This
changed the political relations, not only of every state in Gaul, but
of every state in Europe, and enormously to the disadvantage of the
Arians. The second was the reconciliation, in 519, of the pope and the
emperor, which rightly understood was the death warrant of the Gothic
kingdom. Had the Goths been Catholic, either that reconciliation would
not have taken place, or it would have been without ill results for
them. As it was it was fatal, though not all at once.
The Arian heresy, if we are to understand it aright, must be
recognised as an orientalism having much in common with Judaism and
the later Mahometanism. It denied several of the statements of the
Nicene Creed, those monoliths upon which the new Europe was to be
founded. It maintained that the Father and the Son are distinct
Beings; that the Son though divine is not equal to the Father; that
the Son had a state of existence previous to His appearance upon
earth, but is not from Eternity; that Christ Jesus was not really man
but a divine being in a case of flesh. Already against it the future
frowned dark and enormous as the Alps.
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