It will be proper for us to glance at the relation which the church sustained to the state during that period. The adoption of the Christian religion by Constantine, and his interference in ecclesiastical matters, completely altered the position of the church in this respect. From having been an independent spiritual community, it became a sort of chartered corporation, linked by manifold ties to the civil government. It acquired political influence, both in executing and making laws. During the barbaric period, that season of wild disorder which ensued upon the invasion of the Roman empire, and which extended from the fifth to the seventh century, the political influence of the church greatly increased. Bishops were invested with extraordinary powers. In the towns and cities where they resided, the general superintendence of public affairs was committed to their hands. The codes of Justinian empowered them to act in the management of city revenues, and in the oversight of the public works, such as the construction and the repairs of magazines, aqueducts, baths, harbours, bridges, and roads. Other powers were given them, rather more in accordance with the clerical character. They were to interfere in the appointment of guardians over the young, in the protection of prisoners, insane persons, foundlings, stolen children, and oppressed women, in the general administration of justice, and in the public maintenance of morality and order.[1] Whatever opinion we may form respecting the discharge of civic functions by the ministers of Christianity, we are constrained to confess that here was an instance in which temporal authority might be most beneficially exercised. But if the temper of the clergy answered the description given by a writer of that period--and if that temper descended to their successors, the beneficial effect of the church's civil power was not very widely extended. "Is it likely that any should undertake the cause of the oppressed, when even the priests of the Lord do nothing,--the most of them either holding their peace, or if they speak, acting like the silent? So it is that the poor are plundered, widows groan, orphans are trampled upon, and many are driven to take refuge among the barbarians, seeking among the barbarians Roman humanity, because among the Romans they are not able to endure their barbarous inhumanity."[2] Some abatement, perhaps, may be justly made from this sweeping censure: most probably, even in that degenerate age, cases were not wanting in which the benign spirit of Christianity prompted those who were invested with such extraordinary powers, to employ them for the relief of human suffering, the vindication of injured character, and the protection of the oppressed.