Follow the money

Not not did the church draw the best men, men who otherwise would have been, Momigliano says, “generals, governors or provinces, advisers to the emperors,” but it drew popular enthusiasm and loyalty, and money: “Money which would have gone to the building of a theatre or of an aqueduct now went to 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.”