric was the constitution of the
conquerors; they had the power, the government, rank, wealth, and
fashion, were reinforced down to the tenth century by fresh
hordes of barbarians, and had even brought the external
ecclesiastical society to a very great extent into harmony with
itself. The Pope became a feudal sovereign, and the bishops and
mitred abbots feudal princes and barons. Yet, after eight
hundred years of fierce struggle, the Roman constitution got the
upper hand, and the barbaric constitution, as far as it could not
be assimilated to the Roman, was eliminated. The original Empire
of the West is now as thoroughly Roman in its constitution, its
laws, and its civilization, as it ever was under any of its
Christian emperors before the barbarian conquest.
The same process is going on in the East, though it has not
advanced so far, having begun there several centuries later, and
the Graeco-Roman constitution was far feebler there than in the
West at the epoch of the conquest. The Germanic tribes that
conquered the West had long had close relations with the empire,
had served as its allies, and even in its armies, and were
partially Romanized.
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