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After the Visigoths besieged and departed from Rome, a storm frustrated their plans to cross from southern Italy into North Africa. The Visigoth leader, Alaric, died, and instead of trying to cross the Mediterranean the Visigoths journeyed north into southwestern Gaul, spreading what to some appeared to be God's punishment of Rome. From his palace in Ravenna, the Roman emperor in the west, Honorius, felt obliged to make peace with the Visigoths. His sister, Placidia, married their new leader, Atauf. And, in 418, the Visigoths were granted a legal domain in southwestern Gaul. The Visigoths made Toulouse their capital, and they established themselves as protectors of those who were there when they arrived. In accord with Roman tradition, as protectors the Visigoths had the right to possess from one-third to two-thirds of the land or the produce from those lands. Local people who owned large tracts of land lost much of it to the Visigoths, while most who came under Visigoth rule had little land to lose.
The Visigoths were awed by Roman civilization. They adopted local methods of agriculture and the Arian branch of Christianity. They began to learn Latin, and they administered their territory as the Romans had, using local Roman bureaucrats. Those who had been there before the Visigoths (the Gallo-Romans) began adopting Germanic ways. They wanted to belong. Some of them began wearing Visigoth trousers instead of the Roman toga. Some wore the jewelry worn by Visigoths, and they imitated the rougher manners of the Visigoths.
The Visigoths shared Gaul with other Germans: the Franks, who occupied Gaul's extreme northeast, and the Alemanni, who moved through central Gaul to the extreme south, along the Mediterranean coast near Spain. Much of the rest of Gaul, especially in the northwest, remained Roman. And the Visigoths expanded through southern Gaul and into Spain, where they found the Vandals - Germans who had advanced into Spain in 409.
With the Vandals were some local people who had joined their ranks. Pushed on by the Visigoths, they decided to move across the Strait of Gibraltar to North Africa, known for its rich farmlands of wheat. And, in 429, about 80,000 of them made the crossing.
The Vandals were Arian Christians like the Visigoths, and they saw God as on their side. The Christians of North Africa thought otherwise, but God did not appear to be on their side either. Their opposition to the Vandal invasion was weak. North Africa was politically and socially fragmented. Military units in North Africa were few, scattered and unpopular. Another miracle was needed, but none was forthcoming. The Vandals easily overran the coast of Mauritania and began moving eastward along the coast of Numidia. The Vandals banished the Trinity worshiping clergy and converted churches to Arian worship. Where the Vandals found resistance and suffered dead they responded by looting, sacking and destroying the offending cities or razing country villas to the ground.
Many fled from the Vandals to Augustine's city: Hippo. The Vandals came upon Hippo and surrounded it, their fleet of ships dominating waters off Hippo's coast. Hippo was fortified, and for months the Vandals remained outside the city's walls. Augustine's church became packed with the demoralized remnants of Roman society. Men who had lived in great affluence now mingled with the beggars who had envied them. They were distressed at what to them appeared to be the collapse of the empire. Believing that death might be near, despite their belief in life after death many realized their love for life.
In the third month of the Vandal's siege, Augustine's health failed, and he became bedridden. He believed in miracles, but no miracle came to rescue his people. He died on August 24, 430. Months later the Vandals overran and burned Hippo. In the happenstance of the burning and looting, Augustine's writings remained untouched by the flames, which for some was the miracle that they wished to see.
The Vandals then settled down in North Africa and consolidated their rule. Within twenty years they built up their navy and began terrorizing shipping in the Western Mediterranean. And they would soon extend their rule to Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearic Islands, between Spain and Sardinia.
Honorius died of dropsy in 423. Rule in the west passed to the six-year-old son of his sister Placidia, who took title Valentinian III. Placidia put her armies under the command one of the few remaining Roman military leaders: Aetius. Aetius lacked money for recruiting a greater army, but against the invaders he used diplomacy. He hoped to keep the invaders divided. He knew the Huns and the Visigoths, having on different occasions been their hostage. According to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Aetius soothed the passions, consulted the prejudices and balanced the interests of those "barbarians" who occupied the Western provinces.
From the Visigoths in Gaul, Aetius recovered Arles and Narbonne. He defended northern Gaul against the Salian Franks. In 437 he defeated an attempt by more Burgundian Germans to push into Gaul around the Rhine River, and in 443 Aetius settled the Burgundians into a federated state southwest of Basel, in Switzerland.
Meanwhile, disorders continued among local peoples in Gaul and Spain. Roman citizens in Gaul and Spain did not identify with Rome to the extent that Romanized Italians did, and many preferred poverty among the invaders to rule by Roman governors. A Christian priest from Gaul named Salvian wrote a work called On the Government of God, a work describing the poor of Gaul as being robbed and widows groaning, "so that even persons of good birth, who had enjoyed a liberal education" were seeking refuge with the Germans. Salvian praised the virtues of the Germans and wrote that Roman citizenship was now shunned and thought "almost abhorrent." In Gaul, the homeless and others joined gangs of brigands. Rural discontent merged with Christian radicalism. Celtic nationalism re-surfaced. In Spain and Gaul serious risings occurred against Roman rule. And, with an army of Germanic mercenaries and Huns, Aetius suppressed them.
A Hun chieftain named Roua had helped Aetius against the Burgundians. Roua had created a unity of sorts among the Hun tribes. He ruled over an empire in Eastern Europe that extended from the Volga River to the Danube and as for north as the Baltic Sea. When Roua died in 435 his rule passed to his two nephews, who began ruling jointly. The stronger of these two would be known as Attila the Hun.
With the Roman Empire as weak as it was, Attila and his brother were the most powerful men in Europe. A peace treaty between the Huns and the emperor of the east, Theodosius II, included a payment of subsidies to the Huns of seven hundred pounds of gold each year. In 441, Theodosius stopped these payments. The Huns retaliated by launching an assault across the Danube River into Illyricum, razing a number of cities, including Belgrade and Sophia. Attila devastated the entire region between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, conquering numerous Germans called Ostrogoths (formerly occupying the Crimea) and forcing them to join his army. The Huns attacked Constantinople, but they were unable to break through its great walls. They continued their attacks in neighboring areas, until Theodosius II agreed to renew his payments to them, including back payments:2,100 pounds of gold annually.
Joint military rule with one's brother was not always a good arrangement - as Caracalla's brother had discovered - and this proved to be the case for Attila's brother. In 445, Attila murdered him and began ruling alone. A couple of years later Attila pushed into Greece, but the empire's army stopped him at Thermopylae. Attila renegotiated a peace treaty with Theodosius II.
In 450, Theodosius II died and a soldier named Marcian became emperor of the east. Marcian was married to Theodosius' sister, which did not impress the emperor in the west, Valentinian III (now thirty-two). Valentinian refused to recognize Marcian, and the lack of cooperation between the two emperors further weakened the empire. Marcian wished to avoid costly military ventures, and when the western empire asked him for help against an invasion into Italy by the Vandals, Marcian refused. Marcian, moreover, stopped paying Attila his annual subsidy, hoping this would drive Attila to the west.
In the west, Valentinian denied his strong-willed sister, Honoria, the marriage she wished, and she plotted with her lover to overthrow Valentinian. The plot was discovered, Honoria's lover was executed, and Honoria faced being forced to marry someone who could control her. She appealed to a power greater than Valentinian: Attila. She sent him her ring. Attila took it as a proposal of marriage. He claimed Honoria as his, and he claimed half of the Western Empire as her dowry.
Attila allied himself with the Franks and Vandals, and in 451 he crossed the Rhine into Gaul with his army. He sacked cities and devastated lands along the channel coast. Aetius and the Visigoths joined forces against Attila, and in one of history's greatest battles (at an unknown location in Gaul) they served Attila his first defeat. Attila suffered great losses - an estimated 175,000 to 300,000 of his warriors killed - and he retreated east of the Rhine.
The following year, after partially recovering from his defeat, Attila invaded Italy - where there were no Visigoths, Franks or Burgundians to combat him. He overran Milan and other cities and drove an Italian people called Veneti to seek refuge on a group of islands that were to become the city of Venice. Valentinian fled from his palace in Ravenna to Rome, and he sent the Bishop of Rome (Pope Leo I) and two Roman senators to meet with Attila. Christian legend has it that the Pope's presence awed Attila and that the ghosts of Peter and Paul appeared to Attila and terrified him. A more likely reason for Attila's withdrawal was that plague had broken out among his men, that his supply of food was running out, and that military help for Valentinian was arriving from the eastern half of the empire. Attila returned to what is now Hungary, and the following year he died there, reportedly as the result of a burst artery. And without Attila's leadership, the collection of peoples that had made up his empire became disunited.
While the western half of the Roman Empire was being overrun, Christian bishops continued their dispute over a controversy about the nature of Jesus Christ. The Gospels described Jesus as human insofar as he had wept, hungered, thirsted and demonstrated a lack of omniscience - characteristics considered contrary to godliness. The bishop of Constantinople, Nestorius, thought it his duty as Church leader to resolve the issue. He concluded that Jesus had a dual nature, that he had a divine nature and a human nature, which were separate but loosely connected. And he believed that Mary, the mother of Jesus, had given birth to the human Jesus and therefore could not be called "The Mother of God."
The question of Jesus' nature was combined with rivalries over prestige and power between the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Constantinople. The bishop of Rome, Leo I, claimed he was chairman over the entire Church, and he supported his claim with a geographical argument: that Rome was where Peter had worshiped and died. Leo claimed that Peter was the highest of the apostles, that he was the rock on which God had built his church and that the bishops of Rome were Peter's successors as supreme rulers and teachers within the Church.
The bishop of Alexandria, Cyril, was jealous of the power of the bishop of Constantinople, and he attacked Nestorius not only for his views about Jesus and Mary but also for extending hospitality to Pelagians. Cyril cemented local alliances and appealed to the emperors in the East and West. This resulted in the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus in 431. The Council voted to depose Nestorius from his position as Patriarch of Constantinople. Nestorius retired to his monastery near Antioch, and he was soon banished to Upper Egypt.
To settle the debate over the nature of Jesus, a Fourth Ecumenical Council met at Chalcedon in the autumn of 451. The bishop of Rome, Leo I, claimed that Jesus Christ had two natures, divine and human, but was one distinct substance. The Council upheld his view, defeating those who still believed Nestorius' version and defeating those Christians called Monophysites, who believed that Jesus Christ had but one composite nature. Leo's supporters at the meeting were jubilant and are said to have announced that it had been Peter who had spoken through Leo. But Leo also lost at the Council: the Council recognized the bishop of Constantinople as having equal authority with the bishop of Rome on the grounds that Constantinople was the New Rome as had been proclaimed by Constantine.
Roman military legions evacuated Britain in the late 300s and early 400s. In Roman-ruled Britain many had favored everything Roman. Townspeople spoke Latin, drank wine, wore the Roman toga and enjoyed Roman baths and dinner parties. But around two-thirds of the people lived outside of the towns, spoke no Latin and worshiped Celtic gods - in a country that was still half forest, shrub and marshy wasteland. And with the withdrawal of the Roman military, Celtic nationalism arose. Power passed to local, Celtic military leaders and Celtic aristocrats. These aristocrats supported a Celtic warrior named Vortigern (Vortiger, or Vortigen) - a Christian of Pelagian persuasion. Around the year 425 Vortigern began extending his influence, and he became the strongest force in Britain, ruling from Wales to the channel coast in the south. Pelagian Christians spread their influence, while orthodox Catholics in Britain held their ground and remained in contact with church leadership on the continent.
In the 400s, a tribe from Ireland called Scots, or Scottie, with others from Ireland. were migrating across water to what today is called Wales and to the north of Hadrian's Wall, today called Scotland. Vortigern defeated those Scots who attacked England from enclaves in Wales, and he battled the Picts, who attacked England from north of Hadrian's Wall. For help against the Picts, Vortigern turned to Anglo-Saxons who had settled along England's east coast. He gave the Anglo-Saxons more land and a treaty, and for eight years the Anglo-Saxons fought the Picts according to their treaty obligations, and the Anglo-Saxons defeated the Pict invaders. Then negotiations over Vortigern's payment to the Anglo-Saxons broke down, and in 442 the Anglo-Saxons attacked Vortigern's army. The result was a terrible but indecisive battle at Aylesford, in 457, about forty miles northwest of London, and after this battle the Anglo-Saxons continued a campaign of pillage and slaughter against the Celts.
Then came the greatest series of Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain to date, as Angles, Jutes and Saxons on Europe's continent were running from the Huns. Vortigern's power evaporated. But unlike the people in Gaul and Spain (who were passive or accepted the presence of German authority) local Britons felt they had much at stake and vigorously resisted invasion. War between the Britons and the invaders continued with the passing of years. Trade and markets broke down. Slaves escaped, and estates were left in ruin. Those towns that were too well-fortified for the invaders and had water became places of refuge, while other towns declined with their supply of food. With England weakened by war, the Picts renewed their invasions southward across Hadrian's wall. And the Anglo-Saxons continued their forays westward, massacring and pillaging their way to the sea that separates Britain from Ireland, while the Celtic Britons fled into the hills, or into Spain, or across the channel to Gaul.
Becoming powerful short of absolute power could be dangerous, and it was for Aetius - as it had been for Stilicho. Aetius' son was to marry the emperor's daughter, and, like Stilicho before him, Aetius became the victim of rumors and palace intrigue. Valentinian III was told that if he did not strike at Aetius first, Aetius would destroy him. When Aetius appeared before Valentinian to claim the emperor's daughter for his son, Valentinian accused him of treason, jumped from his throne and killed the defenseless man with his sword.
Six months later, two men who had been Aetius' retainers retaliated by assassinating Valentinian. Valentinian had fathered no son, and a scheming aristocrat seized the throne. Within a few months, as invading Vandals were again in Italy and approaching Rome, a mob in Rome killed the upstart. The emperor in the east, Marcian, refused to help defend Rome from the Vandals. Rome was plundered for a second time in the century, and after nineteen days the Vandals sailed away with thousands of prisoners, including Valentinian's widow and his two daughters.
Power in the western half of the empire fell to the commander of what was left of west's armies. This was Ricimer, a German and an Aryan Christian, who, according to Roman law, could not become emperor. But Ricimer was able to appoint emperors to rule under him. In 457, he appointed Majorian emperor. Majorian moved to stop abuses in tax collecting and oppression in the provinces, but he lost 300 ships to the Vandals off the coast of Spain, and after four years in office Ricimer removed him as emperor and had him executed. Ricimer appointed as emperor a member of the royal family from the east: Anthemius. After a campaign led by Ricimer against the Vandals failed, Ricimer and Anthemius quarreled, and, like Majorian, Anthemius was put to death.
Ricimer then died of a disease. The emperor of the eastern half of the empire, Leo I (not to be confused with the Bishop of Rome), appointed an emperor for the west, Nepos, and sent him with an army into the west. A military commander in the west, Orestes - a Roman from Pannonia - drove Nepos into exile. And Orestes appointed his son, Romulus, as emperor.
In 476, a commander in the Roman military, Odoacer, whose troops were mostly Ostrogoths, demanded grants of land for his troops and demanded the same federal status for Ostrogoths that others Germans had won. When his demands were rejected, he and his army seized Orestes and Romulus. He had Orestes executed, but he took pity on Romulus, whose beauty he admired, and he sent Romulus into retirement with a pension. Romulus was the last of the Roman emperors in the West, and Odoacer, who is believed to have been a member of the tribe of Scyrri, was the first "barbarian" to begin ruling Italy.
The emperor in the east, Zeno, refused to recognize Odoacer, and he sent an Ostrogoth army against him. The army, led by an Ostrogoth tribal chief, Theodoric, crossed the Alps in the year 488 and arrived in northern Italy in late August the following year. Theodoric's army confronted Odoacer's army - Ostrogoths against Ostrogoths, Arian Christians against Arian Christians. Tribal cohesion was stronger among Theodoric's people than among Odoacer's, and during four years of fighting Theodoric wore down Odoacer's forces. While Theodoric was besieging the capital city, Ravenna, a truce was called and the two leaders met. Odoacer and Theodoric agreed to divide the rule of Italy between them. It was another sharing of power that was not to succeed. At a banquet at the emperor's palace, Theodoric killed Odoacer, and Theodoric's troops killed all of Odoacer's relatives and cut down Odoacer's troops wherever they could find them.
Theodoric assumed the title of king of Italy, and, to the relief of the other Germanic tribes within the western half of the empire, he appeared content to conquer no territory in their direction. Theodoric left administrative posts in the hands of experienced Roman aristocrats, and he respected Italy's aristocracy in general. He promoted agriculture and commerce. He tolerated various differences among Christians. Uninterested in metaphysics, he saw himself as the protector of the Trinity believing Christians as well as Arian Christians. He recognized the dignity and position of the Bishop of Rome. And the Church of Rome allied itself with Theodoric's rule. Like Constantine the Great, Theodoric intervened in disputes within the Church, and he was recognized by the Church of Rome as having this authority despite his being an Arian Christian.
The Franks occupied an area north of Paris, around the Rhine River, and like the Visigoths and the Burgundians they had been federated into the Roman Empire. The Franks enjoyed singing about their past heroes, and they had many gods and were ruled by a royal family that claimed descent from the gods. When their king died in 481, he was succeeded by his fifteen-year-old son: Clovis. When Clovis was twenty he moved with his army southward and west against other Franks, believing in himself and that he had the help of the gods. He won battles and extended his rule all the way to the river Seine. Then, intermittently, he fought more wars and enlarged his territory, assassinating, and plundering when he could, including Catholic churches.
Clovis' gains made him feared in neighboring kingdoms. An envoy that Clovis sent to the king of Burgundy told Clovis of the king's exceptionally attractive and graceful granddaughter - Clotilda. Clovis sent a representative to the king asking to marry Clotilda, and the king was afraid to refuse.
Clotilda was Catholic. A hundred years later, a Catholic historian, Gregory of Tours, would write that three years after Clovis and Clotilda married, Frankish people fought a major battle near what is now Bonn, Germany, against invading Alemanni Germans. According to some modern historians, the Franks who fought the Alemanni Germans were led not by Clovis but by a king called Siegebert. At any rate, Gregory of Tours described Clovis' forces as suffering during the battle against the Alemanni and Clovis as calling on his gods for help. But no help was forthcoming. Then, according to Gregory, Clovis "lifted his eyes up to heaven" and, "moved to tears," said:
Jesus Christ, Clotilda proclaims you the living God. You are said to give aid to those in need and to grant victory to those who have hope in You.
According to Gregory, Clovis told Christ that if He helped him he would have himself baptized in His name, and the battle then turned in Clovis' favor and Clovis defeated the Alemanni. Jesus had apparently taken an interest in Clovis' expansions and had seen in Clovis an agent in his cause. Jesus, according to Gregory, had become a god of war - as with the pagan Constantine almost two hundred years before.
Clovis continued to war for more territory and extended his rule as far south as Switzerland, to what is now the city of Basel, on the Rhine River just inside Switzerland. Italy's king, Theodoric, who was the elder statesman among the German kings in western, continental Europe, warned Clovis to expand no farther toward Italy and no closer to the kingdoms of those Germans to whom he, Theodoric, was patron.
Meanwhile, Christian evangelists had been finding converts among Clovis' Franks. The Franks had been impressed by Christianity's association with Roman civilization, and they had no theology that rivaled that of the Christians. But despite the victory that Gregory claimed Jesus gave him, Clovis remained unconvinced in his choice of faiths. Clovis' family was divided in religion: Clotilda's uncle (the new king of Burgundy) was an Aryan Christian; one of Clovis' sisters was an Arian Christian and married to the Arian king Theodoric; a second sister was also Arian; and a third was pagan. Clovis, the story goes, consulted those closest to him: his warriors. Then, on Christmas day - more than two years after his purported victory near Bonn - Clovis and several of his warriors were baptized Catholics. And the conversion of Clovis' subjects was soon to follow.
The emperors at Constantinople still ruled over Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and Egypt - areas tied together by trade as well as the imperial authority at Constantinople. The emperors at Constantinople saw themselves as the rightful heirs of a rule that dated back to Augustus Caesar. They saw themselves as the sole and legitimate ruler of the Roman Empire.
After the disintegration of the western half of the Roman Empire, Constantinople continued to trade with the coast of Gaul, the Iberian peninsula, Africa, India and China. Constantinople remained a prosperous city, populated by Romans, Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, Arabs, Asians and some Germans, all of them united by a common Roman citizenship and belief in Christ and the Trinity. Intermarriage among the different ethnicities was common, and by the 500s most people in Constantinople spoke Greek. A few spoke Latin, but Latin was declining and used chiefly on formal or official occasions. Prejudice was common only against those who could not speak Greek or who were not Catholic - the essentials, according to some in Constantinople, for civilization. Germans made up the majority of those in Constantinople's army, and some soldiers were Huns. Many Germans labored on lands just outside the city, and some worked in Constantinople at menial jobs or as slaves in rich households.
As a Christian city, Constantinople had many churches, monasteries and convents. It had free hospitals for the sick, staffed by monks and nuns. It had almshouses for the needy and the old. It had free accommodations for the homeless and city-subsidized orphanages. And in times of need, rationing was often introduced to help the poor.
Many in Constantinople saw the world as did Augustine of Hippo: as a vale of tears in which one should not place trust or hope. But the people of Constantinople were generally enthusiastic about chariot racing. From early in the morning, young and old people and priests from all over Constantinople would begin to converge on the city's circus to view and gamble on the chariot races.
Recommended Books
History of the Franks, by Gregory of Tours
History of the Later Roman Empire, Vol. 1, by John B. Bury, 1974
The Franks, by Edward James, 1988
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