Orbis Romanus

This book reassesses the role of the Franks in the early medieval world by studying their relationship to Byzantium and the significance attributed to the Roman heritage that they both shared. The book offers new insights into this key subject of the early Middle Ages, offering a broad overview on important questions related to Mediterranean travels and connectivity, notions of empire, the reception of Antiquity, the use of Greek and Latin, religious community and controversies, and Roman and Byzantine features in Frankish culture.

In this revisionist study of Roman imperialism in the Greek world, Gruen considers the Hellenistic context within which Roman expansion took place. The evidence discloses a preponderance of Greek rather than Roman ideas: a noteworthy readiness on the part of Roman policymakers to adjust to Hellenistic practices rather than to impose a system of their own.

The Roman empire remains unique. Although Rome claimed to rule the world, it did not. Rather, its uniqueness stems from the culture it created and the loyalty it inspired across an area that stretched from the Tyne to the Euphrates. Moreover, the empire created this culture with a bureaucracy smaller than that of a typical late-twentieth-century research university. In approaching this problem, Clifford Ando does not ask the ever-fashionable question, Why did the Roman empire fall? Rather, he asks, Why did the empire last so long? Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire argues that the longevity of the empire rested not on Roman military power but on a gradually realized consensus that Roman rule was justified. This consensus was itself the product of a complex conversation between the central government and its far-flung peripheries. Ando investigates the mechanisms that sustained this conversation, explores its contribution to the legitimation of Roman power, and reveals as its product the provincial absorption of the forms and content of Roman political and legal discourse. Throughout, his sophisticated and subtle reading is informed by current thinking on social formation by theorists such as Max Weber, Jürgen Habermas, and Pierre Bourdieu.

A monumental work in scope and content, Aloys Grillmeier's Chirst in the Christian Tradition offers students and scholars a comprehensive exposition of Western writing on the history of doctrine. Volume Two, Part One, covers the development of Christology from the Council of Chalcedon to the beginning of the rule of Emperor Justinian I.

Studies the effect of Rome's geographic worldview on its politics

How did the medieval Frankish world relate to the orbis Romanus? Although this term is only sporadically attested in the early medieval evidence, Laury Sarti makes use of it to designate the sum of what may have been understood, from a western medieval perspective, as characteristic of or belonging to the Roman world. She argues that, although the Roman empire mainly persisted in the east beyond the fifth century, the orbis Romanus was not limited to Byzantium. The medieval west had emerged from that same Roman imperial tradition, and it retained some notable Roman characteristics and features even after it ceased to belong to the empire. In this book, Sarti challenges the caesura between a Roman and a post-Roman west by arguing that the Carolingian world, ruled by the Franks, still belonged to the multi-ethnic orbis Romanus. Instead of relying upon intense connectivity, which had ceased by the sixth century, ongoing Frankish participation in Roman identity emanated from the significance attributed to the Roman heritage. The Frankish kingdoms had emerged from the Roman world with a large Roman population and continuity on virtually every level of society, including governance, law, the Church and Christian belief, language, and culture. Although the Franks never designated themselves as Romans, Sarti demonstrates how Frankish Romanness--defined by the imperial past, the Byzantine present, and markedly western Roman characteristics--remained a constitutive feature of Frankish identity. While the Frankish relation to the Byzantine empire is more difficult to grasp, western and eastern notions of Romanness had common origins, and both implied a genuinely Christian understanding of Roman identity. When the Franks revived western emperorship through Charlemagne, the Roman and Christian elements were implemented as essential features of its conception. The book touches on a wide range of topics, including notions of empire, the connectivity between the Frankish kingdoms and Byzantium, mutual perceptions of Roman identities, the role of the Church and religious controversies, the reception of Antiquity, the use of and significance attributed to Greek and Latin, and Roman culture in the west. Its conclusions--which challenge basic assumptions about the Carolingian period--and its up-to-date discussion of the evidence and research will be of interest to students and scholars alike.