Ecclesial aristocracy

Arnaldo Momigliano suggests that one of the key ways that Christianity contributed to the decline of Rome was by siphoning off the best and brightest to the church. The “central feature of the fourth century” was “the emergence of the Church as an organization competing 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.”

Fourth-century church Fathers are “almost all born rulers, rulers of a type which, with the exception of the scholarly emperor Julian, it was hard to find on the imperial throne.” They were able to study philosophy and theology, and combined “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.”