....I'm sure somebody somewhere must have fleshed out the idea that the Church represented some kind of survival of the system of the Roman Empire.'' Matthias Wasser
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I am greatly interested in these topics so any additions are welcomed by me. I am particularly interested in the transition from Roman imperial latin system of law, rank, rights, and privileges to the joint management of the Church-State system. For example the ranks with Emperor and Pope, Senate and Cardinals, the Magistrates and Bishops.
These mergers of power correspond to the evolution of the Latifundium over many centuries. Go here for details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latifundium
``A comparable social system exists in agricultural California, where the latifundia of the Central Valley are the basis of corporate agribusiness. This was a development whose parallels in Antiquity were specifically noted by Edmund G. Berry in 1943: "The same latifundia are appearing again in the United States.... and with them the coloni".[6] Mechanized agriculture was driving out the iconic family farm, as slave labor and then free serf labor had made Roman estates profitable. The "ranchos", Mexican land grants in California had pre-existed statehood and were supported by American court decisions.[7] Today, small holdings persist in the corporate-owned landscape, as they had persisted in al-Andalus...''
when I was kid living on Hoover and 73rd, the city was digging up some part of the sidewalk and the right north bound lane of Hoover. I was watching and they came across some big bones. I asked if they were dinosaur bones. No, kid they are probably just cow bones. I wondered how cow bones got buried in LA? Much later I found out that a lot of LA had been part of large hacindas, duh. So that's what the missions were, a parish network interlocked with the big land owners. Zorro was big on my kid mind.
About the only place I can think of were `family' farms could even exist here are the coastal valleys from about San Luis Obispo north to the start of the redwoods where big lumber tracks take over.
CG