Tag Archives: Rome

The Germans did not destroy the world’s greatest civilization.

Posted on by +

The Germanic tribes have been blamed for the collapse of the Roman Empire; however this is incorrect. For the most part the collapse of the Roman empire was not a collapse of an empire, but the slow integration of Germanic custom with Roman culture. This means the collapse of the Roman empire was a transfer of power from one ruling party to another. This transfer was neither peaceful nor quick, but it is the foundation of modern western society and Europe as we know it today. ((Editor’s note: This is just a sketch or an outline to introduce the topic.))

The Germanic tribes and Romans first interacted in 100 BC, and for the next 400 years there were many skirmishes with the Romans prevailing, but starting around 300 AD with the first Völkerwanderung or migration the Germans pushed hard on the Roman defenses and in many places began to merge with the existing Roman populations.

Germans were then, as today, divided into tribes: the major tribes that came into contact with the Roman Empire were the Franks, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Lombards. The first of these Germanic tribes to enter into the Roman empire officially were the Visigoths who settled near the Danube frontier until they rebelled and sacked Rome in 410 AD, but they moved on and settled in Spain, and the Western Roman Empire was ruled by Proxy from the Eastern Roman Empire. However, while the Visigoths only sacked Rome, Theodoric the Great, leading the Ostrogoths, conquered Italy and set himself up as ruler of a post-Roman kingdom. Even though Theodoric conquered Italy he still respected the Roman institutions and everything about his government from the courts to the coins were Roman. He even appointed Roman aristocrats to help administrate the country in a very Romanesque way.

The integration favored the Roman traditions because the Ostrogoths and Visigoths where already exposed to Roman ideals. The didn’t want to conquer Rome. They wanted to be Roman. It was not until the Lombard invasions around 568 AD that purely Germanic ideals and culture began to be foisted onto the previous territories of the Roman Empire. The Lombards had no concept of a king and they were never exposed to Roman ideals, so they just pillaged, conquered and destroyed the last remnants of the Italian Western Roman Empire

While the Ostrogoths, Lombard and Visigoths had forced their way into the Roman empire, the Franks, beginning around 476, settled the area know as Gaul far more gently and although they stayed separate they merged into the area without using force. At first, the Franks kept many of the Roman traditions and structures of society, but slowly replaced them with Frankish analogues which were far more simplistic. Unlike the Goths who valued actual Roman Culture and traditions, the Franks kept them for show and under the Merovingian dynasty most of the Roman traditions and institutions were forgotten. In the 700-800s, under Charles the Great, there were brief moments of Roman ideas and classical knowledge, but it did not last long, and Rome was officially dead.

The Roman Empire was not conquered by the Germans nor was it conquered by avarice and greed. The two cultures merged; however, the merging of German and Roman societies was aided by external forces: the advance of the Huns forced the Germans into the Roman territories while simultaneously the advance of the Arabs weakened the Roman defenses and the constant civil wars weakened the Roman economy. Each of these helped weaken the cultural institutions of the Roman Empire which made its population susceptible to and willing to accept the German “invaders.”

Google Question and Answer: Religion in the Roman Empire

Posted on by +

Some people search search engines by using a few keywords, but others ask entire questions. This series of posts is dedicated to them. Over the next couple weeks I’m going to pick full questions from my logs and answer them. It is the least I could do.

The first question in this series comes from an American using Windows and Internet Explorer, and they ask “What religion did the People of the Roman Empire follow?” Well I’m glad you asked that… um…let’s call you Fred… while your search landed on a very popular article entitled Causes and Effects of the Popularization of Christianity in the Roman Empire, I’m afraid that it won’t answer your question entirely.

Yes, for a portion of its history the Roman Empire was Christian, but for most of its history Rome itself (including the period of the Republic and the Empire) followed a mythopoeic religion that was closely related the classical Greek religion. It wasn’t until Constantine realized that a single unified religion could revitalize the Roman empire that Christianity actually became a quasi-official religion. Prior to this the Roman Empire as a whole did not have an official religion: each culture was allowed to worship their own gods as long as they paid tribute to the gods of Rome and did not deny their existence. Even this requirement was ignored for a time and the Jewish peoples were allowed to live peaceably under Roman rule for many years. However, as the Roman economy degraded and the Empire spread to encompass many different cultures, it began to fracture and there was little to integrate the different groups or the classes. Read that article if you want to know more.)

For the rest of Roman history, the Romans followed a pagan religion and allowed people to believe whatever they wanted. That was the long way of saying: there was no one religion of the Roman empire, there were many.

My next question comes from … let’s say Sarah … who hails from Canada and also uses Windows and Internet Explorer. Sarah asks Did the church unite the Roman Empire?” Sarah landed on the same page as Fred and again the question is not fully answered. The real answer is both yes and no because individually the Eastern Empire and Western Empire were united through Christianity, but because they both had a slightly different view of Christianity (this is the divide between the Greek Orthodox and Catholic sects) the two parts of the empire slowly separate because of the religion.

You see Sarah, as Christianity spread in its early days, certain cities became the founding cities of the religion think Québec and Toronto or New York City and Boston, so they had a relatively large Christian population with widespread influence. However, in what was to become the Western Roman Empire, there was only one city: Rome, but in the Eastern Roman Empire there were several cities such as Jerusalem and Antioch.

Each of these major cities basically had someone, think a bishop, who was sort of a guide to the people under their influence, so while the Eastern Empire had several religious leaders to look up to, the Western Empire had only one: the Pope. As the two empires split the Western side looked only to their Pope for religious guidance and over time the two churches separated because the Western Pope was seen as the single most influential person in the religion by his own people, but the Eastern Empire was used to following several different religious leaders, so the religious structure of the two sides slowly separated.

So the short and sweet answer is yes, Christianity did unite the Roman Empire, but it united it in two slightly different styles.

Thoughts on Saint Augustine’s “City of God”

Posted on by +

The City Of God was written around 420 A.D. in response to the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 A.D . Many Romans believed that the sacking of Rome occurred because the pagan Roman gods were angry with Romans for abandoning them in favor of Christianity. Saint Augustine combated this by effectively saying that Rome, because it is an earthly city, does not matter; only the city of God matters. According to Saint Augustine the “city of God” is filled with believers while the earthly city is filled with nonbelievers. This division allows Saint Augustine to argue that the church is part of the city of God, but the city of Rome is earthly and thus expendable, and because the city of God (the church) is intangible it is indestructible.

Saint Augustine argues this idea by stating the difference between the two cities is in the goals of its inhabitants. According to Saint Augustine the inhabitants of the earthly city seek physical and financial wellbeing with their only goals being peace in wealth. (Just to stick my two sense in isn’t that a very good goal?) However, the inhabitance of the city of God do not seek peace but instead use peace to further the city of God. These people do not look for earthly peace or wealth, but rather look to the next life as their goal.

In general he says that the two cities are part of each other, but that the differences between them deal mainly with life goals and the important things in life.