The proselyting spirit among these Frankish bishops gave rise to a great movement in the north. The preaching of Patrick was followed by what has been described as a marvellous burst of enthusiasm; and Celtic enthusiasm was from now to be counted on. Columba, the founder of Iona, was the missionary for the Northern Picts and the Albanian Scots; Aidan for the Northumbrian Saxons; Columbanus for the Burgundians of the Vosges; Callich or Gallus for north-eastern Switzerland and Germany; Kilian for Thuringia; Virgilius for Carinthia; Fridolin in Suabia and Alsace; Magnoald founded a monastery in Fingen; Trudpert penetrated as far as the Black Forest, where he was killed. Among these people there had been a variety of conditions before the coming of, first the Romans, and secondly the Christians. Before the arrival of St. Patrick and the conversion of the natives there is very little doubt that part of the pagan worship included human sacrifice. On a plain in what is now the county of Leitrim which was then called the Magh-Sleacth, or Field of Slaughter, these primeval rites took place. “There on the night of Samhin, the same dreadful tribute which the Carthaginians are known to have paid to Saturn in sacrificing to him their first-born, was by the Irish offered up to their chief idol, Crom-Cruach.”[393] Of the Gauls and the Germans we learn something from Cæsar and Tacitus, but both are vague enough when it comes to the subject of children. The two people, according to Strabo, were as much alike as brothers. “The two races have much in common,” said Martin, “in their social organization.” In Gaul the power of the father was absolute—_viri in uxores sicut in liberos vitæ necisque habent potesta__tem_, wrote Cæsar, and Tacitus tells us in _Germanicus_ that the husband had assisted in the execution of his adulterous wife by her nearest relatives—a condition that would lead one to believe that there was high regard for the mother of the family, although it has been said that Tacitus in painting the Germans as virtuous as he did[394] was following much along the lines of Fenimore Cooper in painting the Indians a holy pink—he wished to improve the morals of his own countrymen and sacrificed truth as a detaining cargo. The Germans of the fourth century represented about the period of culture that our American Indians did when the English first arrived in this country. Unlike the Indians, they had the power to learn, whereas the Indians seemed to be able to learn only the vices of civilization. Their imagination stirred by the stories that came back to them of the glory of Rome, they were for pressing forward. With the growing population that made migration necessary, and with the inimical forces pushing them from the rear, the “open road” beckoned them on to Rome. Before the close of the fourth century the Gospel had been carried to them, especially to those near the Roman border.