4 history essays questions

Chapter Eight: The Late Roman Empire: Decline or Transformation?

Rome had influenced Mediterranean civilization for almost 700 years. Then, in the later fifth century CE, the Roman emperor was removed from power in Italy. Traditionally, we refer to this period as the “Fall” of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages. However, there is debate today about the nature and speed of that transition. Was there a decline in Roman power, followed by a “fall”, or was it a gradual transition, marked by a few dramatic episodes, from the collapse of western Imperial government to new European societies?

It is difficult to define, let alone understand, ‘late antiquity”. As recently as fifty years ago there was little disagreement that Rome’s fall brought on centuries of darkness. The classical description of Rome’s final years was given by Gibbon in the eighteenth century.

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…the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay: the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long…The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered [the army] alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigor of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians…

The Romans were ignorant of the extent of their danger, and the number of their enemies. Beyond the Rhine and Danube, the northern countries of Europe and Asia were filled with innumerable tribes of hunters and shepherds, poor, voracious and turbulent; bold in arms and impatient to ravish the fruits of industry. The Barbarian world was agitated by the rapid impulse of war…the endless column of Barbarians pressed on the Roman empire with accumulated weight; and, if the foremost were destroyed, the vacant space was instantly replenished by new assailants. (Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Ed. J. B. Bury, 7 vols. (1896-1902), vol. IV, pp. 160-169)

The Question: What is the traditional view concerning Rome’s “decline and fall”?

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Gibbon would be one of the first to look at the history of late Rome. He saw several reasons for Rome’s fall, most importantly a weakening of what had made Rome great. Gibbon and others saw Rome as having been fatally wounded by factors like the degradation of older Roman values, ethnic dilution, Christian interference and barbarian invasions. In the end, Gibbon claimed, Rome declined in greatness, resulting in dramatic collapse. This view would hold into the twentieth century.

The counter-argument was initiated by Peter Brown in the mid-twentieth century:

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To study such a period one must be constantly aware of the tension between change and continuity in the exceptionally ancient and well-rooted world round the Mediterranean. On the one hand, this is notoriously the time when certain ancient institutions, whose absence would have seemed quite unimaginable to a man of about AD 250, irrevocably disappeared. By 476, the Roman empire had vanished from western Europe; by 655, the Persian empire had vanished from the Near East. It is only too easy to write about the Late Antique world as if it were merely a melancholy tale of “Decline and Fall”… On the other hand, we are increasingly aware of the astounding new beginnings associated with this period…

Looking at the Late Antique world, we are caught between the regretful contemplation of ancient ruins and the excited acclamation of new growth. What we often lack is a sense of what it was like to live in that world. Like many contemporaries of the changes… we become either extreme conservatives or hysterical radicals. A Roman senator could write as if he still lived in the days of Augustus, and wake up, as many did at the end of the fifth century AD, to realize there was no longer a Roman emperor in Italy…

…Perhaps the most basic reason for the failure of the imperial government, in the years between 380 and 410, was that the two main groups in the Latin world – the senatorial aristocracy and the Catholic Church – disassociated themselves from the fate of the Roman army that defended them…having hamstrung their protectors, they found, somewhat to their surprise, that they could do without them…

The barbarian invasions did not destroy western Roman society, but they drastically altered the scale of life in the western Roman provinces… In western Europe, the fifth century was a time of narrowing horizons, of the strengthening of local roots, and the consolidating of old loyalties. (Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity. 1971 pp. 7-8, 119, 126)

The Question: In the opinion of Brown, why should we be looking at “change and continuity”, rather than “decline and fall”?

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Brown and others talk of transition from ancient Rome to medieval Europe, arguing that older values were slowly replaced by more expedient values guided by Church, local interests and the new barbarian rulers. While there was tension and disruption, people got on with their lives and society adjusted. Gibbon’s history sees a break between a grand ancient world and a grim Germanic dark age. Instead of outright decline, Brown envisioned a period where antiquity shaded into medieval. Today, “”late antiquity” is used to describe the period from the reign of Constantine to the disappearance of Romanity,, a heritage that lingered in many places well after the western Roman empire had disappeared.

This chapter will address the question of when and how Rome “ended”. Section One will ask what role if any Christianity and the institution of the Church had in the transformation or collapse of Rome. Section Two will look at the popular belief that the barbarians brought Rome down. The final section will look at what we mean by “Decline and Fall” and the immediate consequences of the collapse of the western government.

The backdrop to late antiquity in some ways begins with Constantine the Great, who established a new capital city at the old Greek town of Byzantium. Constantine had recognized that power, wealth and military concerns now lay to the East, where a reinvigorated Persian Empire made its presence known on the eastern frontier. The West was simply not as important economically, and the city of Rome too far removed from the frontiers. Constantine moved his court to the newly named Constantinople, making it clear that he was building a new and religiously purer Rome on the Bosporus Straits. With him went the most powerful and most ambitious elites and churchmen. Those who stayed in Rome were generally the older or more conservative families. The city of Rome quickly lost political relevance. The political division between east and west had cultural consequences as well. The Hellenistic world had remained Greek in character and language under the Empire. When Rome had been the imperial capital, the East had looked west to Rome. However, with the establishment of Constantinople, the Greek East now looked no further west than the Balkans.

By the death of Emperor Theodosius in 395 there were signs of economic hardship. The decline was certainly not consistent across the empire, and some places continued to prosper, but monies for government and armies had already begun to dwindle in the reign of Diocletian, who tried to bring the economy under state control. By then, the middle class and cities had become overburdened with taxes, with diminishing benefits. At the height of the Roman Empire, elected city offices held coveted status, but the appeal declined as elites increasingly found themselves mandated to run for office and make up the tax shortfalls out of their own pockets. As no one wanted to volunteer the family fortune for the good of the state, elites abandoned city life for their villas in the countryside, away from imperial reach. The old civic centers of Roman life eroded in the west, except where bishops maintained some imperial representation. Cities endured, especially in the east, but politics became increasingly more regional. On the other hand, some areas of the empire continued to prosper, and we can detect a new urban landscape as physical centers shifted from the forum to the churches.

The military was also affected. Military service had once been part of the elite Roman’s training for future leadership. Now, few aristocratic families sent sons to the frontiers. The best officers came from the periphery and were increasingly of partial barbarian descent. The emperors came to prefer such men as military officers. Loyal to those who promoted their advance, they would have a more difficult time leading any sort of usurpation because of their ancestry.

Thus, there is a period after Constantine when there are noticeable social and economic changes. In some places there was certainly upheaval. In other places life went on in ways that would still be seen as quite Roman. Two other factors have been examined in great detail for their contribution to late antiquity and the collapse versus change question: the influence of the Church and the activities of the barbarians.

Section One: Christianity in Many Forms

Constantine waited until days before his death to become a baptized Christian. This was not uncommon in a world that believed that baptism wiped away prior sins. However, no matter what his actual perceived state of grace, he had significant impact on the Church in his lifetime. There is agreement among historians that the Church played an enormous role in politics from Constantine on. However, did the Church weaken the late Roman state or help prolong it? Again, the classic view was forwarded by Gibbon:

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As the happiness of a future life is the great object of religion, we may hear without surprise or scandal that the introduction, or at least the abuse of Christianity, had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman empire. The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity. Faith, zeal, curiosity, and more earthly passions of malice and ambition, kindled the flame of theological discord; the church, and even the state, were distracted by religious factions, whose conflicts were sometimes bloody and always implacable; the attention of the emperors was diverted from camps to synods; the Roman world was oppressed by a new species of tyranny; and the persecuted sects became the secret enemies of their country. Yet party-spirit, however pernicious or absurd, is a principle of union as well as of dissension. The bishops, from eighteen hundred pulpits, inculcated the duty of passive obedience to a lawful and orthodox sovereign; their frequent assemblies and perpetual correspondence maintained the communion of distant churches; and the benevolent temper of the Gospel was strengthened, though confirmed, by the spiritual alliance of the Catholics. The sacred indolence of the monks was devoutly embraced by a servile and effeminate age; but if superstition had not afforded a decent retreat, the same vices would have tempted the unworthy Romans to desert, from baser motives, the standard of the republic. (Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Ed. J. B. Bury, 7 vols. (1896-1902), vol. IV, pp. 160-169

The Question: Why does Gibbon believe Christianity weakened the Roman Empire?

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Gibbon suggests that Christian values of pacifism and charity sapped Roman strengths, and that religious struggles led to too much preoccupation with church affairs, to the detriment of the armies. Heather, on the other hand, suggests that the impact was limited:

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But while the rise of Christianity was certainly a cultural revolution, Gibbon and others are much less convincing in claiming that the new religion had a seriously deleterious effect upon the functioning of the Empire. Christian institutions did…acquire large financial endowments. On the other hand, the non-Christian religious institutions that they replaced had also been wealthy, and their wealth was being progressively confiscated at the same time as Christianity waxed strong. It is unclear whether endowing Christianity involved an overall transfer of assets from secular to religious coffers. Likewise, while some manpower was certainly lost to the cloister, this was no more than a few thousand individuals at most, hardly a significant figure in a world that was maintaining, even increasing, population levels. Similarly, the number of upper-class individuals who renounced their wealth and lifestyle for a life of Christian devotion pales into insignificance beside the 6,000 or so who by AD 400 were actively participating in the state as top bureaucrats…

Nor was there any pressing reason why Christianity should have generated such a crisis, since religion and Empire rapidly reached an ideological rapprochement. Roman imperialism had claimed…that the presiding divinities had destined Rome to conquer and civilize the world… After Constantine’s public adoption of Christianity, the long-standing claims about the relation of the state to the deity were quickly, and surprisingly easily, reworked. The presiding divinity was recast as the Christian God… The claim that the Empire was God’s vehicle…changed little: only the nomenclature was different. (Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire. 2006, pp. 122-3).

The Question: In Heather’s view, what was the impact of Christianity in the relationship between Empire and the divine? Is the idea that only a few thousand were involved believable? Why?

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While Heather accepts that there was a cultural change in the way Christians viewed their relationship with the Classical world, from a political and comparative standpoint there was little difference in the monies and attention given to the Church, nor did it have a measurable role in weakening the empire. This did not stop non-Christians over the next century, however, from believing that it had.

During most of the fourth century, Christianity and paganism coexisted in joint legality. The formidable theologian Augustine, who served as bishop of the North African city of Hippo, for instance, was raised by mixed parents, and had a foot in both traditions. However, it became increasingly difficult to maintain pagan worship, and those who did so were subject to violence from churchmen and the Christian community. Temples could be publicly desecrated, often in humiliating ways, the stones recycled for churches. The gulf between the Christian and non-Christian view of Rome’s future grew wider.

Much of the debate lies in the nature of Christianity itself by late antiquity. Before Constantine the Church had been an underground movement that advocated social justice for the oppressed. Once Constantine legalized the faith, he made Christianity a partner of a military state that emphasized victory, conquest and lordship. The language of the church changed into a militant cry for battle against the unbeliever. The Church itself became a weapon of the state.

Of course, defining “the Church” was also problematical. Even 300 years after the life of Jesus of Nazareth, there were still many unresolved questions concerning the nature of Christianity, and the Christian life, especially those issues dealing with the actual life and nature of Christ before and after ascension, the nature and structure of the Trinity, and the necessary steps towards redemption and salvation. Now that the Church had an imperial stamp of approval, the Church was faced with the challenge of establishing a standard belief system. Deviations, now called heresies, were not to be allowed.

Donatism was one such alternate interpretation labeled as heresy. Donatists, so-called after the views of Bishop Donatus during Diocletian’s Great Persecution of the early fourth century, believed that apostasy (turning away from the faith) should be severely punished in penitence. Moreover, clergy who had apostatized should not be allowed to take up their office again. In most Christian churches, apostates had been allowed back, but the Donatists of Africa, where Christians had suffered greatly in the Persecution, had little sympathy for the weak-spirited. Although Donatists refused to follow mainstream church guidelines on readmitting lapsed Christians, Donatist churches and liturgy otherwise looked very much like the orthodox (“correct word”) Church.

The debate over Arianism presents the problem faced by Constantine as he tried to work through the vicious politics of the various bishops defending their beliefs. Many of the bishops were from the elite families that once would have produced senators and governors in an unforgiving political environment. They understood power politics, and played games with the lives of rivals in a way that reminded one scholar of a wild animal hunt.

Much of the debate centered on the nature and structure of the Christian Trinity – God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, somehow all at once and yet distinct. Many Roman Christians had had difficulties seeing Jesus as having the same substance and power as God. After all, in a good Roman family sons are not equal to fathers. Named after its chief apologist, Bishop Arius, Arianism saw Jesus as Son of God but still a creation and thus not equal to God.

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To his very dear lord, the man of God, the faithful and orthodox Eusebius, Arius, unjustly persecuted by Alexander the Pope, on account of that all-conquering truth of which you also are a champion, sendeth greeting in the Lord.

… the bishop greatly wastes and persecutes us, and leaves no stone unturned against us. He has driven us out of the city as atheists, because we do not concur in what he publicly preaches, namely, God always, the Son always; as the Father so the Son; the Son co-exists unbegotten with God; He is everlasting; neither by thought nor by any interval does God precede the Son; always God, always Son; he is begotten of the unbegotten; the Son is of God Himself. Eusebius, your brother bishop of Cæsarea, Theodotus, Paulinus, Athanasius, Gregorius, Aetius, and all the bishops of the East, have been condemned because they say that God had an existence prior to that of His Son; except Philogonius, Hellanicus, and Macarius, who are unlearned men, and who have embraced heretical opinions. Some of them say that the Son is an eructation, others that He is a production, others that He is also unbegotten. These are impieties to which we cannot listen, even though the heretics threaten us with a thousand deaths. But we say and believe, and have taught, and do teach, that the Son is not unbegotten, nor in any way part of the unbegotten; and that He does not derive His subsistence from any matter; but that by His own will and counsel He has subsisted before time, and before ages, as perfect God, only begotten and unchangeable, and that before He was begotten, or created, or purposed, or established, He was not. For He was not unbegotten. We are persecuted, because we say that the Son has a beginning, but that God is without beginning. This is the cause of our persecution, and likewise, because we say that He is of the non-existent. And this we say, because He is neither part of God, nor of any essential being. For this are we persecuted; the rest you know…. (Arius, Letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, Theodoret, Historia Ecclesiastica, 1.4.1-4 tr from NPNF series, earlychurchtexts.com)

The Question: What did Arians believe about the Trinity?

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In 325 the Church leaders and Constantine gathered in council at Nicaea, in Bithynia, to discuss the controversy:

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We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of his Father, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance (homoousios) with the Father. By whom all things were made, both which is in heaven and in earth. Who for us men and for our salvation came down [from heaven] and was incarnate and was made man. He suffered and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven. And he shall come again to judge both the living and the dead. And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost. And whosoever shall say that there was a time when the Son of God was not, or that before he was begotten he was not, or that he was made of things that were not, or that he is of a different substance or essence [from the Father] or that he is a creature, or subject to change or conversion--all that so say, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them. (Nicene Creed, CE 325)

The question: How does a universal creed change and define the late antique Church? How does this differ from Arian belief?

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This Nicene Creed is the ancestor of the standard belief statement still used in much of Christianity today. Although Arius was excommunicated, his followers found converts on the frontiers, especially among the barbarian tribes who also saw the unequal relationship between father and Son as sensible and obvious. The Council of Nicaea demonstrated that Christians had little tolerance for variant beliefs.

The role of an annoyed Constantine in calling the council was equally important. When the Church accepted the protection and patronage of the empire, it tacitly acknowledged that the Emperor had a great deal of influence on the official theology of the Church. Constantine’s son, for example, was an Arian who recalled the Arian bishops to the court. His short-lived successor, Julian, renounced his Christian upbringing and tried to stem the tide of Christian influence in the Empire. After Julian, the eastern emperors at least tended to be surrounded by the sternly orthodox.

The Church remained embroiled in controversy by the time Theodosius made public paganism illegal in 391. Christians still did not agree on the nature of Christ or the Christian life, and confrontations between Christians and pagans had gotten, if anything, more violent since Julian. Those views deemed heresies were given short shrift.

By the time of Julian in the mid-fourth century, the Empire had split into two, with the eastern court in Constantinople and the west ostensibly in the city of Rome. In the east, the emperor’s court had remained strong. Some of the best administrators remained in imperial service. The Church was more easily regulated by the court, and the Eastern Roman Emperors continued to control the direction of the church, a system we call Caesaropapism. In the West, on the other hand, the Church grew increasingly self-reliant, in part because of the weakness of the western imperial court. Ambitious and competent Romans of good western families often found the Church to be a better institution for advancement than the court or increasingly powerless local administration. Moreover, the Church was an effective tax shelter. Wealthy Romans could take on a Church career and so save the family fortune. Bishops, being members of a class born to be governors, leaders and ambassadors, could not help but take over local administrations as well.

Increasingly, the Bishop of Rome administered the city of Rome as well as the church, and was called the Little Father or “Papa” -“Pope”. The Pope saw himself as uniquely positioned above all other bishops in spiritual authority, based on a text from the Book of Matthew which was subsequently call the Petrine Doctrine. By tradition Peter was the first bishop of Rome, and had been buried in the cemetery on the Vaticanus hill across the Tiber River from the city.

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18 And I tell you that you are Peter,[ and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades[ will not overcome it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be[ bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Matthew 16:18-19, New International Version)

3. The covenant of the truth therefore abides and the blessed Peter, persevering in the strength of the Rock, which he received, has not abandoned the helm of the Church which he accepted. For he was ordained before the rest in such a manner that as he was called the Rock, as he was declared the foundation, as he was constituted doorkeeper of the kingdom of Heaven, as he was appointed judge to bind and loose, whose judgments will retain their validity in Heaven, by all these mystical titles we might perceive the nature of his relationship to Christ.

And today he still more fully and effectually performs the office entrusted to him and carries out every part of his duty and his charge in Him and with Him by whom he was glorified. So if any act or decree of ours is righteous, if we obtain anything by our daily supplications from God's mercy, it is his work and his merits, whose power lives in his see and whose authority is so high….

4. And so, dearly beloved, with reasonable obedience, we celebrate today's festival in such a way that in my humble person he may be recognized and honored, on whom rests the care of all the shepherds, as well as the charge of the sheep commended to him. His dignity is not diminished by even so unworthy an heir. Hence the presence of my venerable brethren and fellow priests, as much desired and valued by me, will be still more sacred and precious if they will transfer the chief honor of this service, in which they have deigned to take part, to him whom they know to be not only the patron of this see but also the primate of all bishops. When therefore we utter our exhortations in your ears, holy brethren, believe that he is speaking whose representative we are, because it is his warning that we give and nothing but his teaching that we preach. (Matthew 16:18-19. Pope Leo,” Sermon 3”).

The Question: How did the Pope justify the primacy of Rome in Christianity? How does this impact Rome’s relevance in the years to come?

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The popes saw themselves as spiritual successors of Peter. Thus, if Jesus had given the powers of decision-making for the Church to his “rock” (Greek Petros), then that power had been spiritually passed down through the succeeding bishops. Leo argued that the Church at Rome – the Roman Catholic Church – thus held primacy among all Christian churches. This would also perpetuate the idea that Rome was eternal, no matter what happened politically.

Not surprisingly, Constantinople did not see it that way. The massive, wealthy and glittering New Rome gave short shrift to the claim of a bishop in old Rome that his word topped those of the sophisticated and powerful bishops of the East. On the other hand, while the west was far from agreeing with the Pope’s claim to primacy, westerners preferred the authority of the ancient city of Rome to a seemingly trumped up claim by an eastern city with no saints and practically no portfolio.

The Church was by now an urban institution, often dominated by the politics of bishops and local leaders. However, some Christians withdrew into reclusive communities or into solitude so as to be less distracted. The third century Antony and others after him fled into the quiet of the Egyptian desert to hear the commands of God, surviving on donations from pilgrims. Such hermit recluses became known as monks (Greek monachorum for singular). They were noted and revered for their ascetism, an almost total surrender of self and the needs of the body. Note this selection from “Life” of Antony:

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… More and more confirmed in his purpose, he hurried to the mountain, and having found a fort, so long deserted that it was full of creeping things, on the other side of the river; he crossed over to it and dwelt there. The reptiles, as though some one were chasing them, immediately left the place. But he built up the entrance completely, having stored up loaves for six months--this is a custom of the Thebans, and the loaves often remain fresh a whole year--and as he found water within, he descended as into a shrine, and abode within by himself, never going forth nor looking at any one who came. Thus he employed a long time training himself, and received loaves, let down from above, twice in the year.

And so for nearly twenty years he continued training himself in solitude, never going forth, and but seldom seen by any. After this when many were eager and wishful to imitate his discipline, and his acquaintances came and began to cast down and wrench off the door by force, Antony, as from a shrine, came forth initiated in the mysteries and filled with the Spirit of God. Then for the first time he was seen outside the fort by those who came to see him. And they, when they saw him, wondered at the sight, for he had the same habit of body as before, and was neither fat, like a man without exercise, nor lean from fasting and striving with the demons, but he was just the same as they had known him before his retirement,…. he persuaded many to embrace the solitary life. And thus it happened in the end that cells arose even in the mountains, and the desert was colonised by monks, who came forth from their own people, and enrolled themselves for the citizenship in the heavens. (Athanasius: Select Works and Letters, Volume IV of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds.: 12-14)

The Question: Why would this spiritual lifestyle be so appealing? How does it break from classical perspectives of society?

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Such a work is called a hagiography, an account of a holy person’s life. It is not meant to be so much biographical as inspirational, demonstrating what faith could accomplish. Certainly ascetism was viewed by several as an alternative to life in Roman society, but we must be careful with the numbers claimed for hermitic monasticism. Holy men need admirers, as the wilderness will only supply so much of human needs.

While several preferred to live in individual solitude, some formed silent self-sufficient communities that ate together for convenience, establishing “Rules” of order, one of the first being that of the fourth century monk Pachomius of Egypt. This “coenobitic” monasticism soon spread, and became more communal and less isolationist. It found appeal in the fifth century west, where the life at first attracted those who in earlier times would have gone into government and civil service, men with some education and a desire to share repose with like-minded men. Silence was tempered with spiritual discussion, prayer with communal activity. For these monks, there was peril in trying to live a spiritual life without rules:

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It is manifest that there are four kinds of monks. The cenobites are the first kind; that is, those living in a monastery, serving under a rule or an abbot. Then the second kind is that of the anchorites; that is, the hermits-those who, not by the new fervour of a conversion but by the long probation of life in a monastery, have learned to fight against the devil, having already been taught by the solace of many. They, having been well prepared in the army of brothers for the solitary fight of the hermit, being secure now without the consolation of another, are able, God helping them, to fight with their own hand or arm against the vices of the flesh or of their thoughts.

But a third very bad kind of monks are the sarabaites, approved by no rule, experience being their teacher, as with the gold which is tried in the furnace. But, softened after the manner of lead, keeping faith with the world by their works, they are known through their tonsure to lie to God. These being shut up by twos or threes, or, indeed, alone, without a shepherd, not in the Lord's but in their own sheep-folds-their law is the satisfaction of their desires. For whatever they think good or choice, this they call holy; and what they do not wish, this they consider unlawful. But the fourth kind of we are about to found, therefore, a school for the monks is the kind which is called gyratory. During their whole life they are guests, for three or four days at a time, in the cells of the different monasteries, throughout the various provinces; always wandering and never stationary, given over to the service of their own pleasures and the joys of the palate, and in every way worse than the sarabaites. Concerning the most wretched way of living of all such monks it is better to be silent than to speak…. (Benedict, Rule for Monasteries, tr. Leonard J. Doyle Collegeville MN: The Liturgical Press, 1948, 1)

The Question: Why would Benedict see issues in non-coenobitic monasticism? In what ways does his Rule perpetuate what is “Roman”?

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Benedict of Nursia advocated an interactive coenobitic monastic life rooted in humble discipline and obedience. He devised a code for a self-supportive spiritual community based on humility, chastity and obedience, and established such a community at Monte Cassino, Italy, in the early sixth century. The lives of Benedictine monks were simple, rooted in the understanding that monks surrendered personal property and all but basic needs for a disciplined routine of work and prayer. Monasteries and convents were normally situated outside old Roman centers, and provided a secure link to Roman values of service and a community governed by law. For a woman of some standing, retreat into a convent gave opportunities for a life beyond the drudgery of an arranged marriage and multiple pregnancies. Sacrifices in one’s personal freedom might be a small price to pay for repose, a chance for leadership and assured salvation. While isolated, monasteries and convents retained connections to the church and offered services to the outside. Local elites often placed their sons in the monastic schools for basic education and safety, or entrusted their assets to monastic care.

One interesting success for the institution of monasticism was in Ireland, which had never been part of the Roman Empire, although evidence suggests a vigorous economic interaction with Roman Britain. By tradition, Patrick was the first Christian missionary, having spent his youth there as a British slave captured by Irish pirates. The actual impact of Patrick himself on the spread of Christianity in Ireland remains debated, but he was certainly at the forefront of successful Christian missions which proved powerfully effective. No matter when exactly monasticism was established in Ireland, Irish monks valued Latin learning and promoted not only the preservation of the written word, but the illumination of sacred texts. Irish-founded monasteries became famous for the concentration of learning within their walls.

As in the East, Irish monasticism placed emphasis on remote contemplation, often at harsh, secluded, sometimes almost inaccessible islands, promontories and cliff sides. They also took missionary work seriously, travelling to Britain, Scotland, Scandinavia and the northern isles, and establishing major monastic centers at Iona and Lindisfarne. The Roman Catholic Church also had an interest in the region. Pope Gregory “the Great” had established an active monastery in Canterbury in 595, in the kingdom of Kent in what had been southeast Britain. One would think that Irish and Roman monks would now work together for the conversion of England, but there were conflicts from the very beginning. First, there was the matter of the proper shape and tradition of the tonsure, the shaved scalp pattern all monks wear. There was also disagreement on how to calculate the date of Easter, the one date on which all Christians (by Roman reckoning) must agree in order to affirm the Resurrection. One of the most interesting confrontations between the Irish and Roman missionaries came at the Synod at Whitby in 664, where the Irish representative was asked to explain his belief about Easter and Rome’s authority to King Oswiu. Unable to refute the Petrine Doctrine, the Irish conceded the debate, and Oswiu adopted the Catholicism of Canterbury. Anglo-Saxon kings noted the way the wind blew to throw their patronage to Canterbury or Iona, sometimes switching allegiances for political advantage. By the mid-eighth century, however, much of Europe had been converted to Catholicism.

Section Two: Barbarians

The role of the Church in the continuity of Romanity continues to evoke debate. However, that question pales beside the controversy over the identity and impact of the barbarians, by which the Romans meant the peoples on the borders of the classical world and beyond. Were the barbarians the cause of Rome’s collapse, or were they merely the beneficiaries of internal problems? Two recent opinions summarize the continuing debate. Goffart believes that the idea of “barbarian invasions” has been blown out of proportion, while Heather revives the classic “the barbarians did it”:

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…The “Germanic world” is a damaging modern invention and usage that badly needs to be abandoned.

The same non-existence goes for “migrating peoples”, the ostensible actors in the Migration Age. “Migration” was not inherent in any of the peoples of late antiquity…It is absurd to believe that the Huns attacked the Alans and then the Goths simply because migration pushed them in that direction…No metaphysical power of migration thrust the Huns westward; they had their reasons even if we have no idea what they were…

…This conjuring up of migrants from distant parts is the international equivalent of the tale of Germanic expansion traced long backward in space and time. In this perspective…the peoples are qualified as “migrating” because they started to travel long, long ago and far, faraway, and never stopped shoving themselves forward until they were destroyed or settled inside the Roman world…Migration was means and a result, not a determinant; the barbarians of late antiquity were not “migrants,” let alone “wanderers”.

…The Roman Empire may have found its existence harder in the fourth century than it had in the first, but the culprit was not a greater force exerted by northern neighbors, since they were no more numerous, no better organized, no more fearsomely armed, and no more hostile than they had been…

It can never be said often enough that the vision of polarity – a coherent north pressing downward along the long river frontiers of the Empire – is a historian’s mirage… The strains affecting the Empire came as much from its own desire for peace and security for its borders as from the turbulence of its neighbors. External security for the Empire presupposed internal restraint and discipline; it was critically undermined by civil wars between competitors for the imperial throne. Church fathers plucked out of the Hebrew Bible the image of a vat in the north disgorging its masses onto the tremulous weaklings to the south…Then as now the vat is fuller of emotion than of ferocious enemies. (Walter Goffart, Barbarian Tides 2006, pp. 20-21, 37-8)

Heather represents the opposing view:

…it was armed outsiders warring on Roman territory who played the starring role. In successive stages, the different groups first forced their way across the frontier, then extracted treaties; then, in the end, detached so much territory from the Empire’s control that its revenues dried up… I take an entirely different view…from [Goffart] who has commented: ‘What we call the fall of the Roman Empire was an imaginative experiment that got a little out of hand.’ You can only argue this…if you don’t let narrative history dirty your hands… In my view, it is impossible to escape the fact that the western Empire broke up because too many outside groups established themselves on its territories and expanded their holdings by warfare….

…The Roman Empire had sown the seeds of its own destruction…not because of internal weaknesses that had evolved over the centuries, nor because of new ones evolved, but as a consequence of its relationship with the Germanic world…The west Roman state fell not because of the weight of its ‘stupendous fabric’, but because its German neighbors had responded to its power in ways that the Romans could never have foreseen… By virtue of its unbounded aggression, Roman imperialism was ultimately responsible for its own destruction. (Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire 2006, pp. 436, 459)

The Question: Why does Goffart downplay the idea that the barbarians brought down the Empire? How does this compare with Heather’s view?

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Goffart, a classicist, suggests that too much emphasis is given to dubious sources that want to put the blame on the migrating Germans with little proof that they migrated much at all. For Goffart, the barbarians profited from Roman troubles, but did not cause them. Heather, who brings archaeological data into the picture, believes that too little attention has been placed recently on the role played by the groups in constant flux on the periphery.

In the later fourth century, thousands of barbarians asked to cross over the Danube River into the Balkans to escape more aggressive peoples. Scholars divide sharply over the identity of these refugees. Traditionally they are called the Goths, a people who supposedly migrated over several centuries from the region of Scandinavia. Some suggest, however, that the term “Goth” is more of an artificial construct of several Germanic tribes constantly on the move that joined and separated depending on need. No matter what their actual origins they were desperate to escape into the Roman world, promising military service in exchange for security.

From what – or whom- they were escaping is another issue. More than likely it was the Huns, a central Asian group that had grown strong in the fourth century. Like the Goths, the actual number of “Huns” might have been small compared to the amalgamation of peoples who called themselves Hun. Huns were renowned for their fighting skills, especially their skill with the asymmetric recurve bow, a weapon that allowed them to shoot with ease from horseback. The Hun arrival changed the balance of power in the North and East.

The Goths sent emissaries to the emperor to negotiate entrance across the Danube, but in the meantime they were delayed by Roman officials on the take. After several bad decisions on the Roman side, the Goths broke into organized revolt and poured across the Danube, devastating the countryside and smaller towns. In August 378 the Eastern Emperor, Valens, confronted the Goth army near Adrianople. It was a major disaster for the Romans. The overheated army was boxed in and brought down. Possibly two-thirds of the army, including Valens, died. The Goths had defeated a Roman army and had gotten away with it. While the threat dissipated over the next few years and treaties were made with the Goths, the message was clear. Rome was no longer unbeatable.

There was a brief moment when it looked as if the Empire would revive under the tough-minded Spaniard Theodosius, who assumed charge over the East after Valens. Theodosius managed to defeat various western contenders to reunite the empire in 394. He was also the first to initiate full-scale loyalty oaths from barbarians in exchange for land, thus “accommodating” them into the Empire. Many would question whether this was a slippery slope to take, but the reality was that the Romans now needed the barbarians in the armies, and could no longer afford the massive campaigns to defeat them. It was far less expensive to pay them, settle them down, and then recruit them. Accommodation may sound like appeasement, but it was cost-effective. Theodosius briefly reunited the Empire but died within a year, leaving the empire to be divided between his sons. The temporary solution had become permanent.

In the early fifth century there was unrest again among the various barbarian groups. Despite accommodation, many Goths felt they had been poorly treated. Under the leadership of Alaric, the Goths harried forces in both East and West. The capable half-Vandal commander of the western forces, Stilicho, managed to keep them at bay for several years. Stilicho, something of an enigma, was to some a loyal warrior and to others a would-be usurper plotting to conquer Constantinople. He certainly had enemies in the court looking for an opportunity to sway Emperor Honorius against him. Eventually Stilicho, whether from frustration or calculation, authorized a payment of 4000 pounds of gold to Alaric to keep the Goths loyal. The insinuations were enough to bring Stilicho down, and the payments were stopped.

Without Stilicho to oppose him, Alaric easily moved into Italy, probably hoping to have the agreement restored so he could pay his own troops. When Honorius, safe in the north Italian town of Ravenna, hesitated, Alaric allowed his men to sack the city of Rome, carrying off cartloads of loot as well as the emperor’s half-sister, Galla Placidia. Two accounts show the mixed reaction.

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12. Whilst these things were happening in Jebus a dreadful rumour came from the West. Rome had been besieged and its citizens had been forced to buy their lives with gold. Then thus despoiled they had been besieged again so as to lose not their substance only but their lives. My voice sticks in my throat; and, as I dictate, sobs choke my utterance. The City which had taken the whole world was itself taken; nay more famine was beforehand with the sword and but few citizens were left to be made captives. In their frenzy the starving people had recourse to hideous food; and tore each other limb from limb that they might have flesh to eat. Even the mother did not spare the babe at her breast. In the night was Moab taken, in the night did her wall fall down… Jerome Letters 127.12)

7.39 Alaric appeared before trembling Rome, laid siege, spread confusion, and broke into the City. He first, however, gave orders that all those who had taken refuge in sacred places, especially in the basilicas of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, should be permitted to remain inviolate and unmolested; he allowed his men to plunder as much as they wished, but he gave orders that they should refrain from bloodshed. A further proof that the storming of the City was due to the wrath of God rather than to the bravery of the enemy is shown by the fact that the blessed Innocent, the bishop of Rome, who at that time was at Ravenna…did not witness the destruction of the sinful populace…

7.40 It was in the one thousand one hundred and sixty-fourth year of the City that Alaric sacked Rome. Although the memory of the event is still fresh, anyone who saw the numbers of the Romans themselves and listened to their talk would think that “nothing had happened,” as they themselves admit, unless perhaps he were to notice some charred ruins still remaining. (Orosius, History Against the Pagans 7.39-40 tr. I Raymond).

The Question: How did contemporaries view the Sack of Rome?

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Despite the news Jerome heard in Jerusalem, Orosius thinks it was a fairly civilized sack. A good Arian Christian, Alaric had not wanted to take that final step. Says Kulikowski:

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…for Alaric the sack of Rome was an admission of defeat, a catastrophic failure. Everything he had hoped for, had fought for over the course of a decade and a half, went up in flames with the capital of the ancient world. Imperial office, a legitimate place for himself and his followers inside the empire, these were now forever out of reach. He might seize what he wanted…but he would never be given it by right. The sack of Rome solved nothing and when the looting was over Alaric’s men still had nowhere to live and fewer future prospects than ever before…

…Three painful days of August 410 entered into the ongoing debate about the effects on the empire of the imperial conversion to Christianity…some suggested that the only way to stave off Alaric was to offer sacrifices to the old gods who had protected the city for so long. Those sacrifices, in all likelihood, were never offered, and then the city was sacked. Thus did pagans find themselves vindicated, though it was a melancholy satisfaction when Rome still smouldered around them. (Michael Kulikowski, Rome’s Gothic Wars from the Third Century to Alaric. 2007 pp. 177, 178)

The Question: In what ways does the sack of Rome connect the issues of religious change and the barbarian issue?

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Kulikowski suggests that the sack was a no-win situation for an Alaric who had truly hoped to be bought off with Roman standing, but also suggests that it was again a moment to face the question: did Christianity help or hurt the Empire? Alaric was actually amazed at how little Ravenna cared for Rome’s fate at his hands. The city of Rome had lost its administrative usefulness. To the Roman world, however, the sack of the Eternal City represented the beginning of the end. There was even talk that the fall of the city would be the beginning of the end foretold in Christian prophecy. Zosimus, on the other hand, blamed the sack of Rome on Christianity:

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Theodosius convened the Senate. The Senators had remained faithful to their long-standing ancestral rites and would not be moved to agree with those who condemned the gods. Theodosius delivered a speech to them in which he exhorted them to recant their "error" (as he called it) and to embrace the Christian faith because it promised forgiveness of every sin and every kind of impiety. None was persuaded by this harangue or was willing to give up the rites which had been passed on from generation to generation since the City's founding, in favor of an absurd belief. For, the Senators said, by preserving the former rites they had inhabited a city unconquered for almost 1,200 years, while they did not know what would happen if they exchanged these rituals for something different.

In turn Theodosius said that the treasury was burdened by the expense of the rites and the sacrifices; that he wanted to abolish them; that he did not approve of them and, furthermore, that military necessities called for additional funds. The Senators replied that the ceremonies could not be performed except at public expense. Nevertheless, a law abolishing them was laid down and, as other things which had been handed down from ancestral times lay neglected, the Empire of the Romans was gradually diminished and became a domicile of barbarians. (Zosimus, Historia Nova, tr. David Koeller)

The Question: How did Zosimus, a non-Christian, see the role of Christianity in the “Fall” of Rome? Is his viewpoint influenced?

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To downplay the incident, Augustine of Hippo preached a series of sermons which he eventually collected into his greatest work, The City of God. Augustine had written extensively on his journey to a Christian life and was concerned with the relationship of free will to the fallen condition of man. He wrote that Rome in the end did not matter. Rome was a city of man, and all works of men invariably fall. Christians lived for a new Jerusalem. Rome was not eternal, and should not be mourned. In many ways, The City of God represented a new mentality. Instead of confidence in the choices of man, Augustine argued, we must admit that free will causes us to sin. Only submission to the grace of God can save. Moreover, because man cannot make moral choices, the Church must provide guidance. Thus would be born the theology that would dominate western thinking for the next thousand years.

Soon after the sack, the Goths agreed to a peace treaty, settling down in parts of Gaul and Italy, and promising in return to protect the region. How the deprived Roman landholders felt about it is a matter of some speculation. More than likely they came to terms, and went with whatever regime would defend their interests. Landholders could not simply pick up and leave if times got bad or if barbarians were accommodated in the region. Their wealth was land-based. Many learned to live with the new realities. In any case, Romans believed that Rome would bounce back. It always had.

Still, the sack had consequences. Rome began to pull back from its less cost-effective holdings. Honorius released Britain to its own defenses in 410, cutting loose an entire region from the Empire. Court politics continued to be filled with plots and conspiracies. Whenever a ruler died, there were power plays. As Heather put it:

The pinnacle of late Rom politics was for high rollers only; if you failed to stay atop the greasy pole, you were likely to end up atop a bloody one” (Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire 2006, p. 254).

Meanwhile the Visigoths moved into Spain and the south of Gaul by the early 430’s, while the Vandals conquered North Africa. The region was a huge provider of wheat, and the Rome-Carthage route had been crucial to control of the western Mediterranean. The loss of the grain revenues cut into the Roman budget, forcing an increase in taxes to maintain the military.

The Romans were unable to deal with the Vandals and Visigoths because their attention was turned to an even greater threat from Attila, leader of the Hun alliance. Even today, the name of Attila the Hun conjures up visions of terror. He is the ultimate barbarian. In reality Attila was a shrewd negotiator who eliminated his rivals and managed to hold a multi-ethnic empire together through skill and charisma from 441-53. His campaigns were brutal and effective, inspiring terror among Roman communities in his path. On the excuse of a personal marriage invitation from a high-handed imperial princess, Attila moved west in 450, looting and burning along the way. He stopped short of sacking Rome itself in 451. Several theories have been proposed. The traditional tale is that Pope Leo was sent - or went - to negotiate with Attila, and managed to turn him back. More practically, the Huns had encountered some problems with supplies of food and material. After all, they were a long way from the Hun center. Whatever the reason, Attila chose not to sack Rome, although he could have done so. He died in 453 after a drinking binge and massive internal hemorrhage on one of his wedding nights. The Hun empire broke up within the decade.

Despite’s Attila’s brief career, far too many cities and villas had been destroyed for easy recovery. The Romans were forced to devote so many resources to dealing with the Huns that other threats had to be ignored. The Vandals and Visigoths were not the only groups to take advantage. In Britain, Angles, Saxons and Irish moved in during the fifth century, blurring the Romano-British culture that had clung on after Rome had withdrawn. The legend of King Arthur may have part of its roots in the attempts of Romano-British leaders holding back the Saxons.

Section Three: Decline, Fall or Change?

By Attila’s death Rome no longer had political influence in most of Europe and Africa. The Hun collapse had created a lot of refugees, which accelerated the problem of accommodation. The western court also continued to feed on itself, arranging the murder of the most capable officers for fear of their ambitions. Emperors came and went in assassinations and plots. The Vandal sack of Rome in the 450’s, a brutal affair, made it clear that Rome’s political relevance existed in name only. A futile attempt to recapture North Africa cost the western empire most of its remaining forces. All the same barbarian leaders continued to pay compliments to Rome, using Roman manners, adopting Roman dress, and retaining Roman advisors.

By 476, all that remained of the western Empire was Italy. In the rest of the Roman world, Romans attempted to keep a Roman lifestyle. A poignant tale is recorded from central Europe of some of the last Roman soldiers:

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So long as the Roman dominion lasted, soldiers were maintained in many towns at the public expense to guard the boundary wall. When this custom ceased, the squadrons of soldiers and the boundary wall were blotted out together. The troop at Batavis, however, held out. Some soldiers of this troop had gone to Italy to fetch the final pay to their comrades, and no one knew that the barbarians had slain them on the way. One day, as Saint Severinus was reading in his cell, he suddenly closed the book and began to sigh greatly and to weep. He ordered the bystanders to run out with haste to the river, which he declared was in that hour besprinkled with human blood; and straightway word was brought that the bodies of the soldiers mentioned above had been brought to land by the current of the river. (Eugippius, Life of Saint Severinus 12)

The Question: What happened to the Roman army when the western empire collapsed?

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As the pay disappeared, Roman soldiers abandoned the garrisons, and sought new local employment. Townsfolk and villa owners made peace with the new masters. Small landholders went with the flow. Slowly, the laws and customs of the new ruling class would determine the survival of what had been Romanity. In 476, Odoacer the Ostragoth deposed the western Emperor Romulus Augustulus, a youth who had been put there just two years before. He sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople and ruled as king of Italy. The western empire was no more.

The Romans saw these events through a different lens than we do. We have several accounts of ruin and pillage, which seems to support a sudden and violent ending. However, many of the accounts are of local events. There are others writing as if Rome would weather the storm in much the same way as she had survived before. One of the most famous accounts of ruin comes from the pen of Gildas, a monk in Britain:

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23. …. The barbarians being thus introduced as soldiers into the island, to encounter, as they falsely said, any dangers in defense of their hospitable entertainers, obtain an allowance of provisions, which, for some time being plentifully bestowed, stopped their doggish mouths. Yet they complain that their monthly supplies are not furnished in sufficient abundance, and they industriously aggravate each occasion of quarrel, saying that unless more liberality is shown them, they will break the treaty and plunder the whole island. In a short time, they follow up their threats with deeds.

24. For the fire of vengeance, justly kindled by former crimes, spread from sea to sea, fed by the hands of our foes in the east, and did not cease, until, destroying the neighbouring towns and lands, it reached the other side of the island, and dipped its red and savage tongue in the western ocean. In these assaults, therefore, not unlike that of the Assyrian upon Judea, was fulfilled in our case what the prophet describes in words of lamentation: "They have burned with fire the sanctuary; they have polluted on earth the tabernacle of thy name."…. So that all the columns were levelled with the ground by the frequent strokes of the battering-ram, all the husbandmen routed, together with their bishops, priests, and people, whilst the sword gleamed, and the flames crackled around them on every side. Lamentable to behold, in the midst of the streets lay the tops of lofty towers, tumbled to the ground, stones of high walls, holy altars, fragments of human bodies, covered with livid clots of coagulated blood, looking as if they had been squeezed together in a press; and with no chance of being buried, save in the ruins of the houses, or in the ravening bellies of wild beasts and birds; with reverence be it spoken for their blessed souls, if, indeed, there were many found who were carried, at that time, into the high heaven by the holy angels. So entirely had the vintage, once so fine, degenerated and become bitter, that, in the words of the prophet, there was hardly a grape or ear of corn to be seen where the husbandman had turned his back. Gildas, “On the Ruin of Britain” 23-4, tr. J. Giles)

The question: If we rely on Gildas, what can we say about the barbarians’ impact on Roman civilization?

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Gildas paints a portrait of barbarism which lingers with us. However, compare this contemporary account of the Ostrogoth king of Italy, Theodoric:

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57. Hence Theoderic was a man of great distinction and of good-will towards all men, and he ruled for thirty-three years. In his times Italy for thirty years enjoyed such good fortune that his successors also inherited peace. For whatever he did was good. He so governed two races at the same time, Romans and Goths, that although he himself was of the Arian sect, he nevertheless made no assault on the Catholic religion; he gave games in the circus and the amphitheatre, so that even by the Romans he was called a Trajan or a Valentinian, whose times he took as a model; and by the Goths, because of his edict, in which he established justice, he was judged to be in all respects their best king. Military service for the Romans he kept on the same footing as under the emperors. He was generous with gifts and the distribution of grain, and although he had found the public treasury nothing but a haystack, by his efforts it was restored and made rich.

65 After peace was made in the city of the Church, King Theoderic went to Rome and met Saint Peter with as much reverence as if he himself were a Catholic. The Pope Symmachus, and the entire senate and people of Rome amid general rejoicing met him outside the city. 66 Then coming to Rome and entering it, he appeared in the senate, and addressed the people at The Palm, promising that with God's help he would keep inviolate whatever the former Roman emperors had decreed.

67 In celebration of his tricennalia he entered the Palace in a triumphal procession for the entertainment of the people, and exhibited games in the Circus for the Romans. To the Roman people and to the poor of the city he gave each year a hundred and twenty thousand measures of grain, and for the restoration of the Palace and the rebuilding of the walls of the city he ordered two hundred pounds to be given each year from the chest that contained the tax on wine….

70 … He was besides a lover of building and restorer of cities. 71 At Ravenna he repaired the aqueduct which the emperor Trajan had constructed, and thus brought water into the city after a long time. He completely finished the palace, but did not dedicate it. He also built baths and a palace at Verona, and added a colonnade extending all the way from the gate to the Palace; besides that, he restored the aqueduct at Verona, which had long since been destroyed, and brought water into the city, as well as surrounding the city with new walls. Also at Ticinum he built a palace, baths, and an amphitheatre, besides new city walls.

73 And he followed this principle so fully throughout all Italy, that he gave no city a gate; and where there were already gates, they were never shut; and every one could carry on his business at whatever hour he chose, as if it were in daylight. In his time sixty measures of wheat were bought for a single gold-piece, and thirty amphorae of wine for the same price. (The Anonymous Valesianus 12.57-73)

The Question: If we rely on this source, how does Theodoric, a barbarian, maintain Roman society? How does this account of the barbarians differ from that of Gildas?

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Theodoric, a well-educated Ostrogoth, understood something of Romanity. He divided the governmental functions of Italy to allow for Roman and Ostrogothic custom. The transition was not always easy, but it was not a violent break from Roman tradition. In a nutshell, Theodoric was a better ruler than any fifth century western emperor. Certainly there was violence and terror as the barbarians moved in, but there are also examples of barbarians who wanted to be part of the Roman world, not its destroyers.

One recent scholar listed over 200 separate theories of what caused such a huge empire to collapse. These theories range from the traditional explanations of barbarian invasions or moral decay, such as Gibbon proposed, to various social, environmental and religious factors that took much longer. The ancient writers are of little help in the matter. It brings us back to our dilemma at the beginning: was the end sudden or gradual? Goldsworthy is one of the most recent scholars to put his hat in the ring:

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The Late Roman Empire was not designed to be an efficient government, but to keep the emperor in power and to benefit the members of the administration…Sheer size prevented rapid collapse or catastrophe. Its weakness was not obvious, but this only meant that collapse could come in sudden, dramatic stages… Gradually, the empire’s institutions rotted and became less and less capable of dealing w/any crisis, but still did not face serious competition. Lost wars were damaging, but the damage was not fatal to the empire itself…

The Roman Empire continued for a very long time. Successive blows knocked away sections of it, as attackers uncovered its weaknesses. Yet at times the empire could still be formidable and did not simply collapse. Perhaps we should imagine the Late Roman Empire as a retired athlete, whose body has declined from neglect and an unhealthy lifestyle. At times the muscles will still function well and with the memory of former skill and training. Yet, s the neglect continues, the body becomes less and less capable of resisting disease or recovering from injury. Over the years the person would grow weaker and weaker, and in the end could easily succumb to disease. Long decline was the fate of the Roman Empire. In the end, it may well have been “murdered” by barbarian invaders, but these struck at a body made vulnerable by prolonged decay. (A. Goldsworthy, How Rome Fell. 2009, pp. 414-5)

The question: How does Goldsworthy explain the collapse of the western empire?

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Goldsworthy is one of several who suggest that the empire died by attrition, rather than by rapid barbarian blows or other sudden causes. Peter Wells, an archaeologist, examines the consequences from the material record.

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This set of ideas about Rome, its collapse, and subsequent developments have dominated popular understanding to the present day…The traditional model of the development of European culture and society during the first millennium is based almost exclusively on the surviving texts…but a very different story now emerges from the abundant archaeological evidence that is available for this period from all parts of Europe…there was no gap in the cultural development between the Roman Empire and the Carolingian Renaissance. There were certainly major changes, but to judge them in terms of “decline,” or the communities that instigated the changes as “barbaric,’ is to adopt the cultural prejudices of the late Roman writers. What has traditionally been called the Dark Ages was a period of immense cultural, economic, and political development along lines different from those of Roman civilization as we traditionally understand it…

The decline (“collapse” is too strong a term) of the Roman Empire was a long, gradual process that took place over at least three centuries. Looked at from a modern perspective, it can seem like a steady, even inevitable unraveling of the military, political, and economic institutions that Rome had created over its seven centuries of growth. But it was much more complex than that, and few people living at the time would have noticed or felt that their world was declining. In different parts of the vast Roman Empire, changes occurred at different times, and often a period of apparent decline would be followed by one of renewed growth…

The Roman Empire “fell” only in the minds of people who had a particular and limited view of what the Roman Empire was and who understood events such as Alaric’s capture of Rome in A.D. 410 as marking its end…Too often, modern researchers lose sight of the fact that these fixed points re intended only to provide a framework for understanding peoples of the past, not real breaks in the social or cultural development of early Europeans.

For the auxiliary soldier serving on the Rhine frontier at the end of the Roman period, for farmers in villages in central France, and for the elites at northern centers…there was no abrupt fall of the imperial power. The changes that were taking place from the fifth to the eighth century were gradual; they would not been seen as abrupt or transformational to anyone living at the time… (Peter Wells, Barbarians to Angels. 2008 pp.4-5, 18-19, 200-202)

The Question: According to Wells, what impact did the decline of the western government have on Europe? Why does he reject the term “collapse”?

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Whereas Goldsworthy looks at the aging giant from the top down, Wells advocates a “bottom-up” approach to understanding the nature of European society after the disappearance of the western empire. The elites who wrote the histories emphasized the disaster of Rome’s “fall”, but Wells argues that the archaeological evidence suggests that European communities not only survived but often prospered in the changes.

Even the Eastern Empire barely managed to hold its own in this period although it had not suffered from barbarian appropriations as had the West. In the East, Constantinople’s court also played politics, but the reigns were longer and more stable. It retained its wealth and commitment to one day restoring the empire. The last attempt to reclaim the west came in the reign of Justinian (527-65). Under the capable leadership of General Belisarius, Justinian’s forces retook Africa from the Vandals in 533. The Italian campaign was far less successful, due in great part to court politics that set Justinian against Belisarius. By the 550’s Italy was in shambles. The Ostrogoths may have been destroyed as a people, but several Italian towns had suffered, including Rome. When the Lombards entered Italy in the 560’s Byzantium did not have the manpower in place to stop them. It was the end of any dream of reconquest.

Had Justinian stopped with this, he might be remembered as a failure. However, he is also known for reorganizing the old law codes into something more systematized and understandable. The Code of Justinian preserved law from a time when the state, not the ruler, made the law. He also commissioned elaborate building projects, the most famous being his complete renovation of the Church of Holy Wisdom, the Hagia Sophia. However, Justinian was no closer to solving the relationship of church and state than were his predecessors, and the emperor continued to have great power, to the dismay of the church.

Basilica of S. Vitale, 547

The Question: What are the issues in interpreting the relationship of church and state in this mosaic of Justinian and Bishop Maximianus? What does it suggest about the role of emperor in the East?

Justinian was known for his role in the continuing religious controversies. Constantinople was by now a city of over one million people, practicing every variety of Christianity known. The city was also sports-mad, especially when it came to chariot racing. Chariot teams were often the favorites of various factions, some of them religious. Upsets at the horsetrack could result in small riots. In 532 the Blue and Green factions rebelled in common when the government interfered in a riot, organizing a prison break. The result, the Nike Rebellion, was a city-wide insurrection so massive that Justinian considered abdicating his throne and escaping. By tradition, Justinian’s remarkable wife Theodora, a former commoner who was possibly no stranger to the street, declared that she would accept no burial shroud but the purple, an honor reserved for the imperial family. Justinian faced down the angry rioters and restored peace.

Let us be careful in our evaluation of Justinian’s programs. His programs, especially his campaigns westwards, cost a great in money and attention. He left the Empire struggling in debt at a time when new threats faced it from the north and east, as we will see in the next chapter. After Justinian there was no real attempt to unify the two halves of empire. The Byzantine emperor lived surrounded by layers of church and bureaucracy, but remained head of church and state. The western empire, on the other hand, had become a multitude of small barbarian kingdoms.

Conclusion

There is no consensus yet about the transition between the ancient and medieval worlds. Some would put the ending in the economic and social transformations beginning as far back as Constantine and before. Others point to the role of the legalized Church as a turning point. The transition from a classical viewpoint to a medieval understanding of the relationship of the Church to the Roman state came in the fourth century and was best expressed by Augustine. Others point to the traumatic military and political episodes of the fifth century that led to the collapse of the western Roman state, and cite 476 as the dividing line between ancient and medieval. Still others suggest a longer transition into the sixth and seventh centuries, during which new institutions and localized economies replaced the Roman systems. In Chapter Nine, we will see that some take late antiquity into the Merovingian period, suggesting that the interaction between Islam and Europe replaced classical ideas with the new centers of power in the Islamic world and northern Europe.

The question of how the Roman world was transformed into the medieval world is linked to the question of how the Roman state collapsed in the first place, a question which continues to draw debate. Whether the barbarians or Church played an active role in the collapse, or whether internal weaknesses gave opportunity to new peoples is just as puzzling as whether Rome declined, fell, or simply evolved into something new. Whatever the process, and however we define late antiquity, certainly by the time of Justinian there was a new European society in the making.

A GOOD PLACE FOR BOETHIUS ETC.

Culture in the W

1. Monasteries as places for intellectual life

2. Cassiodorus

3. Reconciling Roman and German trads

4. Institutes – curriculum of study for monks

5. Calculation of Easter

6. Church music

7. Trivium and Quadrivium

8. Boethius

9. Boethian philosophy

10. Consolation of Philosophy

11. Fortune and God’s Purpose

12. Benedict of Nursia

13. Communal over hermitic monasticism

14. Monte Cassino

15. Rule of Benedict

16. Life of monks

17. Manual labor and humility

18. Rule as constitution.