While bishops Victor and Maximian were completing the church of San Vitale in the 540s, the war between Gothic and imperial forces continued. Despite the loss of their capital in 540, the new Gothic leader Ildebadus defeated a major military contingent near Treviso later that year. When he was murdered in 541, his nephew Totila (also called Toutilas, Badua and Baudilas) took his place. Under this young energetic general, the Goths began to reverse all Belisarius’ victories (Plate 22).1 Their tenacity extended the war from 540 to 552, contributing to terrible destruction of agriculture (and the ruin of the farmers who grew crops, harvested olives and grapes and maintained food supplies), of fortifications, bridges, aqueducts and roads, and of many lives.
Constantinople had clearly not anticipated such a vigorous revival of Gothic power and Justinian had not arranged an adequate restoration of imperial administration in the reconquered regions of Italy. One reason for this failure was a catastrophic development in the East, where Chosroes, the Shah of Persia, broke the ‘Perpetual Peace’ and invaded the empire in the spring of 540. He marched across the eastern provinces, capturing major cities including the great centre of Antioch, and bathed in the Mediterranean.2 This symbol of his extension of Persian control to the coast of the Roman sea had to be countered. But in the summer of 542 the first outbreak of a devastating plague took its toll on conqueror and conquered alike. The movement of this sixth-century ‘Black Death’, from the south-east corner of the Mediterranean right across the Roman world, can be traced in records of many thousands dead and entire villages abandoned. It was carried by fleas clinging to rats that had travelled on ships from the Far East, bringing a deadly poison to all human life. Once established in Egypt the pestilence spread rapidly throughout the Roman world.3 In Constantinople, the living were too few to bury the dead, and the emperor himself suffered the swellings that usually predicted death. Unlike many, he survived. But Justinian was hardly in a position to reinforce the recent imperial conquest of Italy while Chosroes remained in control of large regions of the empire in the East and the army was devastated by the plague. He concentrated what forces he had on preserving power in Egypt, the most fertile and prosperous province that provided the grain for Constantinople’s bread supply, and left Italy to fend for itself.4 The Persian campaign was a harbinger of the even more successful challenge of Islam.
After the reconquest of North Africa, Belisarius had appointed men on whom he could rely, often his own commanding officers, to leading positions within the newly imposed administration, and it seems reasonable to assume that he did the same in Italy before he left Ravenna in June 540. Among the junior military leaders who had served under him, several remained in charge of Italian garrisons in key areas: Conon in Naples, Cyprian (Perugia), Bessas (possibly Spoleto), Justin (Florence), Vitalian (Venetia) and Constantianus (Ravenna).5 But their presence was not enough to secure all the territory that had been reoccupied. In 542, Constantinople appointed Maximinus Praetorian Prefect for Italy with overall military responsibility, but he never ventured further than Syracuse in Sicily. When he eventually sent the fleet to Naples to confront Totila, it was destroyed in a storm. This remarkable failure was not corrected by immediate reinforcements, partly because the eastern capital was in the grip of the pestilence that killed so many, but partly because the Gothic king had his own fleet, which consolidated his control over southern Italy.6
Within Ravenna, now the provincial capital of Italy, officials appointed from Constantinople jostled for the best facilities and most prestigious accommodation. Among civilian officials sent to Italy, Procopius only mentions Alexander, the logothetes (controller) of state finances (known as ‘Snips’ from his skill in clipping gold coins), who was condemned for his meanness in settling military claims for compensation, and making unreasonable tax demands. The introduction of imperial taxation was one of the consequences of Belisarius’ campaign and widely resented. A disastrous shift from the victorious entry into Ravenna in 540 to military defeats two years later may be attributed both to inadequate armed support and to Snips’s niggardly attitude to pay, which reduced the willingness of the garrisons of Ravenna and other cities to fight. His reputation was well known, as Totila reminded the Senate when he compared the good deeds of Theoderic and Amalasuintha to the new governors from the East: ‘You know full well what guests and friends you have found them, if you have any recollection of the public accounts of Alexander.’7 Procopius also records Snips’s failure to cooperate with Constantianus, when the two shared the leadership of a large force sent to capture Verona from the Goths. They failed to agree a strategy, which led to a major defeat for the imperial forces. From Ravenna Constantianus wrote to Justinian complaining about the lack of reinforcements. While the ineffectual praetorian prefect Maximinus refused to leave Sicily and ‘Snips’ imposed his rule in Ravenna, the new Gothic leader rallied his forces to regain many of the key fortresses of southern Italy.8
In this indeterminate situation, the deadly pestilence spread throughout the Mediterranean world, although Italy does not appear to have suffered such dramatic losses as the East. Agnellus alludes to its effects in Ravenna under Bishop Victor who lived through these years, mentioning pestilence, hunger and strife and great dissention between Christians, as if the world was about to end. Quoting the Book of Revelation, he describes the signs and wonders and unnatural phenomena that heralded the Apocalypse, claiming that evil men had destroyed what Victor had achieved.9
In 544 Justinian had to send Belisarius back to counter the Gothic threat. When he arrived in Ravenna, via Salona and Pola, Totila was besieging Rome. Since the imperial general’s own forces were quite inadequate to the task of relieving the city, he attempted to win over any Goths who would change sides. But, in the protracted war from 544–9, Totila captured Rome and reoccupied most of Italy and Sicily, thus reversing the balance of power. Belisarius’ campaign was ineffective and he was recalled to Constantinople. In 552 Justinian provided more substantial funding for Narses, an Armenian general, to resume the anti-Gothic campaign. Narses was a eunuch who had held the court position of praepositus (treasurer) and had served briefly under Belisarius before 540. He was a remarkably skilful military leader who would have a major influence in shaping imperial administration in the West for the next twenty years.10 With the help of John, another commander familiar with the region, he initially outwitted the Gothic forces sent to oppose his entry to Italy at the Julian Alps by taking the coastal route around the head of the Adriatic, using the small boats of local inhabitants of the Venetia to construct pontoon bridges across the many river outlets that normally made the route impossible. In May/ June 552 these troops appeared unexpectedly at Ravenna, having avoided the established road through Verona.11
Late in June 552, before what was to be the decisive battle of the campaign, Totila gave a prolonged bravura display of horsemanship in front of the imperial troops, making his horse prance and dance while he threw his javelin up and caught it in a demonstration of military skills.12 At this clash at Busta Gallorum in the Apennines, the Gothic forces were routed and their leader was fatally wounded; in August Justinian received Totila’s jewelled cap and cloak as proof of his death. Although the Goths elected another king, Narses defeated them again the following year and marched in victory to Ravenna, to be welcomed by Archbishop Maximian. He then proceeded to Rome, which he made his base of operations. After eighteen years of highly destructive warfare the provinces of Italy had been won back into imperial control. But Justinian had little to celebrate. The war had totally disrupted the civilian population, administration and, most critically, agricultural production, which made it very difficult to collect the regular taxation destined for Constantinople.
Nothing daunted, in August 554 the emperor issued an edict in Latin now known as the Pragmatic Sanction, to rebuild a working government in Italy based in the imperial capital, Ravenna.13 Although it was directed to Antiochus, the newly appointed praetorian prefect, as well as Narses, the victorious commander took precedence, following the model of imperial administration recently restored in North Africa. This arrangement, with priority given to military needs and considerable overlap between the military and civilian spheres, broke the strict separation traditional in Roman administration and took a clear step towards their fusion that would characterize all governments of the early medieval West. The Pragmatic Sanction was primarily designed to restore land ownership, which had been disrupted by the long war. It insisted on the validity of laws issued and grants made by Athalaric, Amalasuintha and Theodahad, but not those of the usurper Totila – ‘utterly abominable’, ‘of criminal memory’ – as well as concessions and grants made by Theodora ‘of pious memory’ (she had died in 548). This effort to maintain legal ownership of property and livestock encouraged landowners who had fled, like Cassiodorus, to return to Italy. Those who had bought or sold property under the Goths would not be threatened by restitution, and all property owners would continue to pay the basic land tax. The effort to reaffirm conditions that existed before the time of Totila was attributed to a petition of Pope Vigilius, who was still in Constantinople in 554.
In addition, Justinian ordered the circulation of his Codex, originally in Latin, and subsequent new laws (Novellae), written in Greek and translated into Latin, to regulate the judiciary; the maintenance of courts of justice; the payment of teachers, rhetoricians, doctors and lawyers (according to the practice of Theoderic); the use of correct weights and measures, as issued ‘to the most blessed pope or the most eminent Senate’, for payments in cash or in kind; avoidance of double taxation; the return of slaves to their owners, and of virgins dedicated to God to their monasteries or churches. Senators were guaranteed the right to travel to the emperor’s court and to go to their estates in Italy for as long as they needed. A specific set of regulations covered the maintenance of public works in Rome, relating to the channel of the Tiber, the Forum, the port and sewers, which were to be financed from taxes assigned. The city was to be governed by a military duke (dux), a subordinate of the praetorian prefect based in Ravenna. Since Justinian had abolished the consulate in 541, and the Senate had been greatly reduced by the flight of so many distinguished members to Constantinople during the war, the bishop of Rome was obliged to assume greater responsibility for the city’s well-being.14
This was part of a system of much closer governmental co-operation with the Church, drawing particularly on the assistance of bishops. Justinian ruled that bishops and local notables, landowners and inhabitants were to select governors of the reconquered provinces to apply the law justly and legally, and if these men were ever found to have exacted excess taxes, or to have used inaccurate weights or light-weight solidi to cause losses, they were to provide compensation out of their own resources.15 This was another major innovation. Previously provincial governors had been nominated by the highest authority (emperor or praetorian prefect) and had been moved from one region to another, rarely serving in their own provinces; government had been highly centralized. Now much power was devolved to local elites who could select governors from among their number. These men were to be appointed without paying anything for the office and were charged with the collection and transfer of public taxes to the imperial administration without extorting any additional payments.
While Rome remained the home of the Senate and probably the chief centre of legal instruction, Ravenna was confirmed as the capital of the reconquered Italian provinces and the base for restored civilian administration. Around six hundred officials would be required to run such a centralized government, and each senior figure would have his own officium, a team of subordinates, secretaries and scribes.16 The influx of trained officials and their entourages, which probably brought additional influence from Constantinople, together with an increase in the military establishment, must have led to a considerable expansion in the size of the city. In addition, regulations that promoted bishops to replace city defenders, defensores civitatis, and other laws addressed specifically to church leaders rather than military officials, increased ecclesiastical authority.17
In spite of Justinian’s insistence that the selection of good governors could reinstate imperial administration in its best possible form, the Pragmatic Sanction of 554, and subsequent rulings, failed to address the underlying problem caused by so many years of warfare. The plague of 542–3 had also taken a toll on the survivors. How were landowners and tenants to pay their taxes when agricultural production had been so severely disturbed that they had no basic resources, crops, oil or wine, to sell, when urban life had been disrupted by sieges, many inhabitants displaced, and castles, bridges and roads destroyed to limit enemy movement? During the war soldiers had regularly complained about the lack of pay and were still roaming the countryside looking for sustenance. Even those who had returned to their homes and could begin to cultivate their land often had no money. Many aristocratic families had spent much of their fortunes during the military upheavals, supporting the population during city sieges, such as the long siege of Rome in 545–6, and would have exhausted their reserves.
The same problem may be observed in many urban centres, where the mechanisms of taxation levied by local councils to support local defences, military needs and court expenditure were reinstated by the Pragmatic Sanction. Whether Justinian intended it or not, a conservative tradition maintained by local scribes prolonged methods of resolving property quarrels and recording sales and gifts with only slight changes to the formulae employed. There was an underlying shift to a more local authority, in the person of the provincial governor elected by bishops and notables, and military men who acquired land assumed greater prominence in almost all parts of the post-Roman world. Ravenna was an exception in that it became the seat of the imperially appointed ruler with overall authority throughout Italy.
But the city had experienced some of the upheavals and disorders of the war period, which surface in muddled form in Agnellus. He appears to have copied material from a chronicle such as the poorly preserved Annals of Ravenna (where information was recorded and dated by year) that involved the vigorous punishment of a group of Manichaeans, heretics according to the established Church, who were discovered in the city. They were thrown out and died in the Fossa Sconii next to the river. Further omens, visions and terrifying events, such as a red sign in the sky on 11 November, may be related to the year 560, as the entry immediately precedes Agnellus’ note about the death of Pope Pelagius on 3 March 561. This red sign (a star or comet?) persuaded the citizens to put marks on their homes so that they would be recognized at the end of times. It was associated with a series of visions, followed by the claim that the people of Ravenna made war on those of Verona and conquered them on 20 July, possibly an allusion to Narses’s siege of that city and its eventual capture in 561. Another comet that appeared between August and October, together with red signs in the sky and the burning of the town of Fano and the camp of Cesena, is associated with the death of Justinian in 565.18
Thanks to the survival of papyri records from the mid-sixth century onwards, the curia of Ravenna can be observed perpetuating city administration, which seems to have survived longer in Italy than elsewhere. In 552 the will of George, a silk merchant, son of a silk merchant from Antioch, was reentered in the municipal archive, George signing in Greek letters. On this occasion the council met in Classis in the presence of the praetorian prefect, Flavius Aurelianus, with Bonifatius Pompulius serving as magistrate, Andreas Melminius, defender of the city, and Johannes the proemptor (agent) as witness. Like many local inhabitants, George donates all his property to the church of Ravenna. In 564 Germana, clarissima femina and widow of Collictus, drew up a charter appointing Gratianus, subdeacon of the church of Ravenna, as tutor of her young son Stefanus.19 A fascinating inventory of his inheritance, written by Johannes, one of the city’s scribes (tabellio civitatis Ravennae), was appended to the charter with a detailed description of all the gold and silver (in coin and objects such as silver spoons), household furnishings (carpets, cushions, bed coverings, kitchen ware), tools, clothes and jewellery, plus portions of three houses, in Ravenna and outside the city in Bologna and Cornelia, which had been sold on Collictus’ death. The slaves Guderit and Ranihilda had been freed (the latter now deceased), and Guderit had received an impressive list of clothing: a silk tunic, a decorated shirt, an old wool coat, a cloak and a cloth (mappa) worth one silver siliqua, all stored in a locked chest. The inventory of the clothing provides a startling example of the sumptuous dress of high-ranking inhabitants of Ravenna: a silk shirt in red and green (worth three and a half gold solidi), a green silk tunic with decoration (one and half solidi), a silk tunic with short sleeves, and linen trousers.20 Their brightly coloured garments echo those worn by the three kings depicted in S. Apollinare Nuovo as Persian or the ladiesinwaiting in San Vitale, and the survival of silks in contrasting colours confirms the same appreciation.
Germana’s petition was accepted and entered in the council’s records to ensure that Stefanus would in due course receive his inheritance. His male guardian, the subdeacon Gratianus, signed with a cross, indicating that he was illiterate. Other witnesses included Stefanus, vir devotus, and the secretary of the prefect (scriniarius gloriosae sedis), probably Pamphronius named in several documents. The civilian administration of the city and the council’s regular activity clearly continued despite the devastation of warfare.
While bishops and local elites were charged with the selection and installation of provincial governors, Narses tried to impose an effective military occupation, sending dukes to the remaining cities and stationing troops in the fortress garrisons that defended the borders of Italy.21 In 553–4 the imperial administration was challenged by the Franks, who with their allies the Alemanni and Heruli, attacked unwalled cities in northern Italy and ravaged the countryside. This brought Narses to Ravenna, where he presumably occupied the palace that had been expanded and redecorated by Theoderic and his successors. While he was there the Gothic defender of Totila’s treasure came to Classis to hand over the keys to Cumae (south of Naples), where the accumulated booty had been secured. Narses then returned to Rome to organize a final campaign against the invaders. In 555 Narses attended the inauguration of Pelagius as pope, who repeatedly asked him for military assistance. He restored at least one bridge destroyed by Totila, the Pons Salarius, commemorated in two inscriptions and a parapet with pilasters decorated with Greek crosses. In gratitude for the assistance of the Veneti, who facilitated his unusual route into Italy, he dedicated churches at the head of the Adriatic (on what became the Rivus Altus, much later the centre of Venice), and in Vicenza, but there is no evidence of his patronage in the imperial capital. In 561 Verona’s was the last Gothic garrison to capitulate.
Despite Narses’s efforts, the disruption caused by prolonged military activity made it very difficult for imperial officials to reimpose order. Newcomers vied with the settled populations in all the western regions previously part of the Roman empire. Africa too was threatened by many revolts. As late as 565 Narses had to put down a rebellion in northern Italy led by Sindual, a magister militum previously associated with an invasion of the Heruli. Was this a band of wandering mercenaries or another group of discharged soldiers without land, homes and families? Narses defeated the revolt and ‘hung Sindual from a lofty beam’, according to Paul the deacon.22
In his efforts to establish firm administration, Narses appears to have generated opposition among some members of Roman society. In 568 Emperor Justin II received letters that denounced the general, accusing him of ‘subjecting the Romans to slavery’, and recalled him to Constantinople.23 The general went off to Naples as if to sail back to the East, but when Pope John III learned of this, he insisted on Narses returning to Rome. When he finally died at the great age of ninety-five, perhaps in 574, his body was shipped back to Constantinople in a lead coffin to be buried in the monastery he had founded in Bithynia.24 Justin II and Empress Sophia took part in this grand funeral. In his burial, as in his life, Narses embodies the unity of the Roman world, in which the Armenian eunuch had served with such distinction in the western provinces while preparing his own tomb in an eastern setting, where he would be commemorated in perpetuity by monastic services on behalf of his soul. But he left Italy in a very unstable condition.