History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VI

[Kyriakos]

And now you're using Earth as a base to invade Alpha Centauri?

This is Alpha Centauri. 'Earth' is just a conspiracy

 

[gay_Aleks]

Question: Why is Christianity regarded as one of the reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire?

 

[ParkCungHee]

Edward Gibbon AFAIK was the popularizer of that one. He held the common superstition of his era that the middle ages was a period of ignorance (also because of Christianity) and blamed the Christian belief in a better life after death, and it's pacifist message detracted from the Roman's willingness to sacrifice and fight for the empire, the reason for them hiring 'foreign mercenaries' (like that was a new thing).

 

[Plotinus]

Plus, of course, anti-Christian prejudice, which was also an important motive for Gibbon.

Our society has progressed to the point where a Christian viewpoint is no longer the expected norm, but unfortunately it's still stuck at the point where the Christian past is too recent to view it objectively, and so the stock alternative to a Christian viewpoint is an anti-Christian one. No doubt the time will come when most people simply don't care enough about Christianity to hate it so much, but that time's a fair way off yet!

 

[gay_Aleks]

In that case... Is Christianity part of the reasons that the Roman Empire was undone? Or was it a complicated connection of events, that led to the destruction of the empire?

 

[ParkCungHee]

In that case... Is Christianity part of the reasons that the Roman Empire was undone?

Not really. The thing about the collapse of the Western Empire is that it had really prevalent, direct causes. Large numbers of civil wars, with little interruption.

You can look into ultimate causes but I think the two most direct ones were:
1) That there wasn't much in the way of a method of peaceful transition of power ever established.
and
2) There were independent competing power bases, of comparable power. Namely, Gaul and Italy.

 

[schlaufuchs]

In that case... Is Christianity part of the reasons that the Roman Empire was undone? Or was it a complicated connection of events, that led to the destruction of the empire?

It most certainly was not a reason, and I sincerely doubt you will find an academic in this day and age who would seriously argue that Christianity had anything to do with the disintegration of the Roman Empire. Modern arguments these days deal more with the question of legitimacy. Around here Guy Halsall's argument that Rome fell apart due to a combination of bad luck and a string of bad emperors with a chronic inability to properly balance the interests of both the Italian and Gallic élite such that the system of patronage on which the entire Empire rested broke down. Halsall argues rather convincingly that the "barbarians" which invaded the Empire were actually extremely small in number and their "success" owed more to the fact that the Gallic élite found them to be a viable alternative to the Roman emperor as a source of patronage and legitimacy than any pronounced weakness in the Roman military system.

This was coupled with other serious issues in the Roman system such as strings of bad harvests and constant and debilitating civil wars which gut-punched the economy and left the Emperor more or less incapable of doing anything about the other problems. As with most postmodern interpretations of history, the explanation is complex, and in the Roman case, especially, a lot of luck comes into play. In the grand scheme of things this period perhaps, one could argue, was not the low point of the Empire, and Rome had pulled through some equally or possibly more dire situations in its past. In fact in this crisis the Romans were quite literally one botched naval battle away from turning the situation around. It just couldn't pull through this one. But the breakdown of the system should not be thought of as inevitable.

some reading:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=431647

 

[gay_Aleks]

So...by what I've understood, the Roman Empire wasn't ended by invading barbarians, but rather, it split up?

Would that mean that the countries that later appeared (i.e the Frankish kingdom, especially under Charlemagne) are actually just a split-off Rome? Like, what we know as the Frankish Kingdom, was actually just the Roman province of Gaul living under a new name? But it's inhabitants aren't the same? Or something? I am kind of confused.

 

[ParkCungHee]

So...by what I've understood, the Roman Empire wasn't ended by invading barbarians, but rather, it split up?

Would that mean that the countries that later appeared (i.e the Frankish kingdom, especially under Charlemagne) are actually just a split-off Rome? Like, what we know as the Frankish Kingdom, was actually just the Roman province of Gaul living under a new name? But it's inhabitants aren't the same? Or something? I am kind of confused.

Pretty much. Except the inhabitants are mostly the same. "Barbarian" identities were frequently used by the political elites at their convenience, depending on what they wanted out of Rome. Actual evidence of large scale population transfers is very limited (basically non-existent), and not accounted for in contemporary texts.

 

[timtofly]

Plus, of course, anti-Christian prejudice, which was also an important motive for Gibbon.

Our society has progressed to the point where a Christian viewpoint is no longer the expected norm, but unfortunately it's still stuck at the point where the Christian past is too recent to view it objectively, and so the stock alternative to a Christian viewpoint is an anti-Christian one. No doubt the time will come when most people simply don't care enough about Christianity to hate it so much, but that time's a fair way off yet!

This makes it sound like the UK was the last bastion of Christianity. Being raised in the US and travelling through both Canada and Mexico, yes there may be churches on every corner. They were rarely used and basically one day a week a small percentage of the population put on their mask and went to church. We understood that the catholics had to go more often and these Amish people were stuck in the past. For the most part people were secular and every one else was viewed with suspicion when religion came up if at all. It was a taboo to mix religion and politics. Sports, entertainment, and education were the driving forces. Religion was take it or leave it, but it was never the norm. There were so many different denominations and flavors that Christianity if any one ever referred to it as one thought was pretty objective and smorgasbord.

Perhaps that was just me though. I could never understand why the US was called a Christian Nation. Nor will any one ever convince me it was one or ever will be one.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Plus, of course, anti-Christian prejudice, which was also an important motive for Gibbon.

I would have mentioned it, but I didn't want to be the kind of guy to harp on about that kind of thing, you know.

Our society has progressed to the point where a Christian viewpoint is no longer the expected norm, but unfortunately it's still stuck at the point where the Christian past is too recent to view it objectively, and so the stock alternative to a Christian viewpoint is an anti-Christian one. No doubt the time will come when most people simply don't care enough about Christianity to hate it so much, but that time's a fair way off yet!

The other upshot to this is, maybe we'll get to the point where the Christian viewpoint is actually treated as something we need to learn, rather than be understood implicitly.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Perhaps that was just me though. I could never understand why the US was called a Christian Nation. Nor will any one ever convince me it was one or ever will be one.

For me, having been raised a non-Christian, I see America as very Christian if only in contrast to myself. That is, I suppose, being raised non-Cheistian, I tend to notice more often when I am not part of the norm of being Christian. When I was little people would look at me weird if I say I didn't believe in god, or believed in reincarnation or something (thankfully since I grew up in a nice neighborhood no one cared otherwise, just found it weird). Since I'm a (second generation) immigrant, my parents and grandparents' non-Christian-ness was also something that wasn't intentionally done to reject Christianity per se (like some converts to eastern religions here), but it was simply part of our identity, so I suppose me feeling outside the norm is more so.

I can understand why you don't see America as a Christian nation, though, as people tend to use the term very vaguely.

 

[schlaufuchs]

So...by what I've understood, the Roman Empire wasn't ended by invading barbarians, but rather, it split up?

Would that mean that the countries that later appeared (i.e the Frankish kingdom, especially under Charlemagne) are actually just a split-off Rome? Like, what we know as the Frankish Kingdom, was actually just the Roman province of Gaul living under a new name? But it's inhabitants aren't the same? Or something? I am kind of confused.

More or less. The main problem people have with Rome is that people tend to think of Rome in very simplified, pseudo-modern terms. Essentially a conquest is equated to one state toppling another, signing a peace treaty, the second state effectively ceasing to exist and everybody going along with it. Also there exists the notion of one, singular "Rome" with singular "Romans" and one Senate and Emperor on top ruling everything. This isn't really how any polity, least of all Rome has existed until arguably the 19th century, and even today that's a pretty tenuous description of how a state works. Rome was a multifaceted entity with a diverse array of players. The best emperors were the ones who could most effectively balance those players. The Roman Empire existed because the various élite who ran the show at the local level acknowledged that the empire existed and they acknowledged its existence because the distribution of patronage by the emperor to the élite granted authority and legitimacy to the élite. You often see posters (or used to, anyway) on these boards and others bemoan how the Roman Empire ceased to expand its borders and that the Empire stagnated (although quizzically they also tend to bemoan the fact that the Empire changed its military format from the old standard and introduced "barbarian regiments" and foederati&#299 except what they fail to realize is that the Empire at the end of Trajan's reign was quite literally all the Empire was capable of sustaining with the form of government the Empire used because:

1) The concept of "borders" really in any pre-modern context is a very tenuous one. Borders as we understand them today essentially didn't exist, and the outer reaches of a polity existed as a part of that polity because the local élite acknowledged that they were part of the polity

2) The entire system was built on the Emperor personally bestowing patronage on local groups and it's very difficult to maintain those types of personal relationships when it takes weeks just to travel between Italy and Gaul, let alone the Balkans, Africa, Britain, Spain, Egypt, and the Levant. It requires a very competent sort of person, or cult of personality to maintain a system like that, and when the people at the top are less than what is necessary you start seeing cracks in the system which are exacerbated by other power-hungry individuals. Eventually the élite in one region (in this case Gaul) felt their demands of legitimacy could be better met by more local personalities and so began to look to them for their patronage.

The most important point to take away in this ramble of mine is that Gaul did not become Frankia because Frankish nobility displaced Gallic ones, anymore than Celtic Gaul became Roman Gaul because Roman nobility displaced Celtic ones. Rather Gaul became Frankia when the Gallic nobility ceased to identify as Romans and identified instead as Franks. This is the crux of Halsall's argument in Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West: ethnicity is malleable, can change rapidly (over the course of just a couple generations) and élite will follow the patronage and most secure source of legitimacy. The source ceased to be (or at least identify as) a Roman one in the 5th century.

tl;dr for the tl;dr: people don't change. ethnicity does.

 

[Louis XXIV]

That being said, it's worth not losing sight that Guy Halsall agrees that there were people who were Franks (even, more specifically, a gens called the Franks). They surpassed the Romans as a source of legitimacy in the absence of effective Roman rule (and Roman patronage), but part of the legitimacy of the Franks was their claim to ties to others across the Limes (or maybe it was an army that went with it).

 

[daft]

Was the battle of Grunwald in 1410 AD between the Teutonic Knights and their allies (including English archers-I think) and the Kingdom of Poland, their allies, the Great Duchy-? of Lithuania, (and their allies, including the Rus and Tatars) the single biggest(regarding the total number of warriors involved) European battle of the Medieval Era? What about on a world scale of the era, where does it rank?
I guess Domen might be able to answer this in a blink of an eye.

 

[daft]

How do British Historians view the life and achievements of (sir) William Wallace?
Is he considered only as a hero of Scotland only by the Scots(for sure)?
Is he viewed as a hero of Britain? At least an important figure in British history?
Is he still regarded as a villain by some of the English folk ?

 

[Plotinus]

Remember that Scottish is British (at least for now).

At the popular level, no-one had heard of Wallace until Mel Gibson - at least in England.

 

[MilesGregarius]

Was the battle of Grunwald in 1410 AD between the Teutonic Knights and their allies (including English archers-I think) and the Kingdom of Poland, their allies, the Great Duchy-? of Lithuania, (and their allies, including the Rus and Tatars) the single biggest(regarding the total number of warriors involved) European battle of the Medieval Era? What about on a world scale of the era, where does it rank?
I guess Domen might be able to answer this in a blink of an eye.

Getting hard numbers for medieval battles is mighty tricky.

That said, the Battle of Mohi often gets huge estimates - 25-70K per side.

 

[cybrxkhan]

So we all know the stereotypes of Romans being sex-crazed orgy-loving perverts, but I've heard that much of this is untrue and that the Romans could in fact be rather prudish, at least when it came to their ideals and so on. How true is this?

 

[Maniac]

The Roman era covers a couple centuries. Sometimes morals were liberal. Other times there was a conservative backlash against those 'decadent' morals and an idealization of traditional Roman values like family, the hard-working farmer life etc. IIRC during emperor Augustus there was such a backlash against the decadency of the previous period.