ABSTRACT
From 401/2, the Emperor of the West, Flavius Honorius, was resident in Ravenna for both strategic and defensive reasons. Under his half-sister Galla Placidia, Regent during the minority of Valentinian III (425-50), Ravenna was adorned with some of its finest buildings, including her mausoleum and San Giovanni Evangelista. Barbarians had made deep incursions, be it either as migrants or invaders, into many areas of the Empire, and over a period of three days in August 410, Alaric the Goth sacked Rome itself. It was a profound shock that the Imperial and religious capital of the world should fall to heretic barbarians. St Augustine, who wrote his City of God in response to the sack of Rome, said elsewhere: ‘Universum regnum in tot civitatibus constitutum dicitur Romana civitas’1 (‘The universal empire, established in so many cities, is called the Roman city’). Of course, Rome had, as a consequence of the emperor’s long absence, declined in its administrative importance since it was no longer the imperial residence, but in the East as well as in the West, people saw themselves as Roman citizens, and the Bishop of Rome was recognized as first in precedence and authority. He took precedence even over the Bishop of Constantinople, or ‘New Rome’, who had been recognized as second in authority at the Council of Constantinople of 381, though ‘New Rome’ would challenge old Rome during the papacy of Gregory the Great. Both the Roman Empire and the Church saw themselves as having a universal calling, so the brief sack of Rome and its permanent occupation by barbarians in 476 on the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Emperor, struck at the heart of Western cultural identity.
