These considerations may help to bring into relief the place which Patrick holds in the history of Europe. Judged by what he actually compassed, he must be placed along with the most efficient of those who took part in spreading the Christian faith beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire. He was endowed in abundant measure with the quality of enthusiasm, and stands in quite a different rank from the apostle of England, in whom this victorious energy of enthusiasm was lacking, Augustine, the messenger and instrument of Gregory the Great. Patrick was no mere messenger or instrument. He had a strong personality and the power of initiative; he depended on himself, or, as he would have said, on divine guidance. He was not in constant communication with Xystus, or Leo, or any superior; he was thrown upon the resources of his own judgment. Yet no less than Augustine, no less than Boniface, he was the bearer of the _Roman idea_. But we must remember that it was the Roman idea of days when the Church was still closely bound up in the Empire, and owed her high prestige to the older institution which had served as the model for her external organisation. The Pope had not yet become a spiritual Caesar Augustus, as he is at the present day. In the universal order, he was still for generations to be overshadowed by the Emperor. The Roman idea at this stage meant not the idea of subjection to the Roman see, but of Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire. It was as impossible for Patrick as it was impossible for the High King of Ireland to divorce the idea of the Church from the idea of the Empire. Christianity was marked off from all other religions as the religion of the Romans in the wider political sense of that Imperial name. If Christianity aspired in theory to be ecumenical, Rome had aspired in theory to realise universal sway before Christianity appeared. The poet Claudian, in his brilliant sketch—written when Patrick was a boy—of the amazing career of Rome, expresses her ecumenical aspiration in the line— Humanumque genus communi nomine fouit.[226] That aspiration was destined to be fulfilled more completely in another sense after her political decline. The dismemberment of the Empire and the upgrowth of the German kingdoms brought about an evolution which enabled the elder Rome to reassert her influence in a new way and a new order. But it was the same idea, at different stages of development, which was borne by Patrick, by Augustine, by Boniface, and by Otto.