After the council of constantinople in three eight one, wegh a first phase of any one considered arian increasingly being ejected from episcopal sees and excluded from the main street an church officing. With these barbarian groups coming into the empire and establishing their own churches hein parallel, or taking it over. In the fifth and sixth centuries, they've re established themselves in a more significant way. And then in the mitlate sixth century, through a series of either military conquests or conversions of rulers, that these churches lose their political backers. So you can really see how, at the very least, we stop being able to see these communities persisting in the catext
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the form of Christianity adopted by Ostrogoths in the 4th century AD, which they learned from Roman missionaries and from their own contact with the imperial court at Constantinople. This form spread to the Vandals and the Visigoths, who took it into Roman Spain and North Africa, and the Ostrogoths brought it deeper into Italy after the fall of the western Roman empire. Meanwhile, with the Roman empire in the east now firmly committed to the Nicene Creed not the Arian, the Goths and Vandals faced conflict or conversion, as Arianism moved from an orthodox view to being a heresy that would keep followers from heaven and delay the Second Coming for all.
The image above is the ceiling mosaic of the Arian Baptistry in Ravenna, commissioned by Theodoric, ruler of the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy, around the end of the 5th century
With
Judith Herrin
Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, Emeritus, at King's College London
Robin Whelan
Lecturer in Mediterranean History at the University of Liverpool
And
Martin Palmer
Visiting Professor in Religion, History and Nature at the University of Winchester
Producer: Simon Tillotson