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 in rapid succession the submission of Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Isles. Orthodoxy was re-established there and in Africa. Justinian directed the laws against heretics to be put in force against the Arians and Donatists in Africa, and their meetings to be altogether forbidden (Baron. ad ann. 535). The orthodox bishops met in a council, at which 207 prelates were present (Baron. ad ann. 535). The orthodox churches of Africa were restored to the full enjoyment of their rights, property, and privileges. But the African church and province never regained its former prosperity. The misgovernment of the imperial lieutenants completed the ruin which the Vandals had begun, and the wild Moorish tribes encroached in all directions on the Roman population. Great part of the country, once the most productive part of the Roman dominions, relapsed into solitude and neglect; the Christians there were still divided by the mutual jealousies of Donatists, Arians, and orthodox.

The success of his enterprise against the Vandals encouraged Justinian to attempt the recovery of Italy from the Ostrogoths, who had held it and Sicily since the invasion under Theodoric in 493–494. The emperors at Constantinople considered themselves, ever since the extinction of the Western branch of the empire in 476, de jure sovereigns of Italy and the whole West, regarding the Gothic kings partly as their lieutenants, partly as mere usurpers. Justinian dispatched Belisarius from Constantinople with a fleet and over 7,000 men in the autumn of 535. He reduced Sicily easily in a few weeks. Then he attacked Italy, occupying Rome in Dec. 536. The Ostrogoths had shortly before risen against their king Theodahad, and chosen Witigis, whom Belisarius took at Ravenna and carried to Constantinople, leaving the imperial power supreme in Italy. Totila, whom the Goths chose in the room of Witigis, recovered fortress after fortress from the incompetent generals who succeeded Belisarius, till he was master of most part of Italy; and at length restored the Gothic kingdom to a better position than it had held since the death of Theodoric. But in 552 his army was defeated, and himself slain by Narses, and with him died the last hopes of the Gothic kingdom of Italy. After Narses had destroyed Butelin and his host in a great battle near Casilinum in Campania, 544, the small remains of the Gothic nation either passed into Spain and Gaul to mingle with other barbarians or were lost among the Roman population of Italy, which now was finally in Justinian's hands. It was, however, a desolated and depopulated Italy. Nor was it long left to his successors.

The third great struggle of Justinian's reign was against the Persian empire, then under Kobad and Chosroes Anushirvan in the zenith of its power. After several campaigns Chosroes concluded in 533, on obtaining from the emperor 11,000 pounds of gold, a peace which gave rest to the eastern provinces. In 539 war broke out again, and also a revolt against Justinian in Armenia, a part of whose people appealed to the Persians for help. Chosroes commanded a vast force, which the Roman generals were quite unable to resist in the open field. In 540 Antioch, far the greatest town of the eastern part of the empire, was sacked, and many thousand inhabitants carried to a new city, built for them near Ctesiphon, his own capital. Towards the end of Justinian's reign the fighting slackened; a peace for 50 years was concluded in 562 on terms humiliating to Justinian, who undertook to pay yearly 30,000 gold pieces. This peace lasted only 10 years; but the war which began in 572 lies outside Justinian's reign.

Less famous, but perhaps even more ruinous, were the contests which Justinian had to maintain against the barbarians of Scythia and the Danube. From the Alps to the Black Sea, the N. border of the empire was the scene of seldom intermitted warfare. The various tribes whom the Roman historian calls Huns, and who included the race subsequently distinguished as Bulgarians, poured from the S. of what is now Russia down upon Thrace, ravaged it and Macedonia, penetrated on one occasion to the isthmus of Corinth, and six years before Justinian's death, in 559, appeared in great force under the walls of Constantinople, from which they were repulsed by the skill and vigour of Belisarius. In the N.W. provinces villages were destroyed, cultivated land laid waste, and immense numbers of the inhabitants carried into slavery. The only serious efforts the emperor made against these enemies (besides the building of fortresses) were by diplomacy. His policy was to foment hostilities between neighbouring tribes, taking sometimes one, sometimes another, into alliance with the empire, and offering large presents, often so regular as to amount to a kind of blackmail, to buy them off for the moment or induce them to turn their arms against some other barbarian power. His activity as a negotiator was unwearied. Embassies from all parts of the barbarian world arrived at Constantinople, excited the wonder of the people by their strange garb and manners, and returned home laden with gifts and promises. Even the tribes of the Baltic and the Turks of Central Asia seem to have thus come into relations with him. His policy was much blamed in his own time (see esp. Procop. Anecd.), and may appear shortsighted as supplying fresh inducements to the barbarians to renew their attacks and letting them know the wealth of the capital; but perhaps no other policy was possible, and the incidental advantages of Roman influence and culture upon the border tribes may have been considerable.

III. We possess no systematic account of the internal state of the empire in Justinian's time, and depend only upon occasional notices by historians like Procopius and Agathias, and a study of Justinian's legislative measures. The civil service was, and had long been, in a high state of efficiency. Such alterations as Justinian made tended to perfect this organization and to render all its members more completely subservient to the crown. He spent enormous sums not only on his wars but in the erection of churches, fortresses, and public buildings of every kind (a list will be found in the de Aedificiis of Procopius), and was therefore always in want of money. Op-