The Beginnings of New England: Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty

t used to be the fashion of historians, looking superficially at the facts pre-

sented in chronicles and tables of dates, without analyzing and compar-

ing vast groups of facts distributed through centuries, or even suspecting

the need for such analysis and comparison, to assign the date 476 A.D. as the

moment at which the Roman Empire came to an end. It was in that year that

the soldier of fortune, Odovakar, commander of the Herulian mercenaries

in Italy, sent the handsome boy Romulus, son of Orestes, better known as

"little Augustus," from his imperial throne to the splendid villa of Lucullus

near Naples, and gave him a yearly pension of $35,000 [6,000 solidi] to con-

sole him for the loss of a world. As 324 years elapsed before another emperor

was crowned at Rome, and as the political headship of Europe after that

happy restoration remained upon the German soil to which the events of

the eighth century had shifted it, nothing could seem more natural than the

habit which historians once had, of saying that the mighty career of Rome

had ended, as it had begun, with a Romulus. Sometimes the date 476 was

even set up as a great landmark dividing modern from ancient history. For

those, however, who took such a view, it was impossible to see the events ofthe Middle Ages in their true relations to what went before and what came

after. It was impossible to understand what went on in Italy in the sixth

century, or to explain the position of that great Roman power which had its

centre on the Bosphorus, which in the code of Justinian left us our grandest

monument of Roman law, and which for a thousand years was the staunch

bulwark of Europe against the successive aggressions of Persian, Saracen, and

Turk. It was equally impossible to understand the rise of the Papal power,

the all-important politics of the great Saxon and Swabian emperors, the rela-

tions of mediaeval England to the Continental powers, or the marvellously

interesting growth of the modern European system of nationalities. [Side-

note: When did the Roman Empire come to an end?]

Since the middle of the nineteenth century the study of history has under-

gone changes no less sweeping than those which have in the same time af-

fected the study of the physical sciences. Vast groups of facts distributed

through various ages and countries have been subjected to comparison and

analysis, with the result that they have not only thrown fresh light upon one

another, but have in many cases enabled us to recover historic points of view

that had long been buried in oblivion. Such an instance was furnished about

twenty-five years ago by Dr. Bryce's epoch-making work on the Holy Ro-

man Empire. Since then historians still recognize the importance of the date

476 as that which left the Bishop of Rome the dominant personage in Italy,

and marked the shifting of the political centre of gravity from the Palatine to

the Lateran. This was one of those subtle changes which escape notice until

after some of their effects have attracted attention. The most important ef-

fect, in this instance, realized after three centuries, was not the overthrow of

Roman power in the West, but its indefinite extension and expansion. The

men of 476 not only had no idea that they were entering upon a new era,

but least of all did they dream that the Roman Empire had come to an end,

or was ever likely to. Its cities might be pillaged, its provinces overrun, but

the supreme imperial power itself was something without which the men of