This chapter delves into the intricate social, political, and theological mechanisms that progressively linked the historical figure of Saint Peter the Apostle to the city of Rome, and, more specifically, the Roman Church, from the late fourth to the late sixth centuries. The central argument posits that the escalations of papal authority during this era, especially those rhetorically justified by ties to the historical Peter, were predominantly aspirational. These escalations often surfaced as a direct counter-response to local or international humiliations. Consequently, this chapter challenges the traditional historiographical narrative of a perpetually powerful and assertive late-ancient papacy that ushered the Church into the Middle Ages from a vantage point of strength and acknowledged authority. It presents a nuanced perspective that acknowledges the complexities and realities of the time.

Chapter 6 explores the light cast on cities and their administration by the collection of administrative papyri from Italy from the fifth to seventh centuries. Frequently revolving round the sale or donation of property, they show the crucial role of local councils in registering such property transactions, and their relevance to the raising of local taxes. The same world emerges from the official correspondence of Pope Gregory at the turn of the sixth and seventh centuries in which a network of links with cities emerges as the means of holding together the church. A collection of documents from French cities similar to the Ravenna papyri imply that city administrations remained essential to property transactions in Merovingian Gaul. Rather than seeing the city administrations that were an instrument of imperial rule as now irrelevant, the conscious retention of old structures suggests a process of adaptation to new conditions.

I focus on why the competition for power among senatorial, imperial, and military elites that had stimulated the recovery of the city of Rome in the face of multiple civic and military crises no longer was effective in the later sixth and early seventh centuries. The end of Rome’s political senatorial aristocracy and its political body, the Senate, is the final “fall” of Rome. In its place, a papal-focused city dependent on Byzantine military might would emerge in the seventh century.