A new study argues that the widely accepted Rhine crossings of 406, traditionally seen as a key moment in the fall of the Western Roman Empire, may have been exaggerated or misinterpreted.
Historian Mateusz Fafinski suggests that Jerome’s Letter 123, a major source for the event, was shaped more by theology and literary tradition than by accurate historical reporting.
The research challenges the idea of the Rhine as an impermeable frontier, highlighting how it was frequently crossed by both Romans and non-Romans, making the supposed ‘invasion’ less clear-cut than previously believed.
A major event long considered a turning point in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire—the Rhine crossings of 406—may have been more rhetorical than real, according to new research published in Early Medieval Europe by historian Mateusz Fafinski.
For centuries, historians have viewed the winter of 406 as a moment of irreversible decline. According to traditional accounts, a coalition of so-called ‘barbarian’ groups, including Vandals, Alans, and Suebi, crossed the frozen Rhine River, overwhelming Roman defenes and unleashing chaos across Gaul. However, Fafinski’s study suggests that one of the key sources for this event—Jerome’s Letter 123—was shaped more by theology and literary tradition than by firsthand historical reporting.
Rethinking the Rhine Crossings
Saint Jerome in His Study, portrait by Antonio da Fabriano II in 1451 – Wikimedia Commons
Jerome, a prominent early Christian scholar, wrote the letter in tbe year 409 to the widow Geruchia. In a key section, Jerome discuses “our present miseries” and details how these Germanic tribes began attacking into Gaul. The devestation is apparently widespread:
Mainz, a once noble city, was seized and overturned and thousands were murdered in a church [there]. Worms was finished after a long siege; Reims the mighty city; Amiens; Arras; Thérouanne, these farthest of the people; Tournai; Speyer; Strasbourg have been delivered to Germania; Aquitania, Novempopulania, Lugdunensis and Narbonensis, apart from a few cities, were devastated; the same cities suffered the sword from the outside and famine from within. Of Toulouse I cannot speak without tears, for it has not fallen only due to the efforts of its holy bishop Exsuperius. Even Spain, which finds itself in imminent danger, trembles daily as it recalls the invasion of the Cimbri. What others suffered once, they relive in fear.
While the letter is frequently cited as evidence for a large-scale invasion, Fafinski argues that Jerome’s primary aim was moral persuasion rather than accurate historiography. He explains that Jerome overall “had a difficult relationship with historical truth,” and even in this letter was writing as a theologian with his broader project of interpreting history through the lens of Christian eschatology (and also to help convince the widow Geruchia that she should not remarry).
Instead of an objective report, Jerome’s description appears to draw heavily from earlier Roman authors, particularly Ammianus Marcellinus, whose Res Gestae recounted an Alemannic raid on Mainz decades earlier. Jerome’s narrative also follows established Roman literary tropes about ‘barbarians’ and the vulnerability of Roman frontiers, further calling into question whether he had concrete details about the events of 406 at all. It would be surprising if Jerome was actually well-informed about events in Western Europe – after all, he had been living in the Near Eastern town of Bethlehem for over 20 years at this point.
Were there really barbarians in Mainz in 406? What was “news” in late antiquity? In case you missed it, my new open access paper that rethinks the founding events of the end of the Roman empire in light of female agency and the understanding of history.
Fafinski’s research also challenges the idea that the Rhine served as an impermeable border. Rather than marking a firm divide between the Roman world and external ‘barbarians,’ the river was frequently crossed by both Romans and non-Romans. Jerome’s portrayal of the Rhine as a breached defensive line appears to be part of a dramatic literary device rather than a reflection of military reality.
Rome’s northern frontier was always porous, with trade, diplomacy, and recruitment of non-Roman soldiers occurring across it. The idea that the Rhine crossings marked a sudden and catastrophic rupture is, at best, an oversimplification.
A New Perspective on Rome’s Fall
The findings have significant implications for how scholars understand the collapse of Roman authority in the early fifth century. If Jerome’s account is unreliable, then the notion of 406 as a watershed moment may need to be reconsidered. As Fafinski explains, even with Jerome’s account, what we know about these events is “merely bare bones.” Without Jerome, the remaining sources provide a very weak case:
All accounts are, to our knowledge, later than Jerome’s. Orosius, writing barely a decade after the events, mentions Alans, Sueves, and Vandals crossing the Rhine and ‘crushing the Franks’ (‘Francos proterunt’). For him this is an element of an anti-Stilicho tirade and thus mainly a result of internal factors – Stilicho’s attempts to wreak havoc on the Gaulish frontier by spurring these various groups to put pressure on the Rhine. Prosper, on the other hand, in his mid-fifth-century chronicle, mentions Vandals and Alans crossing the Rhine into Gaul. He fails to mention a precise place and he also does not mention any consequences of the crossing itself, skipping instead directly to the usurpation of Constantine in the next entry. While Frigeridus is roughly contemporary to Prosper, we only have his testimony as quoted by Gregory of Tours. He presents a narrative about Respendial, a king of the Alans, and Goar, an Alan leader, who defected to the Romans ‘mov[ing] his forces from the Rhine’ (‘de Rheno agmen suorum convertit’). All action in this passage takes place on the right bank of the Rhine. These accounts do not substantially differ from the usual tradition of describing movements inside and out of the Rhine frontier.
Fafinski’s study raises important questions about how historical narratives are constructed and how much weight should be given to sources shaped by ideology. While the Rhine crossings remain a key moment in traditional accounts of Rome’s fall, they may now need to be viewed with greater skepticism.
The article, “The ends of history? Jerome, Geruchia, and the Rhine crossings,” by Mateusz Fafinski, appears in the latest issue of Early Medieval Europe. Click here to read it.
Mateusz Fafinski is an Assistant Professor at the University of Erfurt, where his research focuses on late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. You can follow him on Bluesky or X/Twitter.
The video below offers a traditional interpretation of the Crossing of the Rhine:
A major event long considered a turning point in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire—the Rhine crossings of 406—may have been more rhetorical than real, according to new research published in Early Medieval Europe by historian Mateusz Fafinski.
For centuries, historians have viewed the winter of 406 as a moment of irreversible decline. According to traditional accounts, a coalition of so-called ‘barbarian’ groups, including Vandals, Alans, and Suebi, crossed the frozen Rhine River, overwhelming Roman defenes and unleashing chaos across Gaul. However, Fafinski’s study suggests that one of the key sources for this event—Jerome’s Letter 123—was shaped more by theology and literary tradition than by firsthand historical reporting.
Rethinking the Rhine Crossings
Jerome, a prominent early Christian scholar, wrote the letter in tbe year 409 to the widow Geruchia. In a key section, Jerome discuses “our present miseries” and details how these Germanic tribes began attacking into Gaul. The devestation is apparently widespread:
Mainz, a once noble city, was seized and overturned and thousands were murdered in a church [there]. Worms was finished after a long siege; Reims the mighty city; Amiens; Arras; Thérouanne, these farthest of the people; Tournai; Speyer; Strasbourg have been delivered to Germania; Aquitania, Novempopulania, Lugdunensis and Narbonensis, apart from a few cities, were devastated; the same cities suffered the sword from the outside and famine from within. Of Toulouse I cannot speak without tears, for it has not fallen only due to the efforts of its holy bishop Exsuperius. Even Spain, which finds itself in imminent danger, trembles daily as it recalls the invasion of the Cimbri. What others suffered once, they relive in fear.
While the letter is frequently cited as evidence for a large-scale invasion, Fafinski argues that Jerome’s primary aim was moral persuasion rather than accurate historiography. He explains that Jerome overall “had a difficult relationship with historical truth,” and even in this letter was writing as a theologian with his broader project of interpreting history through the lens of Christian eschatology (and also to help convince the widow Geruchia that she should not remarry).
Instead of an objective report, Jerome’s description appears to draw heavily from earlier Roman authors, particularly Ammianus Marcellinus, whose Res Gestae recounted an Alemannic raid on Mainz decades earlier. Jerome’s narrative also follows established Roman literary tropes about ‘barbarians’ and the vulnerability of Roman frontiers, further calling into question whether he had concrete details about the events of 406 at all. It would be surprising if Jerome was actually well-informed about events in Western Europe – after all, he had been living in the Near Eastern town of Bethlehem for over 20 years at this point.
The Rhine as a Rhetorical Barrier
Fafinski’s research also challenges the idea that the Rhine served as an impermeable border. Rather than marking a firm divide between the Roman world and external ‘barbarians,’ the river was frequently crossed by both Romans and non-Romans. Jerome’s portrayal of the Rhine as a breached defensive line appears to be part of a dramatic literary device rather than a reflection of military reality.
Rome’s northern frontier was always porous, with trade, diplomacy, and recruitment of non-Roman soldiers occurring across it. The idea that the Rhine crossings marked a sudden and catastrophic rupture is, at best, an oversimplification.
A New Perspective on Rome’s Fall
The findings have significant implications for how scholars understand the collapse of Roman authority in the early fifth century. If Jerome’s account is unreliable, then the notion of 406 as a watershed moment may need to be reconsidered. As Fafinski explains, even with Jerome’s account, what we know about these events is “merely bare bones.” Without Jerome, the remaining sources provide a very weak case:
All accounts are, to our knowledge, later than Jerome’s. Orosius, writing barely a decade after the events, mentions Alans, Sueves, and Vandals crossing the Rhine and ‘crushing the Franks’ (‘Francos proterunt’). For him this is an element of an anti-Stilicho tirade and thus mainly a result of internal factors – Stilicho’s attempts to wreak havoc on the Gaulish frontier by spurring these various groups to put pressure on the Rhine. Prosper, on the other hand, in his mid-fifth-century chronicle, mentions Vandals and Alans crossing the Rhine into Gaul. He fails to mention a precise place and he also does not mention any consequences of the crossing itself, skipping instead directly to the usurpation of Constantine in the next entry. While Frigeridus is roughly contemporary to Prosper, we only have his testimony as quoted by Gregory of Tours. He presents a narrative about Respendial, a king of the Alans, and Goar, an Alan leader, who defected to the Romans ‘mov[ing] his forces from the Rhine’ (‘de Rheno agmen suorum convertit’). All action in this passage takes place on the right bank of the Rhine. These accounts do not substantially differ from the usual tradition of describing movements inside and out of the Rhine frontier.
Fafinski’s study raises important questions about how historical narratives are constructed and how much weight should be given to sources shaped by ideology. While the Rhine crossings remain a key moment in traditional accounts of Rome’s fall, they may now need to be viewed with greater skepticism.
The article, “The ends of history? Jerome, Geruchia, and the Rhine crossings,” by Mateusz Fafinski, appears in the latest issue of Early Medieval Europe. Click here to read it.
Mateusz Fafinski is an Assistant Professor at the University of Erfurt, where his research focuses on late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. You can follow him on Bluesky or X/Twitter.
The video below offers a traditional interpretation of the Crossing of the Rhine:
Top Image: Map by Jbribeiro1 / Wikimedia Commons
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