The transformation of the Roman West /Ian Wood.
- Leeds : ARC Humanities Press, (c)2018.
- 1 online resource (x, 160 pages)
- Past imperfect .
Includes bibliographies and index.
Introduction. The end of the West Roman Empire : from decline and fall to transformation of the Roman world -- Gibbon's secondary causes : "the disorders of military despotism" and "the division of monarchy" -- Barbarism : "the invasion and settlements of the barbarians of Germany and Scythia" -- Religion and the transformation of the Roman world -- Religion : "the rise, establishment, and sects of Christianity" -- Religious reaction to the fall of Rome -- Doctrinal division -- The impact of Christianity : a quantitative approach -- Clerics, soldiers, bureaucrats -- Ecclesiastical endowment -- Beyond Gibbon and Rostovtzeff -- Appendix. Clerical ordinations.
The Church was at the heart of the political and social, as well as the religious changes that look place in the Roman West from the fourth to seventh centuries. In this concise and effective synthesis, Ian Wood considers some ways in which religion and the Church can be reintegrated into what has become a largely secular discourse, and he contends that the institutionalisation of the Church on a huge scale was a key factor in the transformation from an incipiently Christian Roman Empire to a world of thoroughly Christianised kingdoms.
9781942401445
Church and state--History--Europe--To 1500. Church history--Middle Ages, 600-1500.