[OT] kuro5hin.org || 12 Year Old Girl Commits Suicide AfterChristian Taunts.

[Ken Brown]

Ray Dillinger wrote:

> Goth attire??  You mean short robes under leather armor and ring mail?
> And why should that be frightening to Christians, anyway? Rome was at
> the height of the *Pagan* empire when the Goths sacked it.... I'm betting
> the early Christians around Rome at the time probably joined in gleefully.

Nope :-)

The Roman Empire was already officially Christian when the Visigoths
attacked the city in 408 & 410. It had sort of been for a hundred years,
but non-Christian religions had only begun to be banned by the Emperor
Theodosios in the 390s.

Christianity was probably still a minority religion in most provinces,
but the majority of the population of Egypt & Syria were probably
Christian, and perhaps also Africa (i.e. more or less what we now call
Tunisia & parts of Algeria).  In the rest of the Empire the
city-dwellers tended to be Christian, especially the working classes,
the slaves & the poor, but the country-folk were mostly not Christian - 
hence the word "pagan" which simply means someone who lives in the
country, as opposed to the city.  Of course in those days peasants were
the vast majority of the population & the urban working-classes a small
minority.

The aristocracy of the city of Rome itself was one of the last sections
of society to be won over to the new religion. But the royal family 
(this was one of the rare bits of history when Rome was actually ruled
by a dynasty in which Emperor succeeded Emperor without civil war) was
thoroughly Christian,  maybe even fanatically so.  Of course they had
little connection with the Roman city aristocracy being a military
family of  Spanish origin with the habit of marrying Greeks or
barbarians. (There is some speculation that the reason Theodosios got to
be Emperor in the first place was that he was the only senior army
officer left who wasn't a German - and he managed to marry most of his
female relatives off to the German officers PDQ - presumably to get and
keep them on his side)

The Goths also been Christians since before most of the Romans were.
They were mostly followers of the Arian heresy, which caused some mutual
stress & recrimination. It was one of the reasons that they never
managed to control Gaul for very long - the local aristos were mostly
Catholic - a century or so later the kings of the Franks became Catholic
and settled down to found France. Paris has always been worth a mass.

When Alaric's troops sacked Rome he went for an audience with the Pope.
His policies were mostly pro-Roman  and always pro-Christian, though he
didn't let either of those get in the way of a good pillage.  His cousin
Athaulf married Galla Placidia, the younger sister of the Emperors - not
apparently against her will.  She later became arguably the only woman
to rule Rome in Imperial times as Emperor, i.e. "Augusta", in her own
right. 

The really *nasty* sack of Rome was a generation later, when the Vandals
did it over. (Odd how these words live on in the language "Vandal",
"Gothic", "Frank" and "Romantic" all have quite strong connotations
these days!.)

The Goths didn't want to destroy Rome they wanted to be part of it. 
More refugees than invaders. Illegal immigrants with attitude.

I strongly suspect that if they had met a half-pissed skinny bloke with
pagan tendencies in black leather with multiple piercings, white makeup,
and a penchant for the gloomy end of rock, they would have cut his head
off first and done the cultural analysis afterwards.


Ken Brown, off-topic, but pedantic.