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One cannot even attempt to begin to understand the medieval lawyer Popes and their normativeachievements without an understanding from whence they came, that is how the Papacy, theecclesiastical leadership of the church of Rome came to be synonomous with the ultimate fount of theauthority of God on earth (continuing the fallacy of the church of the time that the Roman Empire wasmore or less euivalent to the !orld anything outside of which consisted of wilderness populated by

Pagans or heretics"# $o understand the progeniture of the Papacy we must loo% to the division of theEmpire into East and !est, the establishment of the christian religion within the Empire, the collapse ofthe !estern part of the Roman Empire, the establishment of the Papacy therewithin, the continuedfriction between the vestiges of imperial authority in the !est and the increasingly dominant papacyand finally the entrance of the &ran%s into the field and the beginning of the 'oly Roman Empire#

1. Rome vs Byzantium: Cradle or Forge?

A. The fall of Rome and the Dark Ages

t was the emperor )iocletian who first conceived the notion of dividing the Roman empire in

two, between East and !est and allocating an Emperor and subemperor to each whilst retainingultimate control in himself, that is his own auctoritas undivided# $his was by way of achieving ameasure of control over an increasingly disassembling Empire whose legendary discipline andadministration was disintegrating under a decadent and decaying society# )iocletian was unsuccessfullalthough his reform was ta%en up by his successor, *onstantine who went as far as building a new seatof the Eastern part of the Empire at the mouth of the Euphrates which he called *onstantinople# +uchmeasures had little curative effect however but rather had the opposite effect of deflecting resources andenergy from the reform of structures and institutions in taly and the ancient seat of the Empire in Romeand its defence against predatory Goths hence hastening, if anything its fall to Odaecer in -.ad# ndeedeven at the very moment of its fall the gap between East and !est, Rome and *onstantinople was wideindeed# *onstantinople in its continuous adoption of the more ancient /y0antine culture and by*onstantine1s shift of the whole administrative seat to his new capital led the Eastern Empire to develop

in a way alien to the 2atins who, meanwhile due to the wea%ness of the central government to theincreasing power of local administrations and also the crucifying financial and military burden ofrepelling the Goths found themselves more and more distant from the dictate of an emperor whoresembled more an 3le4ander than an 3ugustus#

'ence the ravages of 3ttilla the 'un became the deposition of the last !estern Roman emperor,5arcus 3ugustus in -.# $he conuest of taly was completed by the Ostrogoths who held taly untilthe attempt of 6ustinien to re7unite the East and !est with invasions in 8orthern taly and in 8orth3frica# ts success, however was shortlived as the ne4t wave of barbarians, this one even morefren0ied than before swept down from the 8orth thus driving the empire1s army bac% into the East andestablishing the %ingdom of 2ombardy in 8orthern taly# 5eanwhile ancient Gaul had long since fallento another tribe of german provenance, the !estern &ran%s who occupied a swathe of territorycontiguous to the Rhine e4tending right into northern and !estern &rance# $he /urgundians in their

turn occupied the +outh eastern corner of what we now %now as modern &rance while the 9isigothsheld the territory ad:acent to the pyrenees and most of +pain until their repulsion by the 5oors#3lthough there was little if anything left of the central imperial Roman administration after the

barbarian onslaught some vestiges of the more ancient Roman civili0ation remained and were adoptedby the Gothic and &ran%ish leaderships who gradually adapted their notions of tribal (ascending"government by customary law to the descending absolutist principles of the Romans so eagerly adopted

by *harlemagne and his inheritors# 5ore obviously the invaders also adopted the locally spo%en dialectof 2atin thus giving us our 5odern Romance languages and at the same time and in an unconsciousway adopting many unspo%en facets of the Roman culture# *ontemperaneously to this and in manyways than%s to it the *hristian church was ever growing, e4panding its missionary activities,establishing monasteries and it was particularly active in the conversion of the German conuerors towhom the ecclesiastics with their literacy, education and respected status were invaluable# $his ne4us

between the *hristian (or rather most importantly the Roman *hurch" and the german tribes is to bevital the understanding of the achievement of the 2awyer popes to the e4tent to which the Emperor ofthe Romans or the later 'oly Roman Empire was the creation of the nineth century papacy as a

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means of emancipating itself from the interference of the /y0antine Emperor and to the subseuentpower struggles between the primatial authority of the pope on earth and the mperial power of theGerman Emperors to which we owe the large part of modern political thought giving us 3bsolute5onarchy, 5odern )emocracy and the 8ation +tate#

B. Rome hanges masters! Christ takes the em"ty seat?

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