"The Throne of the World"

In 452 A.D. Attila the Hun was bearing down on Rome and there was no army to stop him. Yet Attila marched within striking distance of Rome and then mysteriously retreated, never to return; he was dead within a year.

Dr. Warren Carroll writes in The Building of Christendom:

"He (Attila) took the Romans by surprise, so his crossing of the eatern Alps was unopposed. The great city of Aquileia ... fell to him and he razed it. Attila pushed on into the lush plain of the Po. City after city opened its gates to him. Wetern Emperor Valentinian III was useless in a crisis, and Aetius, though he had defeated the Huns at Chalons just the year before, now meditated flight. Finally it was decided that Pope Leo (Pope Saint Leo I, the Great) himself should head an embassy to Attila. No man knows what they said to each other, the great wise Pope of old Rome and the new Church and the brutal bandy-leeged Hun .... But when the talk was over, Attila turned his army around and rode out of Italy, never to return. A year later, back in the lands along the Danube, he died suddenly and mysteriously after a night of hard drinking. Modern historians have many ideas about problems and dangers and materialistic considerations which could account for Attila's sudden retreat after meeting Pope Leo. ... The fact remains that it was immediately after meeting the Pope that he departed, without explanation , but without hesitation; and Italy was saved."

I just finished reading "The Throne of the World" by Louis De Wohl, which I picked up in a thrift shop some years ago. Mr. De Wohl writes an historical novel, climaxing on the last three pages with Pope Leo the Great's talk with Attila the Hun. I don't know how close Mr. De Wohl's solution was to reality, but I can imagine that Mr. De Wohl's portrayl of Pope Leo I was accurate: strong, decisive, prayful and holy - in a word: a man of Christ.

(Don't forget that Witnesses to the Holy Mass and other sermons is great Lenten reading especially in this year of the Eucharist. You can get it here).

From the small holding in Bethune...

Oremus pro invicem!