Incidentally, we note that it was by the great Byzantine general Belisarius, that these last three were defeated and sent out of the story. None of the three left a very lasting impression on it, but that cannot be said of the Visigoths, who altered the way in which people lived both in Gaul and Spain very considerably. The Lombards' kingdom was swallowed up, as we saw, by Charlemagne, in 744. They, too, left little mark on the story. There remain, however (and their kingdom does not, like that of the others, come to an end), the Franks. The others go, but the Franks stay. Charlemagne absorbs into his own domains many others besides those Lombards. He absorbs the Burgundians, the Saxons (this name had by now been transferred from those Northern Saxons who were sea-pirates and came to Britain, to a people occupying part of that territory in south-west Germany which is still called Saxony) and many besides. With Charlemagne we come to the beginnings of Europe such as we know Europe now. But in order to see how Europe began at that time to seem something like the Europe that we know we must go back again to "the Eternal City," as it has been called--to Rome--and see what has been happening there, and especially what it is that has happened which has brought into being and into his great importance in the story that personage of whom we made our first mention only a page or two back--the Pope. {54} CHAPTER VIII THE POPE As Christianity spread through the world in the second and third centuries, churches, that is to say places in which the Christians assembled for worship, were established in many cities. In different parts of the Empire, as these parts were converted from paganism, overseers of the local churches were appointed and were called "episcopi," from a Greek word which is very literally translated by our word overseer. And our word "bishop" is formed from that word "episcopus." There was, of course, a bishop, an episcopus, at Rome. If Jerusalem had not been, as we have seen that it was, so battered by war and so deserted by the inhabitants who were driven out of it, it is likely that Jerusalem would have been regarded as the chief Christian city, because Christ had taught and had suffered there. It was the centre and chief city of the religion on which Christianity was based and of that law which Christ Himself said that He came not to destroy but to fulfil. But Jerusalem itself was almost destroyed. Rome was the chief city, the centre, of the Empire. At Rome, moreover, the apostle who did more than any other to spread Christianity among the Gentiles--that is to say, all over the world--St. Paul, had lived for some years, and had died.