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XXXVI. Zeno
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308 time, Saint Laurence turned over and welcomed his equal—Christendom rejoiced at that—and he edged over in a way to make room for Saint Stephen . Be assured that all righteous souls will follow him. His power and renown are still increasing in Rome. Constantine Leo found his joy in God. He performed good works and never let a day go by without visiting these lords of his. He entrusted his soul to them and had a grave made for himself in the cathedral, saying that he wanted his resurrection to be in their company. He held the Empire for exactly thirty years and six weeks; then the Romans buried their lord. XXXVI Zeno This chapter introduces most of the main players in the replacement of the Roman Empire in the West by the rule of Germanic or other non-Roman kings. Attila the Hun had negotiated his marriage to the sister of the feeble Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III, but before the time for the wedding elapsed, he had taken a young girl from the Balkans as a bride and died in the wedding night of a hemorrhage, so that our author’s description of his death as “died in his own blood” is not far off. As far as most Europeans were concerned the Huns then settled down in what became Hungary. As we will see in future chapters, Europeans assumed that the Magyars who invaded them from bases in Hungary were latter-day Huns. Aetius, who was the dominant personality in the Western Empire during the second quarter of the fifth century, rose in its military service under Valentinian III and his more decisive mother, Galla Placidia. He commanded the forces that defeated Attila at Zeno 309 the battle of Chalons-sur-Marne in 451. Aetius sought to claim Valentinian’s daughter in marriage, but the emperor, who suspected that Aetius might desire to be emperor himself, stabbed him fatally with his own hand at what was supposed to have been a friendly meeting. Odoakar was king of the small Germanic Scirian tribe, significant mainly for replacing the last Roman emperor in the West in 476 with himself and thus—although this was not obvious to most contemporaries—putting an end to the Roman Empire outside of what was left in the East. After 476, he called himself simply “King Odoakar,” dropping the Scirian appellation, although it was never really clear of what he was claiming to be king. In retrospect he appears to have been king of the German forces in Italy, which falls rather short of being the Roman emperor. Theodemir ruled a portion of the Ostrogoths or East Goths and sent his son, the future Theodoric the Great (454-526), as a hostage to guarantee the good behavior of his tribesmen to the court of the Eastern emperor, where he was very well treated. He received enough Greek education to enable him partly to shed the stigma of being a barbarian, although he never did live down the rumor that his mother was one of Theodemir’s concubines rather than his official queen. Zeno (Eastern emperor 474–491; sole emperor after 476) sent Theodoric to Italy with considerable forces to conquer and rejoin it to the Eastern Empire. Theodoric took over Italy and then stabbed Odoakar with his own hand at what was supposed to be a feast of conciliation. He then took his broadsword in both hands and clove Odoakar from the shoulder to the flank. Our author mentions Theodric holding his big sword in both hands, although he provides a fictional context of a trial by combat. After that he ruled Italy and much of the remnant of the Western Empire, maintaining the fiction that he was functioning at the behest of Emperor Zeno in Constantinople . The capital of the Western Empire had been moved from Rome to Milan and then to Ravenna. Theodoric turned out [23.20.220.59] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 06:48 GMT) 310 Chapter Thirty-six to be an excellent de facto emperor, presiding from Ravenna over a period of peace and revitalized economic activity. The Ostrogoths, however, like most of the Germanic invaders, were Arians, and, as heretics, at odds with the papacy and most Italians. In 524, Theodoric dispatched Pope John I to Constantinople to try and negotiate the emperor (Justin by then) into adopting an imperial policy that would extend basic toleration to Arians. Perhaps John’s heart was not in it...