The Fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity are the two dominant events in Western Civilisation. For they form the framework of our entire intellectual approach to belief, to art. to science and to politics and society. The doings of Gregory the Great, Charlemagne, St Francis Xavier, Napoleon, the Founding Fathers of the USA, and many others were all entirely conceived and framed in that meta-narrative, The Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Christianisation of vast areas were due to those who still avidly studied Greek and Latin, or spoke daughter languages such as French, Spanish and Portuguese. How did the Roman Empire transform so quickly? And then collapse?
Dr Jonathan Kennedy[1] thinks he has the answer. Following closely the work of Professor Kyle Harper, a scholar we have often cited in these pages (LSS 13 5 24,24 6 21 10 3 21) he sees the plague of Cyprian of the mid third century as the key tipping-point. There had been a terrible plague before: the Antonine one of the late second century, but somehow, like a groggy fighter getting up off the canvas, the Empire had recovered. This time was different. This was the time that the Old Gods failed. They lost the people’s hearts forever to a new God, who, until then had not been doing notably well. And anyone with even a casual acquaintance with Roman History will tell you, the whole feel of the Empire changed in those fifty crucial years. A citizen of Alexander Severus(d 235) inhabited a world of temples, philosophers, the agora and open towns in a vast trading network, which would have been recognisable to Cicero, or even Plato. A subject of Diocletian(reigned 284-305) saw a world of Churches, walled towns, command economies: the Middle Ages in the bud. The Plague of Cyprian sits right across these years, although Professor Harper also cites climate change, as old LSS buffs know well.[3]
So- most of what you need to know? Well, yes, today more than ever. Once again a society that imagined itself to be prosperous and enlightened sees its very foundations threatened, The old open trade routes are rapidly giving way to protectionism. Massive climate change hovers in the wings. We have already had one pandemic, and it almost wrecked our economies. Others threaten. As we write these words news comes that avian flu has once again jumped the species barrier, wiping out a valuable collection of rare cats in the State of Washington in the USA.[2] If not this influenza, there will be others. Is our world about to be transformed again, forever?
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/25/birth-jesus-plague-roman-empire-christianity
[2]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyvx4d1n4vo
[3] Kyle Harper The Fate of Rome Princeton University Press 2018
#plague of cyprian #christianity #roman empire #pandemic #economics #society
Learning, Science and Society 