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| Exarchate of Ravenna Exarchatus Ravennatis Ἐξαρχᾶτον τῆς Ῥαβέννης | |||||||||||||||
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| Exarchate of theByzantine Empire | |||||||||||||||
| 584–751 | |||||||||||||||
 Map of the Exarchate of Ravenna within theByzantine Empire in 600 | |||||||||||||||
| Capital | Ravenna | ||||||||||||||
| Government | |||||||||||||||
| Exarch | |||||||||||||||
• 584–585 | Decius (first) | ||||||||||||||
• 726–751 | Eutychius (last) | ||||||||||||||
| Historical era | Early Middle Ages | ||||||||||||||
• Lombard invasion of Italy | 568 | ||||||||||||||
• Foundation of Exarchate | 584 | ||||||||||||||
• Death of Eutychius | 751 | ||||||||||||||
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TheExarchate of Ravenna (Latin:Exarchatus Ravennatis;Greek:Ἐξαρχᾶτον τῆς Ῥαβέννης,romanized: Exarcháton tís Ravénis), also known as theExarchate of Italy, was anexarchate (administrative district) of theByzantine Empire comprising, between the 6th and 8th centuries, the territories under the jurisdiction of theexarch of Italy (exarchus Italiae) resident inRavenna. The term is used in historiography in a double sense: "exarchate" in the strict sense denotes the territory under the direct jurisdiction of theexarch, i.e. the area of the capital Ravenna, but the term is mainly used to designate all the Byzantine territories in continental and peninsular Italy. According to the legal sources of the time, these territories constituted the so-calledProvincia Italiae, on the basis of the fact that they too, until at least the end of the 7th century, fell under the jurisdiction of the exarch and were governed byduces ormagistri militum under him.[1]
The exarchate was established around 584, the year in which the presence of an exarch in Ravenna is attested for the first time, as a consequence of the perpetual state of war with theLombards (who in the meantime had stolen approximately two thirds of the Byzantine lands in continental and peninsular Italy), which necessarily entailed the militarization ofByzantine Italy. The necessities of war pushed military commanders to centralize powers, thus depriving the civil authorities which are no longer attested by sources starting from the second half of the 7th century. Thus the separation of civil and military powers introduced byDiocletian andConstantine disappeared. Byzantine Italy was divided into various military districts governed byduces ormagistri militum dependent on the exarch of Italy, the military governor with full powers chosen by the emperor from among his generals or trusted officials to govern and defend the remaining territories italics. These districts gradually evolved into increasingly autonomous duchies.
Starting from the second half of the 7th century, the autonomist tendencies of the local aristocracies and the ever-increasing temporal political role of the Church of Rome led to a progressive weakening of imperial authority in Italy. Byzantine Italy had now fragmented into a series of autonomous duchies outside the effective control of the exarch, whose authority no longer extended beyond the Ravenna area. Fiscal and religious conflicts between the Papacy and Byzantium accelerated the disintegration of the exarchate. The armies, recruited from the local population, tended to take the pontiff's defense, and did not hesitate to turn on the exarch if he plotted against the Papacy. The Lombards took advantage of this to extend their conquests in an attempt to unify Italy under their domination. The exarchate fell in 751 with the Lombard conquest of Ravenna at the hands of the Lombard kingAistulf.[2]
In 395Theodosius I bequeathed the throne of theRoman Empire to his two sons:Arcadius was Emperor of the East;Honorius becameWestern Roman Emperor. The Roman Empire would never return to a single ruler.
ThePrefecture of Italy suffered the invasion ofbarbarians in the5th century: the first to cross the Alps wasAlaric,king of the Visigoths. He arrived inAquileia in 401 and from there headed forMilan, which he besieged the following year. Honorius, no longer feeling safe, moved toRavenna and established the new capital of the Western Empire there.
In 476 Ravenna fell due to a military coup d'état by the generalOdoacer who, at the head of a militia ofHeruli,Sciri,Rugii andTurcilingi mercenaries (i.e. the Germanic component of the imperial troops), oustedRomulus Augustulus and took possession of the city. The kingdom of Odoacer, the first Roman-barbarian kingdom to exist in Italy, was short-lived: in 493 Odoacer was defeated by the king of theOstrogoths,Theodoric, who became the new lord of Italy. The newOstrogothic Kingdom established by Theodoric continued to maintain, as previously, the Roman provincial and state organisation.
Around the middle of the6th century, EmperorJustinian I launched an impressive series of campaigns for the reconquest of the West and in particular Italy. On the peninsula the emperor began the long and bloodywar against the Ostrogoths. In 540 Ravenna, capital of the Goths and seat of the prefecture, was reconquered and the Byzantines began to appoint their own prefects there. The long campaign ended only in 552-554 with the decisive expedition of the generalNarses.
On 13 August 554, with the promulgation inConstantinople by Justinian of apragmatica sanctio pro petitione Vigilii (pragmatic sanction on the requests ofPope Vigilius), the Prefecture of Italy returned, although not yet completely pacified, to Roman dominion. However,Sicily andDalmatia were separated from the Prefecture of Italy: the former did not become part of any prefecture, being governed by a praetor dependent on Constantinople, while the latter was aggregated to thePrefecture of Illyricum. Consequently, at the end of the conflict, the prefecture of Italy, also calledProvincia Italiae by the Pragmatic Sanction as if to demonstrate a loss of importance, was reduced to only continental and peninsular Italy (Sardinia and Corsica, conquered by theVandals in the century, after Justinian's reconquest they became part of thePraetorian prefecture of Africa).
Narses still remained in Italy with extraordinary powers and also reorganized the defensive, administrative and fiscal apparatus. Four military commands were allocated to defend the prefecture, one inForum Iulii, one inTrento, one in the region of Lake Maggiore and Como and finally one in theCottian andGraian Alps.
In 568, theLombards under KingAlboin, together with other Germanic allies, invadedNorthern Italy. The area had only a few years ago been completely pacified, and had suffered greatly during the long Gothic War. The local Byzantine forces were weak and, after taking several towns, in 569 the Lombards conqueredMilan.[citation needed] They tookPavia after a three-year siege in 572 and made it their capital.[3] In subsequent years, they tookTuscany. Other military initiatives led byFaroald andZotto, penetrated intoCentral andSouthern Italy, where they established the duchies ofSpoleto andBenevento.[4] However, after Alboin's murder in 573, the Lombards fragmented into several autonomous duchies (the "Rule of the Dukes").
EmperorJustin II tried to take advantage of the Lombardian fragmentation in 576 by sending his son-in-law,Baduarius, to Italy. However, he was defeated and killed in battle,[5] and the continuing crises in theBalkans and the East meant that another imperial effort at reconquest was not possible. Because of the Lombard incursions, the Roman possessions had fragmented into several isolated territories. In 580, EmperorTiberius II reorganized them into five provinceeparchies: theAnnonaria in northeastern Italy around Ravenna,Calabria,Campania,Aemilia and theUrbicaria around the city ofRome (Urbs).[6] What would become theRepublic of Venice was at some point created out of part of the exarchy's territory. The title of theDoge of Venice included the phrasedux Veneciarum provinciae, marking it as a province of the Byzantine Empire.
By the end of the 6th century the new order of powers had settled into a stable pattern. Ravenna, governed by its exarch, who held civil and military authority in addition to his ecclesiastical office, was confined to the city, its port and environs as far north as thePo (bordering territory of the duke ofVenice, nominally in imperial service) and south to theMarecchia River, beyond which lay theDuchy of the Pentapolis on the Adriatic, also under a duke nominally representing the Emperor of the East.[7]
The exarchate was organised into a group of duchies (Rome,Venetia,Calabria,Naples,Perugia,Pentapolis,Lucania, etc.) that were mainly the coastal cities in the Italian peninsula since the Lombards held the advantage in the hinterland.
The civil and military head of these imperial possessions, the exarch himself, was the representative at Ravenna of the emperor inConstantinople. The surrounding territory reached from the River Po, which served as the boundary withVenice in the north, to thePentapolis atRimini in the south, the border of the "five cities" in theMarches along theAdriatic coast, and reached even cities not on the coast, such asForlì. All this territory, which lay on the eastern flank of theApennines, was under the exarch's direct administration and formed the Exarchate in the strictest sense. Surrounding territories were governed bydukes andmagistri militum ("masters of the soldiers") more or less subject to his authority. From the perspective of Constantinople, the Exarchate consisted of the province of Italy.
The Exarchate of Ravenna was not the sole Byzantine province in Italy. ByzantineSicily formed a separate government, andCorsica andSardinia, while they remained Byzantine, belonged to theExarchate of Africa.
The Lombards had their capital atPavia and controlled the great valley of thePo. The Lombard wedge in Italy spread to the south, and established duchies atSpoleto andBeneventum; they controlled the interior, while Byzantine governors more or less controlled the coasts.
Piedmont,Lombardy, the interior mainland ofVenetia,Tuscany and the interior ofCampania belonged to the Lombards, and bit by bit the Imperial representative in Italy lost all genuine power, though in name he controlled areas like Liguria (completely lost in 640 to the Lombards), or Naples andCalabria (being overrun by the Lombard duchy of Benevento). In Rome, the pope was the real master.
At the end, 740, the Exarchate consisted ofIstria, Venetia,Ferrara, Ravenna (the exarchate in the limited sense), with thePentapolis, andPerugia.
These fragments of the province of Italy, as it was when reconquered forJustinian, were almost all lost, either to the Lombards, who finally conquered Ravenna itself in 751, or by the revolt of the pope, who finally separated from the Empire on the issue of theiconoclastic reforms.
The relationship between thePope inRome and the Exarch in Ravenna was a dynamic that could hurt or help the empire. The Papacy could be a vehicle for local discontent. The old Roman senatorial aristocracy resented being governed by an Exarch who was considered by many a meddlesome foreigner. Thus the exarch faced threats from outside as well as from within, hampering much real progress and development.
In its internal history, the exarchate was subject to the splintering influences that were leading to the subdivision ofsovereignty and the establishment offeudalism throughout Europe. Step by step, and in spite of the efforts of the emperors at Constantinople, the great imperial officials became local landowners, the lesser owners of land were increasingly kinsmen or at least associates of these officials, and new allegiances intruded on the sphere of imperial administration. Meanwhile, the necessity for providing for the defence of the imperial territories against the Lombards led to the formation of local militias, who at first were attached to the imperial regiments, but gradually became independent, as they were recruited entirely locally. These armed men formed theexercitus romanae militiae, who were the forerunners of the free armed burghers of the Italian cities of theMiddle Ages. Other cities of the exarchate were organized on the same model.
During the 6th and 7th centuries, the growing menace of the Lombards and theFranks, as well as the split between Eastern and Western Christendom inspired both byiconoclastic emperors and medieval developments in Latin theology and culminating in the acrimonious rivalry between the Pope of Rome and thePatriarch of Constantinople, made the position of the exarch more and more untenable. Ravenna remained the seat of the exarch until the revolt of 727 over iconoclasm.Eutychius, the last exarch of Ravenna, was killed by the Lombards in 751.
In 752, the northeastern portion of the Exarchate known as theDucatus Pentapolis was conquered by King Aistulf of the Lombards.[8] Four years later, after the Franks drove the Lombards out,Pope Stephen II claimed the territory. The Pope's ally in the military action against the Lombards,Pepin the Short, King of the Franks, then donated the conquered lands back to the Papacy; this donation, which was confirmed by Pepin's sonCharlemagne in 774, marked the beginning of the temporal power of the popes as thePatrimony of Saint Peter. The archbishoprics within the former exarchate, however, had developed traditions of local secular power and independence, which contributed to the fragmenting localization of powers. Three centuries later, that independence would fuel the rise of the independent communes.
The southern portions of the exarchate including the imperial possessions at Naples, Calabria, and Apulia were reorganized as theCatepanate of Italy headquartered inBari. These territories were lost to theSaracenBerbers in 847 but recovered in 871. Later after Sicily wasconquered by Arabs the remnants were placed into newly established military/administrativethemes of Calabria and Langobardia. Istria at the head of the Adriatic was attached toDalmatia.
Note: For some exarchs there exists some uncertainty over their exact tenure dates.
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