LATE IMPERIAL CHURCH COLLECTION

During the last days of the Western Roman Empire, and well into the Ostrogothic, Byzantine, and Lombardic period, there were various writers who sought to inform the intellectual life of the church with their own varied educational and political positions. Among these, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose of Milan, Pope St. Gregory, and the various Italo-Romanic poets attempted to keep the light of learning burning while Roman civilization itself was in political chaos. Their work come down to us to the present, and offer a glimpse of the last remaining lights of the Classical world in the West, until its eventually rediscovery during the 14th century with the alleged re-birth of Classical Thought during the zenith of the Western European Renaissance.