Late Antiquity Analysis

After Rome finally fell in 476 AD, people across Europe, Asia and Africa were shocked and extremely worried because they thought it would never fall. With Rome’s demise, so did the idea of civilization, and knowledge for around a thousand years, or did it? Historians have started to question whether the last few centuries of the Roman Empire were really a decline and instead the rise of new cultures, artworks, and religions that still have remnants to this day.
When the term “Late Antiquity” was first used in 1971 by Peter Brown in his book, he had no idea how much controversy there would be that resulted from it. Brown was different from prior scholars in the way he actually concentrated on the eastern portion of the Mediterranean and the Middle East instead of focusing on Western Europe and the Western Barbarian World (Concept of Late Antiquity, 5, James Edwards).
The Late Antiquity (L.A.) challenges the notion that the post-Roman Empire period was one of decline and stagnant as most historians believe, and instead was a period of innovation and a continuity of civilization. Up to this period, historians has believed what happened in the …show more content…
project are dramatic increase and change in spirituality, the insistence of continuity and rejection of the concept of decline (10, Edward James). The Concept of “decline” has been rejected so much by the L.A. that the very word “decline” is even banned from use. The scholars firmly believe that there is no decline of anything, but instead a continual rise. Some of the biggest advocates of the Late Antique time period is Henri-Irénée Marrou (French historian of antiquity), Peter Brown (Presiding Genius and Father of Late Antiquity), the Catholic Church and historians who have a personal connection to the period. These historians are mainly from regions that were part of the Roman Empire, especially French, German and British scholars who have written works that benefit their individual