A CLERICS VIEW OF ROME'S FALL
Some newly Christianized Romans blamed the barbarian invasions on their own disloyalty to the old pagan deities. Church leaders--among them Salvian, a fiery Fifth Century monk--answered them by saying that the barbarians were God's punishment for the Sins of Rome.
Since almost all barbarian nations have drunk Roman blood and torn apart our bowels, why is it that our God delivered the wealthiest state and the richest people who bear the Roman name to the most potent jurisdiction of enemies who were once most cowardly? Why? Unless that we may acknowledge...that it was a question of merit, not of strength...
Events prove what God judges about us and about the Goths and Vandals. They increase daily; we decrease daily. They prosper; we are humbled. They flourish; we are drying up. Truly there is said about us that saying which the Divine Word spoke of Saul and David; "because David was strong and always growing more robust; the house of Saul grew less daily"....
If human weakness allowed it, I would wish to shout beyond my strength, so that I would be echoed over the whole world:
You, O Roman people, be ashamed; be ashamed of your lives. Almost no cities are free of evil dens, are altogether free of impurities, except these cities in which the barbarians have begun to live....it is not the natural vigor of their bodies that enables them to conquer us, nor is it our natural weakness that has caused our conquest. Let nobody persuade himself otherwise. Let nobody thing otherwise.
The vices of our bad lives have alone conquered us.
Great Ages of Man: Barbarian Europe, Gerald Simons. Time-Life Books: New York, 1969, p. 15.
N.B. Romans 1
