ATTIGNY
61
ATTIRET
upon enlarging the prerogatives of his see, he obtained
from Theodosius the Younger two rescripts which
placed Bithynia and Illyria under his jurisdiction.
Rome resisted these encroachments, and the rescripts,
thanks to the intervention of Honorius, were re-
called. Atticus in some measure atoned for his am-
bition and the irregularity of his promotion by his
zeal in the cause of orthodoxy. He drove the Mes-
salians from Pamphylia, and his opposition to the
Pelagians caused him to be praised by Celestine I as
"a true successor of St. Chrysostom ".
Ven.vbles ia Diet. Christ. Biog., I, 207-209; VERscH.^FFEL in Diet, de theot. cath. {Paris, 1903), s. v.; Tillemont, Mc- motres, XII, 416, 31,672.
A. J. B. Vdibert.
Attigny, Councils of. — In 765, St. Chrodegang of Meiz and thirty-seven other bishops mutually promised in an assembly held at the royal residence of Attigny near Vouziers (Ardennes) that after the death of each the sur\dvors would cause the psalter to be said one hundred times and would have one hundred Masses celebrated for the repose of the soul of the departed. Each one would also say thirty Masses for the same intention. In 785, Charlemagne held a council at Attigny. Widukind and Aboin, two con- quered Saxon kings, presented themselves for in- struction and were baptized. In 822, Pope Paschal I was present at a Council of Attigny, convened for the reconciUation of the Emperor Louis the Pious with his three younger brothers, Hugo, Drogo, and Theodoric, whom he had caused to be violently tortured and whom he had intended to put to death. In the council he confessed publicly his wrong-doing; also the violence practised by him on his nephew, Bernard, King of Italy, and liis brother, the Abbot Adelard Wala, and proposed to perform public penance in imitation of the Emperor Theodosius I. He also exliibited an earnest desire to correct abuses arising from the negligence of the bishops and the nobles, and confirmed the rule (Aquensis Regula) that the Council of .\achen had drawn up (816) for canons and monks. In 870, thirty bishops and si.x archbishops met at Attigny, to pass judgment on Karlmann, the king's son, made an ecclesiastic at an early age, and accused by his father of conspiring against his life and throne. He was deprived of his abbeys and imprisoned at SenUs. In the council of 875, Hincmar, Bishop of Laon, appealed to the pope from his uncle, Hincmar, .A.rchbishop of Reims.
M.^N.si, Coll. Cone. Sup. I, 621, XII, 674; Sup. I, 285, XIV, 403; Sup. I, 993; XV, 680, XVI, 562; Hulot, Attigny, avec ses depcrulances . . . ses coneiles, etc. (.\ttigny-Reinis, 1826); Chevalier, Topo-bibl. (Paris, 1894-99), 247.
Thom.\s J. Shahan.
Attila, king and general of the Huns; d. 453. Succeeding in 43.3 to the kingship of Scythian hordes disorganized and enfeebled by internal discords, Attila soon made of his subjects a compact and formidable people, the terror of Europe and Asia. An unsuccessful compaign in Persia was followed in 441 by an invasion of the Eastern Roman Empire, the success of which emboldened Attila to invade the West. He passed unhindered through Austria md Germany, across the Rhine into Gaul, plunder- ing and devastating all in his path with a ferocity unparalleled in the records of barbarian invasions, md compelling those he overcame to augment his mighty army. In 451 he was met on the Plains of Chalons by the allied Romans under Aetius and the Visigoths under Theodoric and Thorismond, who overcame the Huns and averted the peril that menaced Western civilization. Turning then to Italy, Attila, in the spring of 452, laid waste Aquileia md many Lombard cities, and was approaching Rome, whither Valentinian III had fled before him, when he was met near Mantua by an embassy, the most influential member of which was Pope Leo I, which dissuaded Attila from sacking the city. Attila
died shortly after. Catholic interest in Attila cen-
ters chiefly in his relations with those bishops of
France and Italy who restrained the Hunnish leader
in his devastating fury. The moral power of these
bishops, and particularly of the pope, during the
dissolution of the empire, is evidenced as well by
the confidence in which the faithful looked to them
for succour against the terrible invader as by the
influence they sometimes exerted in staying that
invader's destroying hand. St. Agnan of Orleans
sustained the courage of his people and hastened tlie
reinforcements that saved his apparently doomed
city; at Troyes, St. Lupus prevailed upon Attila to
spare the province of Champagne, and gave himself
as a hostage while the Hunnish army remained in
Gaul; when Rome seemed destined to meet the fate
of the Lombard cities which Attila had pillaged, it
was Pope Leo the Great who, by his eloquence and
commanding personality, overawed the conqueror
and saved the city. The terror which for centuries
after clung to the name of Attila, "the Scourge of
God ", as he came to be called, and the gratitude of
the people to their deliverers combined in time to
encumber medieval hagiography with legends of
saints reputed to have overcome Attila by their
imposing presence, or stayed his progress by their
prayers. But these fictions serve to emphasize the
import of the facts which inspired them. They
enable us to appreciate how widespread must have
been that sentiment expressed in the recently dis-
covered appeal of Eusebius of Doryhiemn to Pope
Leo I: "Curavit desuper et ab exordio consuevit
thronus apostolicus iniqua perferentes defensare
. . . et humi jacentes erigere, secundum possibili-
tatera quam habetis" [see Harnack, "History of
Dogma" (Boston, 1903), II, 168]. National pride,
too, came in time to invest the person of Attila with
a halo of fiction. Most European countries have
their legends of the Hunnish leader, who is diversely
depicted, according as the vanity of nations would
represent Attila as a friend who had contributed to
their greatness or as a foe to whose superhuman
strength it had been no discredit to succumb. Of
these legends the best known is the story of Etzel
(Attila) in the "Niebelungen-lied ".
Thierry, Histmre d'.Attila (Paris, 1864); Gibbon, Roman Empire (New York, 1902), xxxiv, xxxv. III, 518-589. con- tains abundant references to sources; in Smith and Wace, Diet. Christ. Biog. (London, 1877), I, the legendary and the historical elements of ecclesiastical tradition are not suffi- ciently distinguished. Aeta SS., s. v. St. Lupus, XXXIV. 75- 90; and St. Leo I, XI. 18. For the legendary elements in the Attila tradition, ibid., s. v. St. Genevieve of Paris, I, 135 sq., 144 sq.; Si. Auctor of Metz, XXXVI, 536; St. Servatius of Maestricht, XVI, 211, 212 (St. Servatius of Tongres did not exist); St. Geminianus of Modena, III, 714; Si. John of Ra- venna.ll, 9, 10. On the St. Servatius and St. Auctor legends •see P.iulusWarnefridus. Dc Gestis Episcoporum Metensium, in P. L., XCV, 701-703 and 715-717; particularly the in- troduction, 682-88.
John B. Peter.son.
Attiret, Je.\n Denis, painter, b. at Dole, France, 31 July, 1702; d. at Pekin, 8 December, 1768. He made serious artistic studies in Rome and after returning to his native country achieved considera- ble reputation as a portrait painter. He entered the Jesuit novitiate as a lay brother and has left some specimens of his work m the Cathedral of Avignon and the Sodality chapel which he painted while a novice. The Jesuits had many of their men in China employed as painters. Attiret joined them in 1737 and was easily the superior of all. He was honoured with the title of Painter to the Emperor, who visited his studio daily and finally made him a mandarin in spite of the brother's unwillingness to accept the honour. As all the work was done not for art but for the sake of pleasing the emperor, every suggestion he made was carefully attended to. Oil was not agreea- ble, so aciuarcUes and distemper were resorted to. The Emperor did not like shading, for he thought it
