Simply put, sex—reproduction maybe, but not sex!—had little or nothing to do with the troubles that brought the Romans to their collective knees in later antiquity. Likewise, the climate and ecology of the time cannot be adduced as the reason for something so earth-shattering as the "Fall of Rome." Nor do any of the other two hundred or so entries cited make the cut in history's time trials, meaning that no one answer has as yet won the day for why the Romans lost. All may have appealed to some but none to all or, more to the point, a majority of scholars.
But once he'd had a good look at the West, especially the desperate condition of things, the Ostrogothic general refused to hand Italy over to some far-off "Roman Emperor" who had no intention of actually ruling it but only milking it for taxes. Now the lord of the land, Theodoric (r. 493-527 CE) set about restoring what more than a century of neglect, civil war, invasion and "vandalism" had wrought. Roman Italy needed a caring hand like his, and this barbarian proved the last ruler in antiquity to lend it such.
Now unprotected, the eternal city, the heart of the Roman Empire, took the full brunt of the Visigoths' rage. In this infamous Visigothic Sack of Rome (410 CE) Alaric and his comrades plundered the city for three days, a devastation which turned out to be actually less physical than psychological but, even so, a wound which went deep into the heart of an already ailing state. When Saint Jerome, the great Latin translator of the Bible, heard the news of the Visigoths' capture of Rome, he wrote "My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth." The shock was indeed registered in deafening silence empire-wide.
At the same time, however, not everything went wrong for the Romans. For one thing, Alaric died only a few months after leading his forces on Rome. This left the Visigoths without competent leadership and, more important, still in search of a land they could settle and call home. After some negotiations, the remnants of their army and people moved out of Italy to southwestern Gaul, and later Spain where with the help of the Roman army they displaced the Vandals and established a kingdom that would endure for nearly two centuries. While barbarian in origin, the Visigoths of Spain quickly adopted Roman customs, the Latin language, and even the Christian religion, though in a heretical variation called Arian Christianity (or Arianism; see ). Although that later caused trouble between the Visigoths and the orthodox Church in Rome, this late-ancient civilization laid the groundwork for much of Medieval Spanish culture to follow, forging a unique synthesis of barbarian, Roman, Christian and—after 711 CE when Islamic forces invaded Spain—Moslem traditions.
His mind poisoned by court intrigue and the jealousy of rivals, Honorius struck a serious blow to his own cause by allowing the assassination of his best general, a man named Stilicho, in 408. So, with the Roman Emperor having done him the favor of eliminating his best defense against them, Alaric and his Visigothic forces invaded Italy with brutal barbarian dispatch and headed for the city of Rome itself. Panicking again, Honorius abandoned the capital, evading the Visigoths by fleeing to another Roman city in Italy, Ravenna, where he watched and waited out their wrath from a safe distance.
Now then, that Roman Empire is to be revived and is coming out of what is called the bottomless pit. It is going to be resurrected and it is going to last just a short time, and it'll be with ten dictators and in the territory of the ancient Roman Empire, Europe and around the Mediterranean. There isn't any definite territory because the Roman Empire continued for many centuries, and at one stage, it occupied one geographical location and at another stage, another geographical location. There isn't any definite geographical outline that it must occupy but it will be the old Roman Empire. Essentially, it will be fascist; you can be sure of that. And, it is now rising and it's going on underground and we seem too stupid somehow to see it. We don't realize what's going on in the world. God says that it's going to come up. But this, my friends, is the final resurrection of this whole system of Gentile empires and Gentile governments. ...
We expect empires to have a clear and stable core inhabited by an imperial people that imposes its will on peripheral regions. But the Holy Roman Empire had no core, because it never possessed a clear centre of government or even an official capital. Instead, power was always multiple and plural. The management of daily life was devolved to more local powers.
Like the Holy Roman Empire which lasted for 1,000 years before Napoleon put it out of its misery in 1806, the EU may not disintegrate but slip into a glacial decline, its political and bureaucratic elites continuing faithfully to observe the rites of a confederacy bereft of power and relevance.
Germany’s past casts a long shadow. … with the questions of how Germany will use its current economic and political influence, and how far the EU can or should contain that power. For answers we should look back in time to when Germany was part of the Holy Roman Empire. …
The Vatican provided a tanigible demonstration of its support of unification by establishing diplomatic relations in 1970 with the European Common Market Commission in Brussels and naming a papal nuncio (ambassador) to the EEC. Speaking personally with the president of the European Parliament in November 1973, the pontiff said the search for European unity must combine both "boldness and realism." He reminded the Common Market official of the "profound interest which the Holy See has long felt for the progress of European unity." The pope at that time also indicated two reasons why he believed Europe should unite on a supranational level. First, the people of Europe needed to collaborate to find solutions to the social, economic, and human problems facing them. Secondly, a united Europe , he suggested, could be desirable in relation to other countries of the world which look to Europe as a guide to the values of civilization. In view of the Vatican's continual support of the United Europe idea - restated again only last month - Roman Catholicism may once again provide the unifying theme to override the long-standing differences obstructing the road to European unity. A modern-day "Holy Roman Empire" may be just over the horizon. (VATICAN ISSUES NEW CALL FOR EUROPEAN UNITY ' ''Reawaken Europe's Christian Soul," Paul VI Tells Bishops in Rome Conference. Plain Truth, November 22, 1975, pp. 3,5)
The Holy Roman Empire spanned the millennium from the coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman emperor by Pope Leo III in A.D. 800 to the . empire's abolition by Napoleon in 1806. It saw a close association between the ruling dynasties of Frankish and German kings and the papacy in Rome, although there were frequent church-state quarrels. Until the 16th century, the Holy Roman emperor was personally crowned by the Pope. The Holy Roman Empire held forth the pretension, at least , of political unity, but its primary unity was found in the religious sphere. The Roman church was the real rallying point, providing a unifying theme among the diverse national and political elements on the Continent. Personal loyalty to the church transcended, as a rule, lesser secular loyalties and divisions.
Notice also that Francis prophesied that there will be a new essentially "Catholic" crossbearing religious order that will do more for this revised "Catholic" Church than all other religious institutions. This is probably because the will work with the Pope to make the world nominally Catholic. Notice also that this is called the Roman Empire with a European to lead it.