Christianity and Barbarian Invasions of the Western Roman Empire in the Fifth Century

Vladyslav Nazarchuk

The fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5^th century was a dramatic event in world history. The empire—already weakened at that time through depopulation, disease, abusive government, and civil war¹—was subjected in the West to invasions by various Germanic and Hunnic peoples, collectively termed “barbarians” by the Romans, and could not effectively resist. By 476 (the year when the Roman senate officially gave up its claims for a Western emperor, and Italy became a province of the Eastern Roman Empire), all the former Western imperial provinces had been conquered by peoples such as the Goths, Vandals, Franks, Burgundians, and Angles and Saxons; Rome itself had been sacked multiple times.² At the same time, the 5^th century was still a time of transition in Roman society from paganism to Christianity, albeit a later one when Christianity already had the upper hand.

Therefore, this essay seeks to understand the role in which Christianity found itself as Western Roman society faced the barbarian invasions during the 5^th century. Various aspects will be considered: the public perception of religion in relation to war, the real-world impact of Christian clergy in several of the military conflicts, and the retrospective Christian understanding of these conflicts. This will be accomplished by analyzing (1) the pagan and Christian mindsets in the years leading into the 5^th century, (2) the sack of Rome of 410, and (3) the Hunnic invasion of Gaul.

Pagan and Christian Mindsets

The pagan view of the role of religion in the Roman state, in the years leading into the 5^th century, makes a clear appearance in the “Memorial of Symmachus”—a speech given by Symmachus (d. 402), senator and prefect of the city of Rome, before the emperor Valentinian II (d. 392), in around 384. Symmachus was the representative of the pagan party of the Roman senate, whose immediate objective was to petition Valentinian to repeal the laws of his predecessor, the emperor Gratian (d. 383), concerning the removal of the altar of Victory from the Senate house and the confiscation of the endowments of sacred colleges of Rome (cults of the Roman pagan gods).³ Although Symmachus’ appeal was unsuccessful, his speech is significant as the “last formal and public protest of the proscribed faith,”⁴ that is, an appeal to paganism in a period of increasing anti-pagan legislation within the empire.

In his speech, Symmachus plainly attributes Rome’s former military successes and prosperity to the pagan religion: “This worship subdued the world to my [Rome’s] laws, these sacred rites repelled Hannibal from the walls, and the Senones from the capital.”⁵ His audience is clearly sensitive to the barbarian military threat, when he argues, “Who is so friendly with the barbarians as not to require an Altar of Victory?”⁶ Symmachus argues that a great famine across the Western Roman Empire which followed Gratian’s anti-pagan decrees, was evidence of the gods’ displeasure; and in general, that “from deeds of this kind have arisen all the misfortunes of the Roman race.”⁷

From the points of argumentation which Symmachus uses in his speech, it is evident that the pagan party of the Roman Senate, and likely the pagan population of the empire at large, believed that a principal goal of the state religion was to provide for the physical prosperity of the state, and in particular to secure military success—especially as a force of protection in moments of crisis, as Symmachus demonstrates when he credits paganism with the successful defense against Hannibal. The new state religion of Christianity would have been subjected to the same “proof from advantage,”⁸ to which Symmachus had subjected paganism, by the empire’s citizens: they would have expected the Church to bring earthly benefits to the empire, and help defend them from the invading barbarians.

This pagan mindset is also seen in the use of pagan magic and divination in military matters. A striking example of this is occurred in Rome in 408, which at the time was threatened by an approaching army of Visigoths under the chieftain Alaric (d. 411). A group of Tuscan pagan magicians offered to Pompeianus (d. 409), the prefect of Rome, to conduct a ritual to save the city, citing their previous success in calling down lightning around the walls of another town under siege by Alaric, dispersing his troops. Pompeianus seriously considered the proposition, and even consulted Pope Innocent I (d. 417) about the offer. Innocent, not wanting to anger the Roman public who was evidently seeking safety from the barbarians by any means, even allowed the pagan ritual to proceed, with the condition that it be performed secretly.⁹

At the same time, Christianity, too, had connections with Roman military history, originating from the conversion of the emperor Constantine I (d. 337). Prior to the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (312) against the emperor Maxentius (d. 312), Contantine saw a vision of the Cross with the inscription “By this sign conquer.” After this, Constantine made the labarum bearing the initials ‘XP’ to be the standard of his army, and was victorious in the battle.¹⁰ Constantine, and contemporary Christians like the historian Eusebius (d. 339), evidently attributed his victory over Maxentius directly to God. When describing the battle, Eusebius writes that “God came to their aid in a most marvelous way, so that at Rome Maxentius fell at the hands of Constantine,” and that “God Himself, as it were dragged the tyrant with chains a long way from the city gates.”¹¹ Interestingly, Eusebius compares the drowning of Maxentius in the Tiber river to the Biblical drowning of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea,¹² in effect presenting Constantine’s victory as part of a centuries-old tradition. Eusebius has the same perspective when he describes Licinius’ (d. 325) victory over Maximin (d. 313), in that Maximin “found himself deprived of God’s assistance, and it was to his rival … that the one and only God of all Himself assigned the victory.”¹³

It can therefore be concluded that, likely, in the years leading into the 5^th century, both the Christian and pagan citizens of the empire had a somewhat similar view of their respective religions in the context of war. The pagans believed that Roman paganism and its associated practices have given the empire the victory and domination over its enemies which it had enjoyed until recently; they would therefore have judged the new state religion, Christianity, according to the same standard. Christians, too, would have had reason to believe that God would always favor an Orthodox Christian army over a pagan or heretic one. Since the enemies arrayed against the Western Roman Empire at that time were either pagan or Arian Christian, Roman Christians would have expected God to protect them from these barbarians. All this sets up the public frame of mind for how the key military events during the barbarian invasions of the 5^th century would be perceived. The next section of the essay will therefore look at the involvement of Christianity in the battles around the city of Rome, and work to understand the role into which the Church was growing as a result—a role made vacant by the increasingly-outlawed practice of paganism.

Christianity during the Sack of Rome

One of the most critical events during the fall of the Roman Empire in the West was the sack of Rome by the Visigoths under Alaric, in 410. Alaric with his army previously came up to the gates of Rome in 409 (the first time a foreign enemy had reached Rome in six hundred years), but withdrew to Etruria after Rome paid a hefty ransom.¹⁴ After Alaric’s request for land from the emperor Honorius was denied, Alaric returned to Rome, and his warriors plundered the city for six days. However, according to Myers, “Alaric commanded his soldiers to respect the lives of the people, and to leave untouched the treasures of the Christian churches,”¹⁵ which is reasonable because Alaric was also a Christian.

The sack of Rome of 410 shocked both Christians and pagans within the Roman empire; both tried to understand and interpret the event to the benefit of their own religion. While Symmachus’ argument of Rome’s decline being caused by its abandonment of paganism used as evidence a recent famine, pagans now had a much greater calamity to support their claims. On the other side, some Christians tried to provide an opposite interpretation of history. One example is the History Against the Pagans, written by Orosius (d. 420), a Spanish priest who, fleeing the invasions of the Suebi and Vandals of his native land, arrived in North Africa in around 414. There, he was engaged by St. Augustine (d. 430), theologian and Bishop of Hippo Regius in North Africa, to provide a historical refutation to the pagan claim.¹⁶

Accordingly, Orosius argues that the Roman empire, and the world in general, is milder, more peaceful, and less vicious after the coming of Christ, by recounting the terrible battles, famines, and natural disasters which befell the pagan nations in the past. Dill notes that Orosius’ method is completely unhistorical: he selectively discusses calamities from the pagan past while ignoring the more prosperous times, treats legends as historical fact, and downplays the evils in the present state of the empire.¹⁷ Orosius presents the sack of Rome as merely a local event, affecting only “a single corner of a world which is enjoying generally a secure tranquility”¹⁸—he evidently did not foresee that by the second half of the 5^th century, almost all former territory of the Western Roman Empire would be transformed into barbarian kingdoms. In general, this method of debate between pagans and Christians during this time period—of trying to construct a narrative from historical events to demonstrate the earthly benefits of either religion—was difficult to do objectively, and likely was not very convincing for either side.

A more impactful Christian response to the sack of Rome was the City of God, written by Augustine himself. Although composed over many years, the first few books of the City of God were written in 413, in response to refugees from Rome fleeing to North Africa in 410 after the sack.¹⁹ As bishop, Augustine needed to respond to the pagan accusation of these refugees that Christianity was responsible for the sack of Rome, and for the decline of the Roman Empire in general.

In City of God, Augustine expounds at length on the mercy which Alaric showed to Christians during the sack. Augustine reports that

“The sacred places of the martyrs and the basilicas of the apostles bear witness to this, for in the sack of Rome they afforded shelter to fugitives, both Christian and pagan. The bloodthirsty enemy raged thus far, but here the frenzy of butchery was checked; to these refuges the merciful among the enemy conveyed those whom they had spared outside, to save them from encountering foes who had no such pity.”²⁰

Thus, many pagans were able to save their lives by “passing themselves off as Christ’s servants”²¹ or seeking shelter in Christian churches, and the churches themselves became places to which the Goths would lead Romans to spare them from the pillage. Augustine underscores the singularity of this event when he points out that showing mercy for the sake of religion or its temples was unprecedented in history, and deviated from the conventions of war, both Roman and otherwise.²² In addition, Augustine uses the sack of Rome as an argument against the pagan gods, in that the Roman gods were unable to protect Rome in this case, much like they could not protect Troy during the Trojan War.²³

From looking at the specific points which Augustine focuses on in his arguments against the pagan Roman refugees, it is again evident that, for the average citizen of the Roman empire, a primary expectation of religion was to protect, in a real and physical sense, the lives and property of its followers. The sack of Rome was thus crucial for Augustine, because during it, Christianity was able to afford this physical protection against the barbarians—for both Christians and pagans—which neither the Roman armies nor the pagan religion could provide at that time.

Augustine, however, goes beyond this simplistic view of religion as a guarantor of military protection, by providing a theological justification for suffering in general. Augustine argues that God’s providence allows the same suffering to happen to both good and evil men, but for different reasons: “the violence which assails good men to test them, to cleanse and purify them, effects in the wicked their condemnation, ruin, and annihilation.”²⁴ He goes on to discuss the exact sufferings which contemporary Western Romans would have been faced with as a result of barbarian invasions—loss of property, death, and rape—and shows that all of them can be used by God for the benefit of men. Losing one’s property teaches one not to be attached to earthly riches; the threat of death forces one to think about “their destination after dying”²⁵; the loss of chastity corrects the pride and love of praise one may have acquired as a result of living a chaste life. In short, he asks the pagans to “observe whether any disaster has happened to the faithful and religious which did not turn out for their good.”²⁶

Augustine’s argument is essentially one of theodicy—justification for why a benevolent and omnipotent God would allow evil to exist— which simply side-steps the issue raised by the pagans that Christianity has led to a weaker Roman empire. Even when the Christian God does not protect Roman citizens from barbarian disasters—although He did protect many of them during the sack of Rome—it can be interpreted not as a disaster, but as a cure. More importantly, Augustine presents the Church as a provider of “spiritual protection” against the barbarian invaders, which in effect is even better than any physical protection the Roman armies or gods could offer. The things which a Roman Christian acquires—spiritual riches, stored with Christ as “the most faithful and unconquerable guardian of treasure”²⁷; eternal life; and interior chastity of the heart, which “is not a treasure which can be stolen without the mind’s consent”²⁸—all cannot, in any way, be stolen by the barbarian invaders. Although Augustine presents these as theological arguments applicable generally, at the same time it is evident that he is extremely sensitive to the principal concerns held by his fellow Western Romans during this time of crisis.

Christianity, in fact, contributed to the defense of the city of Rome twice more during the 5^th century. In 452, the Huns, under Attila (d. 453), crossed the Alps, and threatened Rome. Leo I (d. 461), Pope of Rome, famously led an embassy into Attila’s camp, and persuaded Attila to spare the city, citing as a warning the fact that Alaric died shortly after himself sacking Rome in 410. Unlike Alaric, Attila was a pagan, but evidently was impressed by Leo’s authority and rhetoric (which was accompanied by a bribe of gold from the emperor Valentinian III), and withdrew back across the Alps.²⁹ As during the sack of Rome in 410, Christianity was again able to compensate for the inability of the Roman military to protect the city from barbarians, and save the lives of its residents.

Rome was threatened again in 455, this time by the Vandals under the king Geiseric (d. 477), who sailed up the Tiber river from his kingdom in North Africa. Once again, Leo used his Christian authority to negotiate on behalf of the city, and was able to secure from Geiseric (an Arian Christian like Alaric) the lives of the city’s residents. However, Leo was not able to save the residents’ property, and the Vandals pillaged Rome for fourteen days. In particular, the Vandals took many of the Roman war trophies which were collected in the city’s pagan temples, which by this time were already closed to pagan worship.³⁰ Still, much like during the sack of Rome in 410, Christianity in effect saved the lives of many Romans from the barbarians.

Christianity in the Hunnic Invasion of Gaul

Another fruitful frontier for understanding the Christian response to the barbarian invasions are the events surrounding Attila’s invasion of Gaul, which took place right before his assault on the city of Rome (see above). In 451, around seven hundred thousand of Attila’s Hunnic warriors crossed the Rhine into Gaul, and ravaged the area. At the Battle of Châlons in the same year, they were met and defeated by the Roman general Aetius (d. 454) together with his allies: the Visigoths, the Franks, and the Burgundians; Attila and his remaining warriors escaped back across the Rhine.³¹ At this point in time, the Franks were still mainly pagan (their conversion to Christianity only happened in 496 with the baptism of Clovis I), so Christianity cannot be the main cause for the unlikely alliance between the Romans and the Germanic tribes—likely, the Huns were seen by both Romans and Germans as a more dangerous enemy than they saw each other.

Still, the Church has memory of several miracles associated with Attila’s invasion, as recorded in the History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours (d. 593/4), historian and Bishop of Tours in Gaul. First, Gregory recounts an episode when Aravatius (d. 384), Bishop of Tongres, compelled by rumors that the Huns were planning to invade Gaul, journeyed to Rome to pray at the tomb of the apostle Peter, in the hope that “God in his pity should not permit this unworthy and unbelieving race to enter Gaul.”³² Without the intercession of Peter, Aravatius felt that his prayer would not be answered by God “because of the sins of the people.”³³ Aravatius miraculously received the following answer from Peter: “It is decreed most clearly by God in His wisdom that the Huns will invade Gaul and that they will devastate that country like some great tornado,”³⁴ and is told to prepare for his own death instead.

This theodicean perspective with which Gregory sees the Hunnic invasion recalls Augustine’s own theological justifications of such barbarian invasions in the City of God. The Huns were allowed to invade Gaul not because the Christian God was powerless to stop them (unlike the pagan gods of the Roman past), but because such a calamity was a just punishment for the sins of the people, and thus ultimately a good and wise act of God. The same perspective is reflected in Gregory’s account of the razing of Metz by the Huns in the course of their invasion. Gregory writes that, before the Huns approached the town, one of the faithful saw a vision of St. Stephen the Levite discussing the destruction of the city with the apostles Peter and Paul. Stephen petitions the apostles to save the town, but they reply that

“As for the town, we can do nothing, for the judgment of God has already been passed on it. The evil-doing of the inhabitants has reached such a point that the reverberation of their wickedness has already come to God’s ears. The town must therefore be burnt to the ground.”³⁵

Again, the destruction of Metz is not a failure of the Christian religion as Roman pagans would have interpreted it, but an intentional and just act of God.

God, however, finally shows favor to the Christians during the Battle of Châlons. Gregory relates that, as the Huns were besieging the city of Orleans, Anianus (d. 453), bishop of the city, together with the inhabitants fervently prayed to God to give protection to the city. As a result, Aetius’ army arrived just in time to relieve the siege and save the inhabitants, and Gregory writes that “Orleans was thus saved by the prayers of its saintly Bishop.”³⁶ The Huns then withdrew and set up for battle in the nearby plain of Moirey, and Aetius attacked them along with his Germanic allies. Meanwhile, Gregory relates that the wife of Aetius, back in Rome, fervently prayed in the churches of the Apostles for Aetius to come home safe. In yet another vision, received in the night by a drunken man who was accidentally locked in the church of St. Peter in Rome, the apostles Peter and Paul discussed these prayers of Aetius’ wife, with Peter saying “God in His wisdom has decreed otherwise, but nevertheless I have obtained this immense concession that Aetius shall not be killed.”³⁷ As a result, Aetius survived the battle and was victorious. Gregory concludes that “No one has any doubt that the army of the Huns was really routed by the prayers of the Bishop about whom I have told you,”³⁸ that is, Anianus, Bishop of Orleans.

Thus, Gregory’s account of the Hunnic invasion, written from an obvious Christian perspective, clearly reveals two general themes. The first, as seen in the bishops Aravatius and Anianus, is the fundamentally patriotic feeling of the Christian clergy, who were evidently on the side of the Romans within their dioceses against the barbarians. These bishops fervently pray for the protection of their people from the military threat, and, sometimes, are able to entreat God to send miraculous help and victory. The second is the theodicy of the invasions themselves, which, rather than invalidating the Christian religion as a whole, are used by God as an intentional tool of judgment and correction.

Conclusion

The above survey of several of the key events relating to the barbarian invasions of the 5^th century in the Western Roman Empire reveals two distinct, but related, aspects of the role of Christianity in war. The first is the more mundane and practical aspect of the ameliorating impact of Christian clergy and of the Christian mindsets of the combatants on the course of events. From the examples of Alaric’s mercy to the Christians of Rome in 410, and from two of Pope Leo I’s successful negotiations on behalf of Rome, it is evident that the Church was, in some cases, able to offer the protection to the citizens of the empire which the Roman army, at that time, could no longer offer.

The second aspect is the supernatural help of the Christian God during these military conflicts. Whether the miracles and judgments of God happened exactly as they were described in the historical interpretations of Augustine and Gregory of Tours is a matter of faith; but the resulting place of Christianity in the public consciousness is a historical fact. The straightforward view of pagans like Symmachus was that the Roman pagan religion gives military victory over and protection against Rome’s enemies; this view analogously appears in Christian form in the historiography of Eusebius and in some parts of Gregory of Tours’ account of the Hunnic invasion. However, the general course of the 5^th century, during which almost all former territories of the Western Roman Empire were lost to the barbarians, must have shown the limits of this way of thinking, and necessitated the Church to develop a different way of interpreting the recent Roman failures.

This new interpretation, as it appears in the writings of Augustine and Gregory of Tours, it essentially one of theodicy—a Christian justification for the existence of evil in the world. God intentionally allowed the Western Roman Empire to be invaded, and for its citizens to suffer, for the sake of administering justice and correcting the sins of the people—ultimately, a benevolent and wise act. Thereby, the Church provided a dual comfort and assurance to Roman Christians in these times of trouble. On the one hand, Christians would understand that the suffering they experienced did not disprove their faith, but could still be understood within a theological framework of God’s omnipotence and benevolence. And on the other hand, through the teachings of Augustine, Christians could instead redirect their focus onto the heavenly realm which the barbarians could not invade, and gather a type of treasure which the barbarians would never be able to steal.