By the last quarter of the seventh century the Byzantine areas of Italy had
experienced over a century of upheaval. Within decades of their first invasion
of Italy in 568 the Lombards had established a powerful kingdom
consisting of the territories north of the river Po, Tuscany and the two outlying
duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. The empire was confined to the
areas of Rome and its duchy, Ravenna, and the neighbouring areas of the
exarchate and the Pentapolis, approximating to the present-day Romagna
and Marche, and a few coastal areas elsewhere. The Byzantines had only
been able to hold on to their possessions by initiating a thoroughgoing militarisation
of society, which involved the concentration of land in military
hands and the concentration of authority in the hands of the commanderin-
chief in Ravenna (the exarch) and his subordinates (duces and magistri
militum at a provincial level and tribuni in the localities). In many areas, such
as the Roman Campania, this process was accompanied by a steady shift
of population, as settlement became concentrated on military strongholds
and refuges, usually located on promontories. Although the pressure eased
somewhat in the seventh century, Liguria and most of the remaining settlements
on the Venetian mainland were lost to the Lombards in the reign
of King Rothari (636–52), and the duchy of Benevento made continual
encroachments in the south, accelerating after the unsuccessful expedition
of Emperor Constans II (641–68) to southern Italy in 663–8. Internal tensions
were reflected in a series of revolts, the determined opposition led
by the papacy to Constans II’s monothelite doctrines and a bitter conflict
between the sees of Rome and Ravenna over the same emperor’s grant of
ecclesiastical autonomy (autokephalia) to the latter in 666.1 In two letters
addressed to his successor, Pope Agatho (678–81) bemoaned the dislocation
caused by the ‘gentiles’ and complained that lack of food forced the clergy
to work the land.2
By 680, however, the outlook appeared more hopeful. In that year, or
shortly before, the empire had concluded a treaty with the Lombards which
seems to have involved formal recognition of their kingdom.3 Constantine
IV (668–85) pursued a policy of reconciliation with the papacy which was
reflected in his abandonment of support for Rome’s ecclesiastical rival, the
archbishopric of Ravenna; reduced taxation of papal patrimonies; and a
renunciation of monotheletism in favour of Chalcedonian orthodoxy at the
sixth ecumenical council, held in Constantinople in 680–1.4 The process
of absorbing the Lombards into the Roman and Christian mainstream was
facilitated when the Arian beliefs which had long served as an anti-Roman
rallying-point for many Lombard kings and their followers were finally
repudiated by King Perctarit (661–2, 671–88). Complete unity within the
catholic ranks was at last achieved when the damaging schism over the
Three Chapters was resolved by the council of Pavia in 698 (see above,
pp. 117–18, 212–14). Byzantine influence was considerable in many respects,
for example the strong presence of eastern clerics and artists not only in
imperial territories such as Rome, but also in the kingdom of Italy; eight
of the nine pontiffs who sat on the throne of St Peter between 676 and 715
were of Greek, Syrian or Sicilian origin.
Any euphoria was short-lived because the situation within the remaining
Byzantine enclaves was inherently unstable. Successful resistance to the
Lombards had been achieved through concentrating power in the hands of
locally formed elites from the imperial garrison units (numeri). Bureaucrats
and soldiers of eastern origin had married into native families, accumulated
property locally and assumed a dominant hereditary position within their
communities. This group, which probably included some more adaptable
elements from among the middle-ranking civilian landowners surviving
from the late Roman period, came to identify strongly with local interests
and traditions; it was in a position to flex its muscles whenever it
saw its position threatened by an imperial government which it regarded
as remote and alternately impotent or oppressive. As a result of this process,
and of the empire’s preoccupation with more immediate threats from
the Arabs, Bulgars and Slavs and its consequent shortage of resources, the
position of the exarch and other officials sent out from the east became
increasingly marginal. Exarchal power was further limited in the early 690s
by the elevation of Sicily into a theme, whose governor (strat¯egos) was also
granted authority overNaples and the other imperial territories in the southern
mainland.5 In this context the transformation of the Lombards from
barbarian bogeymen to Romanised catholics served to weaken allegiance
to the empire further.
World History
