What we call the Christian Middle Ages emerge from a time of confusion that separates them from the ordered civilization of the Roman Empire. During that time of confusion there was a progressive disintegration of the old Roman order. The Empire itself broke up, and Europe was subjected to successive waves of barbarian invaders, who, if they brought nothing else, did at least invigorate the West with fresh blood. The barbarian brought with him an energy both physical and moral that provided sufficient human enthusiasm to embrace Christianity, and under Christian inspiration produce something as near a purely Christian culture as mankind has yet reached.

The connecting link between the ancient and medieval world is the Catholic Church, carrying with her down the centuries the cultural heritage which she had already adopted and baptised: this was largely preserved in the living tradition of her worship, which gathered and conveyed in an unbroken stream a thin residuum of human achievement. Much disappeared in the wanton destruction of the great libraries of the ancient world, or through the neglect that comes of despair, when the past glows with a melancholy radiance and the future is veiled by darkness and fear. At such times there comes a point when nothing seems worth saving but the bare fact of existence. In a world of shifting sands the Church remained the one rock of civilization.