10 Late Antiquity and the Post-Roman World

Rome’s gradual transformation

The end of Roman rule in western Europe was a gradual transformation, not the sudden disappearance of Roman society. In 476 CE, the Germanic commander Odoacer deposed the last western Roman emperor. This date is often used to mark the end of the Western Roman Empire, but Roman law, Latin, Christianity, and local administrative traditions continued.

Kingdoms of the West

From the fifth century onward, regional kingdoms took shape across former Roman territories. The Ostrogoths ruled Italy for a time, the Visigoths established a kingdom in Iberia, the Franks expanded through Gaul, and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms emerged in Britain. These kingdoms were not simply replacements for Rome: new rulers often relied on Roman officials, laws, landowners, and Christian institutions.

Political authority in the West became increasingly organized around kings and personal ties of loyalty, while much everyday life remained local and rural.

Frankish power and imperial renewal

The Frankish kingdom became especially influential. King Clovis’s conversion to Catholic Christianity around the end of the fifth century helped connect Frankish rulers with the Roman Church and Gaul’s largely Catholic population.

In the eighth century, the Carolingian dynasty expanded Frankish power. Charlemagne was crowned emperor in Rome in 800, presenting his rule as a renewal of Christian Roman authority. His court supported schools, manuscripts, and church building, although the empire was divided among his heirs after his death.

Byzantium and Roman continuity

The eastern empire centered on Constantinople, founded as a new imperial capital by Constantine in 330. Its strategic position linked Europe and Asia. The Byzantine Empire preserved Roman imperial government and law while developing a distinct Christian and increasingly Greek-speaking culture.

Emperor Justinian I, who ruled from 527 to 565, sought to reconquer former western territories and ordered Roman laws to be collected and organized. Major buildings from his reign included Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

Byzantine control in the West proved temporary. Lombards took much of Italy in the late sixth century, and Arab conquests in the seventh century removed large eastern and southern territories from Byzantine rule. Constantinople nevertheless remained a powerful political, religious, and commercial center. Byzantine art, learning, and Orthodox Christianity influenced neighboring peoples, including Slavic communities to the north.

Christianity and cultural change

Christianity had spread through the Roman Empire before western imperial rule ended. The agreement commonly called the Edict of Milan granted Christians legal toleration in 313. Later in the fourth century, imperial policy established Nicene Christianity as the empire’s official religion.

Conversion was uneven: cities often became Christian before the countryside, and older customs persisted for generations. After western Roman government fragmented, bishops and monasteries helped sustain religious life, education, and written culture. Missionaries, rulers, and church leaders encouraged conversion across Europe.

Royal conversion could strengthen political ties as well as religious communities. For example, the Visigothic king Reccared adopted Catholic Christianity in 589. Churches and monasteries became centers of worship, learning, and artistic production, blending Roman, Christian, and regional traditions.

A changed Mediterranean

The Mediterranean remained connected, but its political map changed. Byzantium, western kingdoms, and—after the seventh century—new Muslim states competed and traded across its shores.

Muslim rule began in Iberia in the early eighth century, while Christian kingdoms survived in the north. The period produced neither a uniform “European” society nor a clean break with antiquity. Instead, Roman institutions and Christian traditions were reshaped by regional kingdoms and new powers.