For it was not any emperor or great soldier at the head of an army
that faced Attila by the Mincio on the Cisalpine plain and saved
Italy, but an old and unarmed man, alone and defenceless. Our saviour
was pope Leo the Great; but above him, in the sky, the Hun perceived
the mighty figures, overshadowing all that world, of S. Peter and S.
Paul, and his eyes dazzled, he bowed his head. "What," he asked
himself, "if I conquer like Alaric only to die as he did?" He yielded
and consented to retreat, Italy was saved. The new emperor, the true
head and champion of the new civilisation that was to arise out of all
this confusion, had declared himself. It was the pope.
There, it might seem, we have the truth at last, the explanation,
perhaps, of all the extraordinary ennui and neglect that had made such
an invasion as that of Alaric, as that of Radagaisus, as this of
Attila, possible. For it is only what is in the mind that is of any
importance. The empire rightly understood was not about to die, but to
change into a new spiritual kingdom in the hearts of men; and there,
in the place of the emperor, would sit God's Vicegerent, till in the
fullness of time the material empire should be re-established and that
Vicegerent should place the imperial crown once more upon a merely
royal head.
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