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When talking about the Christian Church in its early years, I often refer to it simply as the Church. Christianity was a huge cultural force from late Roman times onward. Before the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, the Catholic Church was the Christian church in Western Europe — virtually the only one. It was the Catholic Church because catholic was still an adjective meaning universal. (Spelled with a lowercase c, catholic still means universal or wide-ranging.) After Rome banned pagan worship, and as the old Norse and Celtic beliefs faded, virtually everybody was a Christian, at least nominally. Everybody was also Catholic; there was no such thing as a Protestant. Historians capitalize the word Church when they mean the network of cathedrals, chapels, priories, and so on that looked to the pope in Rome for direction, and so do I in this chapter and in chapters 10 and 14.

In addition to its role as the root of modern romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish, and so on), Latin was the unifying language of the Roman Catholic Church, which to Roman and other European Christians before the 16th century AD was just the Church. Until the middle of the 20th century, Catholic masses worldwide were almost always celebrated in Latin.

Don’t confuse the Roman Empire with the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire was a later group of European principalities and duchies (lesser monarchies) that changed shapes and allegiances over centuries. It started in 800 AD, when Pope Leo III bestowed the new title of Emperor of the West on Charlemagne, king of the Franks (a Germanic tribe) and the first ruler since the original Roman Empire’s demise to unite most of Western Europe under a single rule. The title carried with it an understanding that Charlemagne would use his military strength to defend the Church.

Charlie’s empire, based where France is today, didn’t long survive him, but German King Otto I put together another edition of the Holy Roman Empire in 962 AD, and that one hung on until the 19th century. (For more on the Holy Roman Empire, see Chapters 6 and 14.) Aside from the pope’s blessing and his expectation of loyalty, this empire’s nominally united lands, largely German and Austrian, and had little to do with Rome. Still, the name Roman smacked of imperial legitimacy.

Other Roman terms endured as well, especially terms for positions of authority. The Russian title czar (or tsar, as it’s often spelled) and the later German kaiser both came from the Roman title caesar. The name of a powerful dynastic family, the Romanovs, who ruled Russia from 1613–1917, referred to imperial Rome too. Even in the Islamic world, the name Qaysar — a place name found from Afghanistan to Egypt — comes from Caesar.