imagine a church in the process of dissolution. The churches are ruined or deserted, no successors can be found for the bishoprics, while despairing ordinary believers are drifting away to other faiths. Perhaps priests and monks are being hunted, in fear of their lives. At some point, it becomes possible to identify the last Christian priest or pastor in a city or a region, perhaps even the very last believer. In such desperate conditions, few have the will or capacity to write their histories of decline and fall, and fewer still to preserve them for posterity.
