He was the last
representative of the Byzantine empire to govern in Ravenna or in
Italy.
But the fall of the imperial power in Italy was not the work of the
Romans or of the Lombards. It fell because it had ceased to be
Catholic.
We have seen the invasions of the Visigoths and the Huns fade away
into nothing; we have seen the greater attempt of the Ostrogoths to
found a kingdom in Italy brought to nought. One and all they failed
for this fundamental reason, that they were not Catholic. The future
belonged to Catholicism, and since it is only what is in the mind and
the soul that is of any profound and lasting effect, to be Arian, to
be heretic, was to fail. The great attempt, the noble attempt of
Justinian to refound the empire in the West, to gather Italy
especially once more into a universal government, succeeded, in so far
as it did succeed, because the circumstances of the time in Italy
forced it to be a pre-eminently Catholic movement. When that movement
ceased to be Catholic it failed.
Let us be sure of this, for our whole understanding of the Dark Age
depends upon it.
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