But energetic promoters of the Papal power had by this time emerged from the forests of the North. The barbarians, who had invaded the West, and there fixed their abode, after intoxicating themselves with blood and rapine, behoved to lower their fierce sword before the intellectual, power which they encountered. Altogether new to Christianity, ignorant of the spiritual nature of the Church, and requiring in religion a certain external show, they prostrated themselves, half savages, and half Pagans, before the High Priest of Rome. With them the West was at his feet. First, the Vandals, then the Ostrogoths, a little later the Burgundians, afterwards the Visigoths, lastly, the Lombards and Anglo-Saxons, came to do obeisance to the Roman Pontiff. It was the robust shoulders of the sons of the idolatrous North which finished the work of placing a pastor of the banks of the Tiber on the supreme throne of Christendom. These things took place in the West at the beginning of the seventh century, precisely at the same period when the power of Mahomet, ready also to seize on a portion of the globe, was rising in the East. From that time the evil ceases not to grow. In the eighth century we see the Bishops of Rome with one hand repulsing the Greek Emperors, their lawful sovereigns, and seeking to chase them from Italy, while, with the other, they caress the Mayors of France, and ask this new power, which is beginning to rise in the West, for a share in the wrecks of the empire. Between the East, which she repels, and the West, which she invites, Rome establishes her usurped authority. She rears her throne between two revolts. Frightened at the cry of the Arabs, who, become masters of Spain, vaunt that they will soon arrive in Italy by the passes of the Pyrennees and the Alps, and proclaim the name of Mahomet on the seven hills--amazed at the audacious Astolphus, who, at the head of his Lombards, sends forth his lion-roar, and brandishes his sword before the gates of the eternal city, threatening massacre to every Roman,[15]--Rome, on the brink of ruin, looks around in terror, and throws herself into the arms of the Franks. The usurper Pepin asks a pretended sanction to his new royalty; the Papacy gives it to him, and gets him in return to declare himself the defender of the "Republic of God." Pepin wrests from the Lombards what they had wrested from the emperor; but, instead of restoring it to him, he deposits the keys of the towns which he has conquered on the altar of St. Peter, and, swearing with uplifted hand, declares that it was not for a man he took up arms, but to obtain the forgiveness of his sins from God, and do homage to St. Peter for his conquests. [15] "Fremens ut leo, asserens omnes uno gladio jugulari." (Anastasius, Bibl. Vit. Pontif, p. 83.) Roaring like a lion, declaring that he would slaughter all with one sword.