Of these two sets of influences which predominated? That both were powerful no one can doubt. All things considered, however, it must be said that monasticism, as it developed in the West, fulfilled a genuine need and performed an important service for Christian civilisation. St. Benedict not only presented a satisfactory solution of the grave dangers threatening this institution as a force in the evolution of the mediæval Church, but with his organised army of devoted, obedient followers, he met the barbarian hosts invading the Roman Empire and gradually won them to adopt and in due course of time to practise the Christian code. Indeed it is difficult to imagine how the Church could have forged its course so triumphantly through all the breakers, trials, and vicissitudes of this crucial epoch--how its jurisdiction could have been extended so rapidly and so effectively to all parts of western Europe and to some points in the East and in northern Africa--how its great humanising, spiritualising, and edifying influences could have been so persistent and at the same time so efficient--how the simple, fundamental truths of the Gospel as set forth in the Apostolic Church could have been handed on to the later ages--had not the growth of monasticism been regulated and utilised. Therefore, next to the evolution of that magnificent organisation of the Papacy, as a creative factor in the rise of the mediæval Church, must be placed organised, western monasticism. SOURCES A.--PRIMARY: I.--JEWISH: 1.--_Old Testament._ 2.--Josephus, _Antiquities_, i., bk. 15, ch. 10, sec. 4-5; bk. 18, ch. 1, sec. 5; ii., bk. 2, ch. 8, sec. 2-11. 3.--Philo, _Contemplative Life_. Bohn, _Eccl. Lib._, 1855, iv., 1-21. II.--GREEK: 1.--_New Testament._ 2.--_New Testament Apocrypha._ 3.--Eusebius, _Church Hist._, ii., ch. 17. _Nic. and Post-Nic. Fathers_, i. Several other eds. 4.--Socrates, _Church Hist._, i., 13; iv., 23 _ff._ _Ib._, ii. Other eds. 5.--Sozomen, _Church Hist._, i., 12-14; iii., 14; vi., 28-34. _Ib._, ii. 6.--Theodoret, _Church Hist._, ch. 33. _Ib._, iii. Bohn Lib. 7.--Evagrius, _Life of St. Anthony_. Bohn Lib., 1851. 8.--Palladius, _Historia Lausiaca_. Ed. by Butler, _Texts and Studies_. Camb., 1898. 9.--_Concerning the Ascetic Life._ Not in Eng. III.--LATIN: 1.--Sulpicius Severus, _Dialogues_, i.-iii. _Nic. and Post-Nic. Fathers_, 2d ser., xi., pt. 11. 2.--Athanasius, _Life of Anthony_. _Ib._, iv., 195-221. 3.--Ambrose, _Concerning Virgins_. _Ib._, x., 360. _Letters_, No. 63. _Ib._, 457. 4.--Augustine, _The Work of Monks_. _Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church_, xxii., 470-516. 5.--Cassian, _Institutes_. _Nic. and Post-Nic. Fathers_, 2d ser., xi. _Cœnobia_, _Ib._ _Conferences_, _Ib._