could hold out no longer, and weary of Vitiges, who had given them no
success, yet afraid of yielding to the emperor lest he should remove
them out of Italy to Constantinople and thereabout, they resolved, of
all things, to declare Belisarius emperor in the West. Secretly they
sent to entreat him to accept the empire, professing to be most
willing to obey him. Such an astonishing proposal must have filled
Belisarius with delight. He, indeed, had no intention of receiving
from such hands a gift so fantastic, for he hated the name of usurper;
but he saw at once how this proposal might help his ends. He
immediately called his generals and the ambassadors together and asked
them if they did not think it a matter of importance to make all the
Goths and Vitiges the emperor's captives, to capture their wealth, and
to recover all Italy to the Romans. They answered it would be an
extreme high fortune and bade him effect it if he could. Then
Belisarius sent to the Goths and bade them perform what they had
offered. And they, for the famine was too hard to bear, agreed and
sent ambassadors to take the oath of the great Roman for their
indemnity and that he would be King of Italy, and when they had it, to
return into Ravenna with the Roman army. Now as to their indemnity
Belisarius bound himself, but touching the kingdom he said he would
swear it to Vitiges himself and the Gothic commanders. And the
ambassadors, not thinking he would forego the kingdom, but that he
desired it above all things, prayed him forthwith to march into
Ravenna. And he himself with his army and the Gothic ambassadors
entered Ravenna; and he commanded also ships to be laden with corn and
to come into Classis.
"When I saw," says Procopius, whose account of the siege and fall of
Ravenna I have followed so far, "when I saw the entrance of their army
into Ravenna, I considered how actions are not concluded by valour,
multitudes, or human virtue, but by some Divinity that steers the acts
and judgements of men. The Goths had much the advantage in numbers and
power, and since they came to Ravenna no defeat there had overthrown
them, yet they became prisoners and thought it no shame to be slaves
to fewer in number. The women (who had heard from their husbands that
the enemy were tall and gallant men and not to be numbered) looked
with contempt upon the Roman soldiers when they saw them in the city,
and spat in the faces of their husbands, reviling them with cowardice,
pointing at their conquerors."
Thus Ravenna, the impregnable city, was taken by stratagem and
willingly; never again to pass out of Roman hands till Aistulf the
Lombard in 752 seized it for a few years and thus caused Pepin to
cross the Alps to vindicate the Roman name.
* * * * *
The first Gothic war, against Vitiges, (536-540) had thus for its
crown and end, the capture of Ravenna; the second, against Totila
(541-553), proceeded from Ravenna for the reconquest, yet once again,
of Italy.
In 540, after Ravenna had been occupied, Belisarius recalled, and
Vitiges taken as a captive to Constantinople, the Romans held all
Italy except the city of Pavia. In 544, when Belisarius returned, they
held only Ravenna, Rome, Spoleto, and a few other strongholds such as
Perugia and Piacenza. Nor was this all. In this second war all Italy
was laid waste and ruined, Rome was twice besieged and occupied by the
Goths, and in 546, when Totila had done with her, during a space of
forty days the City remained utterly desolate, without a single
inhabitant. How had such a miserable and unexpected catastrophe
befallen the Catholic cause?
In the first place it must be admitted that the capture of Ravenna by
stratagem was not the final catastrophe it appeared for the Goths. It
is true that that triumph seemed to give, and indeed did give, all
Italy into the hands of the Romans, but that gift was never secured.
Belisarius, partly from necessity, partly on account of the suspicious
jealousy of the emperor, was withdrawn from Italy too soon. He was
victorious, but he was not given time to secure his victories. The
extraordinary incompetence and rivalries of the committee of generals
which succeeded him let the opportunity for securing and establishing
an enduring peace slip through its fingers; the inevitable reaction
that followed the departure of Belisarius was not met at all, the
whole situation that then developed was misunderstood, with the result
that the Goths were soon able to find a leader, perhaps the most
formidable, and certainly the most destructive, that they had ever
produced.
The cause of the imperial incompetence and failure would appear to
have been financial. The empire had been perhaps always, certainly for
two hundred years, bankrupt. Its administration and above all its
defence were beyond its means. The Gothic war had been a tremendous
strain upon the imperial finances already incredibly involved in the
defence of the East. It was necessary to find in Italy the money for
that war and for the future defence of that country; but Italy had
been ruined by the Gothic war and above all things needed capital and
a period of reproductive repose. These Justinian was unable to give
her. His necessities forced him to cover the peninsula with tax
gatherers, to bleed an already ruined country of the little that
remained to her. If the result was a reaction, in the north actively
Gothic, in the centre and south certainly indifferent to the imperial
cause, we cannot wonder at it. The spiritual situation and the
economic or material would not chime. The result was the appalling
confusion we know as the second Gothic war.
[Illustration: Colour Plate S. VITALE: THE GALLERY]
I say it was a confusion. No clear issue seems to present itself from
beginning to end; the old democratic cause, the Catholicism of the
people rising in rage and fury against the Arianism of the courts,
burnt low for a moment, and was indeed in part extinguished by the
appalling misery of the material situation of Italy. Upon this
materialism, the material benefits that Theodoric had undoubtedly
conferred upon the Italian people, Totila, that formidable chieftain
who now came to the front as the Gothic leader, based his appeal and
his hope of victory. "Surely," he says to the Roman senate, "you must
remember sometimes in these evil days the benefits which you received
not so very long ago at the hands of Theodoric and Amalasuntha." And
again: "What harm did the Goths ever do you? And tell me then what
good you received from Justinian the emperor?... Has he not compelled
you to give an account of every _solidus_ which you received from the
public funds even under the Gothic kings? All harassed and
impoverished as you are by the war, has he not compelled you to pay to
the Greeks the full taxes which could be levied in a time of
profoundest peace?" Totila based his appeal upon the material
well-being of the people. It was a formidable appeal; it nearly
succeeded. That it did not succeed, though it had so much in its
favour, is the best testimony we could have to the real nature of the
war, which was not a struggle between two races or even primarily, at
any rate, between barbarism and civilisation, but something greater
and more fundamental, a fight to the death between two religions
Arianism and Catholicism, upon the result of which the whole future of
Europe depended.
The confusion of the second Gothic war, in which the future of the
world and the major interests of man were in jeopardy, may be divided
into three parts. The first of these is that in which the whole
administration precariously established by Belisarius fell to pieces
before the earthquake that was Totila, who, never systematically met
and opposed, by the year 544 held all Italy with the exception, as I
have said, of Ravenna, Rome, Spoleto, Perugia, Piacenza, and a few
other strongholds. The second is that in which Belisarius again
appears, and from the citadel of Ravenna, without ceasing or rest, but
without much success, opposes him everywhere. In this period Rome was
occupied and reoccupied no less than four times, and, as I have said,
in 546 was left utterly desolate. Nevertheless, when for the second
time Belisarius was recalled, in 548, he left things much as he had
found them. He had at least--and with what scarcity of men and money
we may see in his letters to the emperor--opposed and perhaps stemmed
the overwhelming Gothic advance. At his departure the imperialists
held Ravenna, Rome (but after the sack of 546), Rimini, Spoleto,
Ancona, and Perugia. But before he arrived in Constantinople, Perugia
had fallen; in the same year, 549, a mutiny in Rome gave the City to
the Goths and Rimini was betrayed. In the year 551, the year of
Narses' appointment as general-in-chief in Italy and the opening of
the third period, only Ravenna and Ancona, with Hydruntum (Otranto)
and Crotona in southern Italy, remained to the empire.
In that year, 551, however, everywhere the Gothic cause began to fail.
In a sea-fight off Sinigaglia the imperial forces disposed of the
Gothic sea power and relieved Ancona, which was in grave danger. About
the same time Sicily was delivered from the Gothic yoke, and in the
spring of 552 Crotona was relieved. Meanwhile, in Illyricum, Narses
gathered his army, in which Ardoin, King of the Lombards, rode at the
head of two thousand of his people, and prepared for the great march
into Italy.
He came through Venetia round the head of the Adriatic, close to the
sea (for a formidable Frankish host held the great roads), crossing
with what anxiety we may guess, the mouths of the Piave, the Brenta,
the Adige, and the Po by means of his ships, and having thus turned
the flank of the Frankish armies he triumphantly marched into Ravenna.
There he remained for nine days, as it were another Caesar about to
cross the Rubicon.
While he waited in Ravenna an insulting challenge reached him from the
barbarian Usdrilas who held Rimini. "After your boasted preparations,
which have kept all Italy in a ferment, and after striking terror into
our hearts by knitting your brows and looking more awful than mortal
men, you have crept into Ravenna and are skulking there afraid of the
very name of the Goths. Come out with all that mongrel host of
barbarians to whom you want to deliver Italy and let us behold you,
for the eyes of the Goths hunger for the sight of you."[1] And Narses
laughed at the insolence of the barbarian, and presently he set
forward with the army he had made, upon the great road through Classis
for Rimini, till he came to the bridge over the Marecchia, there which
Augustus had built and which was held by the enemy. There in the fight
which followed--little more than a skirmish--the barbarian Usdrilas
came by his end, and Narses ignoring Rimini marched on, his great
object before him, Totila and his army, which he meant, before all
things else, to seek out and to destroy. So he went down the Flaminian
Way to Fano and there presently left it for a by-way upon the left,
rejoining the great highway some miles beyond the fortress of Petra
Pertusa, which he disregarded as he had done that of Rimini. He
marched on till he came to the very crest of the Apennines, over which
he passed and camped upon the west under the great heights, at a place
then called Ad Ensem and to-day Scheggia.
[Footnote 1: Hodgkin's free translation of Procopius, _op. cit_. iv.
28.]
[Illustration: Sketch Map NARSES' MARCH FROM RAVENNA _To Meet_ TOTILA]
Meanwhile Totila had come to meet him from Rome, and had managed to
reach Tadinum, the modern Gualdo Tadino, when he found Narses,
unexpectedly, for he must have thought the way over the mountains
securely barred by the fortress of Petra Pertusa, upon the great road
before him.
Narses sent an embassy to Totila to offer, "not peace, but pardon;"
this the barbarian refused. Asked when he would fight Totila answered,
"In eight days from this day." But Narses, knowing what manner of man
his enemy was, made all ready for the morrow, and at once occupied the
great hill upon his left which overlooked both camps. In this he was
right, for no sooner had he seized this advantage than Totila
attempted to do the same, but without any success.
Then on the morrow Totila, having meanwhile been reinforced with two
thousand men, rode forth before the two armies and "exhibited in a
narrow space the strength and agility of a warrior. His armour was
enchased with gold; his purple banner floated with the wind; he cast
his lance into the air; caught himself backwards; recovered his seat
and managed a fiery steed in all the paces and evolutions of the
equestrian school."[1] No doubt Narses the eunuch smiled. The
barbarians were all the same, and they remain unaltered. Totila's
theatrical antics are but the prototype to those amazing cavalry
charges, excellently stage-managed, that may be seen almost any autumn
during the German manoeuvres, a new Totila at their head.
[Footnote 1: Gibbon's free translation of Procopius, iv. 31.]
When Totila had finished his display the two armies faced one another,
the imperialists with Narses and John upon the left, the Lombards in
the centre, and Valerian upon the right with John the Glutton; the
Goths in what order of battle we do not know. At length at noon the
battle was joined. The Gothic charge failed, Narses drew his straight
line of troops into a crescent, and the short battle ended in the
utter rout of the Goths, Totila flying from the field. In that flight
one Asbad a Gepid struck at him and fatally wounded him. He was borne
by his companions to the village of Caprae, more than twelve miles
away, and there he died.
Thus ended Totila the Goth and with him the Gothic cause in Italy. A
remnant of his army made its way to Pavia, where it was contained by
Valerian; and all over Italy the Gothic fortresses hastened to
surrender, Perugia, Spoleto, Narni, all opened their gates, and Narses
marched on to occupy Rome which he did without much difficulty. All
Italy lay open to the imperialists, and when Totila's successor Teias
was slain all hope of recovery was gone. The Goths offered to leave
Italy, and their offer was accepted. For a year longer a desultory
war, the reduction of Cumae and Lucca, occupied Narses; but by 554
this too was brought to an end, and unhappy Italy was once more
gathered into the government of the empire.
VIII
MODICA QUIES
THE PRAGMATIC SANCTION AND THE SETTLEMENT OF ITALY
Such was the inevitable end of the Gothic war in Italy. The issue thus
decided was, as I have tried to show, something much more tremendous
than the mere supremacy of a race. Nothing less than the future of the
world was assured upon those stricken fields and about those ruined
fortresses, the supremacy of the Catholic religion in which was
involved the whole destiny of Europe, the continuance of our
civilisation and culture. For let it be said again: these wars of the
sixth century were not a struggle to the death between two races, but
between two religions; the opponents were not really Roman and Goth,
but Catholic and Arian, and in the victory of the former was involved
the major interest of mankind. The whole energy of that age was
devoted to the final establishment of what for a thousand years was to
be the universal religion of Europe, the source of all her greatness
and the reason of her being. What was saved in those unhappy campaigns
was not Italy, but the soul of Europe.
Certainly it was not Italy. Materially the result of those eighteen
years of war, which began with the invasion of Italy by Belisarius in
536, reached their crisis in 540 with the capture of Ravenna, and were
finally decided by Narses in 552-554, was the ruin of Italy.
Exhausted, devastated, and unfilled, the prey, for half a generation,
of a fundamental war, Italy was materially ruined by Justinian's
Gothic campaigns, and so hopelessly that, when in 568 the Lombards
fell upon her, she was almost unable to defend herself, to offer any
resistance to what proved--and in part for this reason--the only
barbaric invasion which had upon her any enduring consequences.
Visigoths, Huns, Vandals, Ostrogoths, all poured over her, and
presently, like winter floods, retreated and subsided, leaving nothing
to remind us of their fear and devastation; the Lombards remained.
I say this was largely due to the appalling exhaustion and ruin of
Italy in the Gothic war; but there was something else which we must
not forget. The Gothic war was a religious war. The Arianism of the
Goths had really threatened our civilisation. But the Lombards were
largely mere heathens. Their heathenism was not at all dangerous to us
as a heresy must always be.[1] Therefore Italy never roused herself
from her exhaustion, one might almost say her indifference. It was
only her material well-being that was at stake, her future was safe.
Her great attempt against the Lombards was a spiritual effort, was an
effort for their conversion, and their final discomfiture, wrought not
from within the peninsula, but from over the Alps, did not involve
their expulsion from Italy, but was seized upon as the opportunity for
the re-establishment in name and in fact of the Western Empire, and
for the great crowning of Charlemagne by the pope in S. Peter's
church.
[Footnote 1: It was not the paganism of the Italian Renaissance but
the heresy of the Teutons which destroyed the unity of Europe in the
sixteenth century.]
Italy, and with Italy Europe, were, then, saved from nothing less than
death when Narses finally disposed of Totila in the Apennines in 552;
but that war which had a result so very glorious had materially ruined
the country.
From this general bankruptcy one city certainly escaped; that city was
Ravenna, which since the year 540, when she had opened her gates to
Belisarius, had been free from attack, and had more than ever been
established as the capital of the West. That position was secured to
her, as I have already said, by her geographical position, which now
that Constantinople had reasserted the claim of the empire to Italy
established her more than at any time in her history as the necessary
seat of military and administrative power; and from Ravenna as from
the citadel the whole of the second part of the Gothic war was waged
by the imperialists. As we might expect the true nature of that war is
immediately manifested in her history at this time.
It would seem that very shortly after the occupation of Ravenna by the
imperialists in 540, the re-edification of the city and its splendid
embellishment was begun. The church of S. Vitalis begun by S.
Ecclesius (_c_. 521-532) was finished and gloriously adorned with
mosaics by S. Maximianus (_c_ 546-556), and not long after S.
Apollonaris in Classe begun by S. Ursicinus (532-536) was completed
and adorned by the same great bishop.
But this eagerness to mark and to express in such glorious monuments
as these the great victory for Catholicism and civilisation that was
then in the winning becomes even more manifest after the death of
Totila and the end of the war. To the S. Agnellus and to the Church of
Ravenna Justinian "_rectae fidei Augustus_" gave all the substance of
the Goths, according to the _Liber Pontificalis_,[1] "not only in
Ravenna itself, but in the suburban towns and in the villages, both
sanctuaries and altars, slaves and maidens, whatever was theirs. _S.
Mater Ecclesia Ravennas, vera mater, vera orthodoxa nam ceterae multae
Ecclesiae falsam propter metum et terrores Principum superinduxere
doctrinam; haec vero et veram et unicam Sanctam Catholicam tenuit
Fidem, nunquam mutavit fluctuationem sustinuit, a tempestate quassata
immobilis permansit_. Therefore S. Agnellus the archbishop reconciled
all the churches of the Goths, which in their time or in that of King
Theodoric had been built or had been occupied by the false doctrines
of the Arians.... He thus reconciled the church of S. Eusebius which
Unimundus the (Arian) bishop had built in the twenty-third year of
King Theodoric. In the same year he reconciled the church of S.
Georgius (S. Giorgio ad Tabulam fuori delle Mura) ... the church of S.
Sergius which is in Classis and of S. Zenone which is in Caesarea." In
Ravenna itself he reconciled the churches of S. Theodorus (S.
Spirito), S. Maria in Cosmedin (the Arian Baptistery), the church of
S. Martin (S. Apollinare Nuovo) which Theodoric had built, which was
called _Caelum Aureum_ and which Agnellus re-decorated with the
mosaics of the Martyrs and Virgins we see and the effigies of
Justinian and himself.
[Footnote 1: Agnellus, _Liber Pontificalis_ (ed. Holder-Egger. P. 334)
_ad vitam Sancti Agnelli_.]
Such was the work achieved in the fortunate capital. But ruined Italy
awaited a more necessary, if less splendid, labour. This can have been
nothing less than the resurrection of the country, which, in those
eighteen years of war, can have become little less than a desert; and,
as we might expect, all Italy desolate and depopulated looked to
Justinian to succour her in her misery if she was not to perish under
her ruins and her debts. The first step in that work was undertaken in
the very year of the peace, in the August of the year 554, and it took
the form of a solemn "Pragmatic Sanction" addressed to Narses and to
Antiochus, the Prefect of Italy,[1] in Ravenna. It had for its object
the social peace of Italy, the re-establishment of order out of the
chaos of the Ostrogothic war; and it is significant of the true
position of affairs that this decree asserts that it is issued by the
emperor in reply to the petition of the pope.
[Footnote 1: The fact that it was addressed to both surely seems to
show that Narses at this time only held a military power in Italy.
This is interesting as touching the discussion later on of the genesis
of the exarchate.]
It consists of twenty-seven articles, and first establishes what is to
be considered as still having authority in that tempestuous past; what
part of it is to remain and to be confirmed and what is to be utterly
swept away. Thus the emperor confirms all dispositions made by
Amalasuntha, Athalaric, and Theodahad, as well as all his own
acts--and these would include Theodoric's--and those of Theodora. But
everything done by "the most wicked tyrant Totila" is null and void,
"for we will not allow these law-abiding days of ours to take any
account of what was done by him in the time of his tyranny."[1] Totila
had indeed most cruelly attacked the great landed proprietors whom he
suspected of too great an attachment for Constantinople; he had
attacked them in their persons and in their wealth. With a single
stroke of the pen Justinian, as it were, effaced all the ordinances of
the tyrant and rendered again to their legitimate masters, as far as
it could be done, their lands, their flocks, their peasants, and their
slaves which had been taken from them, or which fear had caused them
to alienate.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Hodgkin, _op. cit_. vi. pp. 519-520.]
Such were the political achievements of the decree. Nor were its
financial provisions less far-reaching. Something had to be done to
meet the crisis resulting from the enormous quantity of debt.
Everywhere Justinian undertook great public works, and tried to repair
the destruction caused by the war; but it is probable that in reality
he achieved very little. He had enriched the Church; he had
re-established the great proprietors in their lands and their rights,
but the industry and commerce of Italy, save perhaps at Ravenna and at
Naples, he could not restore. And we seem to understand that the mere
lack of men left whole districts of Italy uncultivated and desert.