Tinkering with the Past: the Church and the Inheritance of Rome

This chapter will begin with an analogy. Imagine a village church, one of those quiet, old buildings hidden in the countrysides of so many countries. It slowly transforms, with subsequent generations of priests securing, with varying success, funds for architectural changes. As decades and then centuries pass the edifice starts to acquire additions and alterations in different styles. It is still the same church! It just looks very different. A trained eye will discern were the original features are still to be recognised under layers of plaster, where the new windows were cut and the old ones given a new form. But given enough time the original structure might be almost impossible to discern. The parish priest securing support from lay and ecclesiastical actors stands, as you might have already discerned, for the Church in post-Roman and Early Medieval Britain. Through cooperation with other actors it facilitated the process of adaptation and while being (both in the case of the British and the ‘Augustinian’ Church) most definitely an emodiement of Roman practice, it inadvertedly led to a progressive loss of distinction. By continuing its Roman and imperial role, the Church moved Britain further from the empire but closer to the post-Roman world.

A significant amount of literature about the connection between the Church and the Roman past is already available. John Blair has made a convincing case for the central role of minsters in the landscape post-650. His work on the role of Rome and Roman towns and forts for the development of Christianity in Early Medieval England remains one of the best surveys of the topic written to date. I would like to, when applicable, direct this chapter towards elements unexplored, or where room for other interpretations exists. I will focus on two phenomena as my case studies: The role of the Church in taking over Roman infrastructure and its re-use, and the role of the Church as a creator of governance on the basis of the Roman infrastructure, with a particular focus on the symbolic power that this infrastructure conferred. The Church had a profound role in economic processes of the Early Middle Ages – it is difficult to analyse them without taking this into account.