A more serious allegation levelled at Christians was that they were disloyal to the Roman state because their primary allegiance was to their God. When Rome officially accepted the Christian God and turned from its own gods, the gods were said to have withdrawn their protection and allowed the Visigoths to sack Rome in order to demonstrate their anger at being replaced by the Christian God. They claimed that Rome had gained world supremacy due to the favour of the ancient gods. Pagans expostulated, 'If the empire had not gone over to the Christian religion those horrible invasions would never have happened.' These pagans were referring to the year 381, when the Christian religion had supplanted the ancient religion of the Romans as the official state religion. They departed Rome after only three days.) (Actually, it was due to the respect of the Goths for the Christian religion that their attack was not worse than it was. Adding to the tension for the Christians was the fact that the Visigoths, though not Catholic, were nevertheless Christians.

Even so, in 410 Pagans and Christians blamed each other for the most recent disaster. And then in 405 and early 406 invaded northern from the Great Hungarian Plain by the pagan King Radagasius, until he was captured and executed near Florence.Īugustine noted that Radagasius' army was much larger than that of Alaric and, had it been successful, would have treated Rome more harshly than Alaric, who, instead of settling in Rome, withdrew after only three days there. Alaric himself first invaded in 401 but was defeated near Verona in 403.

He began to write his City of God soon afterwards as his personal, ecclesiastical and social response to the situation.Īugustine and his readers were aware that the attack on Rome by Alaric was not the first such attack upon northern Italy, but only the first one that actually succeeded in invading Rome. Without directly mentioning the event, he encouraged his hearers at Hippo to accept testing by God's Will. Aged in his fifties in the year 410, Augustine was shattered emotionally by the attack of Rome.

City of God by Augustine of Hippo