THE FALL OF AQUILEIA.
Thus the great festivals of the Church swept on, and spring had conquered
winter in the natural and the Christian year.
All through those months the household on the Aventine knew that Aquileia
was still holding her own, and trusted that there also the summer was
beating back the winter.
Ethne remembered Orleans, with her brave garrison, and her brave aged
Bishop Anianus and his victorious prayers; and Lupus with his peaceful
victory over Attila at Troyes; and her hope was strong that victory must
come for Aquileia also, through Aquileia for the Roman world.
Moreover, one more little volume of waxen tablets reached them from
Marius, still within the unconquered city.
“We are holding our own,” he wrote; “the walls still stand unshattered,
the heart of the enemy, they say, is failing, the besiegers seem to
slacken at their work. Glorious it will be if this great host is driven
back, baffled by one faithful stronghold. Despair not for us; hope and
pray!”
But they had scarcely read these words of courage and hope, when another
message brought the fatal tidings that Aquileia, the impregnable, had
fallen, was being razed to the ground and burnt to ashes, and, with the
terrible Hunnish genius of destruction, smitten to the dust never to rise
any more.
A flight of storks had done it; a flock of harmless, innocent birds had
accomplished the ruin of Aquileia.
Just as the assailants were wearying of their work, and murmurs of
retreat were spreading in the camp, and Attila himself was pacing round
the unbroken walls, moodily meditating whether to go or stay, the
flapping of wings and the cry of birds arrested his attention. He looked
up, and saw the white storks which had built their nests on the roofs
of the city soaring high in the air, and alluring their callow young to
follow them, evidently with the intention of abandoning the beleaguered
city, and, contrary to their usual habits, betaking themselves to the
open country. He caught at the augury. “Look there!” he cried to the
dispirited soldiers; “see those birds, whose instinct tells them of the
future; they are leaving the city which they foresee is to perish, the
fortress which they know will fall.”
The courage of the Huns revived at his words. Once more they pushed their
engines up to the walls, and plied their slings and catapults; and the
walls yielded; and Aquileia, the impregnable, the city of the north wind,
fell, as was the fate of cities that sank beneath the Huns, never to
rise again.
There was need indeed now of Leo’s strong words in the sorrowful little
family on the Aventine. The fellowship of the Passion was theirs; the
cup of the martyrs was held to their lips. But it was Christ, the
ever-living, the ever-loving, the all-conquering, not himself, that Leo
had set before them; and He, “the Ransom from death, and the Cup of Life”
(_pretium et poculum_), would not fail His Christians. All else in the
world—emperors, armies, generals, statesmen—were failing Rome. Would Leo
himself fail?
Leo did not fail!
The people of Rome had done well in electing him during his absence, and
waiting the forty days for his return. Every one else among their rulers
failed them, but not Leo.
The feeble Valentinian was present in the city; he had fled to Rome, it
was said, as a safer refuge, for the moment, than his Imperial Ravenna,
enclosed in her marshes. The port of Ravenna on the Adriatic was too near
the fallen city of Aquileia, so long the queen of the Adriatic; too near
the hordes of the Huns. Aetius, the great general, the Count of Italy,
seemed to fail them. The foremost place which he obtained for himself by
basely betraying his great rival Boniface, Count of Africa, had proved
no post of ease or real power to him. The feeble Emperor himself had
become his rival, using him (as was afterwards terribly proved) not a
moment longer than the hour of danger lasted. Boniface was dead; Africa,
through his treachery, was lost to the Empire, to civilization, and, as
it was proved afterwards, to Christianity; and Italy lay bare to the foe.
He himself had become the dread and detestation of the weak and wicked
court, and now it seemed as if a palsy had fallen on his own strong will
and clear intellect; it was rumoured that Aetius was counselling the
Emperor that they should take flight together and abandon Rome to her
fate.
Only Leo was left. But Leo stood firm, a rock of strength because he
stood on the Rock. Still his protecting presence and his words of power
were there—“Christ Himself has not abandoned the care of His beloved
flock.”
“Throughout the universal Church Peter is still saying day by day, ‘Thou
art the Christ, the Son of the Living God;’ and every tongue which
confesses the Lord is clothed with the majesty of this voice. This faith
overcomes the devil and dissolves the fetters of his captives; those who
are torn away from the world it engrafts into heaven, and the gates of
hell cannot prevail against it.”
And from day to day, in those days of earthquakes and storms, went up the
prayer for ever associated with Leo’s name and with this great conflict—
“Grant, O Lord, we beseech Thee, that the course of this world may be so
peaceably ordered by Thy governance, that Thy Church may serve Thee in
all godly quietness, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Never could the world have seemed less peaceably ordered than then; yet
it was indeed not under the governance of Valentinian, or of Aetius,
or of Peter, but of God. Never could there have been less external
quiet; but the Church, and Leo, kept the “godly quietness” within, in
the presence of God. Never could the waves have seemed more likely to
overwhelm the Rock than then; but it stood firm as ever. “Our fathers all
ate the same spiritual meat, and all drank the same spiritual drink, for
they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was
Christ.”
And again from every basilica and every house rose Leo’s prayer—“Grant us
the spirit to think and do always such things as be rightful, that we who
cannot do anything that is good without Thee, may by Thee be enabled to
live according to Thy Will.” Leo’s prayers were indeed fulfilled for him
in the way his inmost soul desired. Of Leo personally scarcely a trace is
left, as to the persons he loved, the life he lived, the death he died;
his only monument, the rescue of his Rome, and the Rock of the great
Apostle’s great confession of the Christ, on which he stood, and which he
held for the Church.
Sorely indeed were the strong words of consolation needed in the
household on the Aventine. No further sound reached them from Aquileia,
no record of individual heroism or deliverance. What voice indeed could
come from ashes and a charnel-house?
The fame of only one act seemed borne above that raging storm of murder
and rapine; only one name was borne to them through the death-silence
that succeeded. It was reported that the good and beautiful young matron
Digna, the friend of their house and of Marius, had covered her head
like a Roman matron of old, and from the tower on the walls adjoining her
house had plunged into the glassy waters of the Natiso which flowed deep
and strong below, to escape the insults of the Huns.
When these tidings reached them, for the first time Damaris uttered a cry
of despair. “Alas! alas!” she said, “too surely our Marius is slain, or
he would have saved her.”
But Fabricius shook his head.
“Fond mother’s thought! Against such a flood of furious savagery Marius
would have been as powerless as when he lay a babe in thine arms;” and
then, with a flash of the old patrician fire, he added, “It is not
Digna only, it is our old Rome, who chose death rather than dishonour
at Aquileia; our Rome has fallen, she is dead, but never could she have
perished save by suicide. Our vices have killed us. Yet she has fallen
fighting to the last, not as a slave and captive, but as free and the
mother of the free. The brave garrison of Aquileia could not save our
Rome from ruin, but they have saved it from the worst dishonour; Digna
stands for ever as a symbol of her great old glory. And Marius, thank
God, our Marius was there!”
But with those words the old man broke down; and the father and mother
wept together.
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