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THE
FALL OF ROME |
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CRISIS
OF
THE THIRD CENTURY |
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CHRISTIANITY
WAS SPREADING throughout the Roman world. INTERNAL
ANARCHY AND FOREIGN INVASION devastated the Empire.
 | Generals
murdered emperors, intimidated all opposition, and put themselves or
their puppets on the imperial throne.
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| German
tribes went past the imperial frontiers.
 | The
Franks devastated Gaul and Spain.
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| The
Saxons attacked Britain.
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| The
Goths occupied Dacia (Romania)
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| A
wall 20 feet high and 12 feet wide was built to protect Rome.
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| ECONOMIC
DECLINE |
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The
Empire was no longer expanding. The ECONOMY HAD BECOME STATIC.
| Wars
were now defensive so the army was a financial liability rather than
an asset.
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| Gold
and silver were being drained away (one-sided trade with India and
China).
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| There
was a trend toward CONCENTRATION OF LAND OWNERSHIP IN A FEW HANDS.
| Small
farmers abandoned their lands.
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| Large
landowners bought it up cheaply .
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| Emperors
added to their vast estates by confiscating lands.
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| The
number of tenant farmers (coloni) increased as men fled
the insecurity of city life to find jobs and protection on the
large estates with fortified villas.
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cultivated their patches of land, paying rent to the
landowner and providing him with free labor.
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| When
the coloni fell behind in their rents and taxes,
they were bound to their tenancies by imperial order.
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| This
was the first step toward serfdom and the social and
economic pattern of the Middle Ages.
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MONETARY SYSTEM FAILED.
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meet military and administrative expenses, the emperors
repeatedly devalued the coinage, reducing its silver content.
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| Ultimately,
the amount of alloy reached 98 percent and prices soared as
people lost confidence in the debased currency.
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| Even
the government refused to accept its own money for taxes and
required payment in goods and services.
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| CIVIL
WAR DISTURBED TRADE and helped undermine the prosperity of the
cities, whose population decreased correspondingly.
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| REFORM
MEASURES |
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Weakened
by economic, social, and political decline, Rome turned to the most
extreme forms of ABSOLUTISM in an effort to ride out the storm.
DIOCLETIAN (285-305) |
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| Relegated
the Senate to the status of a city council.
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| Divided
the Empire into East and West with two Augustuses and two Caesars.
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| Increased
the number of administrative units.
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| Set
up a separate hierarchy of military officials.
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| Created
a large secret service to keep close watch over this bureaucracy.
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| Persecuted
Christians ruthlessly.
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| Established
fixed maximum prices
for all essential goods and services (ranging from peas to beer and
from haircuts to freight rates).
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CONSTANTINE (306-337) |
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| Solved
the Christian problem by legalizing Christianity.
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| Issued
a series of decrees which froze
people to their occupations and places of origin.
| Coloni
could not leave the soil and their children had to accept the
same status as that of their father.
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| In
the cities, the same restrictions applied to members of guilds
whose activities were essential to the state.
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| DIVISION
OF EMPIRE |
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ROME
CEASED TO BE A SEAT OF IMPERIAL AUTHORITY. Constantine selected the old
Greek colony of Byzantium for a new capital.
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foreshadowed the division of
the Empire into two completely separate states, the East and
the West. After 395, the Empire was never gain governed as a single
unit.
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| Henceforth,
we can speak of a western
Roman empire, which soon fell, and of an eastern Roman or Byzantine
Empire, which endured for another thousand years.
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UPHEAVAL
IN THE WEST
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Rome's
internal crisis was compounded by mounting external pressures. The
greatest danger lay in the north, the home of restless bands of FIERCE
BARBARIANS -- the Germans. |
| Germanic
Tribes |
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| Each
German warrior leader had a group of followers who were linked to
him by personal loyalty.
| This
war band -- called COMITATUS in Latin -- had an
important bearing on the origin of medieval feudalism, which
was based on the personal bond between knights and their
feudal lords.
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| The
heroic virtues associated with the comitatus also
continued into the Middle Ages where they formed the basis of
the value system of the feudal nobility.
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| The
Germanic system of justice was based on the PRINCIPLE OF
COMPENSATION.
| For
the infliction of specific injuries a stipulated payment
termed a bot was required.
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| If
a crime was so grave that compensation could not be paid, a
person had to stand trial and produce oath-helpers who would
swear to his innocence.
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| If
unable to obtain oath-helpers, he was subjected to trial by
ordeal.
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| There
were three kinds of TRIAL BY ORDEAL adopted by Medieval society and
used until the 13th century.
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the first, the defendant had to life a small stone out of a
vessel of boiling water. Unless his scaled arm had healed
within a prescribed number of days, he was judged guilty.
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| In
the second, he had to walk blindfolded and barefooted across a
floor on which lay pieces of red-hot metal. Success in
avoiding the metal was a sign of innocence.
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| In
the third, the bound defendant was thrown into a stream that
had been blessed. Only if the holy water accepted him and he
sank was he believed innocent.
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| Roman-German
Contacts |
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| There
was PEACEFUL CONTACT between the Romans and the Germans.
| Roman
trade reached into Germany.
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| Germans
entered the Empire as slaves.
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| During
the troubled third century, many Germans were invited to
settle on vacated lands within the Empire or to serve in the
Roman legions.
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| The
Germans beyond the frontiers were kept
in check by force of arms, frontier walls, diplomacy and
gifts, or playing off one tribe against the next.
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| Barbarian
Invasions |
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| In
the last decades of the 4th century, methods proved insufficient to
prevent a series of great new invasions.
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basic factor behind Germanic restlessness seems to have been
land hunger.
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| Their
number were increasing, much of their land was forest and
swamp, and their methods of tillage were inefficient.
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| Fearful
of the advancing Huns, the Visigoths petitioned the Romans to allow
them to settle as allies inside the Empire.
| Granted
permission, they crossed the Danube into Roman territory in
376, but after corrupt roman officials cheated and mistreated
them, they went on a rampage.
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| In
378, the Romans were defeated by the Visigoths in the battle
of Adrianople -- one of history's decisive battles because it
destroyed the legend of the invincibility of the Roman legions
and ushered in a century and a half of chaos.
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THE
FALL
OF ROME |
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The
year 476 SYMBOLIZES THE END OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST. In this year
the long line of emperors inaugurated by Augustus ended and the
undisguised rule of Italy by Germanic leaders began.
The REASONS FOR THE FALL OF ROME have been debated for
centuries. |
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| Pagan
writers attributed the sack of Rome to the abandonment of the
ancient gods.
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| In
The City of God, St. Augustine argued against this charge.
| He
put forth the theory that history unfolds according to God's
design.
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| Thus
Rome's fall was part of the divine plan -- "the necessary
and fortunate preparation for the triumph of the heavenly city
where man's destiny was to be attained."
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| This
view was challenged in the 18th century by Edward Gibbon, author of
the famous The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
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saw Rome's fall as the "triumph of barbarism and
religion."
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| Christianity,
he argued, had played an important role in undermining the
imperial structure: "The clergy successfully preached the
doctrines of patience and pusillanimity [timidity]; . . . the
last remains of the military spirit were buried in the
cloister."
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| In
our time, some explanations of Rome's fall have been rooted in
psychological theories.
| For
example, the basic cause has been attributed to a weakening of
morale in the face of difficulties, to a "loss of
nerve."
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| Or
it has been argued that the ultimate failure of Rome came from
its too complete success. The easy acquisition of power and
wealth and the importing of ready-made cultures from conquered
peoples led to indolence and self-gratification among the
ruling classes.
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| Most
historians account for Rome's decline in terms of a variety of
interacting forces.
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the political side, the failure of civil power to control the
army resulted in military anarchy, the disintegration of
central authority, and the weakening of Rome's ability to
withstand external pressures.
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| On
the economic side:
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small farmer class disappeared, and more and more land
was consolidated into huge latifundia.
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| Civil
war and barbarian attacks disturbed trade relations.
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| A
debased currency and a crushing tax burden undermined
the confidence of the people.
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| Eventually,
the rigid economic and social decrees of Diocletian and
Constantine created a vast bureacracy which only
aggravated the existing ils in the western half of the
Empire, already far gone along the road to decline.
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WESTERN
EUROPE IN
THE SIXTH CENTURY |
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In
the West, the Empire was no more than a memory by the 6th
century.
| In
its place were NEW STATES that foreshadowed the major political
divisions of modern Europe:
| Visigothic
Spain
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| Anglo-Saxon
England
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| Frankish
Gaul
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| A
divided Italy ruled by Lombard dukes, the Eastern emperor, and
the pope.
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ECONOMY was becoming progressively DECENTRALIZED:
| Vast
tracts of formerly cultivated land were left untilled.
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| There
was a failure of communications and transportation.
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| the
labor force fled from the cities to the country.
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| Industry
was transferred from cities to large country estates.
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| Medieval
civilization was taking on its essentially RURAL CHARACTER.
| Scores
of once flourishing towns near the frontiers ceased to exist.
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| Towns
closer to the Mediterranean shrunk in size and importance.
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| The
general level of civilization was lowered.
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| In
most areas the Germanic invaders still represented a minority of the
population.
| A
gradual blending and fusing of the cultures and the blood of
the two peoples began.
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| The
barbarians in time lost their Germanic customs, religion, and
speech.
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| The
foundations for the spiritual and political power of the papacy,
which would lead to the Church-state rivalry of the Middle Ages, had
been laid.
| Pope
Leo the Great had acquired the moral leadership of the West by
successfully protecting Italy from the Huns.
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| The
Lombard conquests in Italy gave the papacy its opportunity to
achieve independence.
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| Ready
for future use was the doctrine of the supremacy of the Church
over the state in spiritual matters, a doctrine implied by St.
Augustine in his City of God and clearly expressed by
St. Ambrose during his clash with the emperor Theodosius I.
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| The
THREE ELEMENTS that were to create the pattern of western
civilization in the Middle Ages were being interwoven:
| GRAECO-ROMAN
CULTURE
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| THE
CHRISTIAN CHURCH
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| THE
GERMANIC PEOPLES AND THEIR INSTITUTIONS.
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Here were the MIND, SPIRIT, AND MUSCLE that were to work
together in western man during the next thousand years.
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| ONLINE
RESOURCES |
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| DISCUSSION
QUESTIONS |
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| Explain
the link between the decline of Rome and the rise of persecution of
Christians up to and especially during the emperorship of
Diocletian.
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| "The
reforms undertaken by Diocletian and Constantine to save the empire
hastened its collapse." Do you agree? Explain.
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| Set
up a hierarchy of reasons for the "decline" of the Roman
Empire. Be prepared to justify the position of each reason.
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| Suppose
you were from an aristocratic Roman family and became a Roman
Catholic bishop stationed in Gaul during the fifth century. What do
you think would be the best way to deal with the decline of the
Roman Empire and the barbarian invasions? Why?
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| What
influence would the anti-Christian attitude of Edward Gibbon have in
arguing that Rome declined through the influence of Christianity?
Does this negate Gibbon's contributions to the study of Rome?
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