THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 208

The Failure of the Empire and the Rise of the Papacy

14-2. The Failure of the Empire and the Rise of the Papacy

Dependent upon barbarian troops, and himself often of barbarian origin, the policy of the "master of the troops" towards the barbarians outside the pale, who sought to enter the Empire, was bound to be dubious. Orosius practically accuses Stilicho of complicity with Alaric, and certainly charges him with the invitation of the Vandals, Alans, and Sueves into Gaul in 406: Aetius was for years the friend of the Huns: Ricimer was apparently not averse to inciting the Visigoths to war against a Roman commander in Gaul. Inevitably, therefore, a Roman party formed itself in opposition to the master of the troops, a party curiously uniting within its ranks the senate, the eunuchs of the court, and some jealous soldier with his followers. The result would be a coup d'etat, such as those of 408 or 454; but inevitably a new magister succeeds to the assassinated Stilicho or Aetius, and if the struggle still continues to be waged (as for instance between Anthemius and Ricimer), its predestined end — the foundation of a kingdom of Italy by some real or virtual generalissimo — draws constantly nearer. In the course of this struggle religious motives apparently intertwine themselves with the underlying motive of racial feeling. Stilicho would seem to have stood for toleration: and a Catholic reaction, headed by the Court, followed upon his fall, and gave to the episcopate an increase of jurisdiction, while it banished all enemies of the faith from the imperial service.

Yet Litorius, the lieutenant of Aetius, put his trust in the responses of seers and the monitions of demons as late as 439: Ricimer, though no pagan, was an Arian. The extreme orthodoxy of the Court of Ravenna, contrasted with the dubious faith of the soldiery and its leaders, must thus have helped to whet the intensity of party strife.

In the period which we are to consider, it would thus appear that the great feature, from an external point of view, is the occupation of successive portions of the Western Empire by barbaric kings, of whom the greatest is Gaiseric, the hero of the last scene of the Wandering of the Nations, who links by his subtle policy the various enemies of the Empire into one system of attack; while internally the dominant factor is the transmutation of the Diocletian autocracy into a quasi-constitutional monarchy, in which the last members of the Theodosian house sink into empereurs faineants, and the commander-in-chief becomes, as it were, a mayor of the palace. Yet another feature in external policy is the relation of the Western Emperors to those of the East, and other features deserving of notice in internal development are the growth of the Papacy, and the new importance from time to time assumed by the Senate.

Upon the Eastern Empire the West is again and again forced to rely. The Eastern Emperors give the West its rulers — Valentinian III, Anthemius, Nepos; or in any case they give a legitimate title to the rulers whom the West, in one way or another, has found for itself. Not only so, but upon occasion they give to the West the succour, which again and again it is forced to beg in the course of its struggle with the Vandals. Theoretically, as always, the unity of the Empire persists: there is still one Empire, with two joint rulers. But in practice, after 395, there are two separate States with separate policies and separate lines of development; and both Priscus in the East, and Sidonius Apollinaris in the West, acknowledge the fact of the separation. In these separate States there is, indeed, much that is parallel. The East has to face the Huns and the Goths equally with the West; like the West, it has its barbarian magistri militiae (with the great difference, however, that there are generally two concurrent magistri to weaken each other by their rivalry) and the Eastern Emperor has to deal with Aspar in 471, as Valentinian III had dealt with Aetius in 454. In both Empires, again, the house of Theodosius became extinct at much the same time. But here the parallel ends.

In the West the death of Valentinian III was followed by the rule of the emperor-makers (Ricimer, Gundobad, and Orestes), and by a succession of nine emperors in twenty-one years: in the East new and powerful emperors arose, who found the office of master of the troops far weaker than in the West, and were able, by the alliance they formed with the Isaurians, to discover in their own realms a substitute and an antidote for barbaric auxiliaries, and thus to prolong the existence of their Empire for a thousand years. Meanwhile ecclesiastical development confirmed the separation and widened the differences between the two Empires. While Eastern theologians pursued their metaphysical inquiries into the unity of the Godhead, a new school of churchmanship, of a legal rather than a metaphysical complexion, arose in the West under the influence of St Augustine; and the growth of the Papacy, especially under the rule of Leo I (440-461), gave to this new school a dogmatic arbiter and an administrative ruler of its own.

The development of the Papacy, like the new vigour which the Senate occasionally displays, is largely the result of the decadence of the Western Emperors and of their seclusion in the marshes of Ravenna. The pietism of the Court, under the influence of Placidia, helped to confirm a power, which its withdrawal to Ravenna had already begun to establish; while the victories of Pope Leo over heresies in Italy, his successful interference against Monophysitism in the East, and the prestige of his mission to Attila in 451 and his mediation with Gaiseric in 455, contributed to the increase both of his ecclesiastical power and of his political influence. Meanwhile the bishops, everywhere in the West, tended to become the leading figures in their dioceses. The constitutions of 402 gave them civil jurisdiction in their dioceses and the power of enforcing the laws against heresy. In the chief town of his diocese each bishop gradually came to discharge the duties, even if he did not assume the office, of the defensor civitatis; and wherever a barbarian kingdom was established, the bishop was a natural mediator between the conquerors and their subjects.

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