In order to understand the situation, political and ecclesiastical, in Southern France we must bear in mind that the Gauls of the West and the Galatae of the East were of the same stock, and that each branch, though several nations intervened, retained unimpaired its racial characteristics. Galli, Galatae, Keltae are but different forms of the same word. Livy would speak of Gauls in the East; Polybius of Galatians in the West. The Gauls were a warm-hearted people, but unstable in their friendships, impetuous and courageous in war, but unable to wear down a foe by stubborn endurance. As Cæsar noticed: "sunt in consiliis capiendis mobiles, et novis plerumque rebus student;" an opinion endorsed in modern times by one of their own nation--Thierry: "Une bravoure personnelle que rien n'égale chez les peuples anciens--un esprit franc, impétueux, ouvert à toutes les impressions, éminemment intelligent--mais, à côté de cela, une mobilité extrême, point de constance, une répugnance marquée aux idées de discipline et d'ordre." To these traits may be added vivid imagination, a fondness for song and poetry, a love of nature so intimate that allegory became reality. Gaul had become one of the perpetual conquests of Rome and had submitted to its governmental system, but nothing could eradicate its racial peculiarities. The Gaul was an individualist, the Roman an imperialist, and hence the Gaul might be conquered, but never destroyed. Now this imperialism which the Church took over from the State was developed vigorously and rapidly under Pope Gregory VII and his successors, and the insistence of it aroused a corresponding reaction in Gaulish nationalism. The Church had condemned Nominalism as inimical to Catholic unity, and had adopted the opposite scholastic theory of Realism as most agreeable to the theory of the Holy Roman Empire. This theory, however, now declared to be a dogma of the Catholic faith, struck at the root of national and individual independence. Such an independence France had constantly shewn, and it may be traced not only to the racial antipathy between Gaul and Pelagian, but to the fact that Western Gaul had never lost touch with its Eastern kin. Its Christianity from the earliest times was on Eastern rather than Western lines. Its monasticism was of the Oriental type. The letter which the Christians of Gaul in A.D. 177, describing the sufferings and deaths of the martyrs in the persecution, sent to "the brethren in Asia and Phrygia, having the same faith and hope of redemption with us," can only be explained on the assumption that they were of the same kith and kin. In fact, one of the martyrs, Alexander, was a Phrygian.[13] The Gallican Liturgy was Eastern (Ephesian), not Western. § 2. SLAVONIC