Meantime, those three years, during which Pavia held her own, had not
been wasted by the barbarian. He crossed the Apennines, we may believe
as Totila had done, by the old deserted way to Fiesole, brought all
Tuscany under his yoke and a great part both of central and of
southern Italy, establishing there two "duchies" as the centres of his
power at Spoleto and Benevento. Then he returned to take Pavia, all
this time besieged, and in the same year, 572, it is probable that
Piacenza fell also, and Mantua. All Italy was in confusion, the system
of government re-established by Narses broken; the work of Justinian's
reconquest seemed all undone. That it was not wholly undone, that it
lived on and was at last re-established, we owe to two great facts:
the conversion of the Lombards to Catholicism by Gregory the Great and
the establishment of the exarchate, the entrenchment of Roman power
and civilisation in Ravenna. Let us consider these things.
The Lombards were barbarians and therefore pagans or Arians, but their
Arianism was of a different kind from that of the Huns, different even
from that of the Ostrogoths.
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