The fall of the city
On the 24th of August 410CE Rome fell to the Goths led by KIng Alaric and the city was sacked for the first time in eight hundred years. So who was to blame for this disaster – the pagans or the Christians ? Well the pagans of the time blamed the rise of Christianity and the abandonment of the Greco-Roman gods and traditional pagan culture and philosophy. And it was these accusations that led to St. Augustine the late Roman period bishop and Christian polemicist and arguably the greatest influencer in early Christianity to write his most well known work ‘City of God against the pagans’.
The object of the book was to answer the various questions being posed by the pagans in those uncertain times. But in fact the fall of Rome raised just as many if not more questions from the Christian perspective as well and meant many Christians wavering in their beliefs. So let’s take a look at few of these issues.
- Well firstly why had the Christian god failed to stop the fall of the city now that it was largely Christian? Or had he actually pushed this huge calamity on the empire himself? Surely keeping this Christian empire as dynamic as possible served his purpose – far more than any work done by the Christian apostles, missionaries and martyrs of previous centuries.
- Why had the Roman empire been stronger and more dynamic during the pagan period and weaker and declining after it became Christian? Surely the Christian god would have engineered it the other way. It seemed to make no sense.
- Why wasn’t there any ‘miracles’ to stop the fall of Christian Rome? Miracles and supernatural intervention were commonplace in Christian mythology. So why does God intervene in far less important circumstances for instance in the case one or another apostle or martyr but fail to save thousands of his followers from being killed or their livelihoods destroyed during the capture of the city? The old Testament, the gospels and the hagiographies and stories of the numerous saints and martyrs are full of divine help or miracles of some sort or another to one individual or another. A miracle preventing the Goths laying siege to, and then entering the city would have saved hundreds of thousands of Rome’s population from misery, starvation and loss of livelihood. It certainly would have made more sense than miracles helping single people as in the gospels.
- Why was the suffering indiscriminate – pagans and Christians alike suffering equally? Augustine records people being tortured for their money, women being raped, wicked and virtuous all being killed or robbed of their fortunes. all being equally inflicted with misfortune? Where was the sense in that? Should not the Christian God have helped his followers like he supposedly helped various martyrs and prophets in the bible and left the pagans to their fate. It has to be remembered that all classes of people suffered – children, pregnant women, slaves and even animals who during the siege had nothing to eat and were in fact slaughtered by the locals for food. Why did he allow this suffering? He had helped individuals before.
So these were the kind of numerous ancillary questions that were also being asked and raised by the pagans and we have to assume by Christians of that time and which taxed Christian theologians of the period. Theologians like Augustine.
Who was Augustine?
So let’s have look at how St. Augustine who actually lived during that time tries to deal with these issues of a Christian God refusing to help a Christian Rome that now worshipped him. As Augustine puts it in City of God…
’… it was my first endeavour to reply to those who attribute the wars by which the world is being devastated, and specially the recent sack of Rome by the barbarians, to the religion of Christ, which prohibits the offering of abominable sacrifices to devils.’
By devils he is referring to the pagan Greco-Roman gods and goddesses. The book itself – the City of God – is a large and rambling answer to the issue compiled from twenty-two smaller books or chapters as we would probably call them today and deals with a lot of other issues as well. ITo deal with all the issues he raises in the book is difficult in one post. So this post is going to be part of a series on Augustine and his responses to the pagans as written in his book. And we’ll firstly deal with how Augustine thought this disaster was actually different from other disasters that had come and gone in pagan times and also what he thought of pagans and their response. And I’ll go further into his criticism of pagan beliefs in future posts.
Augustine’s thoughts
A number of quick points about the City of God and Augustine s own beliefs…
It has to be remembered that early Christians like Augustine really did believe the Greco-Roman gods existed – but they believed they were demons in disguise not real divinities. And that’s reflected in Augustine’s writings. So in the City of God he does acknowledge at various points that the Roman Gods performed various miracles of some sort or intervened in human affairs from time to time. However being demons they did this to fool humans and to mislead them from the right path and aways from the true Christian God. And that, of course, was consistent with the gospels with various sundry demons and devils willy nilly manifesting themselves into people of the first century and being driven away by Jesus and the apostles. So this belief that demons and unclean spirits as they’re termed in the gospels were real and did exist was built into Christianity at a genetic level.
Now at some point this belief was jettisoned by Christians and the pagan gods became fiction and mythology but from the time of Christ and onwards into the 5th century and beyond they were definitely seen as demons fooling the pagan masses who believed in them. So this was quite different from the Jews who had no belief in the Greco-Roman gods at all believing them to be entirely fiction.
Secondly Augustine also on this issue of the fall of Rome curiously doesn’t quotes from the Bible or New Testament. The bible being full of prophesies you’d think he would utilise some obscure and vague mention of a disaster in the New or Old Testament – and certainly the fall of the Rome was about as big an event as they come – but you get the feeling he could not find anything relevant that could be utilised. So the book really covers his own views in which he tries to make sense of what has happened rather than try an extricate an answer for what happened from the Old or New Testaments.
Thirdly what’s apparent as you read the book is that he seems to shed few or no tears for the fall of the city and the immense damage to the cultural heritage of the city during the plundering. During the siege prior to the sacking the population were put on half rations of an already small amount and which was later reduced to a third. This meant wholesale starvation and famine and even accounts of cannibalism for those that remained. The city eventually fell because from what we know a wealthy lady, taking pity on the population, had organised the opening the gates of the city to allow the Goths in and put an end to the siege. Once the Goths entered the city, considerable damage was done. Many of the important buildings of the city were destroyed or ransacked including the mausoleums of Hadrian and Augustus, which were a tremendous loss for culture and history. The ashes of the former Emperors were scattered around the city. In addition some of the important buildings and temples in the forum were destroyed.
But Augustine doesn’t dwell on this disastrous economic and cultural damage done to the city. Instead he goes pretty much straight on to the offensive against the pagans. And I suppose there is no surprise in this as this was the raison d’etre for the book – to defend the newly Christian Rome. And so it made no sense to portray it as a major disaster but rather a triumph of Christianity. So this disaster for the empire is given as positive a spin as possible. And he does try to mitigate the circumstances of the disaster. Much of what happened he says would have happened at any other time as that was the nature of war.
Fourthly and very curiously he doesn’t really mention that the conquerors of the city the Goths although Christians were not Catholic Christians but rather Arian Christians. And this large split between Catholics and Arians was a big issue in those days. Arian Christianity was seen as a heresy and had been heavily condemned at the Council of Nicaea nearly a hundred years earlier. Augustine doesn’t seem to see any issue with how an army of heretics manages to destroy what was now the stronghold of Catholic Christianity. Why would a Christian God allow heretics to destroy a bastion of the true faith? Augustine doesn’t try and answer this issue.
Also most if not all Augustine’s points against paganism could really be used against any religion and conversely any arguments for Christianity could really be used in favour of any religion as well. For instance he argues as to why the Greek gods supported Troy against the Greeks or let the Greeks win even though both sides worshipped the same deities. Or why the Roman Gods allowed the Gauls to sack Rome or allowed Hannibal to have so much success against the Romans. And so on. But these arguments could be adapted to criticise Christianity as well. If a Christian country is attacked by another Christian country, then who would the Christian god support?
Finally Augustine does struggle with the random nature of events and I think he realised there is no rhyme or reason why the Christian God would push this huge misfortune on his Christian followers and a Christian empire. But he tries to make the best of it as we well see.
Introduction to the sack of the city
So before we go deeper into the issue a quick background to the fall of Rome and its subsequent sack of the city. The city had been laid siege to to twice before the attack in 410CE. And each time the previous sieges created misery inside the city as the city could not be supplied by food. This meant much of the population abandoning Rome altogethery which was leading to the economic ruin for the capital.
But the capture of the city was even worse for the civilian population. Augustine mentions many women being raped and others kept as slaves and taken by the Goths. Pelagius, a British monk who was the instigator of the Pelagian heresy was witness to these events and would write about them:
’Rome that commanded the world was astonished at the alarm of the Gothic trumpet, when that barbarous and victorious nation stormed her walls, and made her way through the breach. Where were then the privileges of birth, and the distinctions of quality? Were not all ranks and degrees leveled at that time and promiscuously huddled together? Every house was then a scene of misery, and equally filled with grief and confusion.’
So the fall of the city was not only a huge shock to the people of late antiquity but showed the Roman Empire was a shell of its former self.
Why did god allow Christian Rome to fall ?
So let’s get straight to perhaps the most important question. Why did the Christian God allow a Christian Rome to fall? You’d think God would be smiling on the Romans now the majority of the population of Rome and the empire were his followers. Augustine not surprisingly doesn’t really have an answer to this problem except to justify it as some sort of trial for the people of Rome. But he’s also very quick to deflect the issue and turns the question around and asks the pagans the very same question which he says could be posed to them as well.
‘As for those who insult over them in their trials, and when ills befall them say, “Where is thy God?” we may ask them where their gods are when they suffer the very calamities for the sake of avoiding which they worship their gods, or maintain they ought to be worshipped; for the family of Christ is furnished with its reply: our God is everywhere present, wholly everywhere; not confined to any place. He can be present unperceived, and be absent without moving; when He exposes us to adversities, it is either to prove our perfections or correct our imperfections; and in return for our patient endurance of the sufferings of time, He reserves for us an everlasting reward. But who are you, that we should deign to speak with you even about your own gods, much less about our God, who is “to be feared above all gods? For all the gods of the nations are idols; but the Lord made the heavens.’
And that effectively is his explanation for the disaster that had hit the city. But this answer that the sack of Rome was being used to ‘prove people’s perfections or correct people’s imperfections’ has pretty deep flaws. First of all it doesn’t explain why many people were killed during the rampage of the Goths and they looted the city. What sort of test is this where a person virtuous or not , pagan or Christian – is cut down by the armed Goth soldiers looking for plunder and loses his life in the process? Secondly you could ask why the Christian God isn’t asking the people of other cities to prove their perfection or to improve their imperfections? Thirdly why do people have to prove their perfections? Surely an omniscient God would know who was virtuous anyway. And for those who have to improve on their imperfections – why ask them to do it in such a cruel and haphazard and random fashion as starvation, rape and the destruction of their homes and livelihoods. There must be a better way than this?
Lastly Augustine forgets that the pagans themselves could use the exact same arguments. They could also claim that their gods were using the fall of the city as some sort of test both for the virtuous and the less virtuous. So his points neither validates Christianity nor invalidate paganism at all. And in fact these same points could be used by the believers of any religion
And as for the ‘everlasting reward’ that Christians are being promised in heaven this is entirely irrelevant to what was happening to the Romans at this time. Whether there is rewards in the Christian paradise has no bearing on why the city of Rome in particular was sacked and its people made to suffer.
The use of Christian churches as sanctuaries
Augustine then asserts that what had happened during the sack of Rome was really according to the custom of war in that the victor had the right to loot the city. And this is pretty strange coming from a saint . As a saint he ideally should have been condemning any looting and plundering of cities and of innocent people and other atrocities that invariably occur at these times. But let’s get to how Augustine tries to show the suffering of the people during this time was less or certainly different than similar events during pagan times. And the way he decides to do this is to attribute the concessions that the Goths made, to the Christianity that they had recently adopted. Alaric, the King of the Goths, had agreed to the basilicas of Peter and Paul to be used as sanctuaries. Anyone who reached these places was not to be harmed although they could of course be relieved of all wealth and valuables even inside the churches.
‘All the spoiling, then, which Rome was exposed to in the recent calamity-all the slaughter, plundering, burning, and misery-was the result of the custom of war. But what was novel, was that savage barbarians showed themselves in so gentle a guise, that the largest churches were chosen and set apart for the purpose of being filled with the people to whom quarter was given, and that in them none were slain, from them none forcibly dragged; that into them many were led by their relenting enemies to be set at liberty, and that from them none were led into slavery by merciless foes.‘
And he attributes this to the conversion of Goths to what he argues is the true religion. For if they were still pagan they would not shown any mercy of this kind.
’Whoever does not see that this is to be attributed to the name of Christ, and to the Christian temper, is blind; whoever sees this, and gives no praise, is ungrateful; whoever hinders any one from praising it, is mad. Far be it from any prudent man to impute this clemency to the barbarians. Their fierce and bloody minds were awed, and bridled, and marvellously tempered by Him who so long before said by His prophet, “I will visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquities with stripes; nevertheless my loving kindness will I not utterly take from them.’
Augustine argues that the Goths being Christians and allowing the use of churches as sanctuaries was something quite contrary to what were the normal practices of war – that of killing all and sundry when a city was attacked. And rather than elaborate on the destruction and ruin of the city and the immense damage done to personal property, he deflects the attention to this mercy shown by the Goths
The plundering
In regards to the looting of the city he does try and argue that the sacking could have been a lot worse had the Christian Goths not allowed the use of churches as sanctuaries and this he stresses was purely because of Christ’s name for no pagan would have allowed the use of pagan shrines as sanctuaries. It was usual in times of war to plunder temples he says but this only changed with the arrival of Christianity and made places of worship, places which even barbarians accepted as sacrosanct
However the fact was that with the sudden entry of the invading army into the city many people could not reach these places and therefore fell prey to the barbarians. And curiously Augustine seems to show a complete absence of sorrow for the loss of human lives, property and violation of women. Simply having churches as sanctuaries may have saved some people but not their livelihoods. And he doesn’t address the issue of the many civilians who starved to death during the siege or saw their children die from malnutrition? And rather than condemning the loss of such heritage, he tries to minimise the damage done by the Goths in his attempts to show that Christian conquerors were different and milder in their disposition than previous pagan armies.
That no temples were ever used as sanctuaries before the rise of Christianity
Augustine then pretty confidently asserts that the pagans were never in the habit of seeing their own temples as sanctuaries in time of war. This was a new concession in times of war that had only come about due to the emergence of Christianity.
‘There are histories of numberless wars, both before the building of Rome and since its rise and the extension of its dominion: let these be read, and let one instance be cited in which, when a city had been taken by foreigners, the victors spared those who were found to have fled for sanctuary to the temples of their gods; or one instance in which a barbarian general gave orders that none should be put to the sword who had been found in this or that temple.’
Well this assertion is difficult to prove or disprove but he does give examples of pagans violating their own temples in time of war. In fact he gives several examples – some of them more mythical than real.One example is the fall of Troy. In Homer’s classic fictionalised narrative of the war the Iliad, Homer writes that the Greek warriors Diomedes and Ulysses desecrated the Trojan temples. The Trojans worshipped the same deities as the Greeks so the Greek army was disrespecting their own gods and goddesses. Not only that but the Greeks would raze the city to the ground including the numerous temples. So this Augustine argued was quite different to how the Goths were treating the churches in Rome during their conquest of the city.
Secondly during their looting of Troy, the Greeks had abused the Temple of Minerva killing its guards and using the temple complex to store the loot from the city before it was taken away. The goddess Minerva Augustine said had done nothing in exchange for this insult to her temple and the Greeks had successfully spirited away their plunder and reached home successfully. And this showed how impotent the Greek deities were. Instead of destroying the Greeks they had helped them reach home safely with the plunder they had taken from Minerva’s temple. Again in contrast the Christian Goths had not used churches in this fashion. And in his other examples he also includes Julius Caesar mentioning the destruction of temples as something to be expected in times of war.
The ‘cowardice’ shown by pagans fleeing to the churches
The Christian Goths had not extended this concession of sanctuary to the pagan temples and the next major point he makes is that the pagans showed cowardice in fleeing to the churches to escape the Goths rather than taking refuge in their own pagan temples. Many he says pretended to be Christians when they entered the churches so that the Goths wouldn’t kill them in other words lying to save their lives. And he mocks them for criticising Christianity when it was safe to come out and the Goths had left the city and attributing their lives to pure good luck.
’Meanwhile I will briefly, and to the best of my ability, explain what I meant to say about these ungrateful men who blasphemously impute to Christ the calamities which they deservedly suffer in consequence of their own wicked ways, while that which is for Christ’s sake spared them in spite of their wickedness they do not even take the trouble to notice; and in their mad and blasphemous insolence, they use against His name those very lips wherewith they falsely claimed that same name that their lives might be spared. In the places consecrated to Christ, where for His sake no enemy would injure them, they restrained their tongues that they might be safe and protected; but no sooner do they emerge from these sanctuaries, than they unbridle these tongues to hurl against Him curses full of hate.’
But the more interesting words are his warning to them of even more grievous punishment to come for their unbelief and for saving their lives when they fled to the churches.
’Therefore ought they to give God thanks, and with sincere confession flee for refuge to His name, that So they may escape the punishment of eternal fire – they who with lying lips took upon them this name, that they might escape the punishment of present destruction. For of those whom you see insolently and shamelessly insulting the servants of Christ, there are numbers who would not have escaped that destruction and. slaughter had they not pretended that they themselves were Christ’s servants. Yet now, in ungrateful pride and most impious madness, and at the risk of being punished in everlasting darkness, they perversely oppose that name under which they fraudulently protected themselves for the sake of enjoying the light of this brief life.’
So there’s none of that generosity and welcome that should have been there. That lives had been saved whether Christian or not . Instead he castigates them for what he sees as subterfuge by the pagans.
So why did pagans survive the fall?
So finally why back to the vexing issue of why some people died and some survived in the fall of the city – more specifically the problem of why pagans in particular survived. Augustine’s simplistic point of view as before is that it is simply a test to see if the pagans would see the error of their ways and change from unbelief, and convert to Christianity.
’And that you are yet alive is due to God, who spares you that you may be admonished to repent and reform your lives. It is He who has permitted you, ungrateful as you are, to escape the sword of the enemy, by calling yourselves His servants, or by finding asylum in the sacred places of the martyrs.’
Summing up
I haven’t tried to cover the full implications of what Augustine says in City of God as this would have made this post too long. But hopefully it’s has been a good introduction into Augustine’s stance on the sack of Rome, the plight of the people, his views on those seemingly arbitrarily killed and those who arbitrarily survived as well, and his attempt to see some sort of positive aspect in terms of Christianity for the fall of the city.
I’ll be diving deeper into his work in part two and on the many other issues arising from a Christian Rome’s decline and fall to the Goths. And that include his views on slavery – it has to be remembered many Romans were take as slaves by the Goths after the end of the siege . Also the commandment ‘thou shalt not kill’ runs counter to the self defence efforts of the defenders of Rome and how he sees this commandment in light of the war against the barbarians.
