In this bold approach to late antiquity, Garth Fowden shows how, from
the second-century peak of Rome's prosperity to the ninth-century onset
of the Islamic Empire's decline, powerful beliefs in One God were used
to justify and strengthen "world empires." But tensions between
orthodoxy and heresy that were inherent in monotheism broke the unitary
empires of Byzantium and Baghdad into the looser, more pluralistic
commonwealths of Eastern Christendom and Islam. With rare breadth of
vision, Fowden traces this transition from empire to commonwealth, and
in the process exposes the sources of major cultural contours that still
play a determining role in Europe and southwest Asia.