The Greeks began an intellectual tradition that ran for centuries and was extended by the Romans. At one point or another a vast percentage of modern concepts were explored by these thinkers in antiquity. However they did not apply this in a manner to provide meaningful validation of one school of though over another. There was very little constraint upon these ideas outside of their own internal logic. With nothing outside of human intercourse to lend credence to one or another mode of thought it devolved to an appeal to the emotions as to which gained acceptance. The broader the appeal the lower the common denominator and lower the threshhold to entry.

At the end of the time of Rome there was a loss in vigor, curiosity, and a widespread idleness upon the land where the rigors of training one's mind and body fell out of favor. The backbone of the Roman army came to rely increasingly on barbarian muscle. Intellectual inquiry withered into a regurgitation of past glories and a rise in the Christian Church. This reshuffling of the deck in Europe with the influx of various peoples (Goth, Visigoth, Ostrogoth, Vandal, Hun, Frank, etc.), the dissolution of Roman authority in the West, and the aristocrats escaping into the service of the emerging Church to avoid the ravages of this shifting in power.

Then at the beginning of the 6th century a young aristocrat who was running with others of his ilk had his heart broke by a woman. As sometime happens in these cases the young man chose not to get back on that horse and went off to a nearby mountian valley and became a hermit. As the years went by he came to have a cult following (against his wishes). He directed the building of a dozen monasteries in the valley there. After some time he left and returned near to Rome and built a single monastery and there formulated The Rule of Benedict.

This Rule of Benedict was to have great influence on a man just learning to walk as Benedict toddered into the grave. This man grew to be very industrious and achieve high office at an early age. Tiring of the great burdens of this office and the constant threat of barbarian rapine he fled to the succor of religion. He sold off the family estates that made him a target and took up the cowl. Living a monastic life according to the Rule of Benedict. This retreat from public life lasted but a few years until he was called back into service by Pope Pelagius II. Sent to Constantinople as the Pope's apociriarius (permanent ambassador) to the court there. Some years later when Pope Pelagius II felt his time drawing near he recalled his ambassador. Upon his death and despite protestations on his own part he was risen to the office of Pope Gregory.

From the beginning of his ascension he published his "Liber pastoralis curae"



The Rule of Benedict
The vow of Stability would have the effect of stopping most travel between monasteries i.e. it would isolate them one from another. This would result in a freezing out of innovative ideas.

It takes generations to build a knowledge base within a culture. It takes only a few generations for it to disintegrate. Under severe conditions a single generations is enough.

With the decay and degradation of the western Roman Empire the peoples of the land had to become self-reliant to fend off the rigors of the times. Rome offered a very structured, and orderly society, enforced by its legions. For this it taxed heavily. As this might waned the rebellions that flared up from time to time were no longer put down; stomped into the ground completely; ruthlessly as in the past.

In xxx the first bubonic plague swept through the empire and in the process reduced the population to sixty percent of its former size.

With reduced native population the legions were forced to employ more barbarians to maintain their ranks. when was the citizen franchise extended to a greater portion of those within the empire? Groucho Marx is quoted as saying, "I don't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member of the club." The grass was not so green. I don't know where the hell I was going with this paragraph.

plagues, catastrophic events (volcanic, meteor), raiding Huns, rebelling youth. These sorts of things happen throughout history. The Western Empire slowly lost its vitality and was not able to respond to this events in full, energetic, and overcoming manner. With this loss of vitality it lost its ability to recover quickly from the damage done. Still trying to come back from one event another would sweep over. It became reactionary this can be seen in Justinian's initial placating reaction to the rioting at the Hippodrome. It was a crack in the confidence of the Roman Emperors.

Fifth-century Gaul: a crisis of identity?1 Ian Wood discusses the problems and limitations when working with the historical sources from the fifth century, traditionally seen as the pivotal era for the "fall" of the western Roman Empire. Wood argues that, because of the thin, sporadic, and often contradictory nature of the surviving written records from this period, scholars should give up pursuing the chimera of a positivist chronological narrative of fifth-century history. He rightly cautions that the works of such authors as Salvian and Avitus are "not mere reflections of reality" but rather "literary constructs."

These "literary constructs" are due to the increased disconnection between the "reality framework" of the ruling elite and the actual reality of the day to day events. Sounds like many of the inhabitants of the bubble know as the "belt" around D.C.

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH37/Goldberg.html

. . . in Gaul, however, was quite different. Between 406 and 418, large-scale Germanic migrations and political usurpations severed Gaul from western imperial authority in northern Italy.

ibid

In 470, like many members of his class in the second-half of the fifth-century, Sidonius entered the Church and became bishop of Clermont. About the same time, the Gothic king Euric (466-84) broke the 418- foedus and began to conquer the remaining imperial territories in Gaul.18 Although Sidonius valiantly led Clermont's resistance against the Gothic siege, in 475 Emperor Julius Nepos ceded the rest of Gaul, including Clermont, to Euric in return for Provence.

http://www.salve.edu/~romanemp/major.htm

EPILOGUE After the fall of Majorian, the Gallic generalissimo Aegidius rebelled against Ricimer and the Italian government, and even went so far as to enter into negotiations with the Vandals (Priscus, fr.30). Majorian had offered the last and best hope of the post-Valentinian, post-Aėtius period to revitalize the western empire. After his death, the authority of western emperors was limited almost exclusively to Italy, where there was rampant squabbling among barbarian generals (Ricimer, Gundobad, Orestes), figure-head emperors (Severus, Olybrius, Glycerius, Romulus), eastern intruders (Anthemius, Julius Nepos), and powerful, self-centered senators.

Valentinian III is considered to be a weak and ineffectual emperor. It is also noted that he gave increasing authority to pope Leo I (aka Leo the Great)(440-461).