Toward the close of this tumultuous fifth century, the various Teutonic tribes show distinct tendencies toward settling down and forming kingdoms amid the various lands they have overrun.  The Vandals build a state in Africa, and from the old site of Carthage send their ships to the second sack of Rome.  The Visigoths form a Spanish kingdom, which lasts over two hundred years.  The Ostrogoths construct an empire in Italy (493-554), and, under the wise rule of their chieftain Theodoric, men joyfully proclaim that peace and happiness and prosperity have returned to earth.  Most important of all in its bearing upon later history, the Franks under Clovis begin the building of France.[6]

Encouraged by these milder days, the Roman emperors of Constantinople attempt to reclaim their old domain.  The reign of Justinian begins (527-565), and his great general Belisarius temporarily wins back for him both Africa and Italy.  This was a comparatively unimportant detail, a mere momentary reversal of the historic tide.  Justinian did for the future a far more noted service.

If there was one subject which Roman officials had learned thoroughly through their many generations of rule, it was the set of principles by which judges must be guided in their endeavor to do justice.  Long practical experience of administration made the Romans the great law-givers of antiquity.  And now Justinian set his lawyers to work to gather into a single code, or “digest,” all the scattered and elaborate rules and decisions which had place in their gigantic system.[7]

It is this Code of Justinian which, handed down through the ages, stands as the basis of much of our law to-day.  It shapes our social world, it governs the fundamental relations between man and man.  There are not wanting those who believe its principles are wrong, who aver that man’s true attitude toward his fellows should be wholly different from its present artificial pose.  But whether for better or for worse we live to-day by Roman law.

This law the Teutons were slowly absorbing.  They accepted the general structure of the world into which they had thrust themselves; they continued its style of building and many of its rougher arts; they even adopted its language, though in such confused and awkward fashion that Italy, France, and Spain grew each to have a dialect of its own.  And most important of all, they accepted the religion, the Christian religion of Rome.  Missionaries venture forth again.  Augustine preaches in England.[8] Boniface penetrates the German wilds.

It must not be supposed that the moment a Teuton accepted baptism he became filled with a pure Christian spirit of meekness and of love.  On the contrary, he probably remained much the same drunken, roistering heathen as before.  But he was brought in contact with noble examples in the lives of some of the Christian bishops around him; great truths began to touch his mobile nature; he was impressed, softened; he began to think and feel.