The Goths deserted their lands and homes on account of this brutish invasion and pressed down into Italy and Southern Gaul; the Ostro-Goths (or East Goths) becoming in time masters of Italy under King Theodoric, while the Visigoths (or West Goths), who were already in Southern Gaul, had overflowed the Pyrenees and established a Gothic empire in Spain (or Hispania, as it was then called). It was not alone the Goths who were swept before Attila and his Hunnish hosts. The Vandals, the Burgundians, the Longobards were carried by the same tide into Southern Europe; the Vandals thence into northern Africa; while the Slavs from the northeast in turn pressed down after them, and, like the waters of the sea, occupied the lands which they had deserted. So this Hunnish invasion was a tremendous upturning force--in itself bearing no relation to the future result more than the plow to the future grain; but it was a terrible instrument, used in bringing the German race into contact with higher civilizations, where, in the alchemy of time, they were destined to survive not as a nation, but rather as an element, and where, in the great creative processes, they were intended to re-enforce the decaying races of Southern Europe with their rude but uncorrupted vitality. Of the Huns themselves nothing remained in Europe after the defeat of Attila, excepting in Dacia, over which they had permanently spread, and which was later called Hungary. During this process of re-creating the old races of Southern Europe, the Roman Empire was perishing. Its conversion to Christianity in the fourth century, under Constantine, was too late to save it. For three hundred years pagan Rome had been drenching the soil of Southern Europe with the blood of Christians. Then this zealous new convert not only espoused the religion of Christ, but determined by her Church Councils what that religion meant and what it did not mean, and made fierce war upon heretics like the Gothic Christians, who knew nothing about these strange doctrines of which Ulfilas had not told them, nor concerning which did their simple Gothic Bible say one word! (A conflict between _Trinitarianism_ and _Arianism_.) The Roman Empire was the "_Holy_ Roman Empire," now. When Constantine removed his capital to Byzantium, it required two Emperors, an Eastern and a Western, to govern the crumbling mass. But as the temporal power declined, there was at Rome a new and spiritual kingdom which was expanding and claiming an empire over all Christendom. The Bishops of Rome had become Popes. Gaul or France was now governed by the German Franks. And the Frankish Kings in France, and the Visigoth Kings in Spain, and Christians everywhere must bow to the will of the Pope.