User blog comment:Jazon Naparleon/Questions of Romans and Mongols/@comment-4727448-20120815054104/@comment-1375165-20120817030017

Yes, Fed, although Gibbon's theory for how Christianity contributed to the Fall of Rome had nothing to do with mass religious persecutions. More recent historians strongly dispute his claims. Since Gibbon's reasoning was that Christianity took people's attention away from the earthly and into the heavenly, destroying Rome's precarious position, and that's implausible as a factor, I think attributing any major influence in Rome's fall to the rise of Christianity is mistaking correlation for causation.

By this I mean: Christianity's rise coincided with Rome's fall so it is tempting to attribute the one to the other - indeed, Rome's fall may have been an influence in the rise of Christianity. I don't put that forward as a theory, merely a possibility.