Italy 526-568

Byzantine Reconquest
Theodoric died in 526, and under his successors the Ostrogothic kingdom gradually declined. Tension between Goths and Romans increased in the kingdom during the reign of Athalaric (526-34), a minor who ruled through his mother Amalasuntha. The later was killed by Athalaric's successor Theodahad (534-36) in 535, and this prompted the eastern emperor Justinian to declare war on the Ostrogoths. There followed twenty years of bloody fighting which had a devastating effect on most of the Italian peninsula. The outcome of this Gothic war was that the Byzantine armies under Belisarius, who landed in Sicily in 535, and later Narses gradually defeated the Goths under a succession of leaders, the most notable of whom were Witigis (536-40) and Totila (541-52). Belisarius fought his way up through the peninsula, taking Ravenna in 540. Totila led a remarkably effective counterattack, recapturing most of Italy and Sicily, including even Rome, where he evicted all the inhabitants, leaving it deserted. Only Ravenna and some key coastal towns which enjoyed the protection of the Byzantine navy remained in Byzantine hands. However, Narses eventually recaptured the peninsula for the Byzantines, killing Totila and then Teias, the last Ostrogothic king, in 552. By 561 Narses had also defeated the Franks, who had since 540 been settling north of the River Po. The Byzantine reconquest of Italy was complete.

The native Italians seem largely to have been unwilling bystanders and victims in this bitter struggle between Goths and Byzantines which was being fought around them, not greatly caring who the victors were, since neither side would really make very much difference to their day-to-day reality. The war ravaged large areas of the country, the damage being particularly serious in Emilia, Picenum, Umbria and Campania. Here the countryside was severely disrupted, and there are accounts of serious famine and hardship. In the end the Goths were virtually wiped from the face of Italian history, disappearing a trifle mysteriously, hardly leaving a trace of their period in control. Justinian proceeded to turn the clock back, issuing in 554 what is now referred to as the Pragmatic Sanction, which re-established Italy as a province of the eastern empire, restored all property (including slaves!) to its pre-Gothic owners, and revived many Roman institutions. There is evidence that Justinian's reconquest was on the whole welcomed by many sections of the old Roman ruling class, but what is more certain is that he left his mark on Italian culture. Dante includes him in his Paradise, he appears in Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican and, above all, there are the great portraits of himself and his wife Theodora in the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna - fine examples, these, of the Byzantine art which was greatly to influence later Italian works. Additionally, Justinian is remembered for his codification of Roman law before his death in 565. His disappearance from the scene heralded the next important development of this early medieval period: the resurgence of the 'barbarians' in the form of the Lombards.

This article is based on material taken from A Traveller's History of Italy (© Valerio Lintner), published by The Windrush Press, and is by kind permission of its author Valerio Lintner.