By the fifth century Christianity was the official imperial religion, and emperors had begun to take seriously its theological minutiae, especially when it came to persecuting heretics and schismatics. In turn, Christianity underwent its first wave of Romanization, developing a distinct military tone, a preference for Latin as the language of exegesis, a network of “diocese” (the name was borrowed, ironically, from Diocletian, once the arch-persecutor, who had in his day divided the empire into secular diocese for ease of administration), a taste for monumental architecture and spectacular
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