The period of time of which this book treats is that lying between the greatest splendor of the Roman Empire and the beginning of what may properly be called the Middle Ages. What had before seemed blind forces of destruction became agents working together in the making of a new and fairer civilization. It is the purpose of this book to dwell upon these elements of construction, to show how they originated, and how they were tending to produce the life of the great period which was to follow. These forces were chiefly three: first, the organized Christian Church; second, the Germanic races; third, the domination of the Frankish race over all the other Germanic nations of the continent. The history of these three lines of development finds its natural culmination in the union of the Frankish kingdom with the Roman papacy under the form of the Holy Roman Empire. - Preface.