Late antiquity is a time period between classical antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. The exact start and end dates are debatable. Late antiquity represents a cultural sphere covering much of the Mediterranean world, including parts of Europe and the Near East.Brown, Peter (1971), The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150–750, Introduction. As an approximate guide, the period can be thought of as spanning "c. 250–750".
Late antiquity was an era of massive political and religious transformation. As a time of significant cultural innovation and transformation, it produced a large body of late antique literature, art, and public architecture like the Hagia Sophia. Religiously, it marked the origins or ascendance of the three major monotheistic religions: Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism, and Islam, as well as the period when both the Bible and the Quran were canonised. Politically, it marked the end of the Western Roman Empire and the Sasanian Empire (the last Persian empire of antiquity), as well as the beginning of the Arab conquests and the formation of the Rashidun Caliphate. Meanwhile, the Byzantine Empire became a militarized and Christianized society.
Terminology
The term , literally "late antiquity", has been used by German-speaking historians since its popularisation by Alois Riegl in the early 20th century.A. Giardina, "Esplosione di tardoantico", Studi storici 40 (1999). It was given currency in English partly by the writings of Peter Brown, whose book The World of Late Antiquity (1971) revised the Gibbon view of a stale and ossified Classical culture, in favour of a vibrant time of renewals and beginnings, and whose The Making of Late Antiquity offered a new paradigm of understanding the changes in Western culture of the time in order to confront Sir Richard Southern's The Making of the Middle Ages.Glen W. Bowersock, "The Vanishing Paradigm of the Fall of Rome", Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 49.8 (May 1996:29–43) p. 34.
The continuities between the later Roman Empire,The Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity dates this as follows: "The late Roman period (which we are defining as, roughly, CE 250–450)..." as it was reorganized by Diocletian (r. 284–305), and the Early Middle Ages are stressed by writers who wish to emphasize that the seeds of medieval culture were already developing in the Christianised empire, and that they continued to do so in the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire at least until the coming of Islam. Concurrently, some migrating Germanic tribes such as the Ostrogoths and Visigoths saw themselves as perpetuating the "Roman" tradition. While the usage "Late Antiquity" suggests that the social and cultural priorities of classical antiquity endured throughout Europe into the Middle Ages, the usage of "Early Middle Ages" or "Early Byzantine" emphasises a break with the classical past, and the term "Migration Period" tends to de-emphasize the disruptions in the former Western Roman Empire caused by the creation of Germanic kingdoms within its borders beginning with the foedus with the Goths in Aquitania in 418.For the invasion of the Goths, the Huns, and the Rhine invaders of 406 (Alans, Suevi, Vandals) as direct causes of the crippling of the Western Roman Empire, see Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: a New History of Rome and the Barbarians (Oxford University Press, 2005).
The general decline of population, technological knowledge and standards of living in Europe during this period became the archetypal example of societal collapse for writers from the Renaissance. As a result of this decline, and the relative scarcity of historical records from Europe in particular, the period from roughly the early fifth century until the Carolingian Renaissance (or later still) was referred to as the "Dark Ages". This term has mostly been abandoned as a name for a historiographical epoch, being replaced by "Late Antiquity" in the periodization of the late Western Roman Empire, the early Byzantine Empire and the Early Middle Ages.Gilian Clark, Late Antiquity: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford 2011), pp. 1–2. The term is seldom applied to Britain; the collapse of Roman rule in the island in the early fifth century is seen as a unique aspect of European history in the period.
Main events During the reign of Diocletian, who began the practice of four simultaneous emperors (the Tetrarchy), the empire began to experience considerable change. On the Eastern border, the replacement of the Parthian rulers of Persia with the Sasanians resulted in the series of Roman–Sasanian Wars. Christianity, persecuted by Diocletian, was made legal by Constantine the Great with the Edict of Milan. This enabled the Christianization of the Roman Empire over the remainder of the fourth century. Theodosius I (d. 395) made Nicene Christianity the state church with the Edict of Thessalonica. Meanwhile, in the 5th century, Constantinople, became the new capital and superseded Rome as the largest city of the empire, as it also grew to become one of the largest in the world. By the 6th century, its population was ten times larger than that of Rome.
Beginning in the late fourth century, the Migration Period, which saw the movement and invasion of many large nomadic tribes (including the Germanic, Hunnic, and Slavic) into the Roman Empire, caused severe disruptions and led to the Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 and subsequent Sack of Rome by the Vandals in 455. By 476, Western Roman Empire fell and was replaced by the so-called barbarian kingdoms. Rome itself was ruled by the Arian Ostrogothic Kingdom from Ravenna. The resultant cultural fusion of Greco-Roman, Germanic, and Christian traditions formed the foundations of the subsequent culture of Europe.
In the 6th century, Roman imperial rule continued in the East, and the Byzantine–Sasanian wars continued. The campaigns of Justinian the Great led to the fall of the Ostrogothic and Vandal Kingdoms and their reincorporation into the Empire, bringing the city of Rome and much of Italy and North Africa back under imperial control. Though most of Italy was soon lost to the Kingdom of the Lombards, the Roman Exarchate of Ravenna endured, ensuring the so-called Byzantine Papacy. Justinian constructed the Hagia Sophia, a great example of Byzantine architecture, as well as the Basilica Cistern, a massive underground cistern capable of holding up to 80,000 cubic metres of water, in addition to many other buildings constructed during his reign. Justinian also codified Roman law and brought silk production to Europe. At the same time, the first outbreak of the centuries-long first plague pandemic took place. At Ctesiphon, the Sasanians completed the Taq Kasra, the colossal iwan of which is the largest single-span vault of unreinforced brickwork in the world and the triumph of Sasanian architecture.
The middle of the 6th century was characterised by extreme climate events (the volcanic winter of 535–536 and the Late Antique Little Ice Age) and a disastrous pandemic (the Plague of Justinian in 541). The effects of these events in the social and political life are still under discussion. In the 7th century, the disastrous Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 and the campaigns of Khosrow II and Heraclius facilitated the emergence of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula during the lifetime of Muhammad. The subsequent Muslim conquest of the Levant and Persia overthrew the Sasanian Empire and permanently wrested two thirds of the Eastern Roman Empire's territory from Roman control, forming the Rashidun Caliphate. The Byzantine Empire under the Heraclian dynasty began the middle Byzantine period, and together with the establishment of the later 7th century Umayyad Caliphate, along with the fall of the Exarchate of Ravenna to the Lombards in 750, which was seen as the last continuation of the West under "Roman" rule generally marks the end of late antiquity.
Religion
One of the most important transformations in late antiquity was the formation and evolution of the Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism and, eventually, Islam.
A milestone in the spread of Christianity was the conversion of Emperor Constantine the Great (r. 306–337) in 312, as claimed by his Christian panegyrist Eusebius of Caesarea, although the sincerity of his conversion is debated.Noel Lenski (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine (Cambridge University Press, 2006), "Introduction" .A. H. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (University of Toronto Press, 2003), p. 73 . Constantine confirmed the legalisation of the religion with the Edict of Milan in 313, which he jointly issued with his rival in the East, Licinius (r. 308–324). By the late 4th century, Emperor Theodosius I had made Christianity the state religion, a development which transformed the classical Roman world, characterised by Peter Brown as "rustling with the presence of many divine spirits."Brown, Authority and the Sacred
Constantine was a key figure in many important events in Christian history, as he convened and attended the first ecumenical council of bishops at Nicaea in 325, subsidized the building of churches and sanctuaries such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and involved himself in questions such as the timing of Christ's resurrection and its relation to the Passover.Eusebius of Caesarea, Vita Constantini 3.5–6, 4.47
The birth of Christian monasticism in the 3rd century was a major step in the development of Christian spirituality. While it initially operated outside the episcopal authority of the Church, it would become hugely successful and by the 8th century it became one of the key Christian practices. Monasticism was not the only new Christian movement to appear in late antiquity, although it had perhaps the greatest influence and it achieved unprecedented geographical spread. It influenced many aspects of Christian religious life and led to a proliferation of various ascetic or semi-ascetic practices. Holy Fools and Stylites counted among the more extreme forms but through personalities like John Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine or Gregory the Great monastic attitudes penetrated other areas of Christian life.
Late antiquity marks the decline of Roman state religion, circumscribed in degrees by edicts likely inspired by Christian advisors such as Eusebius to 4th century emperors, and a period of dynamic religious experimentation and spirituality with many syncretic sects, some formed centuries earlier, such as Gnosticism or Neoplatonism and the Chaldaean oracles, some novel, such as Hermeticism. Culminating in the reforms advocated by Apollonius of Tyana being adopted by Aurelian and formulated by Flavius Claudius Julianus to create an organised but short-lived pagan state religion that ensured its underground survival into the Byzantine age and beyond.Smith, Rowland B.E. Julian's Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian
Mahāyāna Buddhism developed in India and along the Silk Road in Central Asia, while Manichaeism, a Dualist faith, arose in Mesopotamia and spread both East and West, for a time contending with Christianity in the Roman Empire.
Many of the new religions relied on the emergence of the parchment codex (bound book) over the papyrus volumen (scroll), the former allowing for quicker access to key materials and easier portability than the fragile scroll, thus fueling the rise of synoptic exegesis, papyrology. Notable in this regard is the topic of the Fifty Bibles of Constantine.
Laity vs. clergy