At the beginning of the seventh century, the Byzantine Empire was part of a political configuration focussed on the Mediterranean world, which had been familiar for centuries and was characterised by two factors, one external and the other internal. The administration of the Byzantine Empire, both civil and military, was essentially what had emerged from the reforms of Diocletian and Constantine in the late third and early fourth centuries. The authors describe the life of the Byzantine church in the seventh century emerging from the 102 canons of the Quinisext Synod, called by the emperor Justinian II in 692.The end of the seventh century saw the Byzantine Empire still in a process of transition and redefinition: the Arab threat to Constantinople was to continue well into the eighth century, and Iconoclasm, which is seen as a further stage in the Byzantine Empire's search for its identity and ways of expressing this in the aftermath of crisis of the seventh century.

This chapter covers the kings who governed the one-time dioceses of Italy, Spain, Gaul and Britannia in the post-Roman era. Sixth and seventh century Europeans with only marginal education could have known of the fall of the kings of Rome. The legitimate emperor, Justinian II, was the last of the dynasty of Heraclius, which takes the credit for saving the Eastern Roman Empire from complete extinction. The only king in Frankish Gaul was Childebert III. Child kings reflected the strictly hereditary nature of kingship in this part of the West. The chapter shows that sub-Roman monarchy in the West derives substantially from the Roman imperial model. Early medieval western kings inherited what was, by the standards of the time when Germans first became familiar with Rome, a massive palace mechanism. Among the themes of their rule was its scaling down until it again resembled what had been at Augustus' disposal.