ITALY AND HER INVADERS.
BOOK VI
.
CHAPTER II.
THE RULE OF NARSES.
Of the twelve years during which the Eunuch Narses bore sway in Italy,
after the last of the Goths had been driven forth, we possess very scanty
memorials.
It was undoubtedly a time of general depression and misery. The fever of
war was past, and the pain 0f Italy, of the sore wounds which twenty years of
bloodshed had inflicted upon Italy was felt now perhaps more bitterly than
ever. All over the land, doubtless, were cities lying desolate; the chasms
still left in their walls, where the Gothic battering-rams had pounded into
them; long streets of burnt houses, where the fiery bolts from the catapult had
carried the wasting flame. To repair these ruined cities seems to have been the
chief work of the busy Eunuch, whose official title seems to have been ‘the
Patrician'. The great city of Mediolanum, that Milan which has been more than
once destroyed, and more than once has arisen in splendour from its ashes, felt
especially the benefit of his restoring hand.
The great law-giving Emperor, too, contributed, after his manner, to the
healing of the wounds of Italy. On the 13th of August, 554, he put forth a
‘Pragmatic Sanction', the object of which was to bring back social peace into
the chaos left by the expulsion of the Ostrogoths. All the legislative acts of
Theodoric and his family, down to Theodahad, were thereby confirmed: only those
of Witigis and his successors (but even these covered a period of sixteen
years) were treated as absolutely null and void.
In the year 555, probably soon after his reduction of the Gothic
stronghold of Campsa, Narses was called upon to take part in an ecclesiastical
ceremony of an extraordinary kind, in connection with the newly consecrated
pope, Pelagius I. It will be remembered that at the end of all his vacillations
as to the miserable controversy of the Three Chapters, Pope Vigilius submitted
himself to the Emperor's will, but there was still considerable delay before he
was suffered to depart from Constantinople. After the defeat of Totila, the
assembled clergy of Rome sought an audience with Narses, and, while
congratulating him on the restoration of the Imperial rule, suggested
(apparently) that the return of Vigilius, and of all the bishops who had gone
into exile with him for their refusal to condemn the Three Chapters, would be a
fitting acknowledgment of the Divine goodness which had thus blessed the arms
of the Emperor. Justinian, on receiving this message from Narses, caused the
banished bishops to be gathered together from Egypt, from the island of Proconnesus, and from all the various places of their
exile, and asked them whether they were willing to recognize Vigilius (now, it
must be remembered, a condemner of the Three Chapters) as their pope, or
whether they would prefer the archdeacon Pelagius, the only other candidate
whom he would permit them to choose. They replied with one accord, “Restore to
us Vigilius; let him be pope again, and when it shall please God to remove him
from this world, then, with your consent, archdeacon Pelagius shall succeed him.”
Then all those bishops were allowed to depart from Constantinople, and,
setting sail for Italy, they touched at Syracuse, where, as has been already
related, Vigilius died, after suffering much agony from the cruel malady with
which he was afflicted, and which, as his biographers thought, was itself
caused by his mental misery.
The archdeacon Pelagius, who was, in accordance with the declared wish
of the Emperor, consecrated pope in the room of Vigilius, was the same whom we
have seen bravely interceding for his fellow-citizens with the victorious
Totila at the time of the siege of Rome.
At that critical time he seemed to bear himself like an upright citizen
and a patriotic Roman, but there must have been something in his character
which suggested to onlookers the idea of a disposition to selfish intrigue.
Under the pontificate of Silverius, who had appointed him his apocrisiarius
(nuncio) at the Court of Constantinople, he was thought to have caballed with
Theodora against that popes; and, under the pontificate of Vigilius, though he
had followed that unhappy exile in all his waverings backwards and forwards about the Three Chapters, he was apparently suspected of
having been all the while intriguing to supersede him, a suspicion to which the
singular proposal of Justinian, which has just been quoted, seems to lend some
probability. Now an even darker, and, it would seem, absolutely unjust
suspicion of having in some way caused or hastened the death of Vigilius rested
upon him. So nearly universal was the dislike and distrust with which he was
regarded that only two bishops, John of Perugia and Bonus of Florence, could be
found willing to consecrate him; and Andrew, a presbyter of Ostia, had to be
joined with them in order to give the rite some semblance of canonical
regularity. All the rest of the clergy, all the religious persons who filled
the monasteries of Rome, all the more influential nobles of the city, shrank
from communion with a man whom they openly accused of being responsible for the
death of his predecessor.
In order to silence these calumnies and to reconcile the pontiff with
the citizens of Rome, Narses and Pelagius together devised a striking ceremony.
Starting from the Church of St. Pancratius on the Janiculan Hill, the two men, the chief of Italy and the chief of the Church, walked in
solemn procession till they came to the great basilica of St. Peter. Up the
long dim nave, lined with ninety-six columns taken from heathen temples, they
proceeded till they came to the semicircular apse where, under the majestic
figure of the Christ, displayed in mosaics on the vault, was placed the tomb of
his boldest disciple. All the while that they were thus marching, Narses,
Pelagius, and such of the priests as had been willing to join them, were
chanting solemn litanies. Then Pelagius mounted the hexagonal pulpit or ambo,
and, taking the Gospels in his hand and putting a cross upon his head, swore an
awful oath that he had had neither part nor lot in the death of his
predecessor. The earnest adjuration of the pontiff, made more impressive by the
presence of the Patrician, who seems to have acted as a kind of compurgator of
the accused man, appears to have satisfied the people. Pelagius proceeded to
deliver one of those exhortations against simony which were becoming, by reason
of the need for them, almost a commonplace in the mouth of an ecclesiastical
ruler, and took measures for the restoration to the Roman churches of the
golden vessels of which they had been plundered. As far as we can tell, the
deep distrust and suspicion of the new pontiff, which had hitherto prevailed,
were now laid aside. The chief occupation of his short pontificate was the
endeavour to persuade the Western bishops that they might, without derogating
from the authority of the Council of Chalcedon, accept the decree of the
Council of Constantinople, condemn the Three Chapters, and anathematize the
memory of the unfortunate Theodore, Ibas and Theodoret. In this labour, which
was the price paid to the Emperor for his nomination to the pontificate, Pelagius
was only partially successful, as we shall perceive in a later chapter, when we
come to deal with the question of the Istrian schismatics. Though the period of
the rule of Narses was generally peaceful, we still hear vaguely of conflicts
with barbarian chiefs, the heavings of the ocean
after the subsidence of the great storm of the Gothic war. A certain Aming, probably a Frankish chieftain, who had entered Italy
in 539 with King Theudebert, returned or remained, and offered his assistance
to a Gothic count, named Widin. They fell, however, before the victorious
Eunuch. Aming was slain by the sword of Narses, and
Widin was sent to Constantinople, whither so many captive barbarian chiefs had
preceded him, all ministering to the pride of “Justinianus Victor et
Triumphator, semper Augustus.”
It may possibly have been in connection with this victory over Aming and Widin that, as we are told by Theophanes,
‘letters of victory came from Rome, written by Narses the
Patrician, announcing that he had taken two strong cities of the Goths,
Verona and Brescia'. This event is placed by the chronicler in the year 563. It
is hardly possible that such important cities can have been left untaken for
ten years after the defeat of Totila, but either Widin the Gothic count, or
some such champion of a lost cause, may have arisen and, collecting the
scattered remnants of his countrymen, may have taken Verona and Brescia by
surprise and held them for some time against the empire.
Two years later, Sindual, king of the Heruli,
whom we last met with making a tardy but effectual charge on the army of
Butilin, turned against Narses, from whom he had received many favours, and
endeavoured to set up an independent barbarian sovereignty in Italy, or, as the
Imperialist writers call it, to establish a ‘tyranny'. Against him, too, the
star of Narses prevailed. He was vanquished in war, taken prisoner, and hung
from a lofty gallows.
This same year (565) witnessed the passing away of two great actors in
the drama of the reconquest of Italy. Belisarius, who, after his last glorious
campaign against the Kotrigur Huns, had fallen into
disgrace at court, being accused of complicity in a plot against Justinian, and
had then, after eight months' obscuration, been restored to the imperial
favour, enjoyed his recovered honours for something less than two years, and died
in the month of March, 565. Of him, as of Wolsey, might the words be used,
‘An
old man, broken with the storms of state,’
and
yet, like Wolsey, he had not reached extreme old age, since, forty years
before, he was still spoken of as in early youth
Eight months after Belisarius died his even more famous master. For
thirty-eight years Justinian had governed the Roman world, filling a larger
space in the eyes of men than any ruler since Theodosius, if not than any ruler
since Constantine. He had restored much of the splendour of the Roman name, had
reunited Rome and Carthage to the Empire, and had even displayed his victorious
eagles on the coast of Spain. He had been an indefatigable student of theology,
had called a General Council, and imposed the dogma which was the fruit of his
midnight studies upon the conscience of a resisting pope. Above all, he had
evoked from the chaos in which the laws of Rome had been tossing for centuries
an orderly and harmonious system, which was to make the influence of Roman Law
thenceforward coeval and conterminous with European civilization and with all
that later civilization which, springing from it, was to overspread four
continents. But there was a reverse to this brilliant picture on which perhaps
sufficient emphasis has been laid in previous volumes of this book. The
conquests of Justinian were not enduring. The financial exhaustion which was
the result of his showy and extravagant policy left the provinces weak and
anaemic, unable to resist the new forces which were about to be hurled upon
them from the deserts of Arabia. The theological activity of the Emperor
alienated many of his subjects, both in the East and West, and probably
facilitated the conquests of Mohammed. Nor did even the Emperor's own theology,
in the later years of his life, escape the charge of heretical error.
But were it good or bad, the work of Justinian was done and a new lord
looked forth from the windows of the Anactoron, over
the wide Propontis and the beautiful Horn of Gold.
That lord was Justin the Second, a nephew of Justinian, who had consolidated
his position at Court, and secured his succession to the throne by marrying
Sophia, niece of the once all-powerful Theodora. In spite of the praises of the
courtly poet, Corippus—who sought to re-awaken the
lyre of Claudian and to sing the praises of Justin and his African general
John, as the earlier poet had sung the praises of Honorius and Stilicho—the new
Emperor was a narrow, small- minded man, just the kind of person who was likely
to emerge, safe and successful, from the intrigues of a court like Justinian's,
but not the man to guide aright the destinies of a mighty Empire. Moreover,
when he had been eight years upon the throne the symptoms of a diseased brain
were so manifest that it was necessary to provide him with a colleague, who was
in fact a regent: and it is probable enough that even at the time of his
accession he showed some deficiency of mental power. Whatever the cause, the
result seems clear, that in the earlier years of the reign, Sophia, not Justin,
was the true ruler of the Empire, and that this Empress, who possessed the
ambition of Theodora without her genius governed feebly and unwisely, cutting
away a branch here and there of the more unpopular parts of Justinian's
administration, but neither resolutely upholding nor broadly remodelling the
system which he had inaugurated.
It was, no doubt, in accordance with this general plan of change without
reform that the Imperial pair decided on the recall of Narses. The popularity
which the Patrician had won by the reconquest of Italy he had lost by his ten
years' government of the peninsula, but whether justly or unjustly lost, who
shall say? The full weight of the misery caused by a prolonged war is often not
felt till the war is over, when the fever of fighting is followed by the
collapse of bankruptcy and famine. This was the experience of our fathers in
the decade which followed Waterloo, and it may well have been the experience of
the Italians during the years which intervened between Totila and Alboin. Over
such an emaciated and exhausted country Narses had to rule, squeezing out of it
by his rationales and his logothetes the solidi which were to be transmitted to
Constantinople—a miserable dividend (if so modem a comparison may be allowed)
on the vast sums which Justinian had disbursed for the reconquest of Italy.
But did Narses plunder for his own private account as well as to fill
the coffers of his master? That is the more or less open accusation of the
later chroniclers, but though it is quite impossible now either to prove or
disprove it, the charge does not altogether correspond with what we hear
elsewhere of the character of Narses. Ambition rather than avarice seems to
have been the master-passion of his soul, and he is represented as a
free-handed and generous rewarder of the men who served him well.
But we have had enough of conjecture. Let us listen to the statement,
poor and meagre as it is, given us by the Papal biographer, of the events which
led up to the recall of Narses.
‘Then the Romans, influenced by envy, sent representations to Justin and
Sophia, that it would be more expedient for the Romans to serve the Goths than
the Greeks. “Where Narses the Eunuch rules”, said they, “he makes us subject to
slavery. And the most devout Prince is ignorant of this. Either, therefore,
free us and the City of Rome from his hand, or else we will assuredly become
servants of the barbarians.” Which, when Narses heard, he said “If I have done
evil to the Romans I shall find myself in evil plight”. Then going forth from
Rome he came to Campania and wrote to the nation of the Langobardi that they should come and take possession of Italy.”
By the last sentence of this extract we are brought face to face with
the accusation which is the heaviest charge that has been made against the
character of Narses, the accusation that he, in revenge for his recall, invited
the Lombard invaders into Italy. It is easy to show how slight is the basis of
trustworthy evidence on which this accusation rests; but in order to show what
the accusation is, it will be well to quote it in the fully developed and
dramatic form which it assumed, two centuries after the event, in the pages of
Paulus Diaconus, the great historian of the Lombard
people. After copying the passage just quoted, from the Papal biographer,
Paulus proceeds:
‘Then the august Emperor was so greatly moved with anger against Narses
that he immediately sent Longinus the praefect into Italy that he might take
the place of Narses. But Narses, when he knew these things, was much afraid,
and so much was he terrified by the same august Sophia that he did not dare to
return to Constantinople. To whom, among other [insults], she is said to have
sent a message that, as he was an eunuch, she would make him portion out the
days' tasks of wool-work to the girls in the women's apartment1. To which words
Narses is said to have given this answer, that he would spin her such a hank
that she should not be able to lay it down so long as she lived. Therefore,
being racked by fear and hatred, he departed to Naples, and soon sent
ambassadors to the nation of the Langobardi, telling
them to leave the poverty-stricken fields of Pannonia and come to possess
Italy, teeming as it was with all sorts of wealth. At the same time he sent
many kinds of fruit and samples of other produce in which Italy abounds, that
he might tempt their souls to the journey. The Langobardi received with satisfaction the glad tidings, which corresponded with their own
previous desires, and lifted up their hearts at the thought of their future
prosperity'.
Such is, as I have said, the fully-developed story, and that which has
succeeded in inscribing itself on the page of history. It contains some obvious
improbabilities. The Langobardi, the flower of whose
nation had served in Italy only fifteen years before, certainly needed no
elaborate information as to the fruits and produce of that country. It would be
strange, too, though not impossible, if just before sending so traitorous a message,
Narses went southward from Ravenna to Naples, thereby at once adding to the
labours of his messengers and lessening his own chances of deliverance from
punishment by the hosts of the invading barbarians.
But, moreover, if we trace the tale backwards through the centuries, we
shall find, as is so often the case, that the nearer we get to the date of the
events, the less do the narrators know of these secret motives which are so
freely imputed, and these dialogues of great personages which are so
dramatically described. Paulus Diaconus wrote, as has
been already said, about the middle of the eighth century. The chronicler, who
is incorrectly quoted as ‘Fredegarius' (who wrote
about 642, and perhaps put the finishing touches to his history in 658), tells
the story in nearly the same words, but, while he gives us the golden distaff,
he takes away the fruits and other vegetable products. We then come back to the
Spanish bishop, Isidore of Seville, who wrote a chronicle coming down to 615.
He simply says, ‘Narses the Patrician, after he had, under Justinianus
Augustus, overcome Totila, king of the Goths in Italy, being terrified by the
threats of Sophia Augusta, the wife of Justin, invited the Langobardi from Pannonia, and introduced them into Italy'. This sentence, written probably
about fifty years after the recall of Narses, is, after the notice already
quoted from the Papal biographer, the strongest support of the charge that
Narses invited the Lombards into Italy. And if we accept, as we seem bound to
do, the early date of the ‘Papal Life,' we shall feel compelled to admit that
there was a belief among his contemporaries that Narses had, at the end of his
life, proved disloyal to the Empire. Only remembering the parallel case of
Stilicho, we shall be careful to distinguish between popular suspicion and
judicial evidence of such a crime1.
Our two best contemporary authorities are Marius of Aventicum and Gregory of Tours, both of whom died (having passed middle age) in or about
the year 594. They are, therefore, strictly contemporary authorities for the
events of 567. Neither of them makes any mention of Narses' invitation to the
Lombards, though the former describes the recall of Narses (with some
suppressed indignation at such a reward to so meritorious a servant of the
Emperor), and both notice the entry of Alboin and the Lombards into Italy.
Equally silent on the subject are the so-called Annals of Ravenna, though the
ecclesiastical chronicler, writing in that Imperial capital, was just the
person who would have been likely to utter the shrillest notes of execration at
so signal an act of treachery by the Patrician towards the Empire.
Upon the whole, then, we conclude that there is hardly sufficient
evidence for the far- famed vengeance of the Eunuch on the Empress. His recall,
which took place in the year 567, was, probably enough, due to the advice of
the ambitious and meddlesome Augusta, and it is in the highest degree likely
that the removal of such a man from Ravenna, who had been not only the recoverer of Italy in war, but for twelve years the
mainspring of the administrative machine in peace, may have led to a certain
amount of confusion and disturbance, during which the barbarians on the
north-eastern frontier perceived that their time had come to re-enter the beautiful
land which they had so unwillingly quitted in 552, when Narses informed them
that he had no further occasion for their services.
Of the later history of the great Eunuch-Patrician we have scarcely any
trustworthy details. The ‘Liber Pontificalis,' which,
as we have seen, repeats the slander as to the invocation of the Lombards, goes
on to describe a mysterious interview between Pope John III and Narses. ‘The
pope goes in haste to Naples, and asks the ex-governor to return to Rome.
Narses says, “Tell me, most holy Pope, what mischief have I done to the Romans?
I will go to the feet of him that sent me [the Emperor], that all Italy may
know how I have laboured in its behalf.” The pope answered, “I will go more
quickly than thou canst return from this land.” Therefore Narses returned to
Rome with the most holy Pope John, and, after a considerable time, he died
there; whose body was placed in a leaden chest, and all his riches were brought
back to Constantinople. At the same time Pope John died also'
If this note of time is to be relied upon, the death of Narses must have
happened about 573, or perhaps a year or two earlier; and, upon the whole, this
seems to be the conclusion to which most of the authorities point: that he died
in Rome early in the eighth decade of the sixth century. The statements as to
his return to Constantinople and recovery of the favour of the Emperor probably
proceed from a confusion between him and another Narses, who, thirty years
later, was one of the bravest of the Imperial generals on the Persian frontier.
The vast wealth of the Eunuch was perhaps simply confiscated by the
Imperial treasury, but in the next generation the following story concerning it
reached the ears of Gregory of Tours. Tiberius II (who, as we shall see, was
first the colleague and then the successor of Justin II) was a man of generous
disposition, and was frequently rebuked for this by his patroness, the Empress
Sophia, who declared that he would bring the Imperial treasury to ruin. ‘What
I,' said she, ‘have been many years in collecting, thou wilt disperse in a very
short time.' Then he said, ‘Our treasury will be none the poorer, but the poor
must receive alms and the captives must be redeemed. Herein will be great
treasure according to that saying of the Lord, “Lay up for yourselves treasures
in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not
break through nor steal.” Now Narses, that great Duke of Italy, who had had his
palace in a certain city, went forth from Italy with a mighty treasure and came
to the aforesaid city of Constantinople, and there, in a secret place in his
house, he dug out great cisterns in which he stored up many hundred thousand
pounds weight of gold and silver. Then, having slain all who were privy to his
plans, he confided the secret of the hoard to one old man, under a solemn oath
that he would reveal it to no man. On the death of Narses these treasures lay
concealed under the earth. But when the afore said old man saw the daily
charities of Tiberius, he went to him, and said, “If it may profit me, O
Caesar, I can reveal to thee a great matter.” “Say on, what thou wilt,”
answered Tiberius. “I have the secret of the hoard of Narses,” said he, “and,
being now at the extreme verge of life, I can conceal it no longer.” Then
Tiberius Caesar, being filled with joy, sent some servants, who followed the
old man to the place with great astonishment. Having arrived at the cistern,
they opened it, and entered within, and found there so great a quantity of gold
and silver that it was hardly emptied after many days, though men were carrying
it away continually. And after this, the Caesar went on more blithely than
before, distributing money to the needy.”
So vanishes from history the mysterious figure of the great
Eunuch-general.
