It was one thing, however, for the Church to claim the right to regulate its own affairs; it was quite another for it to assume the functions which the Roman government had previously performed and which our governments perform to-day, such as the maintenance of order, the management of public education, the trial of lawsuits, etc. It did not, however, exactly usurp the prerogatives of the civil power, but rather offered itself as a substitute for it when no efficient civil government any longer existed. For there were no states, in the modern sense of the word, in western Europe for many centuries after the final destruction of the Roman Empire. The authority of the various kings was seldom sufficient to keep their realms in order. There were always many powerful landholders scattered throughout the kingdom who did pretty much what they pleased and settled their grudges against their fellows by neighborhood wars. Fighting was the main business as well as the chief amusement of the noble class. The king was unable to maintain peace and protect the oppressed, however anxious he may have been to do so. Under these circumstances, it naturally fell to the admirably organized Church to keep order, when it could, by threats or persuasion; to see that sworn contracts were kept, that the wills of the dead were administered, and marriage obligations observed. It took the defenseless widow and orphan under its protection and dispensed charity; it promoted education at a time when few laymen, however rich and noble, pretended even to read. These conditions serve to explain why the Church was finally able greatly to extend the powers which it had enjoyed under the Roman Empire, and why it undertook functions which seem to us to belong to the state rather than to a religious organization. [Sidenote: Origin of papal power.] 19. We must now turn to a consideration of the origin and growth of the supremacy of the popes, who, by raising themselves to the head of the Western Church, became in many respects more powerful than any of the kings and princes with whom they frequently found themselves in bitter conflict. [Sidenote: Prestige of the Roman Christian community.] While we cannot discover, either in the Acts of the Council of Nicæa or in the Theodosian Code, compiled more than a century later, any recognition of the supreme headship of the Bishop of Rome, there is little doubt that he and his flock had almost from the very first enjoyed a leading place among the Christian communities. The Roman Church was the only one in the West which could claim the distinction of having been founded by the immediate followers of Christ,--the "two most glorious apostles." [Sidenote: Belief that Peter was the first Bishop of Rome.]