It is obvious that the result of the first ten years of that conquest was a complete destruction of the limits of the old Roman provinces of Italy. A new grouping of territories was not only necessary but was already forming itself under the pressure of the conquest and its terror. The regions which had escaped the barbarians were drawing together without any regard for the ancient provincial divisions and were grouping themselves about the cities, where the resistance, such as it was, was concentrating itself, and where the imperial administration had taken refuge.
If we confine ourselves for the moment to Italy north of the Apennines, we shall find that in the old province of Liguria the vicar of the prefect of the praetorium had fled from Milan to Genoa, and that about that city the debris of the old province was slowly re-assembling itself. In Venetia we shall find that the governor had departed to Grado, and about this town as a centre the eastern part of the old province was gathered. The western part of that province, cut off from its capital, attached itself by force of circumstances to what remained of Aemilia and of Flaminia, whose neighbour she was, and these fragments of the ancient provinces all together grouped themselves about, or found their centre in, Ravenna, the capital of Flaminia and the residence of the prefect of Italy.
In these new groupings the great pre-occupation and the supreme interest are defence—the defence of civilisation against the barbarian.
Now, it was to regulate this new state of affairs that the exarchate was created; or rather the exarchate was the official acknowledgment of a state of affairs that the disastrous invasion of the Lombards had brought about. The new order was established at the end of the reign of Justin II. (565-578) under a new and supreme official. Without doing away with the prefect of Italy the emperor placed over him as supreme head of the new administration the exarch[1] who was both the military commander-in-chief and the governor-general of Italy; and, since the chief need of Italy was defence, without entirely suppressing the civil administration, he placed at the head of each of the re-organised provinces a certain military officer—the duke.
[Footnote 1: For the discussion of the derivation of the title
"Exarch," see Diehl, op. cit. pp. 15-16.]
The earliest document that remains to us in which we find definite mention of the exarch is the famous letter, dated October 4, 584, of pope Pelagius II. to the deacon Gregory, his nuncio in Constantinople. It is probable that the exarch at this time was Smaragdus, but it is extremely improbable that he was the first to bear the new title. This it would seem was a much nobler and more notable person.
It will be remembered that in the year 575 Baduarius, the son-in-law of the emperor, had appeared in Italy at the head of an army, had been beaten by the Lombards, and a little later had died, probably in 575.[1] This man was not only a great Byzantine official, but the destined successor of Justin and one of the first personages of the empire. It is obvious, if at such a moment he commanded the imperial armies in Italy, he was supreme governor of the province And it seems certain that it was to mark the amalgamation in him of the two offices, military and civil, that the new title of exarch was created.[2]
[Footnote 1: Migne, lxxii. 865; Joannes Biclarensis, s.a. 575; cf.
Hodgkin, op. cit. v. p. 195, and Diehl, u.s.]
[Footnote 2: "It is only an hypothesis," says M. Charles Diehl, the originator of this theory, "but it explains how, between the prefect Longinus (569-572) and the exarch Smaragdus (584) was produced in the years 572-576 the administrative transformation out of which rose the exarchate.">[
At the same time as the central government took on a new form the provincial administration was re-organised. Before the year 590, this had been certainly achieved. Istria, as we have seen, was divided from Venetia and formed a new and a special government. In Flaminia Rimini, which till now had been a part of the same province as Ravenna, was detached and became the capital of a new government in which a part of the Picenum, Ancona, and Osimo were involved. While the exarchate properly so called, that is the region of Ravenna from which Rimini and Picenum were now separate, formed a new province under the direct authority of the governors-general of Italy, that is to say, of the exarch of Ravenna. By the year 590, then, we see Italy thus divided into seven districts or governments: (1) the Duchy of Istria, (2) the Duchy of Venetia, (3) the Exarchate to which Calabria is attached, (4) the Duchy of Pentapolis, (5) the Duchy of Rome, (6) the Duchy of Naples, (7) Liguria.