Chapter 7 reconstructs when post-Roman kings and their officials went to church and considers the significance of church membership in shaping their positions in post-imperial palaces. This is (unsurprisingly) much easier to do for Nicene as opposed to Homoian rulers. Prominent officials accompanied Nicene Burgundian and Merovingian kings to church. Brief glimpses of life in Homoian royal palaces imply the potential participation of Nicene courtiers at regular religious observances. It may be that officials were not expected to go to church with the king; concerns for religious accommodation may have shaped the character of these events and allowed Nicene officials to justify attendance. Those who served the king could also be subject to the local bishop. Yet two episodes of excommunication make clear that the ultimate judgement over the continued standing of royal officials—both in palace and church—remained with the king himself. Post-Roman bishops may have been keen to claim the presence of ‘our people’ in the palace (as Victor of Vita put it). Dependence on the king, commitment to legal procedure, and membership of this separate Christian community seems normally to have trumped the claims of church affiliations even when courtiers and bureaucrats interacted with clerics.

Chapter 2 considers how requirements for Christian officials intersected with ongoing debates and disputes over the definition of orthodoxy in East and West. Eastern emperors and post-imperial kings felt the need to establish forms of consensus which might unite potentially opposing churches and church factions amidst new Christological disputes (in the East) and renewed Trinitarian controversies (in the West). This chapter considers how that pursuit of accommodation affected the practical implementation of ideals of a religiously uniform state. What Eastern emperors seem to have sought (and officials provided) was not personal commitment to a particular Christological orthodoxy, but rather, public support of and administrative co-operation with the current imperial line on its definition. Post-imperial kings adopted similar strategies. While the Hasding dynasty eagerly (and self-consciously) deployed the precedents of Theodosian legislation on religious uniformity within the state, these provisions were quietly shelved elsewhere in the West. This tacit acceptance of Christian diversity within the state maps onto the wider attempts of Burgundian and Ostrogothic regimes and their elite subjects to skirt the implications of doctrinal difference as part of wider strategies of accommodation.