Lecture 3
Rebuilding of the West

It is common to refer to the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries as marking the beginning of the Dark Ages in Europe, but this overlooks the fact that the ‘empire’ continued for another thousand years at the eastern end of the Mediterranean and in adjacent parts of Asia. We cannot understand ‘Catholic identity’ in its broadest meaning without recalling Eastern orthodoxy. In the Latin west, however, there was a significant cultural rupture and the healing of it, from which the ages of learning, arts and culture flowed, was due to the Catholic Church.