*intro*
Thanks to Theodora,
the vulnerable Justinian hadn't been assassinated or supplanted,
and he still had an empire to wake up to;
but some of his enemies had kept busy during his long sleep
The plague had left a permanent scar on the Byzantine Empire:
nearly a quarter of its citizens lay dead,
crops had failed,
trade had ground to a halt,
and imperial revenue simply hadn't come in.
The short-term consequences of this were apparent to anybody who saw the mass graves,
but the long-term effects ran still deeper.
In Italy, the Gothic tribes had rebelled, having felt cheated by Belisarius' betrayal;
and unhappy with Roman rule, the tribe seized the opportunity to rearm and prepare for war,
as plague gripped and weakened the hobbled Empire.
The signs had been obvious, and yet the Byzantines had done nothing.
The Gothic leadership had even squabbled and fought, leaving them vulnerable and weak;
and yet the Byzantines had done nothing.
Why?
Because they had been even more divided.
The attention of the imperial court had been entirely on the East: first on the Persians and then on the plague,
and so there'd been little direct oversight of Italy.
Meanwhile, the question of overall command had never been settled,
and so instead,
dozens of Byzantine commanders operated quasi-independently across the Italian Peninsula.
This all meant that when the Goths had finally settled their differences,
and come together under a man named Totila,
Italy was ripe for the conquest.
As the Gothic forces swept south, the towns, which were under-garrisoned and frustrated by high Byzantine taxes,
threw open their doors;
and when the Romans tried to retaliate, it only ended in disaster.
In one famous attempt,
the Byzantine forces had actually got someone to betray one of the Ostrogothic strongholds at Verona;
and while a force of a hundred men snuck inside and threw open the gates the eleven
commanders of the Byzantine Army assembled outside
Bickered about how to split the loot from the town and so caught up were they in this argument [that] no one ever
Actually ordered their army to go through the now open gates
Before the commanders were done in fighting the Ostrogoths had received the gate and the Roman Force trapped inside had to leap over the city
wall in an attempt [to] escape shortly after that a roman force of
12,000 was scattered by five thousand men under [totila]
And italy became theirs for the taking save for a few major cities and a few well fortified
coastal towns all of italy all of Belisarius is hard-won conquests fell to the Gothic forces even
Naples with its strong Walls couldn't stand against the Ostrogothic King
twice the Romans tried to resupply it from sicily but twice they failed once by having their fleets scattered by the fleet of [totila] and
Once by Nature herself when the wind turned against them and when naples isolated and starving at last handed over the keys [to] the city
Justinian knew it was time
He needed to get belisarius back in the fight
But the Empire was already strained to its limits Justinian made
Belisarius underwrite the cost of the war sending him off essentially without an army to collect conscripts along the way
but through all of thrace and delirium
Belisarius could only raise four thousand men and when he got to italy he found the situation to be even worse there were very few
Roman soldiers there
And they'd already gone for years without pay morale was at Rock-bottom and every day more of them deserted to go join the ostrogoths
Belisarius had to start all over again from the very
Belisaruis
secured a few towns and established a presence in a few ports
But soon he found himself out of resources he had neither the men nor the arms nor the supplies
He needed and at the same time many of those that he'd recruited along the road to italy got word of the fact that Barbarian
Tribes had invaded their homeland and deserted to defend their own families and farms and while belisarius had a few successes and would on occasion
[even] best to Teyla in the field he could never capitalize on those successes enough to move the war forward plagued by
insubordination and low morale
He couldn't even defend rome the city he had spent so much of his life trying to bring back into the empire the goal [that]
Had personally cost him so much the byzantine empire
Just couldn't support the war in Italy any longer the ravages of the barbarians the assaults of cause Ro the utter devastation
Of the plague all of these had sacked the empire of its vitality of its strength its reserves had all been spent on
monumental buildings and Grand campaigns
And when these waves of tragedy had hit there was simply nothing left to fall back on and so though belisarius was able to briefly
Reoccupy [rome] he soon recalled to defend Constantinople never to reunite
Italy and never to campaign again and
Rome that city that was to be his and Justinian's legacy fell again to the ostrogoths not long after he departed
Meanwhile Rebellion had flared up in Africa
And the same old story of lack of pay disunity of command and Plague spreading through the Army Kept the rebellion alive for years
fortunately this rebellion was eventually successfully quelled the same year belisarius withdrew from Italy A
much-needed victory
Amidst so many losses [it] had cost more time and money than it ever should have but at least it would not go the way
of italy then in 548 Theodora died of cancer
Justinian wept at her casket the indomitable emperor in tears for all to see he would not marry again
Even though he lacked an heir
He chose to name his nephew [in-law] as his successor rather than betray her memory
But even as she had neared her death the entire time he never forgot his empire
after so many failures and setbacks many others would have just sunk into dejection and let the empire rot but never
Justinian say what you will about him, but Justinian never once abandoned what he thought to be his duty
He worked to slowly put the pieces back together with the same tireless spirit
He had applied in the glorious days after the Nika Revolts, but perhaps without the same joy
He continued the war in Lusaka
but prevented the conflict from turning into an all-out war between the byzantines and the persians he tried to reorganize the
defenses to put up some resistance to the ever mounting Barbarian raids from the North he began to get the byzantine economy moving again and
though it was often complained about he
reestablished a system of
taxation to slowly fill the [imperial] [Treasury] and to pay for all the armies he needed to protect an empire assailed on all sides and
Though the weight of the world could be seen on him after
Theodora's death though he had perhaps lost some of the fire he once possessed and no longer found as much joy in his old passions
he did undertake one last great project a
Project that had been most dear to theodora it would perhaps be the greatest he ever embarked on and it would perhaps be his greatest
failure One last time Justinian
attempted to [heel] the split in the church that had plagued his empire [a] split that would do more damage to the empire than
Barbarian Raids or persian Kings one which would last for centuries if we talk more about
byzantium [in] future series this split is going to keep coming up now when most of us think about splits and
Christianity we usually think about the split between Protestant and catholic
But this divide was just as bitter and ran just as deep
This was the divide between the monophysites and the orthodox it was a problem that Justinian had studied for years
Theodora had been monophysite he himself was orthodox
Their reign was supposed to be a symbol of unity and yet the divide had persisted he had many times tried to find solutions
But nothing had ever stuck
But he had one final grand idea the church was split concerning a complex
Theological question over the singular or dual nature of christ
But in practicality it really came down to whether one accepted or refused the decisions of the council of Chalcedon?
Where the dual nature of christ had become orthodoxy justinian's thought that he'd found a clever solution in the fact [that] the three
Strongest voices supporting that dual Nature view also came from the now considered heretical and historian Branch of Christianity
So if he could just get everybody to condemn those guys they could serve as scapegoats for the problem
Monophysites could accept Chalcedon and everybody could move on he had made this proclamation in the year 543 while theodora was still alive
But he would fight to get the leaders of the church to sign on for the rest of his life
He worked to see that the pope who was staying with him during a period where he was exiled from rome because it was in
Ostrogothic Hands endorsed his view the pope
eventually gave [in] and agreed
Though with great reluctance because he knew exactly what it would [mean] to his followers in italy he knew what would eventually
prove true
this would not heal the schism in the [east] rather it would simply end up creating a schism in the west and
So italy has fallen
Theodora is gone and the great
Project that their union was supposed to symbolize the healing of the faith of the [empire] lies in tatters
But slowly justinian is rebuilding he's not done yet. [so] [join] [us] next time as we conclude the reign of Justinian
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