JUSTINIAN AND RECONQUESTAthanagild, were in the main kept by Byzantium until 624 and their defence
put under a magister militum appointed by Constantinople.^71
Leaving aside North Africa, the overall result of the ‘reconquest’ of the
western provinces was that the eastern empire regained and retained a
small portion of Italy and a much smaller portion of Spain during the ensu-
ing period when the early medieval western kingdoms were taking shape.
In itself this was a signifi cant achievement. But in Italy the effects of the
Gothic wars were destructive in the extreme. A law known as the ‘Prag-
matic Sanction’ imposed a settlement on the model of that given to North
Africa twenty years before. Pope Pelagius I (556–61), already alienated by
Justinian’s religious policies, complained in his letters that agriculture was
devastated; in addition, the senatorial aristocracy had had its fortunes under-
mined if not destroyed, and many members had left for the east, while the
senate itself collapsed as an institution and many towns, including Rome, suf-
fered greatly during the hostilities.^72 Even if Italy’s capacity for recovery is
often underestimated, Ravenna especially showing evidence of growth and
vitality,^73 profound underlying changes in urban structure, municipal organi-
zation and settlement patterns were already under way. The future Pope Gre-
gory I spent some years in Constantinople in the 580s, where he established
excellent relations with the family of the Emperor Maurice and the Italian
senatorial exiles in the eastern capital, which, as his letters show, survived into
his tenure of the papacy. But, as T.S. Brown points out, this group suffered
severely from the attack made on the supporters of Maurice by Phocas (602–
10), and with it, valuable connections between Constantinople and Italy were
broken. Another factor which had made for diffi culty in relations with Con-
stantinople was the opposition of the Roman church to the Three Chapters
decree and the Fifth Ecumenical Council of 553–4.^74 This was to continue. In
the seventh century, too, despite the appointment of easterners to the papacy,
Rome was the centre of opposition to the imperial policy of Monotheletism,
and attracted African as well as eastern participants to the Lateran Synod held
there which condemned the policy in 649 (Chapter 9). The African church,
equally opposed to Constantinople, looked to Rome throughout this period
as its natural ally. The church in Italy also gained economically and in other
ways from the political changes in the later sixth century, in effect stepping
into the shoes of the old senatorial aristocracy and acquiring both wealth and
political infl uence. In this way, Justinian’s own ecclesiastical policies, though
aimed at the near-impossible task of achieving unity between the eastern and
western churches, in practice proved a major diffi culty in Byzantine relations
with Rome and contributed to the growth in power of the Roman church and
eventually the papacy.
In considering the effects of the reconquest policy on the provinces and on
the empire generally, three factors need to be remembered: fi rst, the immedi-
ate effects of war and of the subsequent administrative, economic and military
settlements; second, Justinian’s own energetic interventions in religious policy,
which so far as the western provinces were concerned cut across the process