the empire in the fourth and fifth centuries was a gradual and complex process. Polytheism did not disappear overnight, especially in the western provinces, where the Christian bishops waged a running battle against beliefs and practices they condemned more than the Christian laity*** did. The boundaries between religious communities were much more fluid in the fourth century than they would become thanks to the repeated efforts of religious leaders, the powerful bishops who now led the Church, to rein in their followers and enforce a more rigid set of beliefs and practices. The general prosperity was especially marked in the East where population was still expanding till the sixth century, despite the impact of the plague which affected the Mediterranean in the 540s.
In the West, by contrast, the empire fragmented politically as Germanic groups from the North (Goths, Vandals, Lombards, etc.) took over all the major provinces and established kingdoms that are best described as ‘post-Roman’. The most important of these were that of the Visigoths in Spain, destroyed by the Arabs between and , that of the Franks in Gaul (c. - ) and that of the Lombards in Italy ( - ). These kingdoms foreshadowed the beginnings of a different kind of world that is usually called ‘medieval’.
In the East, where the empire remained united, the reign of Justinian is the highwater mark of prosperity and imperial ambition. Justinian *monolith – literally a large block of stone, but the expression is used to refer to anything (for example a society or culture) that lacks variety and is all of the same type. **Christianisation – the process by which Christianity spread among different groups of the population and became the dominant religion. The Colosseum, built in CE , where gladiators fought wild beasts.
It could accommodate , people. A N E MPIRE A CROSS T HREE C ONTINENTS ***laity – the ordinary members of a religious community as opposed to the priests or clergy who have official positions within the community. T HEMES IN W ORLD H ISTORY recaptured Africa from the Vandals (in ) but his recovery