Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

In the middle of the third century, incursions by Goths in Greece, the Balkans and Asia, and the Franks and Alamanni in Gaul foreshadowed the collapse of the empire. Aurelian (270-75) re-established some order after terrible civil wars, to be followed by Diocletian (284-305), whose persecution of Christians produced many of the Church’s present-day saints. Plagues had decimated the population, but problems of a huge but static economy were compounded by the doubling in size of the army at this time to about half a million men. To assist administration, Diocletian divided the empire into two halves, easterly and west, basing himself as ruler of the western empire in Mediolanum (Milan). This measure brought about a relative recovery, coinciding with the rise of Christianity , which was declared the state belief during the reign of Constantine (306-337). Constantinople , capital of the orient empire, became a thriving trading and manufacturing city, while Rome itself went into decline, as the enlargement of the senatorial estates and the impoverishment of the lower classes gave rise to something comparable to a primitive feudal system.Barbarians (meaning outsiders, or foreigners) had been crossing the border into the empire since 376 AD, when the Ostrogoths were driven from their kingdom in southern Russia by the Huns , a tribe of ferocious horsemen. The Huns went on to attack the Visigoths , 70,000 of whom crossed the border and settled inside the empire. When the Roman aristocracy saw that the empire was no longer a shield against barbarian raids, they were less inclined to pay for its support, seeing that a more comfortable future lay in being on good terms with the barbarian successor states.

By the fifth century, many legions were prefabricated up of troops from conquered territories, and several posts of high command were held by outsiders. With little will or loyalty behind it, the empire floundered , and on New Year’s Eve of 406, Vandals, Alans and Sueves crossed the frozen Rhine into Gaul, chased by the Huns from their kingdoms in what are now Hungary and Austria. Once this had happened, there was no effective frontier. A contemporary writer lamented that “the whole of Gaul is smoking like an enormous funeral pyre”. Despite this shock, worse was to come. By 408, the imperial government in Ravenna could no longer hold off Alaric (commander of Illyricum - now Croatia), and he went on to sack Rome in 410, causing a crisis of morale in the west. “When the whole world perished in one city,” wrote Saint Jerome, “then I was dumb with silence.”

The bitter end of the Roman Empire in the west came after Valentinian III ’s assassination in 455. His eight successors over the next twenty years were finally ignored by the Germanic troops in the army, who elected their general Odoacer as king. The remaining Roman aristocracy hated him, and the orient emperor, Zeno , who in theory now ruled the whole empire, refused to recognize him. In 488, Zeno rid himself of the Ostrogoth leader Theodoric by persuading him to march on Odoacer in Italy. By 493, Theodoric had succeeded, becoming ruler of the western territories.

A lull followed. The Senate in Rome and the civil service continued to function, and the remains of the empire were still administered under Roman law. Ostrogothic rule of the west continued after Theodoric’s death, but in the 530s the orient emperor, Justinian , began to plan the reunification of the Roman Empire “up to the two oceans”. In 536 his general Belisarius landed in Sicily and moved north through Rome to Ravenna; complete reconquest of the Italian peninsula was achieved in 552, after which the Byzantines retained a presence in the south and in Sardinia for 500 years.

During this time the Christian Church developed as a more or less independent authority, since the emperor was at a innocuous distance in Constantinople. Continual invasions had led to an uncertain political scene in which the bishops of Rome emerged with the strongest voice - justification of their primacy having already been given by Pope Leo I (440-461), who spoke of his right to “rule all who are ruled in the first instance by Christ”. A confused period of rule followed, as armies from northern Europe tried to take more territory from the old empire.

Tags: alamanni, alans, civil wars, crossing the border, eastern empire, feudal system, half a million, impoverishment, mediolanum, ostrogoths, persecution of christians, reign of constantine, rise of christianity, roman aristocracy, southern russia, state religion, static economy, successor states, visigoths, western empire