With the sign of the cross he gave the signal for battle, and hurled himself into the war, resolved to be victor even if no one followed. The first way of safety appeared in Arbitio, a count of the enemy's party: for when he had caught the unsuspecting emperor in encircling ambushes, turning instead to reverence for the Augustus present before him, he not only freed him from danger but even equipped him with aid. But when they had come to the spaces adjoining for joining battle, immediately that great and unspeakable whirlwind of winds rushed into the faces of the enemy. The javelins hurled by our men were carried through the air, and borne beyond the measure of human throwing through the great void, were scarcely allowed to fall anywhere before they struck home.
Furthermore the continuous whirlwind battered the faces and breasts of the enemy: now it heavily beat against their shields dashed upon them, now it stubbornly pressed shut what was barred, now it violently tore away and stripped bare what was abandoned, now it incessantly thrust them backwards by what was set against them; the weapons too, which they themselves had vehemently hurled, caught by the force of the wind, turned over and driven backwards, unhappily pierced the throwers themselves. The dread of human conscience looked out for itself, for at once the hostile army, with a small band of his own men routing it, prostrated itself before the victor Theodosius; Eugenius was captured and slain; Arbogast struck himself down with his own hand.
Thus here too the civil war was quenched by the blood of two men, apart from those ten thousand Goths whom, sent ahead by Theodosius, Arbogast is said to have destroyed utterly: but to have lost them was, in truth, gain, and to be conquered was to conquer. I do not insult our detractors. Let them bring forward some single war from the beginning of the City's founding undertaken with so pious a necessity, accomplished with so divine a felicity, lulled to rest with so merciful a kindness, where neither did the battle exact a grievous slaughter nor the victory a bloody vengeance — and perhaps I will grant that these things may not seem to have been granted to the faith of the Christian commander;
although I am not troubled by this testimony, since one of their own number — a poet indeed of the highest excellence, but a most obstinate pagan — bore testimony in verses of this kind both to God and to the man, in which he says: 'O too greatly beloved of God! For you the heavens make war, and the winds, sworn in league, come at the trumpet-call.' Thus it was judged from heaven between the party that, even without the protection of men, humbly hoped in God alone, and the party that most arrogantly presumed upon its own strength and upon idols. Theodosius, moreover, having settled and tranquillized the commonwealth, while stationed at Milan, met his end.
In the 1149th year from the founding of the City, Arcadius Augustus, whose son Theodosius now rules the East, and Honorius Augustus his brother, on whom the commonwealth now leans, in the forty-second place began to hold a common empire, divided only in their seats; and Arcadius lived twelve years after his father's departure, and dying handed over the supreme command to his son Theodosius, then quite a little child.
Meanwhile the count Gildo, who at the beginning of their reign was in charge of Africa, as soon as he learned that Theodosius was dead — whether (as some report) moved by a certain envy he strove to join Africa to the regions of the Eastern empire, or whether (as another opinion holds) he judged that there was very little hope in young boys (especially since, apart from these two, scarcely ever before had any small child left in the empire come through to the maturity of manly age, and these two almost alone are found to have been advanced, both divided and forsaken, by the protection of Christ on account of their father's outstanding faith and their own) — dared to seize for himself Africa, torn away from the fellowship of the commonwealth, content rather with the license of his native temperament than puffed up with the ambition of royal pretension.
This man had a brother, Mascezel, who, shuddering at his brother's machinations for revolution, left his two adolescent sons in the African army and returned to Italy. Gildo, holding both the absence of his brother and the presence of his sons suspect, treacherously encircled and killed the youths. Mascezel the brother was then sent to pursue Gildo, now as an enemy, in war, since his recent grief at his own bereavement promised that he would be a fit instrument for managing the commonwealth. So Mascezel, knowing already from the time of Theodosius how much in the most desperate affairs a man's prayer through the faith of Christ obtains from the clemency of God, went to the island of Capraria, whence he took with him several holy servants of God, moved by his entreaties.
Continuing day and night with these men in prayers, fastings, and psalms, he merited victory without war and vengeance without slaughter. Ardalio is the name of a river which flows between the cities of Theveste and Ammedera; there, having pitched camp with a small band — that is, with five thousand soldiers (as they say) against seventy thousand of the enemy — when, after an intervening delay, he wished to leave the place and to cross the opposing narrows of the valley lying before him, as night came on he seemed in a dream to see the blessed Ambrose, bishop of Milan, who had died a little before, pointing with his hand and, striking his staff three times to the ground, saying: 'Here, here, here.'
This he understood by prudent conjecture to be the deservedly faithful pledge of the announcer of victory — that by the word he signified the place, by the number the day. He halted, and on the third day at last, after a night spent wholly awake in prayers and hymns, he advanced from the very mysteries of the heavenly sacraments against the enemy poured round about him; and when he cast pious words of peace to those who first met him, he struck with his sword on the arm a certain standard-bearer who was insolently resisting and even now stirring up battle, and, having maimed him by the wound itself, compelled him with his hand to bow down the banner forward. Seeing this, the remaining cohorts, supposing that a surrender of the foremost was now taking place, eagerly handed themselves over to Mascezel with their standards reversed.
The barbarians, of whom Gildo had led a great multitude to the war, deprived by the defection of the soldiers, fled in various directions. Gildo himself, attempting flight, seized a ship and was carried out to the deep, and then, recalled back to Africa, after some days died by strangling. We should be in peril, in the report of such miracles, as though presumptuous with the shamelessness of lying, were it not that the conscience of those who were present still runs ahead of our voice. No ambushes are contrived, no corruption; seventy thousand of the enemy are conquered almost without a battle; the conquered flees for a time, lest the angered victor dare more; he is transported to a different place, that the brother may not know that the man is being killed, by whose killing he is avenged.
Yet this same Mascezel, lifted up by the insolence of prosperity, having set aside the fellowship of the holy men with whom he had formerly conquered while fighting for God, even dared to profane the church and did not hesitate to drag certain men out of it. Punishment followed the sacrilegious man. For with those very men surviving and exulting, whom he had dragged from the church to punishment, after some time he alone was punished, and proved in himself alone that the divine judgment ever watches over both alike, since both, when he hoped, he was helped, and, when he despised, he was killed.
Meanwhile, when by the elder emperor Theodosius the care and instruction of his little sons had been committed to the most powerful men of each court — that is, to Rufinus that of the Eastern court, to Stilicho that of the Western empire — what each of them did, or attempted to do, the end of each declared: since the one aspiring to the royal summit for himself, the other for his own son, in order that the necessity of the commonwealth, suddenly thrown into turmoil, might cover the crime of their ambition, the former let loose barbarian nations, the latter fostered them. I say nothing of King Alaric with his Goths, often conquered, often shut in, and always let go.
I say nothing of those unhappy deeds done at Pollentia, when the chief command of the war was committed to a barbarian and pagan leader, that is, to Saul, by whose wickedness the most revered days and the holy Pasch were violated, and it was wrung from the enemy — who was yielding on account of religion — that he should fight: when indeed, with God showing in brief by a token both what His favor could do and what His vengeance exacted, fighting we conquered, and as victors we were vanquished. I say nothing of the frequent mutual manglings of the barbarians among themselves, when two wedges of Goths, and then the Alans and Huns, ravaged one another with various slaughters. Radagaisus, by far the most savage of all enemies past and present, with a sudden onslaught flooded all Italy.
For they report that there were in his host more than two hundred thousand Goths. This man, beyond this incredible multitude and untamed valor, was a pagan and a Scythian; who, as is the custom of barbarians of such tribes, had vowed to pour out all the blood of the Roman race as a libation to his gods. When he therefore was threatening the citadels of Rome, there arose a thronging of all the pagans in the City, saying that the enemy was powerful both in abundance of strength and especially in the protection of the gods, but that the City was for this reason forsaken and would soon perish, because it had abandoned the gods and their rites. Loud complaints are raised everywhere, and at once there is discussion of resuming and celebrating the sacred rites; blasphemies seethe throughout the whole City; in common the name of Christ is loaded with the reproaches of the present times as though it were some plague.
And so by the unspeakable judgment of God it came about that — since in a mingled people grace was owed to the pious, but punishment to the impious, and it was fitting that enemies be permitted who, with scourges harsher than usual, might convict a city in very many ways unpersuadable and contradictory, yet not those who would indiscriminately destroy all with unrestrained slaughter — two peoples of Goths with their two most powerful kings were then raging in Bacchic frenzy through the Roman provinces:
of whom the one was a Christian and nearer to the Roman, and, as the matter showed, gentle in slaughter through the fear of God; the other a pagan, a barbarian, and truly a Scythian, who loved not so much glory or plunder as, with insatiable cruelty, slaughter itself amid the slaughter — and this one, now received into the bosom of Italy, was shaking from close at hand Rome, trembling with terror. And so, if to this man the power of vengeance had been granted — whom the Romans judged especially to be feared, because by the homage of sacrifices he would invite the favor of the gods — both a more immoderate slaughter would have blazed without the fruit of amendment, and a newest error, worse than the former, would have grown;
since indeed, to have fallen into the hands of a pagan and idolater would have been not only, for the remaining pagans, an undoubted persuasion of restoring the cult of idols, but also, for the Christians, a perilous confusion, when both these would be terrified by the prejudicial precedent and those would be confirmed by the example. Wherefore God, the just dispenser of the human race, willed the pagan enemy to perish and permitted the Christian to prevail, that the pagan and blaspheming Romans might both be confounded by the destruction of the one and be punished by the sending-in of the other;
especially since the admirable self-restraint of the emperor Honorius toward the king, and his most holy faith, merited not a little of the divine mercy. Indeed, against that most savage enemy Radagaisus, the inclined minds of other enemies, with their forces, are granted for aid. Uldin and Sarus, leaders of the Huns and the Goths, are present as a protection to the Romans; but God does not allow a matter of His own power to seem the valor of men, and especially of enemies.
He drives Radagaisus, divinely terrified, into the hills of Faesulae, and — according to those who report most sparingly — shuts in two hundred thousand of his men, destitute of counsel and of food, on the dry and rough ridge of the mountain, with fear pressing on every side, and thrusts into one small summit the columns to which Italy had lately seemed too narrow, in their hope of hiding. Why should I delay over many words? No battle-line was drawn up for war, no fury and fear set forth the uncertainties of combat, no slaughter was done, no blood was shed, no — finally, what is wont to be reckoned in place of good fortune — losses of battle were compensated by the outcome of victory: while our men were eating, drinking, and playing, those so great and so savage enemies were finished off, hungering, thirsting, and fainting.
This is too little, unless they know that he was captured and subjugated whom the Romans feared, and unless they look down upon that idolater of theirs — whose sacrifices they pretended to dread more than his arms — conquered without battle and bound under the yoke and chains. So King Radagaisus, alone taking up hope of flight, secretly deserted his own men and fell among ours: by whom he was captured and held a little while and then killed. So great indeed is the multitude of captive Goths said to have been, that herds of men were sold everywhere, like the cheapest cattle, at a single gold piece apiece. But God allowed nothing to survive of that same people.
For straightway, with all who were being bought dying off, what the wicked buyers did not shamefully spend in prices, they mercifully laid out in burials. And so ungrateful Rome — which, as it now perceived, the oblique mercy of God the judge had been shown not to remit but to repress the presumption of idolatry — was thus, on account of the pious remembrance of the holy living and dead, immediately to suffer the wrath of God, yet not a full wrath (if perchance, being confounded, it might repent and through experience learn faith); and so for a little space of time it was deferred from the incursion of King Alaric — an enemy indeed, yet a Christian.
Meanwhile the count Stilicho, sprung from the stock of the Vandals, an unwarlike, greedy, treacherous, and crafty nation, holding it of little account that he was commanding under an emperor, strove by any means to substitute into the empire his son Eucherius, who, as is handed down by very many, already from boyhood and while still a private man was meditating the persecution of the Christians. For which reason, secretly fostering Alaric and the whole Gothic nation — who were suppliantly and simply begging for the best peace and for any settlements whatever — by a hidden treaty, while publicly denying them the opportunity both of war and of peace, he reserved them to wear down and to terrify the commonwealth.
Moreover, soliciting unbidden to arms other nations intolerable in their forces and strength — by which the provinces of the Gauls and the Spains are now oppressed, that is, the Alans, Sueves, Vandals, and, impelled by the same movement, the Burgundians as well — once the dread of the Roman name had been wiped away, he stirred them up. He wished these meanwhile to batter the banks of the Rhine and to assail the Gauls, hoping, wretched man, that under this pressure of necessity he might both wrest the empire from his son-in-law for his son, and that the barbarian nations could be as easily crushed as roused.
And so, when this scene of such great crimes was laid bare to the emperor Honorius and the Roman army, with the army most justly stirred up, Stilicho was slain — he who, that he might clothe one boy in the purple, had given over the blood of the whole human race; slain too was Eucherius, who, to win for himself the favor of the pagans, was threatening that he would inaugurate the beginnings of his reign with the restoration of the temples and the overthrow of the churches; and a few satellites of such great machinations were punished along with them. Thus, with the smallest trouble and the punishment of a few, the churches of Christ, together with a religious emperor, were both liberated and avenged. And so, after such great increases of blasphemies and no repentance at all, that final and long-suspended punishment overtakes the City.
Alaric is present; he besieges, throws into confusion, and bursts into trembling Rome — yet with a command given first, that if any had fled into the holy places, and especially into the basilicas of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, these above all they should permit to be inviolate and secure, and then thereafter, gaping after plunder as much as they could, they should refrain from blood. It happened also — that this irruption of the City might be proved to have been wrought by the indignation of God rather than by the bravery of the enemy — that blessed Innocent, bishop of the Roman city, like the righteous Lot withdrawn from Sodom, by the hidden providence of God then placed at Ravenna, did not see the destruction of the sinful people.
As the barbarians were running here and there through the City, by chance one of the Goths, and he both powerful and a Christian, found a virgin consecrated to God, now advanced in age, in a certain ecclesiastical house; and when he honorably demanded gold and silver from her, she with faithful constancy promised that she had very much of it with her, and would presently bring it forth, and she brought it forth; and when, with the riches laid out, she perceived the barbarian astonished at the greatness, the weight, the beauty, and even the unfamiliar quality of the vessels, the virgin of Christ said to the barbarian: 'These are the sacred ministries of the apostle Peter. Take them, if you dare; you will see to the deed. I, since I cannot defend them, do not dare to keep them.' But the barbarian, moved to reverence of religion by the fear of God and by the faith of the virgin, reported these things to Alaric through a messenger:
who immediately commanded that all the vessels, just as they were, be carried back to the apostle's basilica, and that the virgin also, and at the same time all the Christians who would join themselves to them, be conducted to the same place under escort. That house was, as they say, far from the holy seats, with the middle stretch of the City lying between. And so, with a great spectacle for all, the several vessels were arranged among the several bearers and, openly raised above their heads, the golden and silver vessels were carried; swords drawn on every side for defense, the pious procession was protected; a hymn to God was publicly sung, with Romans and barbarians chanting together; the trumpet of salvation resounded far and wide amid the destruction of the City, and invited and roused even all those lurking in hidden places;
from every side they run together to the vessels of Peter, the vessels of Christ; very many pagans too are mingled with the Christians by profession though not by faith, and through this nonetheless escape for the time — that they may the more be confounded; and the more copiously the fleeing Romans are gathered together, the more eagerly the barbarian defenders pour round about. O sacred and unspeakable discernment of the divine judgment! O that holy and saving river, which, springing from a small house, while with blessed channel it makes for the seats of the saints, with pious rapacity carried the wandering and imperiled souls into the bosom of salvation! O that illustrious trumpet of the Christian warfare, which, inviting all generally with sweetest melody unto life, left inexcusable unto death those whom, being disobedient, it did not rouse unto salvation.
This mystery, which lay in the transferring of the vessels, the singing of hymns, the leading of the peoples, I judge to have been like a great sieve, through which, out of the congregation of the Roman people as out of a great mass of grain, throughout all things, from the whole circuit of the city, through the openings of the hiding-places, there flowed out living grains, moved either by occasion or by truth; yet all things believing concerning their present salvation were received from the storehouse of the Lord's preparation, while the rest, like dung and like chaff, prejudged by their very unbelief or disobedience, remained for extermination and burning. Who could weigh these things with full marvels, who could proclaim them with worthy praises?
On the third day after the barbarians had entered the City, they depart of their own accord, having indeed set fire to some buildings, yet not so great a fire as chance had wrought in the seven-hundredth year of its founding. For if I should recount the conflagration exhibited for the spectacles of their emperor Nero, beyond doubt no comparison will make equal to that — which the wantonness of a prince had kindled — this, which now the wrath of a victor inflicted. Nor in such a comparison ought I to make mention of the Gauls, who, for the space of almost a whole continuous year, possessed the ground-down ashes of the burned and overthrown City.
And lest anyone perchance doubt that it was for the correction of a proud, wanton, and blasphemous city that it was permitted to the enemies, at the same time the most renowned places of the City were demolished by thunderbolts, which could not be set ablaze by the enemies. And so in the 1164th year from the founding of the City, the irruption of the City by Alaric was made; of which event, although the memory is recent, yet if anyone should both see the multitude of the Roman people itself and hear its voice, he would judge that nothing had happened — as even they themselves confess — unless perchance he were taught it by some ruins still existing from the fire.
In that irruption Placidia, daughter of the emperor Theodosius and sister of the emperors Arcadius and Honorius, was captured by Athaulf, Alaric's kinsman, and taken in marriage — as though by divine judgment Rome had handed her over as a special pledge and hostage; and thus, joined in marriage to the most powerful barbarian king, she was of much advantage to the commonwealth. Meanwhile, two years before the Roman irruption, the nations of the Alans (as I have said), Sueves, and Vandals, and many others with them, stirred up through Stilicho, trample the Franks, cross the Rhine, invade the Gauls, and by a direct onset reach all the way to the Pyrenees; repulsed for a time by its barrier, they pour back through the surrounding provinces.
While these were raging in Bacchic frenzy through the Gauls, in the Britains Gratian, a townsman of that same island, is made tyrant and is killed. In his place Constantine, from the lowest soldiery, is chosen on account of the mere hope of his name, without the merit of virtue: who immediately, as soon as he had invaded the empire, crossed over into the Gauls. There, often deluded by the barbarians with uncertain treaties, he was rather a detriment to the commonwealth. He sent judges into the Spains: and when the provinces had obediently received them, two brothers, young men noble and wealthy, Didymus and Verinianus, set about — not to assume against the tyrant a tyranny indeed, but to protect for the lawful emperor, against the tyrant and the barbarians, themselves and their fatherland; which became plain by the very order of the affair as it was carried out.
For no one seizes a tyranny in secret unless it has been swiftly brought to a head, but rather takes up arms openly, since the whole aim is to be seen wearing the diadem and the purple before being known. These men, however, over a long span of time merely gathered their own slaves from their private estates and fed them at their household's expense, and with their purpose by no means concealed, yet without disturbing anyone, they made for the passes of the Pyrenees. Against them Constantine sent his son Constans into the Spains—alas the grief!—who from a monk had been made a Caesar, together with certain barbarians who had once been received into a treaty and enrolled in military service and were called the Honoriaci. From this point came the first calamity of evil among the Spains.
For when those brothers had been slain, who were striving to guard the Pyrenean Alps with a private garrison, license to plunder was first granted to these barbarians, as if in reward for victory, in the Palentine plains; thereafter the charge of the aforesaid mountain and of its passes was entrusted to them, the faithful and useful guard of the countrymen having been removed. And so the Honoriaci, steeped in plunder and lured by abundance—that their crime might the more go unpunished and that more might be permitted to the crime itself—betrayed the guard of the Pyrenees and threw the passes open, and let loose upon the provinces of the Spains all the peoples who were wandering throughout the Gauls, and joined themselves to those same peoples.
There, after carrying out for a time great and bloody raids, after grievous devastations of property and of men—of which they themselves now in some measure repent—having cast lots and apportioned the land, they settle down in possession of it even to the present day. I should now have ample occasion to speak of matters of this kind, were it not that, in the case of every single person, conscience speaks secretly within his own mind. The Spains were broken into and suffered slaughter and devastation: nothing indeed new, for this has now gone on for two years. That which the enemy's sword raged with, they endured from the barbarians—the same that they had once suffered from the Romans for two hundred years, the same too that, under the emperor Gallienus, they bore for nearly twelve years while the Germans were laying them waste.
Yet who, being conscious of himself and of his own deeds or even of his thoughts, and fearing the judgments of God, would not confess that he has justly suffered all things, or that he has endured even but small ones? Or he who does not understand himself and does not fear God—how has he not justly endured these things, and indeed but small ones? And since this is so, nevertheless God's mercy, with that same loving-kindness wherewith it had long since foretold it, took care that—according to His Gospel, in which He unceasingly admonished, 'when they have persecuted you in one city, flee into another'—whoever wished to depart and go away might use the very barbarians as his hired servants and defenders. This at that time they themselves offered of their own accord;
and those who could have carried off everything once they had killed everyone instead demanded only a small portion of pay as the wage for their service and for the freight they had conveyed. And this indeed was done by very many. But those who did not believe the Gospel of God, as if defiant—or even if they had not heard it, doubly defiant—did not give place to wrath, and were justly seized and crushed by the wrath that overtook them. And yet, even after this, the barbarians forthwith, abhorring their own swords, turned to the plough, and now cherish the remaining Romans as their allies and friends, so that there are already found among them certain Romans who would rather endure a poor freedom among the barbarians than the anxiety of taxation among the Romans.
And yet, even if the barbarians had been let into Roman territory for this reason alone—that throughout the East and the West the churches of Christ are everywhere being filled with Huns, Suevi, Vandals, and Burgundians, and with countless diverse peoples of believers—the mercy of God would seem worthy of praise and exaltation, since, even at the cost of our own weakening, so many nations were receiving the knowledge of the truth, which assuredly they could not have found except by this occasion. For what loss is it to a Christian who pants after life eternal to be drawn away from this world at any time and in any manner? And what gain is it to a pagan, in the midst of Christians, hardened against the faith, if he prolong his day a little longer, when he is destined to die at some point, and whose conversion is despaired of?
And because the judgments of God are unspeakable, which we can neither wholly know nor expound even of those we do know, let me put it briefly: the chastisement of God the Judge, in whatever way it befall, those who know it justly endure, and those who do not know it justly endure. In the year 1165 from the founding of the City, the emperor Honorius, seeing that, with so many tyrants set against him, nothing could be done against the barbarians, ordered that the tyrants themselves should first be destroyed. To the count Constantius the supreme command of this war was committed. Then at last the commonwealth perceived both what advantage it had at last received in a Roman general, and what ruin it had so far endured, subjected for long ages to barbarian commanders.