two more aspects of his life which deserve notice—his work as a builder
and his codification of the laws. From the days of Diocletian the style of
architecture which we call Byzantine, for want of a better name, had been
slowly developing from the old classic forms, and many of the emperors of
the fourth and fifth centuries had been given to building. But no previous
monarch had combined in such a degree as did Justinian the will and the
power to launch out into architectural experiments. He had at his disposal
the hoarded treasures of Anastasius, and his tastes were as magnificent as
those of the great builders of the early empire, Augustus and Nero and
Hadrian. All over the empire the monuments of his wealth and taste were
seen in dozens of churches, halls of justice, monasteries, forts,
hospitals, and colonnades. The historian Procopius was able to compose a
considerable volume entirely on the subject of Justinian’s buildings, and
numbers of them survive, some perfect and more in ruins, to witness to the
accuracy of the work. Even in the more secluded or outlying portions of
the empire, any fine building that is found is, in two cases out of three,
one of the works of Justinian. Not merely great centres like
Constantinople or Jerusalem, but out-of-the-way tracts in Cappadocia and
Isauria, are full of his buildings. Even in the newly-conquered Ravenna
his great churches of San Vitale, containing the celebrated mosaic
portraits of himself and his wife, and of St. Apollinare in the suburb of
Classis, outshine the older works of the fifth-century emperors and of the
Goth Theodoric.
[Illustration]
Columns In St. Sophia.
[Illustration]
Galleries Of St. Sophia.
Justinian’s churches, indeed, are the best known of his buildings. In
Oriental church-architecture his reign forms a landmark: up to his time
Christian architects had still been using two patterns copied straight
from Old Roman models. The first was the round domed church, whose origin
can be traced back to such Roman originals as the celebrated Temple of
Vesta—of such the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Rome may serve as a
type. The second was the rectangular church with apses, which was nothing
more than an adaptation for ecclesiastical purposes of the Old Roman
law-courts, and which had borrowed from them its name of _Basilica_. St.
Paul’s Outside the Walls, at Rome is a fair specimen. Justinian brought
into use for the first time on a large scale the combination of a
cruciform ground-plan and a very large dome. The famous Church of St.
Sophia may serve as the type of this style. The great cathedral of
Constantinople had already been burnt down twice, as we have had occasion
to relate: the first time on the eve of the banishment of John Chrysostom,
the second in the great “Nika” riot of 532. Within forty days of its
destruction Justinian had commenced preparations for rebuilding it as a
monument of his triumph in the civil strife. He chose as his architect
Anthemius of Tralles, the greatest of Byzantine builders, and one of the
few whose names have survived. The third church was different in plan from
either of its predecessors, showing the new combination which we have
already specified. It is a Greek cross, 241 feet long and 224 broad,
having in its midst a vast dome, pierced by no less than forty windows,
light and airy and soaring 180 feet above the floor. In the nave the
aisles and side apses are parted from the main central spaces by
magnificent colonnades of marble pillars, the majority of _verde antique_.
These are not for the most part the work of Justinian’s day, but were
plundered from the chief pagan temples of Asia, which served as an
inexhaustible quarry for the Christian builder. The whole of the interior,
both roof and dome, was covered with gilding or mosaics, which the
Vandalism of the Turks has covered with a coat of whitewash, to hide the
representations of human forms which are offensive to the Moslems’ creed.
Procopius describes the church with enthusiasm, and his praises are well
justified—
“It presents a most glorious spectacle, extraordinary to those who
behold it, and altogether incredible to those who know it by
report only. In height it rises to the very heavens, and overtops
the neighbouring buildings like a ship anchored among them. It
towers above the city which it adorns, and from it the whole of
Constantinople can be beheld, as from a watch-tower. Its breadth
and length are so judiciously chosen, that it appears both broad
and long without disproportion. For it excels both in size and
harmony, being more magnificent than ordinary buildings, and much
more elegant than the few which approach it in size. Within it is
singularly full of light and sunshine; you would declare that the
place is not lighted from without, but that the rays are produced
within itself, such an abundance of light is poured into it. The
gilded ceiling adds glory to its interior, though the light
reflected upon the gold from the marble surpasses it in beauty.
Who can tell of the splendour of the columns and marbles with
which the church is adorned? One would think that one had come
upon a meadow full of flowers in bloom—one wonders at the purple
tints of some, the green of others, the glowing red and glittering
white, and those, too, which nature, like a painter, has marked
with the strongest contrasts of colour. Moreover, it is impossible
accurately to describe the treasures of gold and silver plate and
gems which the Emperor has presented to the church: the Sanctuary
alone contains forty thousand pounds weight of silver.”
Justinian was almost as great a builder of forts as of churches, but his
military works have for the most part disappeared. It may give some idea
of his energy in fortifying the frontiers when we state that the Illyrian
provinces alone were protected by 294 forts, of which Procopius gives a
list, disposed in four successive lines from the Danube back to the
Thessalian hills. Some were single towers, but many were elaborate
fortresses with outworks, and all had to be protected by garrisons.
Thus much of Justinian as builder: space fails to enumerate a tithe of his
works. Of his great legal achievement we must speak at even shorter
length. The Roman law, as he received it from his predecessors was an
enormous mass of precedents and decisions, in which the original basis was
overlaid with the various and sometimes contradictory rescripts of five
centuries of emperors. Several of his predecessors, and most especially
Theodosius II., had endeavoured to codify the chaotic mass and reduce it
to order. But no one of them had produced a code which sufficed to bring
the law of the day into full accord with the spirit of the times. It was
no mean work to bring the ancient legislation of Rome, from the days of
the Twelve Tables down to the days of Justinian, into strict and logical
connection with the new Christian ideas which had worked their way into
predominance since the days of Constantine. Much of the old law was
hopelessly obsolete, owing to the change in moral ideas which Christianity
had introduced, but it is still astonishing to see how much of the old
forms of the times of the early empire survived into the sixth century.
Justinian employed a commission, headed by the clever but unpopular lawyer
Tribonian, to draw up his new code. The work was done for ever and a day,
and his “Institutes” and “Pandects” were the last revision of the Old
Roman laws, and the starting-point of all systematic legal study in
Europe, when, six hundred years later, the need for something more than
customary folk-right began to make itself felt, as mediæval civilization
evolved itself out of the chaos of the dark ages. If the Roman Empire had
flourished in the century after Justinian as in that which preceded him,
other revisers of the laws might have produced compilations that would
have made the “Institutes” seem out of date. But, as a matter of fact,
decay and chaos followed after Justinian, and succeeding emperors had
neither the need nor the inclination to do his work over again. Hence it
came to pass that his name is for ever associated with the last great
revision of Roman law, and that he himself went down to posterity as the
greatest of legislators, destined to be enthroned by Dante in one of the
starry thrones of his “Paradise,” and to be worshipped as the father of
law by all the legists of the Renaissance.
IX. THE COMING OF THE SLAVS.
The thirty years which followed the death of Justinian are covered by
three reigns, those of Justinus II. [565-578], Tiberius Constantinus
[578-582], and Maurice [582-602]. These three emperors were men of much
the same character as the predecessors of Justinian; each of them was an
experienced official of mature age, who was selected by the reigning
emperor as his most worthy successor. Justinus was the favourite nephew of
Justinian, and had served him for many years as Curopalates, or Master of
the Palace. Tiberius Constantinus was “Count of the Excubiti,” a high
Court officer in the suite of Justinus: Maurice again served Tiberius as
“Count of the Fœderati,” or chief of the Barbarian auxiliaries. They were
all men of capacity, and strove to do their best for the empire:
historians concur in praising the justice of Justinus, the liberality and
humanity of Tiberius, the piety of Maurice. Yet under them the empire was
steadily going down hill: the exhausting effects of the reign of Justinian
were making themselves felt more and more, and at the end of the reign of
Maurice a time of chaos and disaster was impending, which came to a head
under his successor.
The internal causes of the disaster of this time were the weakening of the
empire by the great plague of 544 and still more by the grinding exactions
of Justinian’s financial system. Its external phenomena were invasions by
new hordes from the north, combined with long and exhausting wars with
Persia. The virtues of the emperors seem to have helped them little:
Justin’s justice made him feared rather than loved; Tiberius’s liberality
rendered him popular, but drained the treasury; Maurice, on the other
hand, who was economical and endeavoured to fill the coffers which his
predecessors had emptied, was therefore universally condemned as
avaricious.
The troubles on the frontier which vexed the last thirty years of the
sixth century were due to three separate sets of enemies—the Lombards in
Italy, the Slavs and Avars in the Balkan Peninsula, and the Persians in
the East.
The empire held undisputed possession of Italy for no more than fifteen
years after the expulsion of the Ostrogoths in A.D. 553. Then a new enemy
came in from the north, following the same path that had already served
for the Visigoths of Alaric and the Ostrogoths of Theodoric. The
new-comers were the race of the Lombards, who had hitherto dwelt in
Hungary, on the Middle Danube, and had more frequently been found as
friends than as foes of the Romans. But their warlike and ambitious King
Alboin, having subdued all his nearer neighbours, began to covet the
fertile plains of Italy, where he saw the emperors keeping a very
inadequate garrison, now that the Ostrogoths were finally driven away. In
A.D. 568 Alboin and his hordes crossed the Alps, bringing with them wife
and child, and flocks and herds, while their old land on the Danube was
abandoned to the Avars. The Lombards took possession of the flat country
in the north of Italy, as far as the line of the Po, with very little
difficulty. The region, we are told, was almost uninhabited owing to the
combined effects of the great plague and the Ostrogothic war. In this once
fertile and populous, but now deserted, lowland, the Lombards settled down
in great numbers. There they have left their name as the permanent
denomination of the plain of Lombardy. Only one city, the strong fortress
of Pavia, held out against them for long; when it fell in 571, after a
gallant defence of three years, Alboin made it his capital, instead of
choosing one of the larger and more famous towns of Milan and Verona, the
older centres of life in the land he had conquered. After subduing
Lombardy the king pushed forward into Etruria, and overran the valley of
the Arno. But in the midst of his wars he was cut off, if the legend tells
us the truth, by the vengeance of his wife Queen Rosamund. She was the
daughter of Cunimund, King of the Gepidæ, whom Alboin had slain in battle.
The fallen monarch’s skull was, by the victor’s orders, mounted in gold
and fashioned into a cup. Long years after, amid the revelry of a drinking
bout, Alboin had the ghastly cup filled with wine, and bade his wife bear
it around to his chosen warriors. The queen obeyed, but vowed to revenge
herself by her husband’s death. By the sacrifice of her honour she bribed
Alboin’s armour-bearer to slay his master in his bed, and then fled with
him to Constantinople [A.D. 573].
But the death of Alboin did not put an end to the Lombard conquests in
Italy. The kingdom, indeed, broke up for a time into several independent
duchies, but the Lombard chiefs continued to win territory from the
empire. Two of them founded the considerable duchies of Spoleto and
Benevento, the one in Central, and the other in Southern Italy. These
states survived as independent powers, but the rest of the Lombard
territories were reunited by King Autharis, in 584, and he and his
immediate successors completed the conquest of Northern Italy.
Thus, during the reigns of Justin, Tiberius II., and Maurice, the greater
part of Justinian’s Italian conquests were lost, and formed once more into
Teutonic states. The emperor retained only two large stretches of
territory, the one in Central Italy, where he held a broad belt of land,
extending right across the peninsula, from Ravenna and Ancona on the
Adriatic, to Rome on the Tyrrhenian Sea; the other comprehending the
extreme south of the land—the “toe” and “heel” of the Italian boot—and
comprising the territory of Bruttium and the Calabrian(15) towns of
Taranto, Brindisi, and Otranto. Sardinia and Sicily were also left
untouched by the Lombards, who never succeeded in building a fleet. The
Roman territory which stretched across Central Italy cut the Lombards in
two, the king ruling the main body of them in Tuscany and the valley of
the Po; while the dukes of Spoleto and Benevento maintained an isolated
existence in the south.
[Illustration]
Cross Of Justinus II. (_From the Vatican._) (_From "L’Art Byzantin," Par
C. Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883._)
This partition of Italy between the Lombards and the empire is worth
remembering, from the fact that never again, till our own day, was the
whole peninsula gathered into a single state. Not till 1870, when the
kingdom of United Italy was completed by the conquest of Rome, did a time
come when all the lands between the Alps and the Straits of Messina were
governed by one ruler. Justinian had no successor till Victor Emmanuel.
After the Lombard conquest the imperial dominions in Italy were
administered by a governor, called the Exarch, who dwelt at Ravenna, the
northernmost and strongest of the imperial fortresses. All the Italian
provinces were nominally beneath his control, but, as a matter of fact, he
was only treated with implicit obedience by those of his subordinates who
dwelt in his own neighbourhood. He found it harder to enforce his orders
at Naples and Reggio, or in the distant islands of Sicily and Sardinia.
But it was the bishops of Rome who profited most by his absence: although
a “duke,” a military officer of some importance, dwelt at Rome, he was
from the first overshadowed by his spiritual neighbour. Even during the
days of the Ostrogoths the Roman bishops had acquired considerable
importance, as being the chief official representatives of the Italians in
dealings with their Teutonic masters. But they spoke with much more
freedom and weight when they had to do, not with a King of Italy dwelling
quite near them, but with a mere governor fettered by orders from distant
Constantinople. Gregory the Great [590-604] was the first of the popes who
began to assume an independent attitude and to treat the Exarch at Ravenna
with scant ceremony. He was an able and energetic man, who could not bear
to see Rome suffering for want of a ruler on the spot, and readily took
upon himself civil functions, in spite of the protests of his nominal
superior the Exarch. In 592, for example, he made a private truce for Rome
with the Lombard Duke of Spoleto, though the latter was at war with the
empire. The Emperor Maurice stormed at him as foolish and disobedient, but
did not venture to depose him, being too much troubled with Persian and
Avaric wars to send troops against Rome. On another occasion Gregory
nominated a governor for Naples, instead of leaving the appointment to the
Exarch. In 599 he acted as mediator between the Lombard king and the
government at Ravenna, as if he had been a neutral and independent
sovereign. Although he showed no wish to sever his connection with the
Roman Empire, Gregory behaved as if he considered the emperor his suzerain
rather than his immediate ruler. He would never give in on disputed
points, issued orders which contradicted imperial rescripts, and
maintained a bitter quarrel with successive patriarchs of Constantinople,
who possessed the favour of Maurice. When the patriarch John the Faster
took the title of “œcumenical bishop,” Gregory wrote to Maurice to tell
him that the presumption of John was a sure sign that the days of
Antichrist were at hand, and to urge him to repress such pretensions by
the force of the civil arm. This is one of the first signs of the approach
of that mediæval view of the papacy which imagined that it was the
pontiff’s duty to censure and advise kings and emperors on all possible
topics and occasions. Gregory’s immediate successors were not men of mark,
or a breach with the empire might have been precipitated. The final
disavowal of the supremacy of the Constantinopolitan monarch was to be
still delayed for nearly two hundred years.
The wars between the Exarchs of Ravenna and the Lombard kings were little
influenced by interference from the East. The emperors during the last
thirty years of the sixth century were far more engrossed with their
Persian and Slavonic wars. Contests with the Great king of the East
occupied no less than twenty years in the reigns of Justin II., Tiberius,
and Maurice. War was declared in 572, and did not cease till 592. Like the
struggle between Justinian and Chosroës I., thirty years before, it was
wholly indecisive. There were more plundering raids than battles, and the
frontier provinces of each empire were reduced to a dreadful state of
desolation and depopulation: if the Persians pushed their ravages as far
as the gates of Antioch, Roman generals penetrated deep into Media and
Corduene, where the imperial banner had not been seen for two hundred
years. The net result of the whole twenty years of strife was that each
combatant had seriously weakened and distressed his rival, without
obtaining any definite superiority over him. Forced to make peace by the
pressure of a civil war, Chosroës II. gave back to Maurice the two
frontier cities of Dara and Martyropolis, the sole trophies of twenty
campaigns, and ceded him a slice of Armenian territory. But these trivial
gains were far from compensating the empire for the fearful losses caused
by dozens of Persian invasions.
The Persian war was exhausting, but successful: on the northern frontier,
however, the Roman army had been faring far worse, and serious losses of
territory were beginning to take place. The enemies in this quarter were
two new tribes, who appeared on the Danube after the Lombards had departed
from it to commence their invasion of Italy. There were now no Teutons
left on the northern frontier of the empire: of the incoming tribes, one
was Tartar and the other Slavonic. The Avars were a nomadic race from
Asia, wild horsemen of the Steppes, much like their predecessors the Huns.
They had fled west to escape the Turks, who were at this time building up
an empire in Central Asia, and betook themselves to the South Russian
plains, not far from the mouth of the Danube. To cross the river and
ravage Moesia was too tempting a prospect to be neglected, and ere long
the Avaric cavalry were seen only too frequently along the Balkans and on
the coast of the Black Sea. Their first raid into Roman territory fell
into the year 562, just before the death of Justinian, and from that time
forward they were always causing trouble. They were ready enough to make
peace when money was paid them, but as they invariably broke the agreement
when the money was spent, it was never long before they reappeared south
of the Danube.
But the Slavs were a far more serious danger to the empire than the Avars.
The latter came only to plunder, the former—like the Germans two centuries
before—came pressing into the provinces to win themselves a new home. The
Romans knew at first of only two tribes of them, the Slovenes and Antae,
but behind these there were others who were gradually to push their way to
the south and make their presence known—Croats, Servians, and many more.
The Slavs were the easternmost of the Aryan peoples of Europe, and by far
the most backward. They had always lain behind the Germans, and it was
only when the German barrier was removed by the migration of the Goths and
Lombards that they came into touch with the empire. They were rude races,
far behind the Teutons in civilization; they had hardly learnt as yet the
simplest arts, knew nothing of defensive armour, and could only use for
boats tree-trunks hollowed out by fire—like the Australian savages of
to-day. They had not learnt to live under kings or chiefs, but dwelt in
village communities, governed by the patriarchs of the several families.
Their abodes were mud huts, and they cultivated no grain but millet. When
they went to war they could send out thousands of spearmen and bowmen, but
their wild bands were not very formidable in the open field. They could
resist neither cavalry nor disciplined infantry, and were only formidable
in woods and defiles, where they formed ambuscades and endeavoured to take
their enemy by surprise, and overwhelm him by a sudden rush. We are
assured that one of their favourite devices was to conceal themselves in
ponds or rivers by lying down in the water for hours together, breathing
through reeds, whose points were the only things visible above the
surface. Thus a thousand men might be concealed, and nothing appear except
a bed of rushes. This strange stratagem would seem incredible, if we had
not on record one or two occasions on which it was actually practised.
The Slavs had begun to make themselves felt early in the sixth century,
but it was not till the death of Justinian that we hear of them as a
pressing danger. But when the Lombards had passed away westward, they came
down to the Danube and began to cross it in great numbers, in the
endeavour to make permanent settlements on the Roman bank. The raids of
the Slavs and the Avars were curiously complicated, for the king, or
Chagan, of the Tartar tribe had made vassals of many of his Slavonic
neighbours. They, on the other hand, sometimes acted in obedience to him,
but more frequently tried to escape from his power by pushing forward into
Roman territory. Hence it comes that we often find Slav and Avar leagued
together, but at other times find them acting separately, or even in
opposition to each other. A more chaotic series of campaigns it is hard to
conceive.
Down to this time the inland of the Balkan peninsula had been inhabited by
Thracian and Illyrian provincials, of whom the majority spoke the Latin
tongue, though a few still preserved their ancient barbaric idiom.(16)
They formed the only large body of subjects of the empire outside Italy,
who still spoke the old ruling language, and as they were about a quarter
of its population, they did much to preserve its Roman character, and to
prevent it from becoming Greek or Asiatic. Their pride in their Latin
tongue was very marked: Justinian, born in the heart of the district, was
fond of laying special stress on the fact that Latin was his native
language.