Sack of Rome by Alaric

conquest · 410 · Rome

On 24 August 410 Alaric's Goths entered Rome — the first sack in eight centuries. Pagans blamed the abandoned gods; Augustine answered with the City of God, severing the church's fate from the empire's. Jerome, in Bethlehem, wrote that the city which had taken the whole world was itself taken. The Goths held the city for three days.

The shock that produced the City of God: Rome could fall, and the church would outlive it.