This unprecedented increase in dominion and subjects carried with it a corresponding change in the power, duties, wealth, and opportunity of the Papacy. The Pope of Rome became the greatest force in the West and one of the greatest in the world. The hierarchy was necessarily extended and elaborated. The number of officers, both locally and in the ecclesiastical court at Rome, was greatly increased. The rapid addition of so many sturdy recruits to the Roman Church, carried on for centuries, gave the Western Church a pronounced ascendency over the Eastern Church. Papal prerogatives, which were little more than assertions in the early period, became realities. As a result of these heroic and persistent missionary efforts, the mediæval Church, at the end of the missionary period, had attained its highest power. A stream is coloured and influenced in its purity by the soil and rock through which it flows. An institution is modified by the peoples through whom it passes. It is not a matter of surprise to the historical student, in consequence, to see the Christian Church reflecting the civilisation through which it grew. Christianity may easily be reduced to the fundamental Gospel principles taught by Jesus, but in that pure, simple form it was not spread over the world and perpetuated. Originating on Jewish soil, it never outgrew the Jewish tinge. During the post-apostolic period it was powerfully modified by the classical philosophy of Rome, Greece, and Alexandria. In post-Constantinian times the multitudes of heathen converted to Christianity introduced heathen modifications and compromises. The spread of the Church to Teutonic soil, there to encounter a sturdy barbarism in most intimate relations, produced modifying influences which can easily be seen in the history of the Church. The Germanic contribution was to prove to be one of the most important and influential forces in the whole history of the Church, because it created, in a large sense, modern civilisation and the modern Church. This period of zealous missionary endeavour among the Celtic and Teutonic tribes was a great pioneer movement. Far too little attention has been paid to it by historians and, consequently, comparatively small credit has been granted to it as a force in the evolution of our institutions to-day. It is impossible to conceive what would have been the history of Europe and the civilisation she has planted around the earth had not Christianity entered at this epoch to lay the foundations. Every institution would have developed differently and the world would certainly not be what it is to-day. SOURCES A.--PRIMARY: I. ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND SCOTLAND. See Gross, _Sources and Lit. of Eng. Hist._ 1.--Gildas (d. 570), _Works_. Transl. by J. A. Giles. Bohn Lib. 2.--Bede (d. 735), _Ecclesiastical History of England_. Various eds. 3.--Neimius (d. 9th cent.). _History of the Britons_ (to 642). Bohn.