20.3 Europe: a.d. 501 to 600

Europe

Back to Europe: A.D. 401 to 500

An interesting map showing the extent and location of the various barbarian migrations and their kingdoms about A.D. 526 will be found on the next page.

Southern europe

Eastern mediterranean islands

All, including Malta remained a part of the Byzantine Empire.

Greece

Greece was an integral part of Byzantium. The Emperor Justinian closed the University of Athens and some of the professors fled to the more enlightened Persia to continue their work there. All pagans were ordered to become Christians. About A.D. 600 Slav tribes crossed the Danube and descended into Greece, driven by Avars behind them and soon only a few southern coastal cities remained Greek, in the old sense. (Ref. 8 )

NOTE: Insert Map 32: The Barbarian, Migrations and Kingdoms AD. 526

Upper balkans

For most of the century, the Ostrogothic king of Italy, Theodoric, also reigned over the Balkan area bordering the Adriatic in the region known as Dalmatia. At the end of the century, however, the Bulgars, Avars and a mixture of southern and western Slavs entered the area and remained to become the Croats, Serbs and finally the Yugoslavians. The Avars were a Mongolian people of mixed Turkic background who had moved from Turkistan through southern Russia, enslaved masses of Slavs, as the Huns had ahead of them and moved on into Europe, ravaging the Balkans on the route and almost wiping out the Latin speaking peoples. Except for Salonica, Macedonia was permanently settled by Slavs in this century. Their occupation of ancient Dacia cut the land contact between Rome and Constantinople. The Bulgars, who moved in from beyond the Danube, controlled the Slavs in their area but gradually took over the Slavic language and culture. (Ref. 49 , 137 , 125 )

Italy

At the end of the last century, the Byzantine Emperor Zeno had commissioned the Arian Ostrogoth King Theodoric to conquer Italy and he had promptly done so. He then reigned over southern Italy, Sicily and a portion of the southern Balkans, Dalmatia, which was nominally under the Byzantine emperor. In addition, early in the century Theodoric defeated some of the Franks and kept the French Mediterranean strip as well as later increasing his holdings in Provence. He was a relatively just and progressive ruler encouraging a revival of learning and literature. His minister of state, Cassiodorus, a Roman of Greek lineage, tried to reconcile the Germanic and Roman types of culture and failing, he withdrew to found a monastery. He composed a history of the Goths, written in Latin.

The original has been lost, but excerpts by Jordanes, another Gothic official, are to be found in his Getica. Cassiodorus was responsible for saving some books from the great Roman libraries, including some works of Hippocrates and Galen, which he stored with other classic manuscripts in his ultimate monastery. (Ref. 49 , 15 , 137 , 127 )

The long Gothic wars ruined Italy. The problems included the existence of two distinct races - Roman and Goth - and two religions - Catholic and Arian, trying to live side by side, each practicing its own laws and traditions. The eastern Emperor Justinian, through his General Belisarius, retook Sicily in 535 and invaded Italy proper in 536 but did not crush the Ostrogoths until 563 when the Germanic Lombards, perhaps originally from Scandinavia and now driven west from Bohemia and Germany by the Avars, arrived to conquer the northern half of the Italian peninsula. These Lombards were the last invaders of Italy, and they ruled their half for two centuries. An outbreak of bubonic plague had weakened the defense of Italy and some say that these Germanic people came into what was practically an empty country. This plague raged in Rome in A.D. 590 and in that same year a Byzantine counter-attack cut the new Lombard Kingdom into two parts, across the waist of Italy but the Lombard vitality continued in spite of this. In the area at the head of the Adriatic Sea, the Veneti tribe and refugees from other regions formed an island empire of sea-farers. (Ref. 8 , 137 )