The way in which the history of Catholic Christianity has been told obscures just what a near-miss Arian Christianity proved in the West. If the balance of preferences among barbarian monarchs had been swayed by the Spanish Visigoths rather than by Clovis of the Franks, European Christianity could have remained a decentralized Arianism rather than a Roman monarchy; and the consequences are incalculable. No wonder Clovis remained so celebrated.
