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 BYZANTINE

103

BYZANTINE

and more peaceful days at the end of the third cen- tury, had outlived its usefulness. During the period of the Arabian conflicts under the Heraclean dynasty, the old Roman system of combining civil and military power was established in a neii form, ["he a immander of a thema (regiment i was charged with the supervision of the civil authorities in his military district. The old diocesan and provincial division di appeared, and military departments became administrative districts. It is manifest that Justinian's p< toration

ended in a miserable failure. The time for a Roman Empire in the old sense of the term, with the old administrative system, was past. It is unfortunate

that the rivers ol bl 1 which brought destruction

upon tw irmanic states, the robber Vandals and

the noble East Goths, and the enormous financial

ce of the eastern half of the empire had no

bcitcr outcome. If, despite all this, the name of

Justinian is inscribed in brilliant letters in the annals of the world's history, it is owing to other achieve- ments: his coi I his enterprise as a builder. It n i 1 -' fortune of this emperor to be contemporary with th iment which, rising in Persi i, gained the ascendancy in Syria and \-ia Minorai. I iO ostantinople and the West, li was the merit of Justinian that he fun. often enormous, for the irations. His fame will endure so long as Saint al Con- pie en- ■ dso long as hundreds of pilgrims annually \ in the churches of Ravenna. This is nut the place to enumerate the a re hitect u ral ai hievements of Justinian, ecclesi- astical and secu- lar, bridges, forts, and palaces Nor

shall we dwell upon his measures against the lasl vestiges of hea- thenism, or his ion of the Universi ty of Athens (529). On the other hand, there isone phase

of his activity as a ruler to which reference must be

made here, and which was the necessary counterpart

of his policy., i conquest in the West and issued in as


 * failure. The Emperors Zeno and Anastasins

had sought remedies foi the difficulties raised by the Council of Chalcedon. Ii was Zeno who commissioned

itinople the perhaps, who took the title of CEcumenical Pa- triarch — to draft the formula of union known as the "Henoticon"! 182). This formula cleverly evaded the don decisions, and made ii possible for the Mon- ophysites to return to the rch. But the

gain on one side proved a loss on the other. Under ex- isting conditions, it did not matter much that Home


 * .in demanded the i i

of the name o) Vcacius from the diptychs. It was much more u and Europe,

as well as the chief Greek i I hostility to

the Henoticon. The Greeks, moreover, were at- tached to their national Church, and they regarded the decrees of Chalcedon as an expression of their

A creed. The Emperor Anastasins was a Monophysiti bj conviction, and his religious policy irritated the \\ • •'. At last when he installed in the

1

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Basket Capital, Cnrn.cn or S., Ravenna

Ckntcky

patriarchal See of Constantinople Timotheus, an un- compromising Monophysite, and at the Synod of Tyre had the decrees of Chalcedon condemned, and the Henoticon solemnly confirmed, a tumult arose at the capital, and later in the Danubian provinces, headed

by Yitalian. a Mu-sian. Anastasins died (518), and, under Justin I, Yitalian, who had received from Ana- stasins the appointment as maqister militum per Thra- ciam, remained all-powerful. He acted throughout as the enemy of the Monophysites and the champion of Chalcedonian orthodoxy. He urged the union with lb •. which must render the breach with the East- ern Churches final. This union was consummated in "if'.); the conditions were the removal of the name of Acacius from the diptychs, and the banishment of over fifty bishops of Asia Minor and Syria who were opposed to the Chalcedonian decrees. A year later the government of Justin rid itself of the too powerful Yitalian by having him assassinated. The union with home, however, was not disturbed. When, in the year ")25, Pope John I appeared in Constantinople on a mission from the Ostrogoth King Theodoric, he celebrated High Mass in Latin and took precedence before the oecumenical patriarch. We know that at the time Justinian was the actual ruler; it may be conjectured what motive inspired him to allow this. His plan for the conquest of the West made it de- sirable for him to win the papacy over to his side, and consummate the ecclesiastical union with the Latins. These views he held throughout his reign. Theo- dora, however, thought otherwise. She became the protectress ol the Monophysites. Egypt owed to her its years of respite; under her protection Syria ven- tured to re-establish its Anti-Clialcedonian Church; she encouraged the Monophysite missions in Arabia, Nubia, and Abyssinia. The empress did not even hesitate to receive the heads of the Monophysite opposition party in her palace, and when, in 536, Anthimus. Patriarch of Constantinople, was, at the

■ of Pope Agape tus, deposed lor his Asiatic propensities, she received the fugitive into the women's apartments, where he was discovered at the death of the empress (548). He had spent twelve years within the walls of the imperial palace under the protection of the Augusta. There are reasons to suspect that Justinian did not altogether disapprove of his consort's policy. It was but a half-way at- tempt to win over the Monophysites. Could they, indeed, ever be won over? — The spectacle of this emperor wearing out his life in the vain effort to re- store the unity ol the ei n j lire, in faith, law, and custom, is like the development of a tragedy; his endeavours only tended to widen the breach between those na- tions which most needed each other's support those of the Balkan Peninsula and of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. With all his dogmatic experiments the emperor did not succeed in reconciling the parties or devising a feasible method of bringing the parts of the empire to co-operate with one another. His successors had no better success. Even the concilia- tory measures of John the faster. Patriarch of the capital (582 95), were of no avail. The conquest of tlve Last by the Arabs, in the seventh century. brought a cessation of this movement towards the iliation of the Last into separate nations — a ion which, to be sure, involved for most of the Syrian and Egyptian Christians the loss ol I heir faith.

(2) Founding of the Real Byzantine State; BIO 717.

Eudocia Ileraclius M it ma

Heraclius Constantinus Heracl

I ( onstans 11 (also called Constantine III)

I ( onstantine IV, Pogonatus

Justinian II, Khinotmetus