"Greatest Roman disaster?" Topic

The loss of the North African provinces to the Vandals.

Christianity? The ghost of Gibbon rises again.

Cannae

Cannae. That, and failing to appreciate Julius Caesar.

The fall of Constantinople. That was the end of everything Roman.

The Trapezuntines might disagree.

Mussolini?

Militarially, the Battle of Manzikert.

Culturally, the adoption of Christianity.

"Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death."

The fact HBO canned it after two seasons.

I'm not all that well read on Roman history, in a nutshell how was the rise of Christianity a negative turning point for the empire?

As a Christian I am no fan of much of what Constantine introduced to the faith, but I fail to see how its adoption led to the fall of the west?

From (very old) memory, I think that Gibbon's premise was that the imperial adoption of Christian monotheism made the empire as a whole far less religiously and culturally adaptable. In other words, the Romans couldn't equate "barbarian" gods with their own and use this as a mechanism to "Romanise" them. I think he also made the secondary argument that Christian in-fighting further debilitated the Empire.

Please note that this is purely a description from memory of Gibbon's view. No pagans were harmed in the making of this passage…

Both these arguments may have some truth in them, however i don't think they account for the fall of the west. I think division of the empire did that, left to fight twice the barbarians with half the resources (give or take)