Why Rome Fell

11 The Pirenne Thesis

*Note: Except where otherwise indicated, all references in this chapter are to page numbers in: Henri Pirenne (1954) Mohammed and Charlemagne, tr. Bernard Miall, London: Allen & Unwin.

“When our first parents were driven out of Paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve: ‘My dear, we live in an age of transition’.”

—Dean William Inge (1929), Assessments and Anticipations, p. 261

A solitary streetcar wends its way slowly on its accustomed route through a devastated city. The place is Hiroshima, Japan, and the date August 6, 1945.

The atomic bomb has just been dropped. This image, from a contemporary film clip, is burned into my memory. What it symbolizes to me is that, even in the midst of cataclysmic change and destruction, there is still some continuity. Business as usual? Certainly not but continuity nevertheless. (periscopefilms.com documentary footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yTMkrMugH4.)

The applicability of this image to the Later Roman Empire and early Middle Ages is not far to seek. The period is replete with change, including violent, even cataclysmic change, coupled with long-term continuity. A prime task of the historian is to try to identify and distinguish the wellsprings of continuity and change as clearly and objectively as possible.

What, then, about the epigraph at the head of this chapter? Though jocular, does it not contradict our searing image of the Hiroshima streetcar by implying that every age is an age of transition? ...