The mother Church in Rome was imbued with great missionary zeal, and spread the new faith with extraordinary rapidity. In 64 A.D. the Christians in Rome, according to the heathen historian Tacitus, constituted a "huge multitude."[73:1] By 250 the Roman bishop ruled over forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, seven sub-deacons, forty-two acolytes, and fifty readers, exorcists, and porters.[73:2] The Christians in Rome, a city of possibly one million, numbered at least fifty thousand as estimated by Gibbon[73:3] and possibly three times that many as reckoned by later investigators.[73:4] Optatus, Bishop of Mileve in Numidia, asserted that in 300 there were forty churches in the Eternal City. While possibly a few churches may have been planted in western Europe independently, just as in Rome, still, in general, Christianity was disseminated throughout western Europe and the western part of northern Africa through the apostolic organisation in the capital city. Paul may have even made a visit to Spain.[73:5] Bede says that King Lucius asked the Roman bishop in 156 to send missionaries to Britain[73:6] and Tertullian confirmed the declaration.[73:7] In France a church was planted at Lyons in 177 and another at Vienne.[73:8] In the third century, asserts Gregory of Tours, seven Roman missionaries went to Gaul and there became seven bishops with subordinate churches. The famous St. Denis of Paris was one of these pioneers.[74:1] Christianity was likewise early carried into Germany (cis-Rhenana)[74:2] and across the Mediterranean to north-western Africa.[74:3] It is a matter of no great surprise, therefore, to see the Roman Church revered as the great mother Church of the West. Paul speaks of the faith of Rome as "proclaimed throughout the whole world."[74:4]