No, not the current jackoff. I mean the whole concept of a papacy which seems to have been back dated into the so-called early history of the church...such history being no more historical than that of paul and jesus.
Let's begin with a story that everyone has heard, pope Leo I convincing Attila the Hun not to attack Rome.
As the story goes after being beaten at Chalons-sur-Marne in 451 by a coalition of Romans, Visigoths and a few others, Attila withdrew into Hungary to regroup. In 452 he was back this time moving on Italy. The coalition had broken up with the Visigoths heading home leaving Flavius Aetius and his Roman force outnumbered. Attila captured the city of Aquileia at the head of the Adriatic after a siege which took longer than anticipated. As the story goes the way the church likes to tell it, pope leo ran out to meet Attila and talked him out of marching on Rome....( and the angels sing and god smiles and all that other holy horseshit they love to trot out.)
There are some problems with the story. First off, Attila was not an idiot. He would have known that Rome had been sacked by the Goths 40 years earlier and since it was no longer the capitol of the Roman world the amount of wealth to be found there would have been minor. Even more importantly, Attila was no where near Rome at the time. As shown in this map
![[Image: huninvasion.jpg]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.boglewood.com%2Ftimeline%2Fhuninvasion.jpg)
Ravenna was then the capitol of the Western Roman Empire and that was where he was heading. After taking Aquileia he moved SW and overran Padua before sending a recon in force to terrorize the Po Valley as far as Milan. Only then did he begin a half-hearted effort to move south but he had not reached the Po River when the delegation - not just Leo - arrived. This included a former consul and a former praefectus urbii but the account of the meeting was given by a man called Prosper, the pope's secretary more or less, and he acted as if the others weren't there.
Now, other contemporary historians note that there were numerous other factors at play which entered into the discussion. First the delay at Aquileia meant that it was far too late in the season to even contemplate a siege of Ravenna which as the capitol was far stronger than Aquileia. Second, the writer Hydatius records that the Huns had been ravaged by a plague during that siege and which might account for Attila's ponderous advance afterwards. The marshes around the Adriatic probably housed all manner of mosquitos that the steppe-living Huns would have never encountered. Third, Jordanes and Procopius note that the Eastern Roman emperor, Marcian, had picked that moment to hit the easternmost edge of the Hunnish Empire with an attack and Attila would have realized that he was over-extended, particularly after the slaughter at Chalons a year earlier and would not have wanted to be cut off by winter snows.
Such obvious military considerations did not serve the church's purpose especially as Leo I was the prime proponent of the doctrine of papal primacy in which he used the fiction of peter in Rome to claim that he was the rightful successor to fucking jesus himself.
This little bullshit story of Leo and Attila should be seen in the context of church propaganda. The fuckers never tire of telling how important they are.
Let's begin with a story that everyone has heard, pope Leo I convincing Attila the Hun not to attack Rome.
As the story goes after being beaten at Chalons-sur-Marne in 451 by a coalition of Romans, Visigoths and a few others, Attila withdrew into Hungary to regroup. In 452 he was back this time moving on Italy. The coalition had broken up with the Visigoths heading home leaving Flavius Aetius and his Roman force outnumbered. Attila captured the city of Aquileia at the head of the Adriatic after a siege which took longer than anticipated. As the story goes the way the church likes to tell it, pope leo ran out to meet Attila and talked him out of marching on Rome....( and the angels sing and god smiles and all that other holy horseshit they love to trot out.)
There are some problems with the story. First off, Attila was not an idiot. He would have known that Rome had been sacked by the Goths 40 years earlier and since it was no longer the capitol of the Roman world the amount of wealth to be found there would have been minor. Even more importantly, Attila was no where near Rome at the time. As shown in this map
Ravenna was then the capitol of the Western Roman Empire and that was where he was heading. After taking Aquileia he moved SW and overran Padua before sending a recon in force to terrorize the Po Valley as far as Milan. Only then did he begin a half-hearted effort to move south but he had not reached the Po River when the delegation - not just Leo - arrived. This included a former consul and a former praefectus urbii but the account of the meeting was given by a man called Prosper, the pope's secretary more or less, and he acted as if the others weren't there.
Now, other contemporary historians note that there were numerous other factors at play which entered into the discussion. First the delay at Aquileia meant that it was far too late in the season to even contemplate a siege of Ravenna which as the capitol was far stronger than Aquileia. Second, the writer Hydatius records that the Huns had been ravaged by a plague during that siege and which might account for Attila's ponderous advance afterwards. The marshes around the Adriatic probably housed all manner of mosquitos that the steppe-living Huns would have never encountered. Third, Jordanes and Procopius note that the Eastern Roman emperor, Marcian, had picked that moment to hit the easternmost edge of the Hunnish Empire with an attack and Attila would have realized that he was over-extended, particularly after the slaughter at Chalons a year earlier and would not have wanted to be cut off by winter snows.
Such obvious military considerations did not serve the church's purpose especially as Leo I was the prime proponent of the doctrine of papal primacy in which he used the fiction of peter in Rome to claim that he was the rightful successor to fucking jesus himself.
This little bullshit story of Leo and Attila should be seen in the context of church propaganda. The fuckers never tire of telling how important they are.
