the conversion of the Roman Empire, the process by which the state of Augustus and Nero became the state of Constantine and Theodosius, has a vital relation to the rise of the new culture. This has never been adequately recognized by the historians, owing to the curious divorce between ancient and modem history which has caused the study of the tra

is impossible to read the contemporary account of these journeys and the letters that St. Paul wrote to the first Christian communities of Europe and Asia Minor without realizing that a new principle had been introduced into the static civilization of the Roman world that contained infinite possibilities of change.

To St. Leo and his contemporaries the Roman Empire was an instrument in the hands of providence to bring the nations together to receive the Gospel of Christ. St. Peter and St. Paul had taken the place of Romulus and Remus as the founders of the second Rome, the Urbs sacerdotalis et regalis, which was the centre of the Christian world:

The great cultures of the ancient East, like China and India, were autochthonous growths which represent a continuous process of development in which religion and culture grew together from the same sociological roots and the same natural environment. But in the West it was not so. Primitive Europe outside the Mediterranean lands preserved no commo

THE BEGINNINGS of Western culture are to be found in the new spiritual community which arose from the ruins of the Roman Empire owing to the conversion of the Northern barbarians to the Christian faith. The Christian Church inherited the traditions of the Empire.

The breakdown of the political organization of the Roman Empire had left a great void which no barbarian king or general could fill, and this void was filled by the Church as the teacher and law-giver of the new peoples. The Latin Fathers—Ambrose, Augustine, Leo and Gregory —were in a real sense the fathers of Western culture, since it was only in

In that age religion was the only power that remained unaffected by the collapse of civilization, by the loss of faith in social institutions and cultural traditions and by the loss of hope in life. Wherever genuine religion exists it must always possess this quality, since it is of the essence of religion to bring man into relation with transcende

to see how far the formation of the Western Europe culture complex was conditioned by religious factors.

the most interesting is to be found in the history of the rise of the modem scientific movement which has had such immeasurable importance in the history of the modem world.