Roman Empire Vs Byzantine Empire

All Roads lead to Rome

The coronation of Charlemagne as emperor of the Holy Roman empire by the catholic church must have been one of the most insulting actions ever committed against a nation and religion. In this time and period there already existed a Holy Roman Empire, and it was in the east as the Byzantine empire. While the Byzantines might have been somewhat culturally different from the Italian, Latin roots of the original Romans, they nonetheless identified themselves as the official successor state of the Roman empire. The western catholic church knew of Byzantine and their history, yet they still held their support to Charlemagne as the protectorate of Christendom in his new Holy Roman empire. This insult was not an unprovoked act, this was years of conflict through dogmatic scuffles, and cultural quarrels all hitting the fan in this symbolic middle finger from the catholic church to the Byzantines. Since before the breakdown of the Roman empire, both western Roman Catholic Christianity and eastern Byzantine Orthodox had their quarrels, but held together in the name of the larger Roman identity. Once the western half of the empire split, after being overrun by Germanic tribes, there became tension of who was the dominant church. The tension was mainly over dogmatic issues in the scripture, but there were also

The fall of western Roman empire occurred steadily, with the signs of Germanic and other western European tribes slowly chipping at the empire one territory at a time. Once all hell broke loose, and the Germanic tribes completely dominated the western Roman empire, the Roman citizen’s reaction was amazement to say the least. As stated in R. P. C. Hanson’s,”The Reaction of the Church to the Collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the Fifth Century”, he