Chapter 8 Notes

Here are the notes I took today in class. Most of them are right from the book but sometimes it's easier to understand it that way.

• The greatest single change that began among the peoples of the empire during the era of the Roman Peace was spread of a new form of monotheistic religion, Christianity
• The new religion began as a group within Judaism
• In 2 centuries, Christianity developed away from Judaism to establish its own scattered, empire-wide community, the Catholic Church
• The Germanic barbarians of northern Europe became wealthier, more highly organized, and militarily stronger as a result of living as Rome's neighbor in the era of Roman Peace
• The only way Rome could hold them off was by building up the army, replacing self-rule by centralized government, and openly ruling as absolute monarchs
• These changes failed to hold up the empire
• As things were going well the romans didn’t take note on the Christians, but in times of trouble the romans blamed their problems on Christians and persecuted them for being different
• They took Christianity into partnership as the official and majority religion
• It became too heavy to bear and the barbarians attacks grew to fierce to be resisted, and the empire collapsed