Exarchate of Ravenna

The Exarchate of Ravenna (Latin: Exarchatus Ravennatis; Greek: Ἐξαρχᾶτον τῆς Ῥαβέννης, romanized: Exarcháton tís Ravénis), also known as the Exarchate of Italy, was an exarchate (administrative district) of the Byzantine Empire comprising, between the 6th and 8th centuries, the territories under the jurisdiction of the exarch of Italy (exarchus Italiae) resident in Ravenna. The term is used in historiography in a double sense: "exarchate" in the strict sense denotes the territory under the direct jurisdiction of the exarch, 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-called Provincia 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 by duces or magistri militum under him.

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 the Lombards (who in the meantime had stolen approximately two thirds of the Byzantine lands in continental and peninsular Italy), which necessarily entailed the militarization of Byzantine 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 by Diocletian and Constantine disappeared. Byzantine Italy was divided into various military districts governed by duces or magistri 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 king Aistulf.

In 395 Theodosius I bequeathed the throne of the Roman Empire to his two sons: Arcadius was Emperor of the East; Honorius became Western Roman Emperor. The Roman Empire would never return to a single ruler.

The Prefecture of Italy suffered the invasion of barbarians in the 5th century: the first to cross the Alps was Alaric, king of the Visigoths. He arrived in Aquileia in 401 and from there headed for Milan, which he besieged the following year. Honorius, no longer feeling safe, moved to Ravenna and established the new capital of the Western Empire there.

In 476 Ravenna fell due to a military coup d'état by the general Odoacer who, at the head of a militia of Heruli, Sciri, Rugii and Turcilingi mercenaries (i.e. the Germanic component of the imperial troops), ousted Romulus 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 the Ostrogoths, Theodoric, who became the new lord of Italy. The new Ostrogothic Kingdom established by Theodoric continued to maintain, as previously, the Roman provincial and state organisation.

Around the middle of the 6th century, Emperor Justinian 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 bloody war 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 general Narses.

On 13 August 554, with the promulgation in Constantinople by Justinian of a pragmatica sanctio pro petitione Vigilii (pragmatic sanction on the requests of Pope Vigilius), the Prefecture of Italy returned, although not yet completely pacified, to Roman dominion. However, Sicily and Dalmatia 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 the Prefecture of Illyricum. Consequently, at the end of the conflict, the prefecture of Italy, also called Provincia 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 the Vandals in the century, after Justinian's reconquest they became part of the Praetorian prefecture of Africa).