Doubtless not without interest will the reader of these pages remark how closely the process of ecclesiastical events resembles that of civil. In both there is an irresistible tendency to the concentration of power. As in Roman history we have seen a few families, and, indeed, at last, one man grasp the influence which in earlier times was disseminated among the people, so in the Church the congregations are quickly found in subordination to their bishops, and these, in their turn, succumbing to a perpetually diminishing number of their compeers. In the period we are now considering, the minor episcopates, such as those of Jerusalem, Antioch, Carthage, had virtually lost their pristine force, everything having converged into the three great sees of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Rome. The history of the time is a record of the desperate struggles of the three chief bishops for supremacy. In this conflict Rome possessed many advantages; the two others were more immediately under the control of the imperial government, the clashing of interests between them more frequent, their rivalry more bitter. The control of ecclesiastical power was hence perpetually in Rome, though she was, both politically and intellectually, inferior to her competitors. As of old, there was a triumvirate in the world destined to concentrate into a despotism. And, as if to remind men that the principles involved in the movements of the Church are of the same nature as those involved in the movements of the state, the resemblances here pointed out are sometimes singularly illustrated in trifling details. The Bishop of Alexandria was not the first triumvir who came to an untimely end on the banks of the Nile; the Roman pontiff was not the first who consolidated his power by the aid of Gallic legions. CHAPTER X. THE EUROPEAN AGE OF FAITH. AGE OF FAITH IN THE EAST. _Consolidation of the Byzantine System, or the Union of Church and State.--The consequent Paganization of Religion and Persecution of Philosophy._ _Political Necessity for the enforcement of Patristicism, or Science of the Fathers.--Its peculiar Doctrines._ _Obliteration of the Vestiges of Greek Knowledge by Patristicism.--The Libraries and Serapion of Alexandria.--Destruction of the latter by Theodosius.--Death of Hypatia.--Extinction of Learning in the East by Cyril, his Associates and Successors._ [Sidenote: The age of Faith.]