ABSTRACT
A triumphal arch was very much part of the pagan tradition of the Roman Empire, and it would have been used in the context of the emperor's victory celebrations. Moreover, the senate was an especially pagan body as part of his promotion of Christianity; he had the pagan Altar of Victory removed from the senate house. Conversion in-depth, and the maintenance of Christianity among a converted people, must have required machinery for organising preaching, teaching, and pastoral care. On the Continent and in Byzantium, such machinery was already in existence as a result of the survival of the structures of Roman Christianity, with a framework of bishoprics and a hierarchy of mother-churches and daughter-churches. Very different was the conversion of Saxony, which lay east of the River Rhine and west of the River Elbe, well to the east of the former Roman Empire. The Saxons of this area had seemingly been unaffected by Roman influence.
