The Restoration of Rome

Title: The Restoration of Rome – Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders
Author: Peter Heather
Publisher: Pan Books, 2013 (First)
ISBN: 9781447241072
Pages: 470

Arnold Toynbee famously remarked that a stationary border cannot remain stable indefinitely because time works against the civilized side. As the ancient Roman empire reached a stasis and began to employ the barbarians on military duty, it was only a matter of time before the outsiders got the better of their masters. In 476 CE, a barbarian general Odovacar gained power by killing the then minor emperor's guardians in Rome and submitting the imperial vestments to the Emperor at Constantinople in a sign of vassalage. At this point, the Roman empire's soul flew out of Rome and rested in Constantinople. This book tells the story of how the empire was restored in the following centuries by the three great imperial pretenders: Theoderic, Justinian and Charlemagne. A final twist came in the eleventh century when Europe's barbarians found the means to establish a new Roman empire in the spiritual realm under the Pope which has so far lasted a thousand years. But why Theoderic, Justinian and Charlemagne? It's because their empires can reasonably be called Roman either in terms of the character of the state they created or in the coincidence between the geographical extent of their power and the bulk of the old Western Empire or because the state they created was the overwhelming dominant force in the Christian European landscape of its time. This book covers this eventful six centuries in considerable detail. Peter Heather is professor of Medieval History at King's College, London. He is the author of several renowned volumes on Roman imperial history. 

Heather has a rich repertoire of words which he employs to good use. The word 'barbarian' does not have the literary pejorative sense in history where it means only that the person does not live in the Roman Empire and is not a citizen or slave of the elite. The book explains how 'Roman-ness' was understood. The population of Rome (or at least its elite) was believed to have become more rational than other human beings by the classical literature in which it was customarily educated. This helped an individual to be rational, that is, to control his bodily passions by exercising the intellect. Barbarians, by contrast, were steered by passions. Hence rationality meant subordinating immediate gratification to the rule of written law which was known as 'civilitas' (civilization). Once a part of the system, it was difficult to break loose. The Western successor states that surfaced after the collapse of the western wing emerged slowly and rather consensually as the central Roman state gradually ran out of revenues and the capacity to direct events. The original Roman state employed a centralized professional army and most of the tax revenue was used to maintain it. The post-Roman times saw the rise of local aristocrats who headed the burden of presenting soldiers for campaigns of the overlord. For this, he appropriated a large part of the tax revenue he collected from locals on the king's behalf. This left them more powerful and led to independence from control of the ruler. Centralized bureaucracy and central collection of taxes vanished. The book also features the violent fratricidal succession struggles in which brothers and cousins fought with each other for the throne. The siblings killed and blinded each other or settled their brothers in monasteries for life, never to enter active politics again.

The barbarian pretenders were not entirely new to the court culture of the Roman state. Theoderic, the leader of the Amal Goths, perfected the art of Byzantian intrigue in and around Constantinople in a series of on-off relationships. He had also stayed there as a surety to the Emperor's treaty with the Goths. Alliances were made on the go and breached at the drop of a hat when it suited either party. He finally reached an understanding with Zeno, the Emperor of Constantinople and invaded Odovacer in Italy. Killing him, he assumed power as de facto emperor of Rome though he exhibited outward symbols of submission to Constantinople. By the end of 511, Theoderic, the son of a moderately important Gothic war band leader was ruling over between a third and half of the old Western Empire. But within a few years of Theoderic's death in 526, the Goths were split into many and the kingdom bit the dust. The next in line is Justinian, who is known for his reformed code of laws, but the author calls him an 'absolute bastard'. His reform of the Roman law was an epochal moment for Europe. It systematically codified a carefully chosen selection from a thousand years or so of Roman jurisprudence. The study of Roman law remained central to many university legal courses until very recently. The author stresses the disastrous foreign policy of Justinian to paint him in bad light. His wars in north Africa to subjugate the Vandals in Carthage and in Italy to conquer the Goths spelled doom for the land. The population levels in both regions did not recover for a long time. However, most of the lands he won back slipped out of East Roman suzerainty in a few years, but southern Italy would remain solidly under Constantinople for nearly half a millennium.

In 2010, a young street vendor in Tunisia immolated himself in protest against the oppressive regime of Ben Ali. It soon spread to the entire country and also to the Middle East and North Africa, toppling the dictatorial regimes one by one. The book provides a similar example when Justinian was very nearly unseated. It is also a lesson to governments in conceding to the demands, whether just or unjust, of a mob. The Nika Riots of 532 clearly shows the perils of authorities yielding to unreasonable mob demands. Justinian had punished two hooligans who murdered people during chariot-racing. Their supporters united and rioted seeking their release. Justinian relented, but the next day saw the rioters asking for the resignation of two senior officials of the administration. This too was accepted, but the very next day the crowd wanted Justinian himself to be deposed. At this point, he resorted to force which ended up killing thousands of people and destruction of monuments such as the Hagia Sophia. Moving on to the consequences of the wars between the Eastern Romans at Constantinople and the Sasanians in Persia which emasculated both, Heather highlights the rise of Islam as a direct result because the incessant battles had prepared the ground for an easy victory for the Arabs. Mohammed's warriors would not have been so successful if the two empires had not spent twenty-five years fighting each other to a state of bankrupt exhaustion. After Justinian, the wars with Sasanians at first and then with the growing power of Islam strangled the East Roman Empire. Muslim conquest and conversion destined their Christian populations to long term decline in cities which had once been the beating hearts of Christianity. The heartlands of Byzantium, Syria, Palestine and Egypt were lost, along with two-thirds of tax revenues. Constantinople itself declined but it miraculously evaded downfall till 1453.

Towards the last quarter of the eighth century, Charles of the Carolingian dynasty acquired the grand name of Charlemagne – Charles the Great – and was without rival within Latin Christendom. This was mainly because Constantinople had declined considerably and its reach was confined to some scattered territories in southern Italy while the line of Visigothic monarchs in Spain had been extinguished by Muslim conquest. Grabbing the moment on Christmas day, 800 CE, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Western Roman Empire with assurances that the Pope will not be disturbed in his internal or church affairs. However, Charlemagne's imperial creation came and went in just a century. At this point, the author projects the papacy as a mirror image of the Roman Empire though not in a political sense. It pervaded all parts of the known world in the case of spiritual and religious fulfilment and still continues after a millennium since it first came into being. Charlemagne employed scholars to produce reformed versions of Latin religious texts. It overhauled the cultural infrastructure of the Church completely. Hence, the authentic Christian texts were dispersed across the empire. Charlemagne used his religious authority to define a mass Christian piety which was to apply to everyone within his empire. Cathedral and monastic communities became centres of education and built up appropriate libraries which allowed them to teach, to preserve and disperse Christian knowledge. The ecclesiastical fragmentation that characterized the post-Roman period was reversed by Charlemagne's exercise of an overarching and unchallenged religious authority.

By the end of the first millennium, Europe was coming into existence. Christianity was spreading to the last strongholds of paganism in Europe’s north and east. The papacy was getting more assertive and capable of managing half of the known world. Within the 300-year period from 450 CE, the papacy changed itself to operate from Rome and its environs as an independent political unit. This period also witnessed papal interest in extending the boundaries of Christian Europe by sending missionaries. Charlemagne and his successors heaped a huge amount of wealth on the Roman Church and when imperial authority waned in the ninth century, the popes stepped into their shoes. Instead of sitting in Rome to receive ceremonial visits, they exploded over the Alps and used the church councils to place themselves and the papacy at the epicentre of events. By the third quarter of the eleventh century, the papacy was reinvented to become the source of ecclesiastical authority independent of secular rulers. The emperor had no say in the selection of popes. The crusades to recover Jerusalem from Muslim hands were orchestrated by the popes which were ably supported by secular rulers with men and material.

The author is a renowned professor of history and he employs the style of having a lecture throughout the book, addressing the thoughts of readers at each point. He virtually engages the readers and teaches the ‘class’ in a witty manner whenever circumstances demanded and within the limits of decorum. The story of Empress Theodora, the Queen of Justinian who was an actress before the Emperor met her, and the geese is an example of how such an outrageous story with erotic undertones could be mentioned in a classroom. You better look up Google for the story! Heather is supremely confident of what he proposes in the book. Only an extremely learned teacher-cum-thinker could be this confident. An interesting example is the story of the three nobles who fell afoul of the Gothic princess Amalasuentha. She had them transferred to the provinces and then had them murdered. The author gives out the names of two of them and then says that 'who the third was, I have no idea, and nor does anyone else' (p. 150). However, the text is huge and requires a more than superficial touch with the late-classical and early-middle age history of Europe to fully engage with it. This may be somewhat trying for most readers. Altogether, the book provides a wonderful reading experience.

The book is highly recommended to serious readers of history.

Rating: 4 Star