The Origins of Christianity and the Decline of the Roman Empire 113aster. In 378 the Visigothic cavalry destroyed Valens
and his army at Adrianople (now Edirne in European
Turkey), a strategic site that controls the land ap-
proaches to Constantinople. Gratian, as the surviving
augustus, appointed the Spanish general Theodosius
(347–395) to succeed his uncle as emperor in the east.
Theodosius was in many respects a remarkable
character. He restored order in the Balkans by allowing
the Visigoths to set up an independent, though allied,
Germanic state on imperial soil. Believing that the bat-
tle of Adrianople had demonstrated the superiority of
cavalry, he reduced the role of the legions and made
heavily armored cataphractithe dominant element in a
reorganized Roman army. It was a major step in the de-
velopment of medieval warfare. The importance of cav-
alry had been growing steadily since the military
reforms of Diocletian.
His religious policies were equally important.
Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of
the empire and actively suppressed not only the pagans
but also Arianism. Paganism remained more firmly en-
trenched in the west than in the east, especially among
the educated upper classes. When Gratian’s successor,
Valentinian II, died in 392, Theodosius became sole
emperor after suppressing a revolt in the west that had
been inspired at least partially by paganism. Nicaean
Christianity was imposed upon the west, and for two
brief years the empire was once again united.
The final division came in 395, when the dying
Theodosius left the empire to his two sons. The eastern
half went on as before, an empire in its own right that,
though Greek in language, continued to evolve accord-
ing to Roman legal and administrative precedents. The
west, as a political entity, ceased to exist within two
generations. Long before the reign of Theodosius it had
begun to exhibit the economic, political, and religious
decentralization that is thought of today as medieval.
As trade and the circulation of money decreased, the
great estates grew larger and more self-sufficient. Their
powerful owners, anxious to protect their workforce,
prevented their tenants from joining the army. This, to-
gether with a slow but persistent decline in population,
forced the emperors to recruit barbarians by offering
them land within the empire. Barbarian chiefs or com-
manders sometimes acquired latifundia as a reward for
their services, and by the end of the fourth century, the
line between Roman and barbarian had become
blurred, especially in Gaul.
Few of these men understood, or accepted, Roman
ideas of law and culture. The persistence of old tribal or
personal allegiances, in addition to conflict between
Romans and barbarians, led to internal violence that the
imperial government could rarely control. Faced with
increasing disorder in the countryside, the latifundia
developed small armies of their own, while peasants—
both Roman and barbarian—were forced to seek pro-
tection by becoming their tenants. Those whose
situation was truly desperate were accepted only under
the harshest of terms and became little more than serfs.
Even the church did little to promote unity. It re-
mained essentially an urban institution. The term pa-
gani,or pagans, was originally Latin slang for rustics,DOCUMENT 6.2
The Council of Chalcedon:
The Nature of Christ
The formula devised by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 de-
fines the nature of Christ in such a way as to leave no room
for Arian, Monophysite, or other interpretations of the Trin-
ity. That is the reason for its precise, legalistic, and inelegant
language.Following the holy fathers we teach with one
voice that the Son [of God] and our Lord Jesus
Christ is to be confessed as one and the same [Per-
son], that he is perfect in manhood, very God and
very man, of a reasonable soul and [human] body
consisting consubstantial with the Father as touch-
ing his Godhead, and with us as touching his man-
hood; made in all things like unto us, sin only
excepted; begotten of his Father before the worlds
according to his Godhead; but in these last days
for us men and for our salvation born of the Virgin
Mary, the Mother of God according to his man-
hood. This one and the same Jesus Christ, the only
begotten Son [of God] must be confessed to be in
two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly,
inseparably, and that without the distinction of na-
tures being taken away by such union, but rather
the peculiar property of each nature being pre-
served and being united in one Person and subsis-
tence, not separated or divided into two persons,
but one and the same Son and only-begotten, God
the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Chalcedon, in P. Schaff and H. Wace, eds. A Select Library
of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church,
vol. 14, 2d series. New York: 1899–1900.