The History of Christianity - John S. C. Abbott (bookstand for reading .txt) 📗

their aid to resist the still more dreaded Huns. He allowed his barbarian allies to take possession of all the waste lands of Thrace. Availing themselves of this advantageous base of operations, the treacherous Goths ravaged the whole country to the shores of the Adriatic, menacing even Italy with their arms. They laid siege to both the cities of Adrianople and Constantinople. Terror reigned everywhere. Tears and blood, through man’s demoniac ferocity, deluged this whole world. In an awful battle before the walls of Adrianople, the army of Valens was cut to pieces. Valens himself perished upon the bloody field. How little can we imagine, seated by our peaceful firesides, the dimensions of that wail of misery ascending from a whole army perishing beneath the sabres and the battle-axes of merciless barbarians! This is indeed a lost world. Surely history proves that man is a depraved animal. How happy might this world have been had man been the friend, instead of the foe, of his brother-man!

For twelve years Valentinian was engaged in almost an incessant battle. The Picts and Scots were rushing down upon Britain from the mountains of Caledonia. All along the Rhine and the Danube, tribes of uncouth names and habits were desolating, in plundering bands, every unprotected region. Worn down with care, toil, and sorrow, Valentinian fell a victim to a sudden attack of apoplexy in the year 375, in the fifty-fourth year of his age.

Valentinian had a son, Gratian, who, at the time of his father’s death, was but seventeen years old. He succeeded his father on the throne of the Western empire, without inheriting either his virtues or his energy. Retiring to Paris, the boy-emperor surrendered himself to voluptuous indulgence. Discontent created an insurrection, which was led by Maximus, Governor of Britain. Gratian, abandoned by his troops, fled to Lyons, where he was overtaken and slain.

A Christian general by the name of Theodosius had succeeded Valens in the East. Difficulties had arisen between Theodosius and Maximus. War ensued. Maximus was slain. Valentinian, a mere boy, younger brother of Gratian, was placed upon the throne of the Western empire. The poor child was almost immediately assassinated. Theodosius marched to the West to avenge his death, and assumed the government of the whole united empire of the East and of the West. But he was a sick man, and the hand of death was already upon him: in less than four months he breathed his last at Milan.

Theodosius was a zealous Christian: in character he was one of the purest of men, and was earnestly devoted to the welfare of his realms; but his reign was sullied by intolerance,—doubtless conscientious, but none the less bigoted. He issued severe edicts against those Christians who swerved from the established faith as enunciated by the Council of Nice. He unrelentingly demolished or closed all the temples of paganism. He instituted that office of inquisitors of the faith, which, revived in subsequent centuries, became the fruitful source of so much crime and woe.

It was indeed a dark day, in the year of our Lord 379, when Theodosius ascended the throne. There was no stable government anywhere, no protection from violence. The Roman power, which, oppressive as it had been, was far better than anarchy, was now but a crumbling ruin, which no human energy or skill could rebuild.

As we look back through the gloomy centuries upon these dim, tumultuous scenes, a new vision of appalling grandeur rises before the eye. Alaric—the world-renowned Alaric the Goth—appears in the arena at the head of his fierce legions. Like gaunt and famished beasts of prey, his savage hordes swept over Greece, entered Italy, and besieged Milan. These barbarians were a short, chunky, broad-shouldered race of men, of herculean strength. A contemporary writer thus describes their general aspect:—

“Their high cheek-bones, and small, twinkling eyes, gave them a savage and cruel expression, which was increased by their want of nose; for the only visible appearance of that organ consisted of two holes sunk in the square expanse of their faces.”

Onward, ever onward, rolled this flood of hideous and pitiless foes. While this inundation was sweeping along from the East, another similar flood came surging down from the North: the two torrents, blending, eddied around the walls of Rome. For six hundred years the city of Rome had not been insulted by the presence of a foreign foe.

Theodosius was the child of Christian parents. At the commencement of his reign, he was but nominally a Christian; that is, he was not a pagan, but had intellectually given his assent to the religion of Jesus. He had not, however, at that time, publicly united with the Church. The perils which were menacing the State, and a severe fit of sickness with which he was seized at Thessalonica, seem to have led him to feel the necessity of personal religion. The emperor sent for Ascole, the pastor of the church in Thessalonica, and, having ascertained that he cordially accepted the doctrines of the Council of Nice, received from him the rite of baptism, and thus enrolled himself among the disciples of Jesus. Notwithstanding the faults of the Christian Emperor Theodosius,—faults to be attributed to the times rather than to the individual,—history has pronounced him one of the purest and noblest monarchs who ever occupied a throne.

Upon the death of Theodosius at Milan, the empire was divided between his two sons: Arcadius was crowned in the East, Honorius in the West. The Eastern empire embraced Thrace, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt: the Western empire included Italy, Africa, Gaul, Spain, Britain, and the Danubian provinces. The Western empire was now much the weaker. Rome had ceased to be the metropolis, and enjoyed only the renown of its former greatness. Milan had become the new capital.

Alaric, with his fierce legions, after a short siege of Milan, was driven back. The timid Honorius was so alarmed by the invasion, that, with his court, he retired from Milan to Ravenna. Alaric, at the head of a hundred thousand men, contemptuously passing by Ravenna, commenced the siege of Rome. The walls surrounding the city still remained in their massive strength. Famine compelled the citizens to purchase a temporary peace at the price of the payment of a vast sum of money, and the surrender of many of the leading citizens as hostages.

When the delegation from the Roman senate, with the offer to surrender, was introduced to Alaric, the members of the delegation ventured to state rather menacingly, that, if Alaric refused them honorable terms, he would rouse against him an innumerable people animated by despair. Alaric replied with a scornful laugh,—

“The thicker the grass, the easier it is mown.”

He then assigned the only terms upon which he would retire. He demanded all the gold and silver in the city, whether it were the property of the State or of individuals; then all the rich and precious movables; then all the slaves who had been captured from the barbarians.

“If such, O king! are your demands,” the ministers replied, “what do you intend to leave to us?”

“Your lives,” the conqueror haughtily replied. Still Alaric somewhat abated the rigor of these demands.

There is but little reliance to be placed in barbarian faith. Alaric and his fierce hordes were soon again encamped before the walls of the imperial city. There were forty thousand slaves (white slaves), the victims of Roman rapacity, within the walls. They conspired with the invaders. At midnight there was a servile insurrection: the gates were thrown open, and the clangor of rushing barbarians resounded through the streets.

It is not in the power of human imagination to conceive the horrors of a city sacked at midnight,—a city of more than a million of inhabitants, men, women, and children, at the mercy of a savage foe.189 The slaves were glad of a chance to avenge the wrongs of ages. They were of the same race with their masters. The hour of vengeance had tolled. The Romans had thoroughly instructed them and their barbarian confederates in all the arts of cruelty and lust. God alone can comprehend the scenes which were enacted during that awful night. The most venerable and costly memorials of the past were surrendered to conflagration: large portions of the city were consumed.

For six days the Goths held the metropolis; then, reeling in intoxication, encumbered with spoil, and dragging after them their captives,—the young men to groom their horses; the maidens, daughters of Roman senators and nobles, to till their harems,—they rioted along the Appian Way, and surged over all Southern Italy, giving loose to every depraved desire.

It is thus that God punishes guilty nations. Though sentence against an evil work may not be speedily executed, the hour of recompense is sure to come. For four years the whole of the south of Italy was subject to the barbarians. Roman philosophers had long argued that it was right for the stronger nations to enslave the weaker. The Goths were now the stronger, and the Romans the weaker; and the Romans were compelled to drain to the dregs the cup which their own hands had mingled.

Men of senatorial dignity, and matrons of illustrious birth, became the menial servants of half-naked savages. These burly barbarians stretched their hairy limbs beneath the shade of palm-trees; and young men and maidens born in palaces washed their feet, and presented them Falernian wine in golden goblets.

While Alaric was thus ravaging Italy, the Emperor Honorius was ignominiously besieged behind the walls of Ravenna. The old Roman empire had so far crumbled away, that Italy alone remained even nominally subject to the emperor. Even large portions of Italy were in the hands of the foe. Persia, Egypt, Turkey, Germany, France, Spain, England, all overrun by barbarians, became the cradles of those monarchies which are flourishing or decaying in those regions at the present day.

Alaric the Goth was one of the most remarkable of men. His native ferocity was strangely mitigated by profound respect for Christianity. Many of the Gothic soldiers had also, at least nominally, adopted the Christian faith. When Rome was taken by storm, Alaric exhorted his soldiers to respect the churches as inviolable sanctuaries. A Goth burst into the house of an aged woman who had devoted herself to the service of the Church. Upon his demanding her gold and silver, she conducted him to a closet of massive plate.

“These,” said she, “are consecrated vessels belonging to the Church of St. Peter. If you touch them, the sacrilegious deed will remain upon your conscience.”

The barbarian was overawed, and sent a messenger to inform the king of the treasure he had discovered. Alaric sent an order that the sacred vessels should be immediately transported, under guard, to the church of the apostle.

“From the extremity, perhaps, of the Quirinal Hill to the distant quarters of the Vatican, a numerous detachment of Goths, marching in order of battle through the principal streets, protected with glittering arms the long train of their devout companions, who bore aloft on their heads the sacred vessels of gold and silver; and the martial shouts of the barbarians were mingled with the sound of religious psalmody.”190

Augustine, in his celebrated work entitled “The City of God,” refers with much gratification to this memorable interposition of God in behalf of his Church. Alaric died just as he was entering upon an expedition for the conquest of Syria, having been in possession of Italy for four years.

“The ferocious character of the barbarians,” writes Gibbon, “was displayed in the funeral of a hero whose valor and fortune they celebrated with mournful applause. By the labor of a captive multitude, they forcibly diverted the course of the Busentius, a small river that washes the walls of Consentia. The royal sepulchre, adorned with the splendid spoils and trophies of Rome, was constructed in the vacant bed. The waters were then returned to their natural channel; and the