Christianity and the Roman Empire
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Christianity and the Roman Empire
The emergence of Christianity had a modest but substantial role in the fall of the Roman Empire by eroding ancient Roman ideas and values and causing disputes between Christians and others who adhered to ancient pagan concepts. Christians were persecuted as a result of these disputes until Constantine, the first Christian Emperor of Rome, put an end to it (Scuralli, 2018). Most historians think that many factors contributed to the Roman Empire’s fall, including corrupt practices, economic issues, disease and plagues, and so on.
Following the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Church became the dominating force in Europe. Christianity, primarily Catholicism, was the only acknowledged religion in the medieval Europe. During the middle Ages, Christianity controlled the lifestyle of both peasants and nobles. Because the state gave considerable funding for religious practices, religious institutions like the Church and monasteries grew rich and prominent (Madigan, 2015). Gregory I the Great was instrumental in building a powerful and prominent pope and church structure. The fact that he dispatched monks to convert the Anglo-Saxons, whom he regarded as heathen, was his first move in imposing authority of the papacy. Gregory built an early regime in which the Church had as much, if not more, authority than the state. The bishops would be overseen by archbishops, and the archbishops would be overseen by the pope.
In the modern world, Christianity has been intricately weaved with the history and development of Western civilization. The Church has historically been a significant provider of social services such as education and healthcare and an influence for art, art, and philosophy, and plays a powerful role in religion and politics.
References
Madigan, K. (2015). Medieval Christianity: a new history. Yale University Press.
Scuralli, N. (2018). The Significance of the Roman, Germanic and Christian Foundations: How Gibbon Misunderstood the Fall of the Roman West (Doctoral dissertation, Concordia University).
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