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.

This conclusion brings together the main arguments of the book regarding Christian expectations of officials in the fifth and sixth centuries. It draws these together to suggest a holistic picture of late and post-Roman service aristocracies whose practices and self-representation were shaped, in part, by the demands of Christian commitment. It recapitulates the two central strands of argument in the book. Some officials sought to present—and likely understood—their role in governance as linked to their exceptional fulfilment of such requirements on members of the church: church attendance and patronage, adherence to orthodoxy, morality, and even asceticism. At the same time, the changing culture of late ancient political institutions meant that (almost) all those who served imperial and post-imperial regimes were subject to distinctly Christian expectations: from rulers, superiors, colleagues, churchmen, holy people, and—last but not least—their subjects. It concludes by suggesting that the survey conducted here should not be the end of this line of inquiry. The implication of this book is that the peculiar character of the Christianity envisaged and practiced within late ancient states should be the subject of further study.