From Roman Empire to Holy Roman Empire

Lecture 25

T

his lecture marks the second great transition in our historical survey
of Christianity; here, we move from imperial Christianity to medieval
Christianity, from the Roman Empire to the Holy Roman Empire. For
the most part, this section of the course turns from the East to the West, where
we find the Latin language instead of Greek, the pope instead of patriarchs,
tribal kings in place of an emperor, and instead of cultural continuity, cultural
disruption and creative adaptation. It was in the medieval period, roughly
between the 5th and 15th centuries, that Christianity established itself across
all of Europe.

Political Context: 5th to 9th Centuries
• Between the 5th and 9th centuries, the western part of the Roman
Empire went through a process of rapid disintegration and
slow reintegration.

•    We have already seen the disintegration in broad terms when we

traced the movements of tribal peoples westward and southward

over the 5th and 6th centuries: the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, Vandals,

Burgundians, and Lombards.

o In the face of these assaults—some friendly, some not—the

former imperial structures in the west (e.g., Gaul, Spain, Italy)

were battered and finally broken.

o The temporary recovery by Constantinople of lands in

Africa and Italy under Justinian (in the 6th century) did not

last; only the area around Ravenna remained securely in

Byzantine control.

o Under the assault of Persia and Islam, as we have seen, the

Byzantine Empire ceded control of the west—in fact if not in

theory—in order to survive in its own diminished domain.