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Rh landowners grew more military. For the tribune did not only hold the command of a fort, the power of raising part of the taxes, and the jurisdiction over the population within the whole district of the fort, but in addition to this the landed property of the State or of the corporation fell to his share. Thus, the more the armed power assumed the character of a militia, the more important it became that the tribunes, who probably continued to pay their nomination-tax or suffragium to the exarch, should be chosen from the landlords of the district, like the officers holding command under them in the numerus, who are occasionally mentioned, such as the domesticus, the vicarius, the loci servator, and others. Probably in many cases the nomination by the exarch became a mere formality, and certain seigniorial families raised a claim to the tribunate. These local powers, the lords of the manor, who were qualified for the tribunate, formed the actual landowning military aristocracy, who, by uniting in themselves all the administrative offices of the first order, virtually ruled over Italy, although under the supervision of officials appointed by the central government. Among these local powers were the various churches, the bishoprics, and above all the Roman Church, the estates of which must in many respects have been exempt from the government of the tribunes, much the same as were the fundi excepti of the preceding time, so that they existed by the side of the secular tribunes, but not in subjection to them. When in the beginning of the eighth century the militia in the town of Ravenna was reorganised, a special division was provided for the Church besides the eleven other bandi. About the same time we see the rector of the patrimonium of Campania leading the soldiers of the Church in a campaign.

The conclusion and spread of this development of local powers formed the social change which led to the great Italian revolt in the first third of the eighth century. The state of anarchy in the centre of the Empire and the dangers by which Constantinople itself was threatened through the advance of Islam, had been a powerful help to the Italian struggle for independence. Different parts of Italy had at various times witnessed risings of the local powers, till the separate discontented forces united in a great opposition movement under the leadership of the pope. This took place when Gregory II boldly withheld the increased tax which Leo the Isaurian, the great organiser of the Byzantine Empire, attempted to raise for the benefit of the central government; and when, in addition to this, the edict against the worship of images and the outbreak of Iconoclasm incited religious passions against the imperial reformer. The first act of the rebels was to expel the exarch and the duces, the representatives of the central government, and to replace them by confidential friends of the local powers. At Rome the pope and at Venice an elected dux (doge) took the place of the former authorities. The dicio, as it was then called, was by this revolt transferred from the