During our study of the ‘Patristic Heritage’ in the second of these articles on the ‘History of Spirituality’ we considered the fulfilment of that heritage as reaching to St Benedict (ϯ547), for in St Benedict and his new Western monasticism we can see as it were summed up the ideals of the patristic age on Christian perfection. And with St Benedict we are on the threshold of the middle ages in Europe: the Roman Empire of the West had ceased to be, and the new nations created by the Goths and the Franks were emerging and leading to the Holy Roman Empire that was the political background of so much of medieval Christianity.