A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )

wrote that they were no longer needed now that Christianity was established. By
the closing chapters of The City of God, at the end of his life, however, he had
become a fervent supporter of the miraculous. 19 Similarly there remains an
element of restraint in the way that Pope Gregory reflected on the miraculous: he
preferred to relate miracles directly to holy men rather than their bones, but he
still saw the hand of God as present everywhere in the natural world. His
contemporary, Gregory of Tours, was completely immersed in the miraculous
effects of holy bones, especially those of St Martin of Tours. In his Gaul, or
Francia as it became when the Franks established their rule, the literature was
dominated by the hagiographical lives of saints and their deeds. St Martin of
Tours was credited with many more miracles than Jesus - 207 according to
Gregory’s account. 20
The cumulation of developments was to ensure that for centuries the
possibility of critical theological (and other intellectual) discussion faded from
Europe.What was needed was the revival of the social and economic conditions
that could foster urban elites and thus the possibility of intellectual discourse.
It is in the eighth century that the very first signs of a revival of trade can be
found. A gradual accretion of prosperity in northern Italy (primarily in Venice
and in the Po valley, where a new class of Lombard landowners arose) and
Francia was given a boost by two factors. The first was the conquest of northern
Italy by Charlemagne in the late eighth century, which brought the two
economies, one either side of the Alps, together, to the mutual benefit of each.
Second there was the beginnings of trade with the Islamic states of the eastern
Mediterranean. These could provide silks, incense, drugs and spices that
originated even further east. Some raw materials, including slaves, could be
traded in return. The revival of trade had little to do with the Church (which on
occasions tried to ban the flourishing commerce with Islam). As the Venetians,
the most successful of the traders, consolidated their settlements on the islands
of the lagoon, they placed their first cathedral, San Pietro in Castello, in the
eastern extremities of the city, far from the political and economic core. Many of
the rejuvenated cities of northern Italy found themselves in dispute with the
landowners and the Church, although accommodations were often made. 21
The first ‘renaissance’ of European culture took place in the reign of
Charlemagne, who ruled as King of the Franks from 768 and Holy Roman
Emperor after his coronation by the pope in 800 until his death in 814.
Charlemagne looked back to the past glories of the Roman emperors and his