Christianity and Fall of Rome

Geza Alfoldy concludes his Social History of Rome with suggestive comments about the relation of Christianity and the fall of the empire. The problem was not that Christianity undermined patriotism; it didn’t. Rather, “The role of Christianity in the collapse of the Roman system of power resulted from the fact that it was taken over by the Germans and carried on. Throughout previous Roman history, the value system of Roman society had been the mos maiorum , which set up an insurmountable barrier between Romans and non-Romans. But Christian Romans were linked to the Christian barbarians by their common religion and morality: in the words of Orosius, a Christian Roman was ‘inter Romanos Romanus, inter Christianos Christianus, inter homines homo . . . : for such men Christian barbarians were not longer hostes , but fratres . . . . From Orosius’ standpoint even Alaric’s capture of Rome in AD 410 did not seem a really bad thing for, after all, the Western Goths were also Christians. For Salvian, the Germans embodied the Christian virtues very much more than the Romans. Orosius had a vision that Romans and Germans should live together in a Christian Romania .”