George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

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Before Christianity, which is a religion of war

Chap. II.}

against the sins of the world, became the established religion of the Roman empire, it found its way, as if by instinct, into the minds of the Goths;¹ and fragments of their version of the Bible are the oldest written monument of the German tongue. It was diffused more slowly through the northern tribes. Boniface, the great Anglo-Saxon missionary, won more and more of his kindred to the new faith: but with him came a centralizing power; for the German bishoprics and cloisters, which were founded through him, were, from their origin, connected with the see of Rome by vows of obedience.

In the life struggle between the Islam and Christianity, between a form of religion bounded by the material world and the religion which sanctifies the intuitions of reason, Charles Martel, a German warrior, leading into the field men of the Christianized tribes of his country, won the victory for that side which teaches that the light of ideal truth is ever present with the human race.

The world had for centuries been distracted by the want of the elements of safe existence: and the hope of central and western Europe knew but two great forces which could introduce the reign of law and protect the growth of culture, universal monarchy and catholic Christianity; and they both centred in the name of Rome. Humanity bore in its memory no form under which the civil rights of the various peoples had been maintained in their strength and unity, except that of the Roman empire;² and the