Barbarians

Momigliano again, pointing out that the church had ways of dealing with the barbarian threat that were not available to pagans: “The educated pagan was by definition afraid of barbarians. There was no bridge between the aristocratic ideals of a pagan and the primitive violence of the German invader.” At best, a few barbarians might be educated and become Roman, but “the ordinary barbarian as such was nothing more than a nightmare to educated pagans.”

Christians, on the other hand, “could convert the barbarians and make them members of the Church. They had discovered a bridge between barbarism and civilization.” In the East, though, the church supported the Byzantine emperors in their persistent struggle against the barbarians, and there “the defence of the empire could be presented as the defence of the Church.”

Thus, “in the West the Church gradually replaced the dying State in dealing with the barbarians,” while in the East “the Church realized that the Roman state was much more vital and supported it in its fight against the barbarians.” On both sides of Europe, ordinary people needed leaders, and largely found them in their bishops.

More, Roman civilization had no way of accommodating barbarians. There was no basis for a common civilization. After converting to Christianity, though the “Germans were, at least to a certain extent, romanized and made capable of living together with the citizens of the Roman empire.”