Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

82 3. justin i and justinian
of the African bishops summoned to Constantinople and effectively held
under arrest there, finished his sharply worded Chronicle in 565/6, a few
years after Liberatus of Carthage’s Breviarium. In effect, the African
bishops, who had traditionally looked to Rome but who may have allowed
themselves to nurture hopes that Belisarius’ ‘reconquest’ would allow a real
restoration of Catholicity, found themselves instead subjected to a new and
equally unwelcome domination. The late 540s, with the death of Theodora
in 548, were a difficult period for Justinian, and it was now that Procopius’
disappointment seems to have reached its height; the Secret History and the
highly critical seventh book of the Wars were both finished in 550–1, as the
author witnessed the spectacle of an emperor apparently obsessed with
forcing his own dogmas on an unwilling church. He did not include the
Fifth Council when he updated the History of the Wars by adding an eighth
book in 553/4; it lay strictly outside his scope, but one may also imagine
that he found the subject distasteful.
Following a historiographical tradition whose origins can be traced back
to the Reformation, modern scholarship still devotes a good deal of attention
to the question of whether Justinian can be termed ‘Caesaropapist’ –
that is, whether he can be seen as an emperor who controlled the church. 112
This debate has usually, however, been conducted from a western perspective,
and the position in Byzantium was more complex than is suggested. 113
Justinian’s dealings with the church lay at one end of a wide spectrum of
differing kinds of negotiation. He was prepared to use force as well as
intimidation in his desire to achieve and maintain unity, but there was little
that was new about this, not even the degree to which he would go.
v. the last decade (c. 554,65)
By now the great achievements of Justinian’s early years were proving
difficult to emulate or sustain. The Gothic war ended in a.d. 554 with the
settlement known as the Pragmatic Sanction (13 August 554), following a
similar ordinance issued to regulate affairs in North Africa some twenty
years earlier. 114 But the mood now was very different and no official celebration
followed. 115 The Pragmatic Sanction sought to turn back the clock
to the days before Ostrogothic rule, but the restoration of civil administration
which it promised soon gave way to a military hierarchy. 116 By the late
sixth century the establishment of a Lombard kingdom had forced the
Byzantines back into pockets of influence centred round Ravenna, Rome
112 Against: Biondi (1936); Amelotti (1978); discussion: Capizzi, Giustiniano 151–64 (‘objective
Caesaropapism’). 113 See Dagron (1996), especially 290–322; Ducellier, L’Église byzantine.
114 Nov., app. 7; for the terms, Stein, Bas-Empire ii.613–22; Africa: CJ i.27.
115 See ch. 19 (Humphries), p. 525 below, and cf. Wickham (1981) 26: ‘the wars devastated Italy . . .
The Goths disappeared as a nation.’ 116 Brown, Gentlemen and Officers, and ch. 19,p.525 below.
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