and audience; and towards him turned all their hopes.  He had even, it is said, in his last battle against Maxentius, displayed the Christian banner, the cross, with this inscription:  Hoc signo vinces ("with this device thou shalt conquer “).  There is no knowing what was at that time the state of his soul, and to what extent it was penetrated by the first rays of Christian faith; but it is certain that he was the first amongst the masters of the Roman world to perceive and accept its influence.  With him Paganism fell, and Christianity mounted the throne.  With him the decay of Roman society stops, and the era of modern society commences.

[Illustration:  Knights returning from Foray——­311]

CHAPTER VI.——­ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY IN GAUL.

When Christianity began to penetrate into Gaul, it encountered there two religions very different one from the other, and infinitely more different from the Christian religion; these were Druidism and Paganism—­ hostile one to the other, but with a hostility political only, and unconnected with those really religious questions that Christianity was coming to raise.

[Illustration:  Christianity established in Gaul——­111]

Druidism, considered as a religion, was a mass of confusion, wherein the instinctive notions of the human race concerning the origin and destiny of the world and of mankind were mingled with the Oriental dreams of metempsychosis—­that pretended transmigration, at successive periods, of immortal souls into divers creatures.  This confusion was worse confounded by traditions borrowed from the mythologies of the East and the North, by shadowy remnants of a symbolical worship paid to the material forces of nature, and by barbaric practices, such as human sacrifices, in honor of the gods or of the dead.  People who are without the scientific development of language and the art of writing do not attain to systematic and productive religious creeds.  There is nothing to show that, from the first appearance of the Gauls in history to their struggle with victorious Rome, the religious influence of Druidism had caused any notable progress to be made in Gallic manners and civilization.  A general and strong, but vague and incoherent, belief in the immortality of the soul was its noblest characteristic.  But with the religious elements, at the same time coarse and mystical, were united two facts of importance:  the Druids formed a veritable ecclesiastical corporation, which had, throughout Gallic society, fixed attributes, special manners and customs, an existence at the same time distinct and national; and in the wars with Rome this corporation became the most faithful representatives and the most persistent defenders of Gallic independence and nationality.  The Druids were far more a clergy than Druidism was a religion; but it was an organized and a patriotic clergy.  It was especially on this account that they exercised in Gaul an influence which was still existent, particularly in north-western Gaul, at the time when Christianity reached the Gallic provinces of the south and centre.