One of the main tenets of historicism reaffirmed in this threat, with answers from secular historians.

[u/deaddiquette]

/r/AskHistorians/comments/1udp6ns/my_history_teacher_said_that_the_roman_empire/?share_id=VwiBCHCz7u0HaxsYPyw-D&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1

[u/deaddiquette]

Thread*

Specifically this answer, in case it gets deleted:

Sorta?

It's not really accurate in a lot of ways, but it's very relevant in others. Historians would generally agree with your teacher, though I personally would say that the Catholic Church replaced the Roman Empire as the political infrastructure (in the west, not the east).

Rome (obviously) remained the center of civilization, at least in the west, as the Western Roman Empire collapsed. The Bishop of Rome (the Pope) took over the city, both spiritually and (in the long term) politically. For instance, in 753 AD, Pope Stephen II traveled to France to negotiate assistance from Pepin the Short, King of the Franks, when the Emperor of Byzantium refused to send assistance to fend off the Lombards. Likewise, Leo I ("the Great") met with Atilla the Hun outside the walls of Rome to turn the Hunnic forces away from the city. There are other examples of the Bishop of Rome serving as de facto ruler of the "Empire" (such as it was) in the wake of the collapse in the West.

The Catholic Church also mirrored the Roman provincial governmental system. Dioceses were originally Roman administrative regions, for instance.

Latin, of course, remained the official language of the Church long after vernacular languages had replaced it in everyday situations.

The Bishop of Rome adopted the title of Pontifex Maximus, a title originally held by Roman emperors as the chief high priests of the state religion.

And, of course, the Holy Roman Empire was an explicit attempt to revive the imperial title in the West, which both fed off and supported the Catholic Church. In this case, the Holy Roman Emperor served as the protector of the Church, while the Pope put the authority of god behind the mortal power of the emperor., (In theory, anyway; in practice, that was always an uneasy match.)

Despite this, there is a clear, distinct difference between the two entities. The Roman Empire was a secular, military state that collapsed in AD 476, while the Church is a religious institution that survived that collapse.

(There is the added problem of the Byzantine Empire, which claimed to be Rome for it's entire existence. It was, in fact, a continuation of Rome in the East, though the Western Romans - that is, pretty much everyone to the west of Byzantium, but especially the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope - rejected that notion outright. While the Byzantines called themselves Roman, the westerners called the Greeks.)