The Restoration of Rome – Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders

 

New book by Peter Heather on the restoration of Rome picks up the story of Empire where the Fall of Rome left off in 2006

The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders
By Peter Heather
524 pages

Publisher: Macmillan; 1 edition (4 July 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0230700152
ISBN-13: 978-0230700154

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

In 476 AD the last of Rome’s emperors was deposed by a barbarian general, the son of one of Attila the Hun’s henchmen, and the imperial vestments were despatched to Constantinople. The curtain fell on the Roman Empire in Western Europe, its territories divided between successor kingdoms constructed around barbarian military manpower. But if the Roman Empire was dead, the dream of restoring it refused to die. In many parts of the old Empire, real Romans still lived, holding on to their lands, the values of their civilisation, their institutions; the barbarians were ready to reignite the imperial flame and to enjoy the benefits of Roman civilization, the three greatest contenders being Theoderic, Justinian and Charlemagne.U

Ultimately, they would fail nevertheless fail. It was not until the reinvention of the papacy in the eleventh century that Europe’s barbarians found the means to generate a new Roman Empire, an empire, which has lasted a thousand years.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Peter Heather is currently Professor of Medieval History at King’s College London. He is the author of the acclaimed and bestselling Fall of the Roman Empire also published by Pan Macmillan.