Europe in the Middle Ages

by Ierne L. Plunket

Justinian worked for the progress of the world when he codified Roman law. It was unfortunate that military ambition led him to exhaust his treasury and overtax his subjects, in order that he might establish his rule over the whole of Europe like Theodosius and Constantine. Besides carrying on an almost continuous war with the King of Persia, he sent an army and fleet under an able general, Belisarius, to fight against the Vandals in North Africa; and so successful was this campaign that Justinian became master of the whole coast-line, and even of a part of southern Spain. This gave him command of the Mediterranean, and he at once determined to overthrow the feeble descendants of Theodoric, and to restore the imperial dominion over Italy in deed, not as it had been from the time of Odoacer merely in name.

The task was not easy, for the Italians, as we have noticed, did not love the Greeks, while the Goths fought bravely for independence. At length, in the year 555, after nineteen campaigns, Narses, an Armenian who was at the head of Justinian’s forces, succeeded in crushing the Barbarians and established his rule at Ravenna, from which city, under the title of Exarch, he controlled the whole peninsula.

Lombard Invasion

Narses’ triumph had been in a great measure due to a German tribe, ‘The Lombards’, whose hosts he had enrolled under the imperial banner. These Lombards, Longobardi or ‘Long Beards’ as the name originally stood, had migrated from the banks of the Elbe to the basin of the Danube, and there, looking about them for a warlike outlet for their energies, were quite as willing to invade Italy at Justinian’s command as to go on any other campaign that promised to be profitable.

Narses, as soon as he was assured of success, paid them liberally for their services and sent them back to their own people; but the Lombards had learned to love the sunny climate and the vines growing out of doors, and were soon discontented with their bleaker homeland. They waited therefore until Narses, whom they knew and feared, was dead; and then, under the leadership of Alboin, their king, crossed over the Alps and invaded North Italy. They did not come in such tremendous strength as the Ostrogoths in the past, nor were the imperial troops powerless to stand against them: indeed, the two forces were so balanced that, while the Lombards succeeded in establishing themselves in the province of Lombardy, to which they gave their name, with Pavia as its capital, the representatives of the Emperor still held the coast-line on both sides, also Ravenna, Naples, Rome, and other principal towns.

This Lombard inroad, the last of the great Barbarian invasions of Italy, was by far the most important in its effects. For one thing, two hundred years were to pass before the power of the new settlers was seriously shaken; and therefore, even the fact that they were pagans and imposed their own laws ruthlessly on the Italians could not keep the races from gradually intermingling. In time the higher civilization conquered, and the fair-haired Teutons learned to worship the Christian God, forgot their own tongue, and adopted the customs and habits they saw around them. The Italians, on their part, in the course of their struggles with the Lombards became trained in the art of war they had almost forgotten. By the eighth century the fusion was complete.

Another very interesting and important result of the Lombard invasion was that the prolonged duel between Barbarians and Greeks prevented the development of any common form of government. There might in time emerge an Italian race, but there could be no Italian nation so long as towns and provinces were dominated by rulers whose policy and ambitions were utterly opposed. The Exarch of Ravenna claimed, in the name of the Emperor at Constantinople, to collect taxes from and administer the whole peninsula, but in practice he often ruled merely the strip of land round his city cut off from other Greek officials by Lombard dukes. He would be able to communicate by sea with the important towns on or near the coast, such as Naples, but so irregularly that their governments would tend to grow every year more independent of his control. In Rome, for instance, there was not only the Senate with its traditions of government, but the Pope, who even more than the Senate had become the protector and adviser of his fellow citizens.

Pope Gregory ‘the Great’

We have seen how Leo ‘the Great’ persuaded Attila the Hun to withdraw when his armies threatened the very gates of Rome, while later he went on a like though unavailing mission to Genseric the Vandal. It was acts like these that won recognition for the Papacy amongst other rulers; and more than any of the Popes before him, Gregory ‘the Great’, who ascended the chair of Peter in A.D. 590, built up the foundations of this authority.

A Roman of position and wealth, Gregory had become in middle age a poor monk, giving all his money to the poor and disciplining himself by fasting and penance. He is remembered best in England to-day for the interest he showed in the fair-haired Angles in the Roman slave-market. ‘They have Angels’ faces, they should be fellow-heirs of the Angels in Heaven.’ His comment he followed up by a petition that he might sail as a missionary to the northern island from which these slaves came; and, when instead he was sent on an embassy to Constantinople, he did not forget England in the years that passed, but after he became Pope, chose St. Augustine to go and convert the heathen King of Kent. In this way southern England was christianized and brought into touch with the life of Western Europe.