The Excellent Empire: The Fall of Rome and the Triumph of the Church

by Jaroslav Pelikan

Examines the responses to the fall of Rome by the Church Fathers, who set the pattern for interpreting the momentus event for all succeeding centuries

Genres: History, Religion, Church History, Theology, Christian

133 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1987

About the author

Jaroslav Jan Pelikan was born in Akron, Ohio, to a Slovak father and mother, Jaroslav Jan Pelikan Sr. and Anna Buzekova Pelikan. His father was pastor of Trinity Slovak Lutheran Church in Chicago, Illinois, and his paternal grandfather a bishop of the Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches then known as the Slovak Lutheran Church in America.

According to family members, Pelikan's mother taught him how to use a typewriter when he was three years old, as he could not yet hold a pen properly but wanted to write. A polyglot, Pelikan's facility with languages may be traced to his multilingual childhood and early training. That linguistic facility was to serve him in the career he ultimately chose (after contemplating becoming a concert pianist)--as a historian of Christian doctrine. He did not confine his studies to Roman Catholic and Protestant theological history, but also embraced that of the Christian East.

In 1946 when he was 22, he earned both a seminary degree from Concordia Seminary in Saint Louis, Missouri and a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago.

Pelikan wrote more than 30 books, including the five-volume The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (1971–1989). Some of his later works attained crossover appeal, reaching beyond the scholarly sphere into the general reading public (notably, Mary Through the Centuries, Jesus Through the Centuries and Whose Bible Is It?).

His 1984 book The Vindication of Tradition gave rise to an often quoted one liner. In an interview in U.S. News & World Report (June 26, 1989), he said: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide.

"Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition."

Reviews

[Paul Dehlinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just to start off this book is very dependent on the reader having read The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. This book might be useful to some with relatively comprehensive understanding of post Roman Christianity. However, to someone just trying to learn more on the topic it might seem confusing and unorganized. You really have to infer what the thesis is. Personally I agree with the point Pelikan is making that Christianity was not the cause of the collapse of Rome but merely the benefactor of its fall. But regardless this book is better as supplemental material the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

[Jack Tracy]

Great summary of what Gibbon wrote and believed , his sources in the ancient world, and latter-day views of the great work. Packed with references on every page that make you do additional research; it’s worth it since it makes it all more understandable.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a well-received birthday gift from an old friend who'd checked out my book collection beforehand and, noting several volumes by Pelikan, selected this title intelligently.

Pelikan is a noted church historian, a worthy successor to A. Harnack. Previously I'd only read his scholarship. This book, an overview of Gibbon's theses as regards the fall of the western Roman Empire, was composed as a series of lectures for the educated, but not specialist, public. As such it reveals Pelikan as a contemporary thinker, his observations as regards Rome having subtle reference to the circumstances of the empire of the U.S.A. today.