Christianity Transformed the Roman Empire

Fall of the Roman Empire

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a historian graphical concept that refers to the transformations during the Crisis of the third century and the Roman Empire, from which 395 led to a rapid decline of Roman power, and the collapse of the Empire West, whose last emperor cash, Romulus Augustus, was deposed by the leader Heruli Odoacer, employed in the service of Rome. The Decline and fall of the Roman Empire is one of the most debated and studied history. It is considered by some as "the greatest riddle of all," and has been one of the axes of the classic historical discourse from St. Augustine of Hippo. The ruin of the "eternal Rome" has endured as the paradigm par excellence of exhaustion and death of civilizations, a worldly expiration interpreted as a precedent and announcement of the end of the world or at least the Western civilization.

Historiography has ranged from a minimalist interpretation (interruption of the line of emperors in the western part of the Empire) and a maximalist (the collapse of civilization and the failure of a divided world history into two stages: an ancient-pagan another modern-Christian). Similarly, from one end of the spectrum to the other theories proposed has been considered as a long process transformation due to endogenous phenomena (the "decadence") or a sudden collapse largely exogenous causes (the "fall"). In particular, the decline and fall term refers to the masterpiece of the English historian Edward Gibbon , who, not being the first to broach the subject in the eighteenth century renewed historiography science through his analysis of late-Roman period, assuming a position midway between the endogenous and exogenous (Grant, pp. 321).

Currently predominant theories are less dramatic, but not to downplay the internal problems and consequences that led to the emergence of the Germans in the Empire. This concept supports the survival continuity until the Carolingian period, despite invasions and violence-political structures and the fundamental economic concept of the late Roman world power (Grant, pp. 121).

Among the causes which have been invoked for the start of the Germanic invasion (not adequately explained) are: the worsening climate in the north, the population explosion of the barbarians, nomadic of these, and the pressure of the Asian peoples, especially Huns (who came to invade the Empire). Among the causes of their success are: military superiority, the earlier settlement of Germanic population and the crisis of Roman political institutions. The great invasions began in 401, with the arrival of the Vandals. This time invasions were not mere raids, but the raiders settled in the territory: the Swabians in the Gallaecia, the Visigoths in Hispania, the Franks in Gaul, the Ostrogoths in Italy, the brugundios in the Alps, the Vandals in Mauritania, etc.. The Roman political crisis was such that the Visigoths came to fight on behalf of the Roman Empire. In 476 the Roman Empire had fallen in the West, but would remain in the East, where the capital was ...