But here we touch the completeness of the success which followed the trust placed in their apostolate by the seven immediate successors of St. Leo. In proportion as Rome became in the temporal order a mere municipal city, the sacerdotal authority of its bishop came out into clearer light. Three times in the fifth century Rome was mercilessly sacked--in 410, in 455, in 472. Its senators were carried into slavery, its population diminished. The finishing stroke of its ignominy may be said to be the deposition, by a barbarian _condottiere_, of the poor boy whose name, repeating in connection the founder of the city with the founder of the empire, seemed to mock the mortal throes of the great mother. But this lessening of the secular city, so far from lessening the authority of the spiritual power, reveals to all men, believers or unbelievers, that the pontificate, whose seat is locally in the city, has a life not derived from the city. Rome's temporal fall exhibits in full the intangible spiritual character of the pontificate. If St. Peter had to any seemed to rule because he was seated on the pedestal of the Caesarean empire, when that empire fell the Apostle alone remained to whom Christ gave the charge, whom He invested with the "great mantle".[111] The bishop of the city in which an Arian Ostrogoth ruled supreme as to temporal things was acknowledged by the head of the empire, from whom the Ostrogoth derived his title, as the person in whom our Lord's word--the creative word which founds an empire as it makes a world--was accomplished, had been during five hundred years accomplished, would be for ever accomplished.[112]