The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes & Imperial Pretenders - Hardcover

'Peter Heather has produced a tightly argued and highly stimulating book which will be of obvious interest to readers curious about the aftermath of Rome's fall and the cultural and ideological legacy of Rome. The style is chatty and accessible, and the scholarship up to date and reliable.' Literary Review

'It is told with energy and zest, full of lurid detail and enthralling biographical portraits. Heather navigates difficult terrain with an engaging occasionally conversational style. He concludes The Restoration of Rome with a brilliant discussion of the way in which northern "barbarians" reinvented the papacy and in doing so created the most durable successor to the Roman Empire the Catholic Church.' --Daily Telegraph

In 476 AD the last of Rome's emperors was deposed by a barbarian general, the son of one of Attila the Hun's henchmen, and the imperial vestments were despatched to Constantinople. The curtain fell on the Roman Empire in Western Europe, its territories divided between successor kingdoms constructed around barbarian military manpower. But if the Roman Empire was dead, the dream of restoring it refused to die. In many parts of the old Empire, real Romans still lived, holding on to their lands, the values of their civilisation, its institutions; the barbarians were ready to reignite the imperial flame and to enjoy the benefits of Roman civilization, the three greatest contenders being Theoderic, Justinian and Charlemagne. But, ultimately, they would fail and it was not until the reinvention of the papacy in the eleventh century that Europe's barbarians found the means to generate a new Roman Empire, an empire which has lasted a thousand years.