With all this in her favour the Church drew into her service men of the best blood and intellect. The nobility became the holders of the bishoprics, and the Christians consented. Indeed, they did more than consent. They sometimes demanded it, as in the case of Ambrose, feeling, no doubt, the value of having a man of high social rank to protect them in the political world. Men like Sidonius who had been living quite a ‘worldly’ life became bishops, moved, one is inclined to suspect, rather by the sense of power than the spirit of devotion. Thus aristocratic ideas were introduced into the Church and the bishop’s office was sometimes made hereditary, as in the case of Eucherius and his sons Salonius and Veranius. These aristocrats were at the same time the intellectuals of their time, and men like Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, who was consulted by all the writers of the South,[905] Arbogast of Trèves, afterwards Bishop of Chartres,[906] of whose learning, as of that of Auspicius, Sidonius thought much,[907] Patiens of Lyons,[908] Faustus of Riez,[909] Mamertus of Vienne,[910] Graecus of Marseilles,[911] Perpetuus of Tours,[912] and many others, all friends of Sidonius and therefore of culture, shifted the balance of intellect from the pagan to the Christian side of society. And yet, in spite of these hopeful signs, this growth in the power of ideals, we feel that the Church in Gaul did not transform the Roman Empire. Power the Church obtained, but found it a perilous possession. For with power came the whole host of political corruptions which had found a home in the imperial system, and entered, unsuspected, along the paths which custom had made. In becoming, to some extent, the successor of the Empire, the Church exposed herself to imperial dangers. Politics tended to overshadow principles. At least one of the two invasions of which Montalembert speaks[913] was needed in order that the Church should save Society—that of the monks from the South. 2. THE PERSISTENCE OF RHETORIC: TRADITION AND REACTION The development of Christianity, then, in the fourth and fifth centuries, largely takes the form of a struggle between the old and the new. Everywhere in the ecclesiastical society there are, inevitably, survivals, and they loom particularly large on account of two factors: the entry of Roman law into the Church, and the assumption of Church leadership by large numbers of the aristocracy. It is natural, therefore, that we should find survivals in education too, and the extent to which we find them is evidence of the strength and the universality of the rhetorical tradition. And we need to see this tradition in its proper perspective before we can fully appreciate the significance of Gallic education in our period.