Churches and Christianity in South Tyrol from the fall of Rome to the advent of Charlemagne

Formally in 476 A.D. the Western Roman Empire came to its epilogue, but the event did not really have such resonance at the time: to put it with Momigliano, was «the fall without noise of an empire». The present-day South Tyrol, in the following historical period and until the conquest of Charlemagne, found itself to be more and more disputed and border land, in the succession of Goths, Byzantines, Lombards, Bavarians, Avars and Franks. The author, based on historical sources and archaeological finds, reconstructs the evolution of Christianity in the area during more than three centuries of confrontation.