Is the Roman Empire in a Relationship to Universalism?

I think it would be much truer to say that empire is in a very problematic relationship to nations of universal peace and universal truth. It's on the one hand linked to violence if you like, but it's also linked to nations of pacification, unity and diversity. We can't readily associate this belief which I'm certainly questioning with some tendency that we might be suspicious of in other ways. In the West, as you know, the Empire is often much more of a fiction, although it eventually becomes something fairly real in the case of the Holy Roman Empire. But I think that Christianity, broadly speaking, is sympathetic to political internationalism. And realistically, that has tended to mean some