Between the two Popes St. Gregory I. and St. Gregory II. lies a period of 111 years, marked with disasters to the Christian people and religion such as no preceding century can show. At the death of St. Gregory I. in 604, all the shores of the Mediterranean were in possession of Christians. The authority of the eastern emperor extended from Constantinople over Asia Minor, Syria, and the region up to the Euphrates, Egypt, and the long range of Northern Africa, embracing the present Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco, to the Atlantic. The beginning of Christian kingdoms, looking up with filial affection to their spiritual Father in Rome, was apparent to the eye of the first Gregory. Gaul and Spain and Africa, lately recovered by Justinian, had a network of spiritual provinces, in which each Metropolitan received from Rome the pallium, the token of apostolic authority and unity. St. Gregory himself had added to these by the mission of Augustine, and the chair of unity founded at Canterbury. Full as these countries were of violence, mutual aggression, and unsubdued ferocity, the Teutonic invaders had nevertheless accepted the law of Christ from Rome, and the first principles of human order had been fused with their natural traditions of freedom. Above all, the Arian heresy had been dispossessed, and there was no appearance of a religion counter to the Christian arising. In every city of a vast region the bishop was regarded by his people with veneration, the very source of which lay in a power which he held by imposition of hands. A spiritual head to those around him, he was himself a link in the chain of that universal hierarchy the head of which was at Rome.