In the centuries with which we deal the importance of Baptism cannot be overrated. It was everywhere, in all the missions of the Church, regarded as the critical point of the individual life and the indispensable means of entrance to the Christian Church. When the children of Sebert the king of the East Saxons wished to have all the privileges of Christians, which their father had had, and "a share in the white bread" though they were still heathen, Mellitus the bishop answered, "If you will be washed in that font of salvation in which your father was washed, then you may also partake of the holy bread of which he used to partake: but if you despise the laver of life you cannot possibly receive the bread of life"; and he was driven from the kingdom because he would not yield an inch. The tale however shows also that there were still on the fringe of Christianity persons who were not baptized, not catechumens, yet still interested in the religion and to some extent anxious to be sharers in its life. Throughout the early history of Gaulish Christianity the same is to be observed, and it is doubtless the reason why a number of semi-pagan customs still survived among those who were nominally Christians, {177} as well as those who still stood outside the Church. Baptism in the case of many was a critical point in the history of a tribe or nation. The baptism of Chlodowech was the greatest historical event in the history of the Franks: it was of critical importance that the Franks, with him, accepted orthodox Christianity, that he, robed in the white vesture which West and East alike considered meet, and which was sometimes worn for the octave after baptism, confessed his faith in the Blessed Trinity, was baptized in the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and was anointed with the holy chrism and signed with the sign of the cross. Baptism not only admitted into the Christian Church, but was invested with the associations of the human family, and thus had transferred to it some of the conditions in which students of anthropology find such interesting survivals, of primitive ideas. The conception of spiritual relationship was endowed with the results which belonged to natural kinship. The sponsors became spiritual parents. The code of Justinian forbade the marriage of a godchild and godparent, because "nothing can so much call out fatherly affection and the just prohibition of marriage as a bond of this kind, by means of which, through the action of God, their souls are united to one another." This led to the growth of as elaborate a scheme of spiritual relationships as that which already hedged round among many tribes the eligibility for marriage among persons even remotely akin to one another. In the East, as in the West, baptism was most frequently conferred at the time of the great Christian festivals, Christmas (as in the case of Chlodowech), Epiphany, and especially Easter; and Easter