Was the fall of the Roman Empire caused by Christianity?

No

Rome was already fucked because of the Third Century Crisis. The empire just couldn't deal with its massive borders, lack of a clear heredity and inability to control its currency. Christianity was just one of a host of monotheistic cults like the Cult of Mithras, Isis and Sol Invictus. Christianity just happened to be much better at spreading because it appealed to slaves and women, not just free men. I couldn't say for certain that the fact that Rome adopted Christianity as it was crumbling was a complete coincidence, but the causation is more likely that it adopted Christianity because it was collapsing, not the other way around

this area I am a little fuzzy on, ask me anything post Charlemange i got you. ask me anything before... eh.

anyways ill take a crack at it. so very rarely do we see Churches, cathedrals, monuments or devotion to Christianity in roman empire times. We see all that post Charlemagne and then an increase of the churches power post 1000's.

what we do see in Roman times for Christianity is a concept of a bunch of unclear beliefs, i mean at the time Christianty was so up in the air it was nuts, you could probably claim that it is gods will to kill all your slaves because they need to be damned to hell, but you still go to heaven because you didnt eat pork on sunday. or something stupid like that. WE really dont see any specific doctrines of Christianity until Augustine which arguably starts the increase in the church's power.

anyways... No Rome feel from previous stated reasons, and much much much more other reasons. think of Rome as a bag of popcorn in the microwave, each of those kernels popping is a reason Rome fell. way to many reasons to point out to make an argument for one. trust me... scholars have been trying for years to pinpoint exact reasons. There are tons!

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Rome was pretty much fucked after the good Emperors.

It was kept alive for a while due to okay Emperors, like Diocletian, Constantine and Theodosius, but the Writing was on the wall.

Theodosius single handedly saved Byzantium with his Walls, though.

The reason Rome died is because the Army grew more concerned with being rewarded donatives than it did actually maintaining a country by letting the Emperor actually worry about more than pleasing them.

tl;dr: Christ didn't kill the Empire, the Army did

>>2107184

Really? haven't read much into this concept. I understood that the Armies really just fell apart as the economy, lack of pay, Officers losing self worth, poor leadership. do you mind going into detail a bit, maybe some dates, time frames? just so i can look into it myself maybe learn from you while im at it

>>2107238

The Legions killed the empire as that other Anon said.

>Protect the borders? Fuck you, pay me.
>Don't mutiny? Fuck you, pay me.
>Support any dickhead Praetor? Fuck you, pay me.
>Don't support said dickhead Praetor? Fuck you, pay me.
>I'm already being bribed out the ass? Fuck you, pay me.

This in conjunction with Emperors fearing their own men caused them to break the Pronvinces up and by extension cut down the number of legionaries protecting them. One example I know of, is of a province being broken down into fiver smaller provinces and the legionaries being split up into cohorts all around the entire greater provincial area. This allowed for raids on an unprecedented scale into Roman territory, and no way to mobilize a proper fighting force.

Could the opposite be argued, that Christianity held the two halves of the empire together (both internally and to each other) than they would have lasted otherwise?

The premise makes no sense. If Christianity caused the fall of the empire, why did the eastern, more intensely Christian half of the Empire survive for 1000 years longer?

>>2107404

are you talking about the Byzantines?

It began to decline after the crisis of the 3rd century, Constantine temporarily stopped the decline and making Christianity the state religion was part of his game plan.

>>2107420
He is, and he is perfectly right since the staunch Christian Eastern part of the Empire survived for 1000 year more. No idea why OP clings to a 200 year old hypothesis.

>>2107422
>Constantine making Christianity the state religion
History Channel please go.

>>2106758
>My idea is that this is because the government was putting more economic focus on churches rather than infrastructure/armies, and the people were putting more focus on spiritual goals rather than making money or other tangible personal goals.
Yeah, no. This is wrong on many levels bro. You should more book on the period before having "ideas".

>>2107454
>staunch Christian
>>2107404

Just curious, what's your argument that they were more Christian than the crumbling west?

In my mind, I see the succession of the Byzantines in the 6th century by which time the west had fallen and in this case the Byzantines weren't "Christians" just because the church fled to the Byzantines, I mean where else were they going to go? Rome fell so where else was the Church to go?

I guess what I'm trying to say is: The east was Christian because they were the only Romans left. of course because Rome had been deemed Christian the now Byzantines were Christian too.

I personally believe they survived due to prime real estate. We don't see any real Muslim extent until some 200 + years after Constantinople is established. The West was gone, the East, near nothing, the only place they had to go was up. They recaptured Rome and took back control of the Mediterranean.

once Rome was reestablished the church's power only increases from there.

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>>2107184
>okay Emperors
>like Diocletian
don't you dare fuck with my cabbage boy

>>2106758

Regardless of this all.

Rome fell to a lot of things. Christianity wasn't a huge factor.

>Rome went too far East
>Woke up the Sleeping Giant
>Mongols
>Huns
>Goths
>No Allies
>
>
>
>

Fill in the blanks

>>2107496
The fuck do you mean by "the church fled"? Where do you think the biggest Christian communities were? Pro tip: Greece and Palestine. Both in Byzantine territory. They also had more Patriarchs in their territory then the West.
All in all it sounds like you think very anachronistically of an established church organization (including papal primacy) that fled from the Western Empire. This never happened.
>I personally believe they survived due to prime real estate. We don't see any real Muslim extent until some 200 + years after Constantinople is established.
>what is the Danube border
>what is Persia, they biggest rival to Roman rules for centuries?
>Rome fell so where else was the Church to go?
They literally stayed in Rome and it's a big question what "Rome fell" actually meant at the time. It certainly wasn't perceived that way.

>>2107505
>Mongols
>Rome

>>2106758
Oh look, this thread again.
>My idea is that this is because the government was putting more economic focus on churches rather than infrastructure/armies
Finally, an argument. Still not really correct, but good on you for bringing something new to the table.
They weren't putting any more resources towards religion then than they were previously with the many pagan temples. If anything, it would be cheaper.
But they still didn't have as much income as they needed. Like, the place was huge, but corruption and waste was rife, so they just couldn't fund enough in the way of troops (of which they just had too few overall) to defend all the boarders. That's why they had to rip off the mercs they hired.

Basically, the downfall of the empire was caused by the Marian reforms allowing the army and boarders to swell unsustainably, and it removed the investment each soldier had in "Rome."

>>2106758
>more economic focus on churches

You do know that whenever a new emperor came to power, or visited cities officially, he would endow temples, right? The tradition continued on the same with Constantine. To say they spent more money on Christian stuff is baseless.

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Yeah.
Just look how "well" the Empire was doing before it's Christianisation.

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>>2107600
>Basically, the downfall of the empire was caused by the Marian reforms allowing the army and boarders to swell unsustainably, and it removed the investment each soldier had in "Rome."
But the Marian reforms were themselves a response to an unsustainable situation. Pic related, another anon describing the situation which necessitated the Marian reforms.

The entire Roman model was built around conquest and the constant absorbing of new peoples. From its earliest beginnings they were a martial society. Their system worked fine as long as they had somebody else to hate. In the absence of immediate enemies, they turned on each other.

>>2107184
>Diocletian, Constantine and Theodosius
Nice list of abysmal emperors fucktard

>>2107600
>Marian reforms happen in 107 BC, under the Republic, nearly a century before the Empire
>Roman Empire in the West collapses in 476 AD

If your proposed "cause of the downfall of the Roman Empire" originates before the Roman Empire even appeared, worked successfully for centuries, and Rome lasted nearly six centuries afterwards, it isn't a good qualifying factor for the collapse of Rome.

>>2107582
mongols twice? lol

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>>2107663
>abysmal
Nigger are you for real? Those were the three most important Emperors of late antiquity. Never in Rome's history was its currency as stable as it was after Constantine's reforms. Diocletian put an end to the crisis of the third century and Theodosius was essentially the WRE's last powerful Emperor.

>>2107673
he makes a good point in that he traces the origins of the cascading system failures of the Roman model all the way back to the small hypocrisies of the Marian reforms. Edward Gibbon himself remarked that starting Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire at the reign of the good emperors was too late in its history, believing that he should have started it with the reign of Augustus, as he felt that the establishment of the Praetorian Guard was the catalyst for Rome's eventual destruction.

>>2107648
>But the Marian reforms were themselves a response to an unsustainable situation.
I totally get that. They were fantastic at the time, but it ultimately let to problems, like you say.
If they hadn't happened, Rome wouldn't have grown as large, but consequently, wouldn't have fallen in the same way (if at all).

>>2107673
If the foundation is flawed, then the structure built later upon it can still fall.

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>>2107774
>I totally get that. They were fantastic at the time, but it ultimately let to problems, like you say.
I would say that they were more along the lines of a half-baked political compromise: it did enough to get the job done, but more should have been done to stabilize the system.

One can't help but wonder if it would have been cheaper for Romans to pay their legionaries a pension rather than having to deal with swarming masses of unemployed veterans totally dependent on their generals for their after-service livelihoods and had no qualms about taking up arms against their own countrymen.

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>>2107184
>Theodosius single handedly saved Byzantium with his Walls, though.

The Theodosian walls were built by Theodosius II twenty-thirty years after the death of Theodosius I. Theodosius I was a war mongering retard who put his two incompetent children on the thrones of the two parts of the empire, permanently splitting it and causing its eventual failure due to their stupidity.

>>2107790
>it did enough to get the job done, but more should have been done to stabilize the system.
Politics in a nutshell?
>One can't help but wonder if it would have been cheaper for Romans to pay their legionaries a pension rather than having to deal with swarming masses of unemployed veterans totally dependent on their generals for their after-service livelihoods and had no qualms about taking up arms against their own countrymen.
Questions like this are what make me want to put every penny i can towards the development of some kind of holodeck where we can play out such questions with every factor added in.

>>2107166
This is the kind of positive contribution I hope to find when I come to /his/.
Good post, friend.

>>2107774

Augustus's own reforms to the Legions were just as drastic as the Marian reforms. If you want to make a reformation argument, you need to point at the most contemporaneous ones. And not even Augustus made the most recent or drastic ones in the Western empire. That nigga didn't:

>Bust up provinces
>Bust up legions into cohorts

It was the 3rd century retards who did this shit.

>>2107701
>Those were the three most important Emperors of late antiquity.
sure
>Never in Rome's history was its currency as stable as it was after Constantine's reforms.
Thanks to the people before him
>Diocletian put an end to the crisis of the third century
That would be Aurelian, Diocletian put an end to the roman empire
>and Theodosius was essentially the WRE's last powerful Emperor.
Theodosius was a cuck to the bishop of Milan and the guy that lead the empire to its ultimate demise

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>Are our opponents going to reply that the Roman Empire could not have been increased so far and wide, and Roman glory could not have spread, except by continual wars, following one upon another? What a satisfying explanation! Why must an empire be deprived of peace, in order that it may be great? In regard to men’s bodies it is surely better to be of moderate size, and to be healthy, than to reach the immense stature of a giant at the cost of unending disorders - not to rest when that stature is reached, but to be troubled with greater disorders with the increasing size of the limbs.

>>2107874
Yes, but those happened further down the line. The Marian Reforms started it all by taking the army away from true sons of Rome.