Bishop Avitus?

The more I read of early church history, the more it puzzles me when apologists for Rome or Eastern Orthodoxy urge people, "if you would only read church history, you would see that Rome (or Constantinople) is the only clear and obvious choice."

I'm missing something, I guess, because the first centuries of the church are pretty crazy; full of the odd and grotesque.  Those who say "look to the early centuries" argue on one side that these were times of strong and pure apostolic tradition, and on the other side, well, don't worry about all the embarrassing  silly stuff.  With one part of our brains we are supposed to believe that these guys received and preserved a faithful apostolic tradition, while with the other part of our brains we are supposed to shrug off their teaching that the horns of the unicorn are nature's testimony of the cross, and that Jesus must have been much older than 50 when he died.

In 456, Rome was subject to a weak and ineffective emperor named Avitus.  Gibbon reports that "Avitus, at a time when the Imperial dignity was reduced to a preeminence of toil and danger, indulged himself in the pleasures of Italian luxury: age had not extinguished his amorous inclinations; and he is accused of insulting, with indiscreet and ungenerous raillery, the husbands whose wives he had seduced or violated."   Avitus was so unpopular and so bad, Ricimer, one of his generals finally informed him that his term was up.  But fear not, Avitus, we have another job for you: you can be bishop of Placentia.

I wonder, had Ricimer been reading 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 concerning the qualifications for bishops?  And Pope Leo in Rome: he was okay with this?

And to be fair, Avitus didn't take the job.

But crazy times.  Christology at Council of Chalcedon, 451: good.  Ecclesiology in Rome, 456: not so good.