[Footnote 39: _Ep._, ccxv.; see also _Ep._, ccxxxix. and cclxvi., for violent language. All the letters of the Popes, up to Innocent III., are in this work quoted from the Migne edition.] [Footnote 40: Mansi, iii., 631.] [Footnote 41: The letter is in Theodoret, _Ecclesiastical History_, v., 10.] [Footnote 42: Theodoret, v., 9.] [Footnote 43: _Ep._, lii.] [Footnote 44: _Ep._, xxii.] [Footnote 45: The best collection is Ihm's _Damasi Epigrammata_ (1895).] [Footnote 46: There is a third part of this "Gelasian Decree," which assigns to the Papacy an absolute primacy derived from Peter. It is improbable that this was due to Damasus. A letter hitherto ascribed to Pope Sirianus (_Ep._, x. in Migne) has lately been claimed for Damasus (Babut, _La plus ancienne décrétale_, 1904), but there is not enough evidence to date it. It is a series of directions, better known as _Canons of the Romans to the Bishops of Gaul_, on the subject of clerical celibacy, fallen virgins, etc.] CHAPTER III LEO THE GREAT, THE LAST POPE OF IMPERIAL ROME During the half-century which followed the death of Damasus occurred two of the decisive events in the transformation of the Roman Empire into Christian Europe. Paganism was destroyed, and the Empire was shattered. Jerome had, with rhetorical inaccuracy, described the great temple of Jupiter as squalid and deserted in the days of Damasus. Now it was in truth deserted, for the imperial seal was set on its closed doors; and the same seal guarded the door of the temples of Isis and Mithra. The homeless gods had sheltered for a time in the schools and in patrician mansions, but these also had fallen with the Empire. The southern half of Europe became a disordered, semi-Christian world, over which poured from the northern forests fresh armies of barbarians. The City of Man was wrecked; and it was not unnatural that the Papacy should aspire to make its old metropolis the centre of the new City of God.