[Ilaubuas]

Originally posted by Colon™


There was actually, namely the Catholic Church*. Heads of state drew from Catholic scholars and their knowledge of canon law, which was based in Roman law. That was a major incentive to convert to Christianity in the first place, since it provided them with access to the legal expertise to administrate their lands.

Your dissertation is flawed because the Greco-Roman heritage did survive, as has been argued countless of times on this forum before. The fall of the Roman Empire would actually be comparable to the fall of a Chinese dynasty, expect that the new order didn't consist of a unified state.

*heck, Christianity itself was part of Roman culture. Could the priests and bishops sent out to tame the barbarians offer to make them gods? Did they offer them residence in palaces the size of cities with every imaginable luxury at their beck and call? The bureaucrats of China assimilated their conquerors by declaring them gods and treating them as such. Obviously the Roman Catholic Church could not do that. The Roman Catholic Church might have been part of roman culture, but it wasn't really Roman Imperial culture. Archeological studies show that in most areas of the empire surrendered to the german tribes Roman commerce and luxury rapidly deteriorated. The baths, arenas and sophisticated towns crumbled away. These were the sorts of goodies which should have been used to lure the barbarians into preserving the imperial state, yet there doesn't appear to have been any real attempt to do so.

So my thesis stands.