While the Christian church was growing in outward prosperity, the empire was weakening. Economic fortunes were declining as war and pestilence swept away the workers, the families best able to rear children were small in size, taxation was heavy and unjustly distributed, money was scarce, and the whole system of industry rested on slavery and rural serfdom. The irresponsible power of unworthy or inefficient emperors in the third and fourth centuries resulted in despotism and chaos. In 375 the empire of Rome lay along both sides of the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the borders of the eastern desert. The Alps protected the peninsula of Italy to the north. Beyond were tribes of barbarians belonging to the German, or Teutonic, race. The territory over which they wandered was a broad plain, which sloped northward to the North and Baltic seas. The people who lived there were hunters and crude farmers. But game was getting scarce, for the lodges of the clansmen were too close together. It was difficult to find sufficient food for the children. The women of the tribes could not raise grain enough on their small cultivated patches of soil to feed so many mouths. Over the southern border were rich provinces of an empire that was growing weak. At last large tribal units began to move. The Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Burgundians, the Vandals, the Franks, and others pushed into the lower Danube valley. With slow but relentless progress they traversed the region, then moved up the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea into the peninsula of Italy. In 410 Rome was sacked.
Impact: The Church was the greatest of the institutions that emerged from this era of confusion. It built up the centralized power of the papacy and extended its influence through missionary activity among the pagan peoples.