Silent among the silent multitudes the three veiled women, Damaris, Lucia, and Ethne, watched the procession leave the northern gate and wind along the plain. They felt in their inmost souls the depth of humiliation symbolized: an entreaty from the Imperial city for mercy from a Tartar savage; an appeal from the Christian Church for compassion from a heathen destroyer, the symbol of whose worship was a scimitar planted hilt downward in the earth. But in reality they all felt the appeal of Leo was from man to God, from princes in their vanity and nothingness “to the Lord of those who rule, and the King of those who reign.”
Thus once more a Roman was found to throw himself into the chasm for the salvation of Rome.
The suppliant embassy went northward to the camp of Attila in Lombardy, to the place where the Po and the Mincio meet; and the multitudes of Rome dispersed again to their various forms of labour or idleness, some of them no doubt, like the little company on the Aventine, to the basilicas or quiet oratories to pray the great prayer of Christendom, and the prayers of Leo himself, and to wait.
They had not long to wait. Attila’s movements were not slow, nor his decisions vacillating. He saw Leo and believed in him. But what can any of us say as to the Presence he felt in Leo, or round about Leo? Legend has told and Raphael has painted in his immortal picture, that he saw the apostles Peter and Paul hovering about Leo in the air, as the champions of Rome, and that Attila and his Huns cowered in terror before the heavenly vision. Prosper, Leo’s own secretary, tells us simply that Leo “committed himself to God, Who never fails to aid the labours of those who trust Him; nor did less ensue than his faith expected.” Leo, no doubt, would scarcely have been surprised at the apparition of St. Peter and St. Paul; he certainly believed that the honour and primacy of his See belonged to Peter and not to himself. But always, above and beyond Peter, Leo beheld Christ, “never relinquishing the care of His beloved flock.” In that Presence he lived, and more than once we know Attila had recognized that mysterious, supernatural Presence in saintly men. The spell of Rome may indeed have been upon him, and the superstitious dread of the terrible tendency to revulsions in the affairs of men, which haunts the high places of the world; perhaps also some natural qualms of conscience for the miseries inflicted on myriads of human creatures, some echo in his heart, which was still human, of the cries of tortured men and wronged women and innocent babes. All this probably wrought for Leo, and also the kinship one great man feels for another; the weight of a spirit accustomed to rule, the force of that “saving common-sense” which often has a persuasiveness stronger than genius, and was the genius of Leo.
But it was something mightier than all this, we may be sure, which conquered Attila. The very best and deepest in us all, however seldom it is reached, is after all the strongest. It was the very deepest depths in Leo, the depths over which broods the living Spirit of God, that met the depths of Attila, and moved him irresistibly “to think and to do the thing that was rightful,” to conquer his own evil will, and spare Rome.
Rumour says that he veiled his surrender in a grim humour which was natural to him, saying, “I can fight with men, but the wolf and the lion (Lupus and Leo) are too much for me.”
But whatever the motive, surrender was made. The vast host from the eastern wilds turned back again eastward, never more to sweep in devastating floods over the West; and Leo returned in peace to the Rome he had saved.
Rome, at all events, did not receive her deliverer as Troyes had received the Bishop to whom she owed her existence. To the great city which he had defended when abandoned by all her natural defenders, Leo became thenceforth Rock and Refuge, Chief Shepherd, Supreme Ruler, Father, Pope. Thenceforth Rome and her Pope were identified. The magic of her old Imperial name was transferred to him; the granite of his ancient Roman character guarded her. Leo spoke “to the City”; the city still spoke, as no other voice could speak, to the world. The “ad Urbem” and “ad Orbem” were thenceforth not to be dissociated.
We do not hear of any pomp and ovation to do him homage on his return. The city was saved; but the salvation was from a humiliation only possible through the degradation and corruption of the city itself. And this moral degradation continued.