Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 2 1913.djvu/260

232 emperor to the local authorities, though they remained in formal adherence to the Empire. This, at least, was the pope's wish, and no emperor set up by the opposition in Italy was generally recognised. The suppression of the revolt resulted in the resumption of the dicio by the emperor, and during the next generation Italy was again ruled by his deputies and appointed duces. The fact, however, that in consequence of the Italian revolt the local powers had for a number of years been practically independent, could not be undone. Henceforth it was impossible to appoint officials in the place of tribunes. In the local organisation the landed proprietors had gained a complete victory over the bureaucracy, and in this the hereditary principle had prevailed. But the bureaucratic superstructure, by which the emperor exercised his dicio, was entirely out of touch with the seigniorial element at its base, and from this resulted — at least as far as North and Central Italy were concerned, where the revolution had temporarily taken a firm hold — the complete and permanent dissolution of the central power of the State.

Not very long after the termination of the Italian revolt there appears at Rome as the highest imperial authority the patricius et dux Stephanus. The title of patricius, and various other circumstances, indicate that he was no longer subordinate but equal to the exarch of Ravenna, and that Central Italy south of the Apennines had been constituted as an independent province or theme. This division of Byzantine Italy, which had long been geographically prepared, was probably due as much to strategical reasons, e.g. the advance of the king of the Lombards, as to any political necessity. Stephanus, however, seems to have been the first and last to bear the new title; after him there appears no other permanent representative of the emperor at Rome. The exarchate proper, comprising the Byzantine possessions north of the Apennines from which the ducatus of Rome had been detached, was ruled by the exarch, who resided at Ravenna until King Aistulf took possession of that town (750-751), when only Venice and a part of Istria of the lands north of the Apennines remained under Byzantine rule. All that was left to the Byzantines in the two southernmost peninsulas of Italy was, at a date which cannot be exactly determined, united into a ducatus which received the name of Calabria, and retained this name even when the Byzantines had completely evacuated the south-eastern peninsula which had formerly borne this name, and were confined to their forts of the former Bruttium in the south-west. This ducatus, which was not linked geographically to the rest of Byzantine Italy, was placed under the command of the patricius of Sicily, so that it was separated from Italy in its administration. In the same way the churches of southern Italy were, in consequence of the Italian revolt, detached from Rome and subordinated to the Greek patriarchate at Constantinople. Thus in the second quarter of the eighth century there