GOTHS: SUEVI; VANDALS; etc.) To the Roman provincials (except in Britain) the change of conditions must have seemed slight. They had often been ruled by German officials, and the German kings who now ruled them held official titles conferred by the Emperor at Rome or the Emperor at Constantinople. The Romans re mained free, and in their disturb.: with each other they were still governed by Roman law. The Burgundian and Visigothic kings caused manuals of Roman law to be compiled for the benefit of their Roman subjects. Theodoric (q.v.). King of the Ostrogoths. issued a similar compilation, by which Goths as well as Romans were to he governed. Each provincial landholder was, in deed, compelled to surrender to a German a part of his estate and slaves: but under the Empire German soldiers had been quartered on the pro vincials, and contributions had been exacted for the support of the soldiers. From such contri butions the Romans were now freed. The chief cause of friction between the German kings and their followers on the one hand and the Roman provincials on the other lay in the fact that the former were generally Arian hen•ties. The re sultant disaffection was a. serious element of weakness in the kingdoms of the Goths, Iffi•g,tm dians, and Vandals. Early in the sixth century the newly converted and orthodox Franks de feated the Visigoths and the Burgtindians, and brought. tinder their control all Gaul except the :Mediterranean coast. (See CLovis;
Later in the same centitr• the armies and Ileets of the orthodox Justinian overthrew the king (loins of the Arian Vandals and Ostrogoths and wrested southeastern Spain from the Visigoths, so that for a few years the Mediterranean was again Homan. (See Jus•ltm.tsAnit's: NAusEs.) Itefore the close of the century the Visigoths and the Suevi. whose realm the Visi goths had annexed. ahInred their heresies, and in Visigothic Spain the clergy became all-powerful. In it(l8 the Arian Longobards. or Lombards (q.v.). conquered northern and central Italy. but this tribe also accepted the orthodox faith in the middle of the seventh century. The seat tered settlement of the Gentian conquerors among their Roman subjects favored a fusion of races, and the chief obstacle to fusion disappeared when the Germans became orthodox Christians. Of all the kingdoms founded by the Germans on Roman soil, that of the Franks became the most powerful and proved the most durable, because the Franks retained, as the central point of their power, their old home on the Lower Rhine, and because the expansion of their rule over Gaul and later over Italy was accompanied by expan sion over purely German territory. At the close of the fifth century the Franks conquered the Alemanni. and in the sixth the Thu•ingians and Bavarians.