This humanitarian spirit, this cloister conscience of monasticism, was bequeathed to society at large. Thus may the direct line of descent of the modern social conscience be traced through the medieval monasteries. [Sidenote: The new conscience condemns and finally suppresses the gladiatorial games] One of the earliest and the most important of the moral reforms effected by the new conscience in the institutions of pagan Rome was the suppression of the gladiatorial games. For almost seven hundred years preceding the triumph of Christianity in the Roman world, these spectacles had formed the favorite amusement of the Roman people without having awakened any special moral protest. Some of the pagan philosophers and moralists, particularly Seneca and Plutarch, had denounced them as opposed to the sentiment of humanity, but their protest had found no echo in the common conscience of the age. As a rule the pagan moralists saw nothing in them to condemn. It was reserved for the Christian moralists to awaken the conscience to a recognition of the criminality of these cruel spectacles. It was particularly the Christian teaching of the sacredness of human life that contributed powerfully to create the new ethical feeling as to the immoral character of these amusements, and prepared the way for their final abolition (404 A.D.) through the protest made by the monk Telemachus and sealed by his martyr death. Speaking of the significance of the abolition of the gladiatorial games, Lecky declares that “there is scarcely any other reform so important in the moral history of mankind.”[645] One thing which enhanced greatly the importance of the reform was its timeliness. Just at the moment of the suppression of these spectacles the Germanic tribes were passing the frontiers of the Empire and adopting the customs and institutions of the Romans. Had not these amusements been abolished or put under the ban of the moral feelings before the final catastrophe to the Empire, the barbarian tastes and fighting instincts of this new race would have led to the eager introduction of these sports into all the northern countries, just as certainly as the humane spirit of the Greeks prevented their general introduction into Grecian lands. When we recall the indurating and dehumanizing effects of these amusements upon the Roman populace, we realize the importance and timeliness of the reform which kept the barbarian nations free from their brutalizing and deadening influence. [Sidenote: The new conscience condemns infanticide and self-destruction]