UKH

You could argue that the Catholic church is the continuation of the Holy Roman Empire.

Just a random thought I had .

TWS

The Romans were a lot more liberal.

But what did they ever do for us?  (Terry Jones RIP)

Certainly seemed to be .

Lets call the Catholic church the ultra believers , inner core .

You could argue that the Spanish and Portuguese should get quite a lot of credit. 

They gave me a job, so I'm not complaining :-D

Not really. I am just reading a book on the transition from the proper Roman empire to the Early Middle Ages, and it is interesting which kinds of ideas were floating around before the papacy could establish some semblance of centralized dogma, which took quite some time even in areas that had been "christianized" hundreds of years before. As a typical example, I ws not aware that Boniface (the Irish guy sent on mission to central Germany) hardly encountered any pagans anymore.

As for the Holy Roman Empire and the full blown papal catholic church, they were separate entitities stabilizing each other, and went on their separate ways by the time of reformation and the Thirty Years' War, where catholic rulers were fighting on both sides.

Interesting topic, for sure, because the weird ideas from way back then still influence our politics and culture.

CB

I meant apart from that, obviously

I take my hat off to you sir, RIP indeed.

Absolutely. Drink drugs sex, they were on it. Rock'n'roll man!

They loved sailing around f*cking and robbing.

I want to know what they have down in the Vatican secret archives.

Probably lots of money and stories about sex abuse and robbing. There's nothing good to be found. Nothing mysterious, no revelations. 

Always dangerous!

best keep these things under wraps

Not at all. I believe the HRE has been referred to as a triple oxymoron as it wasn’t holy, roman or an empire. Essentially just the state of what is now Germany and Austria with bits of various countries from time to time.

Not sure what  ook you are reading but St Bonifatius ( Boniface) was English not Irish and he got killed by pagans in Dokum AD 754.

Sorry for being pedantic but that little snippet of history was drummed into me in school

English, of course. The book I am reading is called "The Inheritance of Rome" by Chris Wickham, part of a series called "Penguin Histor of Europe"

On page 176 he e.g. writes in the context of the Christian takeover of pagan holy sites, rituals, and festive dates like Easter in the 7th and 8th century, that in contrast to Willibrord, who worked amongst true pagans in Frisia,

"...Boniface worked mostly in central Germany, fully part of the Frankish world, ... , and the 'pagan' practises he describes there were more likely local Christian customs, like those at Noyon. .... simply preaching against such customs was unlikely to get rigorists very far, precisely because they were seen as Christian already."

CB

Voltaire is the most famous source "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire".

The state church of the late western Roman empire did outlive the empire itself and transition into the Roman Catholic church. So whilst I am not sure it would count as a continuation as such it certainly preserved some traditions.

When the Borgia's were running the church thats not a completely inaccurate description.

Actually, a more accurate argument might be the Western Roman Empire as opposed to the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire which could be regarded as the Greek, Serbian, Syrian and Coptic Churches.

A very interesting book about a fascinating bit of history, I thought.  I also enjoyed "The Rise of Western Christendom" by Peter Brown, about the same period.

Earlier this week I was having a cup of tea with a Conservative MP (as one does), and I asked him whether the idea of moving the House of Lords to York was for real.  Oh yes, he said, and the reason why it had to be York was that this was the site of one of the most significant events in the last two millennia of world history.  York was where Constantine was proclaimed Emperor in 306 AD by the Roman army he commanded.  Constantine then took the army into Gaul, from where he ultimately won the resulting civil war to take total power in Rome.  He converted to Christianity, invented Sundays, and started the process of Christianity becoming the state church of the Roman empire, thus founding the idea of Christendom, which long outlasted the (Western) Roman empire.  So without York things would have been very different...

Yes I like the book as well. It is the second of the series my daughters bought me for Christmas, the first one was "Christendom Destroyed" dealing with the time from the end of the middle ages to the thirty year's war. Mostly history of ideas and economics, and extremely fascinating.

CB

Nothing to do with the superb housing, beautiful surrounds and fast rail link to London, then?