How does empire mould human subjectivity, for instance, and how does it affect the understanding of humans within the whole of creation? This title analyzes the global empire in its political and economic dimensions, in its symbolic constructions of power, and in its general assumptions often taken for granted.

This enabled the Church, when the empire crumbled, to open to the new peoples beyond the Alps, mediating what it had received from classical and biblical sources to the nucleus of the modern world being formed in Western Europe." "Beyond the Empire points out the similarities between the earlier period and ours; asks if Rome can have a similar function today; and shows how much of pagan and early Christian Rome are still extant."--BOOK JACKET.