The Roman Church And Its Bishops 447
selection challenges a papal history oriented around the dynamics of ascent
and descent. Moreover, the Roman church may have indirectly benefited
from Italy’s gradual economic contraction during the later 6th century: with
fewer large-scale property owners around, the Roman church—by attrition—
became among the richest and most powerful institutions in the region.99 In
other words, the Roman church may have been on the rise, at least in relative
economic terms, precisely when scholars tell us it was declining. Future stud-
ies of the Roman church and its bishops will need to engage more fully with
these and other material changes and explain how they do (and do not) inter-
sect with the complex political history of the period.
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Secondary Literature
Alchermes, J., “Petrine Politics: Pope Symmachus and the Rotunda of Andrew at Old
Saint Peter’s”, Catholic Historical Review 81 (1995), 1–40.
Allen, P./Neil, B., Crisis Management in Late Antiquity, 410–590 CE: A Survey of the
Evidence from Episcopal Letters, Leiden 2013.
Amory, P., People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, Cambridge 1997.
99 Sessa, Formation of Papal Authority, pp. 275–6 and Lizzi Testa in this volume.