[Billthedrill]

The accusation - that's what it was at the time - that Christianity had a deal to do with the downfall of the Roman Empire was first proposed by Edward Gibbon in his magnificent The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire. It was, to say the least, highly controversial in the more church-centric age in which he published but the claim seems to have stood the test of time. The real key to this one cause (of many) of the downfall of the western empire was not the diversion of wealth to the Church but the diversion of trained administrators from Roman government to Christian clergy that did the most to undermine the actual running of Rome (this is Gibbon's argument now, not my own).

There were other factors, of course. The establishment of Constantinople split the empire into administrable regions once it became obvious to Constantine and others that it was too large geographically to be administered from Rome. That in turn revivified the already strong Greek influence within the empire. It also split the revenue stream, a good deal of which was, actually, filling Church coffers but not (my contention now) enough to fully explain the atrophy of Roman government.

In the end it was the influx of migratory peoples that changed the empire the most, a wild cascade of tribes that first surrounded, then invested, and then infiltrated the Roman body politic. The real damage was already done by the time the Vandals swept through Spain and into the breadbasket of Rome, which was northern Africa. Once the food supply was controlled by the barbarians it was all over, at least for a century or so until Justinian's great general Belisarius threw the Vandals out of possession. Procopius chronicles what happened next in the Gothic Wars, when the Greeks attempted to wrest Rome from the Goths. We are here into the hideously misnamed "Dark Ages." Gibbon takes us through this and the next nearly thousand years in the Decline and Fall. Some of the best stuff I've ever read, and highly, highly recommended.

[briarbey b]

We are here into the hideously misnamed “Dark Ages.”
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My understanding was this was when the RCC took over total religious control of the known world....at least until the protesting ones..aka Protestants stood up and wanted their freedom from religious oppression. The religious system of that time took the light of the world and translated it in to Latin, which your common uneducated pheasant (middle-class and poor) could not understand.

Don't tell me your statement of hideously misnamed Dark Ages will be twisted like the ...there was no Holocaust...just something made up by the Jews. Why do I feel I won't be surprised. :)