But the regulations were mild compared to the law by which Theodosius ordered all his subjects not only to accept the Christian doctrines, but to accept them only in the form laid down by the “universal” or “Catholic” church of which he had made himself the protector and which was to have a monopoly in all matters spiritual. All those who after the promulgation of this ordinance stuck to their “erroneous opinions”—who persisted in their “insane heresies”—who remained faithful to their “scandalous doctrines”—were to suffer the consequences of their willful disobedience and were to be exiled or put to death. From then on the old world marched rapidly to its final doom. In Italy and Gaul and Spain and England hardly a pagan temple remained. They were either wrecked by the contractors who needed stones for new bridges and streets and city-walls and water-works, or they were remodeled to serve as meeting places for the Christians. The thousands of golden and silver images which had been accumulated since the beginning of the Republic were publicly confiscated and privately stolen and such statues as remained were made into mortar. The Serapeum of Alexandria, a temple which Greeks and Romans and Egyptians alike had held in the greatest veneration for more than six centuries, was razed to the ground. There remained the university, famous all over the world ever since it had been founded by Alexander the Great. It had continued to teach and explain the old philosophies and as a result attracted a large number of students from all parts of the Mediterranean. When it was not closed at the behest of the Bishop of Alexandria, the monks of his diocese took the matter into their own hands. They broke into the lecture rooms, lynched Hypatia, the last of the great Platonic teachers, and threw her mutilated body into the streets where it was left to the mercy of the dogs. In Rome things went no better. The temple of Jupiter was closed, the Sibylline books, the very basis of the old Roman faith, were burned. The capital was left a ruin. In Gaul, under the leadership of the famous bishop of Tours, the old Gods were declared to be the predecessors of the Christian devils and their temples were therefore ordered to be wiped off the face of the earth. If, as sometimes happened in remote country districts, the peasants rushed forth to the defense of their beloved shrines, the soldiers were called out and by means of the ax and the gallows made an end to such “insurrections of Satan.”