One great political effect of the Lombard conquest was the opportunity which it gave the Papacy, while Lombard and Byzantine were buffeting each other, to grow strong and independent. Had Italy remained a Greek province the Pope would have been a mere provincial bishop, barely taking ceremonial precedence of the metropolitans of Ravenna, Aquileia, and Milan; had Italy become a Lombard kingdom, the Pope would have been a royal appointee; but with the Lombard kings fighting the Byzantine Exarchs, each side needing papal aid and sometimes bidding for it, the Pope was enabled to become master of the city and of the duchy of Rome, and the real head of the Latin people as well as of the Latin clergy. In fact, the growth of the Roman Catholic Church is the most interesting development in this period. The Lombards gave it the opportunity to grow strong and independent, but the power to take advantage of the opportunity came from within. This power was compact of many elements, secular and spiritual. From the ills of the world men betook themselves with southern impulsiveness to things religious; they sought refuge, order, security in the Church. In the greater interests of life among the Latins the rising ecclesiastical fabric had no competitor. Paganism had vanished before Christianity, philosophy before theology. Literature, art, science had perished. Italy had ceased to be a country. The ancient Empire of Rome had faded into a far-away memory. The wreck of the old nobility left the ecclesiastical hierarchy without a rival. In the midst of the general ruin of Roman civilization the Church stood stable, offering peace to the timid, comfort to the afflicted, refinement to the gentle, a home to the homeless, a career to the ambitious, power to the strong. By a hundred strings the Church drew men to her; in a hundred modes she sowed the prolific seeds of ecclesiastical patriotism. She was essentially Roman, and gathered to herself whatever was left of life and vigour in the Roman people. With a structure and organization framed on the Imperial pattern, she slowly assumed in men's minds an Imperial image; and Rome, a provincial town whose civil magistrates busied themselves with sewers and aqueducts, again began to inspire men with a strange confidence in a new Imperial power.