Christianity and the Decline of the Roman Empire.

* This essay first appeared as the introduction A. Momigliano, ed., The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, pp. 79—99 (1)

I may perhaps begin with a piece of good news. In this year 1959 it can still be considered an historical truth that the Roman empire declined and fell. Nobody is as yet prepared to deny that the Roman empire has disappeared. But here historians begin to disagree. When we ask them to tell us when the Roman empire disappeared, we collect an embarrissing variety of answers. The more so because there is a tendency to identify the beginnings of the Middle Ages with the end of the Roman empire: a tendency which would have given no little surprise to medieval men who firmly believed in the continuity of the Roman empire.

There are, of course, historians who see the Middle Ages making their appearance and the Roman empire sinking into oblivion with the conversion of Constantine in 312 or with the inauguration of Constantinople in 330. And there are historians who would delay the end of the ROman empire to that year 1806 - more precisely to that day 6 August 1806 - in which Napolean I compelled the Austrian emperor Francis II to underwrite the end of the Holy Roman empire. Between these two extreme dates there are plenty of intermediate choices.

There are still traditionalists ready to support the once famous date of september 476, when Romulus Augustulus lost his throne; and there are more sophisticated researchers who would prefer the death ofJustinian in 565 or the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 - when the Roman empire was in a way replaced by two Roman empires. Another favourite date is the fall of Constantinople in 1453 as the end of the new Rome. Uninhibited by such a variety of opinions, Professor Arnold Toynbee has succeeded in adding one which at first sight seems to be of remarkable originality. He has reproached Gibbon for not understanding that the Roman empire began to decline four centuries before it was born. Indeed, Professor Toynbee maintains that the crisis of Roman civilization started in the year 431 B.C. when the Athenians and the Spartans came to grief in the Peloponnesian War. [1]

But this opinion is really not original: it is in fact curiously reminiscent of an old Marxist point of view. Until recently Marxist historians have held that the crisis of classical civilization started with the Peloponnesian War or at the latest with the Gracchan movement. Only later have Russian historians begun to realize that their position verged on absurdity.

It is tempting to laugh at this game of finding a date for the end of the Roman empire, especially when the date is four centuries before the beginning of the Roman empire. But it is obvious that the game is after all not so futile as it looks. A date is only a symbol. Behind the question of dates there is the question of the continuity of European history. Can we notice a break in the development of the social and intellectual history of Europe? If we can notice it, where can we place it?

Historians, theologians, and political theorists have meditated on the decline and fall of Rome for centuries. Toynbee might defend himself by saying that the ancients pondered about the decline of Rome before Rome gave any clear sign of declining. They reflected on the causes of the fall of Rome even before Rome fell in any sense.

Professor Mircea Eliade rightly observed that the Romans were continuously obsessed by the "end of Rome"'. [2] The problem of the decadence of Rome was already formulated by Polybius in the second century B.C. The idea that Rome was getting old is clearly expressed in Florus, an historian of the second century A.D. [3] After the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 the decline of Rome became the subject of the most famous of all philosophic meditations on history - St. Augustine's Civita dei. The Roman empire continued to survive, but people knew that something had happened. They spoke of translatio imperii - of the transition from the old Roman empire to the new Holy Roman empire of Charlemagne and other German emperors. Nobody doubted that the continuity of the Roman empire concealed a change. Indeed, about A.D 1000 Otto III dreamt of reviving the old Roman empire: he spoke of renovatio imperii Romanorum. But the greatest of the Latin poets of the eleventh century, Hildebert of Lavaardin, was under no illusion about the state of Rome: 'Par tibi, Roma, nihil, cum sis prope tota ruina.' [1]

The thought of reviving old Rome, old classical civilization, became the inspiration of the humanistic movement in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This implied the awareness that the Christian civilization of earlier centuries was something profoundly different from the classical world of Rome. Let us remind ourselves - because this is essential - that our problem of the decline of Rome is a product of italian humanism. In that atmosphere Flavio Biondo wrote his history of Italy 'ab inclinatione Romanorum imperii' towards the middle of the fifteenth century. He dated the decline of Rome from the sack of Rome in 410. The Goths, the barbarians, started the decline of Rome.

Since Flavio Biondo each generation has produced its own theory or theories on the decline and fal of Rome. [2] Gibbon was heir to a long tradition of thought on the subject. Until the end of the eighteenth century few responsbile historians followed Biondo in attributing the decline of Rome to the German invasions. Rather, causes of the decline were sought inside the empire. Machiavelli and Paruta in the sixteenth century tried to discover the cause of the decline of Rome in its constitution. In the early eighteenth century, more exactly in 1734, Montesquieu published his Considerations sur la grandeur et la decadence des Romains.

By subtle analysis Montesquieu showed two of the main reasons for the fall of ancient Rome. There is an anti-Christian note in Montesquieu which becomes loud in Voltaire and loudest of all in Gibbon's Decline and Fall. Gibbon focused attention on Christianity as the main factor of change and, as he throught, of decadence in the structure of the Roman empire. It was not until the nineteenth century that the German invasions came to be generally regarded as the key to understanding of end of old Rome.

During the nineteenth century nationalism prevailed, and historical research was mainly in German hands; it is not surprising that German scholars should believe that the German invasions sufficed to explain the birth of the Middle Ages. The most coherent alternative view was elaborated by Marx and his followers when they claimed that the Roman empire fell because its social structure, founded as it was upon slavery, was replaced by the feudal economic system.

In more recent years the picture has become more complex. The enormous vitality of the Byzantine empire has been recognized, and it has been shown that much of its political and cultural tradition is of Greek or Roman origin. While older Byzantine scholars like Professor Charles Diehl stressed the oriental character of Byzantine civilization, a more modern school of thought has maintained, in Professor Bayne's words, that the Byzantine empire was the result of the fusion of the Hellenistic with the Roman tradition. [1]

There is also an increasing realization of the part played by Islam in the social changes of the Mediterranean world during and after the seventh century. Other scholars like the Hungarian Professor A. Alfoldi and the German Professor F. Altheim invite us to look beyond the borders of the empire at the nomadic tribes of non-German origins - Sarmatians, Huns, Slavs - who directly or indirectly contributed to changing the ways of life of Europe after the third century A.D.

As I have said, even the Marxists are no longer able to defend their tenet that the crisis of ancient civilization started at the end of the fifth century B.C. Recent discussions in the leading periodical of the Russian historians, the Vestnik Drevnej Istorii, show that they have been shifting their positions. A book published in 1957 by a very intelligent historian, Mme E. M. Staerman, denies that there was a clear-cut struggle between slaves and slave-owners. She emphasizes the variety of social forms to be found in the Roman empire, and the need of avoiding generalizations. [2]

But the most important discussion on the topic of social changes in the Roman empire remains that which developed in the last forty years between the followers of the Belgian scholar H. Pirenne and the followers of the Austrian A. Dopsch. [1] As we all know, Dopsch substantially claimed that no break in continuity is noticeable in the Western world as a consequence of the German invasions. There was considerable redistribution of land, but the legal forms of ownership remained essentially Roman, city life survived, there was no return to natural economy, no interruption of the great trade-routes, and no interruption on the transmission of cultural goods.

Pirenne accepted Dopsch's view that the German invasion did not put an end to the Graeco-Roman social structure, but contended that the ancient ways of life were disrupted by the Arabs: they played the part that more conventional historans used to attribute to the Germans. In Pirenne's opinion the Arabs destroyed the unity of Mediterranean, paralysed the trade between East and West, drained the gold away from the West, and displaced the centre of civilized life from the Mediterranean to the North Sea. The West, having been cut off from Byzantium, had to look after itself. The coronation of Charlemagne was symbolically the answer given by the West to the challenge of Mohammed's followers. Thence the somewhat unexpected title of Pirenne's great book, Mohammed et Charlemagne.

It is perhaps right to say that Rostovtzeff was in essential agreement with Pirennce against Dopsch. Of course, he found the cause of the decline of the cities not in the intervention of Arabs, but in the revolution of the peasantry against the city-dwellers. But Rostovtzeff, like Pirenne, was a bourgeois in the classical sense: he identified civilization with city life and saw the end of the classical world in the decline of the cities.

Now it is clear that all this recent research is unified by a common interest in the structural changes of the social organization of the Roman empire. It is also undeniable that researchers are less and less prepared to maintain that a simple formula can cover the enormous variety of local situations within the Roman empire. We are learning to respect regional differences as much as chronological sequences. We begin to see that what is true of France in the fourth century is not necessarily true of Spain, Africa, or Italy, not to speak of Syria or Egypt.

But even regional studies cannot overcome what seems to me the most serious objection against both Pirenne and Dopsch, and, indeed, against Rostovtzeff. The objection is that these historians talked of social changes without even discussing the most important of all social changes - The rise of Christianity. More generally, it can be said that no interpretation of the decline of the Roman empire can be declared satisfactory it it does not also account for the triumph of Christianity.

It may seem ridiculous to have to emphasize this proposition so many years after A. Harnack and E. Troeltsch. But a careful study of their works can perhaps explain why they failed to impress their fellow historians. Though both Harnack and Troeltsch were well aware that the Church was a society competing with the society of the Roman empire, they remained theologians to the end. They were more interested in the idea of Christianity than in Christians. Rostovtzeff and Pirenne, who loved the cities of men, may be excused if they remained unimpressed by theologians who talked or seemed to talk about the idea of the city of God.

It is the modest purpose of this paper to reassert the view that there is a direct relation between the triumph of Christianity and the decline of the Roman empire. But, of course, it will not be a simple return to Gibbon. What Gibbon saw as a merely destructive power must be understood on its own terms of Civitas dei - a new comonwealth of men for men.

Christianity produced a new style of life, created new loyalties, gave people new ambitions and new satisfactions. So far nobody has written a realistic evaluation of the impact of Christianity on the structure of pagan society. I shall not attempt such a task here. I shall confine myself to a few elementary remarks on the impact of Christianity on political life between the fourth and the sixth centuries A.D. We all know the basic facts. [1]

In the third century the Roman empire had faced disintegration. It survived thanks to the strenuous efforts at reconstruction which are connected with the names of Claudius Gothicus, Diocletian, and Constantine. The result was an organization founded upon compulsion. For reasons which have not yet been entirely explained, money economy collapsed in the third century: there were moments in which barter and taxation in kind seemed destined to replace money transactions in the the empire.

This crisis was overcome. Constantine introduced gold coins, the solidi, which remained the standard for about 800 years and served as an ultimate basis both for the fiscal system and private transactions. But there was a debased currency for everyday use, and the fluctuations in the rates of exchange between gold and debased currency were a source of uncertainty and an excuse for extortions.

The middle class emerged from the crisis demoralized and imporverished. Civil servants and soldiers were paid less in the fourth century than in the third. They came to rely on fees and bribery to supplement their salaries. Whatever the explanation may be, there developed also a shortage of manpower, while ordinary activities were made more burdensome by excessive taxation and the general unpleasantness of life. Barbarian invasions and civil wars must have destoryed a great deal of wealth. People tended to drift away from their work; and the government answered by bindng the peasant to the land, making compulsory and hereditary certain activities and transforming the city councils into compulsory and hereditary corporations responsible for the collection of taxes.

The army needed men. About 500,000 men seem to have required by the army, and there were not enough volunteers to make up this number. Recruitment was no easy matter. Landed proprietors had to supply recruits from among their serfs or at least had to compound by paying money. The son of a soldier was bound, at least under certain circumstances, to follow his father's profession But the best soldiers were recruited among the barbarians, mainly Germans and Sarmatians, who were settled within the empire either individually or in communities.

The army was therefore organized on uneconomic lines. It was made even more uneconomic by the division between frontier army and central army. The frontiers were guarded by soldiers who were less well paid and less respected than their colleagues of the mobile force at the centre.

To pay such an army a prosperous empire was needed. The empire was not prosperous, and there are reasons to believe that insecurity and inflation curtailed traffic. We have not enough evidence about the volume of trade circulating in the Roman empire at any given moment. We are therefore in no position to state in figures that there was less trade in the fourth century than, for instance, in the second century.

But we can infer from the decline of the bourgeoisie in the fourth century and from the exclusive importance of great landowners that properous traders were few. One has the impression that long-distance trade was increasingly in the hands of small minorities of Syrians and Jews.

Two capitals having replaced one, there were more unproductive expenses than before. Constantinople, the new Rome, grew up a marvel to see. But, as in the older Rome, the citizens of Constantinople enjoyed the privilege of a free supply of bread - the corn being provied by Egypt.

Preachers in their sermons painted in violent colours the contrast between wealth and poverty, and invariably intimated that wealth was the root of oppression. St. Ambrose in the West and St. John Chrysostom in the East attacked the rich who bought house after house and field after field, throwing out the former owners. What they say seems to be confirmed by the few data we have about individual estates in the fourth and fifth centuries. Some families had princely possessions spread over several provinces of the empire. They lived more and more, though not yet exclusively, in the country, and their estates were self-sufficient units.

The wealthiest landowners were members of the sentatorial class. Here again, the change from the third century is evident and important. In the third century the class of the senators was definitely declining. The senators were deprived of the command of the armies and to a certain extent of the provincial government. The conditions of the fourth century did not allow the senators to recover control of the army: professional soldiers, most frequently of German origin, took over.

But the senatorial class absorbed their formal rivals, the knights, and developed into a powerful clique of great landowners who, especially in the West, monopolized what was left of civilized life outside the Church and played an increasing part in the Church itself. Senators and great landowners became almost synonymous terms. These people knew the comforts and amenities of life; they cultivated rhetoric and poetry. In Rome, under the guidance of Symmachus, they provided the last bastion of paganism. Elsewhere they turned to the Church.

The fact that the aristocracy played a role of increasing importance in the affairs of the Church is only one aspect of what is perhaps the central feature of the fourth century: the emergence of the Church as an organization completing with the State itself and becoming attractive to educated and influential persons.

The State, though trying to regiment everything, was not able to prevent or suppress the competition of the Church. A man could in fact escape from the authority of the State if he embraced the Church. If he liked power he would soon discover that there was more power to be found in the Church than in the State.

The Church attracted the most creative minds - St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, Hilarius of Poitiers, St. Augustine in the West; Athanasius, John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Basil of Caesarea in the East: almost all born rulers, rulers of a type which, with exception of the scholarly emperor Julian, it was hard to find on the imperial throne. They combined Christian theology with pagan philosophy, worldly political abilities with a secure faith in immortal values. They could tell both the learned and the unlearned how they should behave, and consequently transformed both the external features and the inner meaning of the daily existence of an increasing number of people.

Gibbon was simplifying a very complicated issue when he insinuated that Christianity was responsible for the fall of the empire, But he perceived that the church attracted many men who in the past would have become excellent generals, governors of provinces, advisers to the emperors.

Moreover, the Church made ordinary people proud, not of their old political institutions, but of their new churches, monasteries, ecclesiatical charities. Money which would have gone to the building of a theatre or of an aqueduct now went ot the building of churches and monasteries. The social equilibrium changed - to the advantage of the spiritual and physical conditions of monks and priests, but to the disadvantage of the ancient institutions of the empire.

The expanding and consolidating hierachical organization of the Church offered scope for initiative, leadership, ambition. With Theodosius' law of A.D. 392 pagan cults became illegal. Other laws were directed against heretics. Catholic priests obtained all sorts of privileges, including that of being judged by their own bishops in the case of criminal offences. This was the outcome of a century of struggles. St. Ambrose, having the whole wieght of his pwoerful and fearless personality into the struggle, compelled the aging Theodosius to yield to the demands of the Church. St. Ambrose's victory can be considered final in so far as paganism was concerned.

When Alaric captured Rome in 410 many people asked themselves whether the ruin of Rome was not the sign that Christianity was bad for the empire. The Christian answer to these doubts prevailed. It opened a new epoch in the philosophy of history. The political disaster was real enough, but more real was the faith which inwardly transformed the lives of the multitudes and which was now given its intellectual justification by St. Augustine in his City of God.

If paganism was dying, this did not mean that the unity of the Church, willed by St. Ambrose and St. Augustine and accepted by Theodosius, was entirely safe. The great episcopal churches of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria were manoeuvring against each other. Nobody seriously challenged the hegemony of Rome in the West (perhaps because the claims of the Roman bishops were still vague), but even in Rome we meet rival bishops fighting each other with the support of excited crowds. And there were heresies. If Arianism was a lost cause inside the Empire, it prospered among the barbarians pressing on its bordres. Other heresies, such as Priscillianism in Spain and Donatism in Africa, kept their appeal for a long time.

Much can be said about the internal conflicts, the worldly ambitions, the intolerance of the Church. Yet the conclusion remains that while the political organization of the empire became increasingly rigid, unimaginative, and unsuccessful, the Church was mobile and resilient and provided space for those whom the State was unable to absorb. The bishops were the centres of large voluntary organizations. They founded and controlled charitable institutions. They defended their flocks against the state officials. When the military situation of the empire grew worse, they often organized armed resistance against the barbarians. It seems to me impossible to deny that the prosperity of the Church was both a consequence and a cause of the decline of the state.

People escaped from the state into the Church and weakened that state by giving their best to the Church. This is a situation which in its turn requires analysis and explanation. But its primary importance cannot be overlooked. The best men were working for the Church, not for the state.

Monasticism provides the most telling test of the capacities of the Church in the fourth century. [1] The first hermits of the third century were Christians who in order to live a perfect Christian life abandoned both the pagan world and the Christian communities and retired to the desert. This was no simple revolt against society. It was born out of a deep experience of struggle against the temptations of the flesh. Where there is a hermit, there is the devil. The devil was a powerful reality in late antiquity, and the hermit was both obsessed by the devil and determined to fight him. The devil pursued the hermit, but the hermit believed he had the right weapons to counter-attack.

St. Anthony was the model hermit, and his biography written by St. Athanasius became the model for all lives of saints, one of the most influential books of any time. But the hermits were a clear menace to orderly Christian society. Each of them organized his life on his own lines, defying the authority of the bishops and claiming to be the embodiment of the perfect Christian. While official Christianity was not bent on organizing the world and on achieveing a working compromise with worldy ambitions, the hermits expressed contempt for the world.

On the other hand, as Athanasius himself recognized when he chose to write the life of St. Anthony, the hermits were the true representatives of Christian asceticism. They could not be eliminated. A solution of the dilemma was found in creating monastic orders where collective life according to strictly ascetic rules replaced the hermit's individual escape from this world. First Pachomius, then Basil laid down the rules for the monasteries they founded and controlled. St. Basil's Rule inspires Eastern monastic rules even today.

Monasticism was introduced to the West in the second part of the fourth century. St. Jerome was the popularizer of the Eastern monastic ideals and found disciples amdong the most aristocratic ladies of Rome. Later St. Augustine dictated rules for people inclining to monastic life both in his Regula ad servos dei (the authenticity of which is disputed) and in his ascetic treatises, such as De opere Monachorum and De sancta Virginitate. So did his contemporary John Cassian in France. All these rules provided approved patterns of life and introduced manual work as a normal part of the monk's day. They also established direct or indirect control by the ecclesiastical authorities over the monasteries. This is not to say that the sting was entirely taken out of monastic life.

The monks, especially in the East, proved often to be unruly, rebellious, disturbingly fanatical, and ignorant. Much social discontent contributed to their psychology. But monasticism as a whole ceased to be a danger and became a source of power and inspiration for the Church. Ultimately, monasticism became a constructive force in society: it united men in a new form of communal life and gave them a considerable amount of economic independence and political self-government. When Cassiodorus added specific cultural activites to the ordinary life of his monks, a new chapter opened in the intellectual history of Europe. [1] The monks were not helping the Empire to survive. Judged from the traditional point of view of the pagan society they were a subversive force. But they provided an alternative to pagan city life.

Monasticism is the most obvious example of the way in which Christianity built something of its own which undermined the military and political structure of the Roman empire. Yet this is only part of the story.

As soon as the barbarians were let into the empire, the conflict between pagan society and Christian society changed its aspect. A new factor was introduced. It remained to be seen whether pagans or Christians would succeed better in dealing wth the barbarians. From the end of the fourth century A.D, the Christian Church was asked not only to exorcise the devils, but to tame the barbarians. Next to Satan, the barbarians could be found everywhere, but unlike the devils no simple formula could chase them away.

Here the Church had to operate with subtlety in a variety of situations: it had to prove itself superior to the pagans.

It was soon evident that the East was safer than the West. The main German pressure was on the Rhine and on the Danube. Asia was fairly secure. The military reserviour of Asia Minor provided enough soldiers for the emperors of Constantinople to counerbalance the influence of the German mercenaries and to help to keep them in their place. Constantinople itself proved to be an impregnable fortress. But the military aspects of the situation cannot be separated from the social ones.

The East was safer not only because it was stronger, but also because it was less dissatisfied with the Roman administration. The concentration of wealth in a few hands did not go quite as far as in the West. City life survived better in the East, and consequently the peasants there were less hard pressed. If we except Egypt, the East has no parallel to the endemic revolts of the Bagaudae and the circumcelliones of Gaul, Spain, and Africa.

In the West there were people wondering whether their lot would not be better under the barbarians. St. Augustine himself is not invariably certain that the empire was a good thing. His disciple Orosius has a telling passage about people who would have preferred to live among barbarians. The French priest Salvianus, the author of the De gubernatione dei, written about 450, was deeply impressed by the quality of the Germans; and there is the famous story of a Roman who lived among the Huns and explained why he was better off with them. [Priscus]

This evidence does not of course mean that the barbarians were greeted as liberators in any part of the empire. The slaves and the derfs were not freed by the barbarians. They simply changed masters and had to bear the consequences of all the destructions and revolutions. It is true that the curiales were progressively releived of their burdens and that the corporate system of the late Roman empire fell into desuetude. But the disappeared only because city life disappeared. The picture of the barbarians arriving as a liberation army is a fantastic traversty of the facts. What must be taken into account, however, is that in the West the psychological resistance to the barbarians was less strong than in the East. Not only military weakness, but defeatism paved the way for the German invasion of Italy and the western provinces.

We badly neeed systematic research on regional differences in the attitude of the Church towards the Roman state. Generalizations are premature. But some facts are apparent. The Greek Fathers never produced searching criticisms of the Roman State comparable with those of St. Augustine and Salvian. On the contrary, St. John Chrysostom supported the anti-German party in Constantinople, and Synesius became a convert and a bishop after having outlined the programme of that party.

It would seem that in the West, after having contributed to the weakening of the empire, the Chuch inclined to accept collaboration with the barbarians and even replacement of the Roman authorities by barbarian leaders. In the East (with the partial exception of Alexandria) the Church appreciated the military strength of the Roman state and the loyalties it commanded.

No doubt the Eastern churches, too, did not hesitate to deprive the Roman administration of the best men and of the best revenues whenever they could, but, at least from the second part of the fourth century, they threw in their weight with the new Rome.

Looking at both sides of the empire, one conclusion seems inescapable. The Church managed to have it both ways. It could help the ordinary man either in his fight against the barbarians or in his compromise with them. It succeeded where pagan society had little to offer either way. The educated pagan was by definition afraid of barbarians. There was no bridge between the aristocratic ideals of a pagan and the primitive violence of a German invader.

In theory the barbarians could be idealized. Primitivism has always had its devotees. Alternatively, a few select barbarians could be redeemed by proper education and philosophic training. There was no objection to barbarians on racial grounds. But the ordinary barbarian as such was nothing more than a nightmare to the educated pagan.

The Christians had a different attitude and other possibilities. They could convert the barbarians and make them members of the Church. They had discovered a bridge between barbarism and civilization. Alternatively, the Church could give its moral support to the struggle against the barbarians: the defence of the empire could be presented as the defence of the Church.

It is obvious that if we had to analyse the process in detail we should have to take into account the complications caused by the existence of doctrinal differences with the Church. It was commonly felt that an heretic was worse than a pagan. Thus the fight against German Arians was even more meritorious than the fight against German pagans.

What really matters to us is that in the West the Church gradually replaced the dying State in dealing with the barbarians. In the East, on the other hand, the Church realized that the Roman state was much more vital and supported it in its fight against the barbarians. In the West, after having weakened the Roman state, the Church accepted its demise and acted independently in taking them. In the East, the Church almost identified itself with the Roman State of Constantinople.

In both cases, ordinary people needed protection and guidance. The wealthy classes were capable of looking after themselves either under the Roman emperor or under the barbarian kings. But ordinary people wanted leaders. They found them in their bishops.

Above all, something had to be done in order to establish a communal life which both Romans and barbarians could share. A glance at the life of St. Severinus by Eugippius is enough to give an impression of what a courageous and imaginative Christian leader could do in difficult circumstances.

In the fourth and fifth centuries the bishops did not make much of an effort to convert the barbarians who were living outside the borders of the Roman empire. But they were deeply concerned with the religion of those barbarians who settled in the empire. In other words, the conversion to Christianity was part of the process whereby the Germans were, at least to a certain extent, romanized and made capable of living together with the citizens of the Roman empire.

The process of romanizing the barbarians by christianizing them is an essential feature of the history of the Roman empire between Constantine and Justinian. If it did not save the empire, at least in the West, it saved many features of Roman civilization.

The superiority of Christianity over paganism in dynamism and efficiency was already evident in the fourth century. The Christians could adapt themselves better to the new political and social situation and deal more efficiently with the barbarians. A closer analysis of the relations between pagans and Christians in the fourth century is therefore the necessary presupposition for any further study of the decline of the Roman empire.

Such analysis may show that in this field as well as in other fields the solitary Jacob Burckhardt was nearer the truth than any other historian of the nineteenth century. His book on Constantine (1852) was inspired by Gibbon and merciless in its judgement of the emperor who christianized the empire, but was very careful to avoid any confusion between Constantine and the cause he embraced. Burckhardt tried to understand what the Church had to give to a declining empire and under what conditions it was prepared to do so. We are still wrestling with the same problem. [1]