J u s t in I I το herakleios ( 5 6 5 - 6 4 1)

Justinian died in 565, leaving a vastly expanded but perilously overstretched empire,

in financial as well as in military terms. His successors were faced with the reality

of dealing with new enemies, lack of ready cash, and internal discontent over high

taxation and constant demands for soldiers and the necessities to support them.

Justin II, Justinian's successor and his nephew, opened his reign by cancelling the

yearly subsidy (in effect, a substantial bribe paid to keep the Persian king at a distance,

and regarded by the latter as tribute) to Persia, beginning a costly war in the

east. In 568 the Germanic Lombards crossed from their homeland along the western

Danube and Drava region into Italy, in their efforts to flee the approaching Avars,

a Turkic nomadic power which, like the Huns two centuries earlier, were in the

process of establishing a vast steppe empire. While the Lombards rapidly overran

Roman defensive positions in the north of the peninsula, soon establishing also

a number of independent chiefdoms in the centre and south, the Avars occupied

the Lombards' former lands and established themselves as a major challenge to

imperial power in the northern Balkan region. Between the mid-570s and the end

of the reign of the emperor Maurice (582-602), the empire was able to re-establish a

precarious balance in the east. Although the Romans suffered a number of defeats,

they were able to stabilize the Danube frontier in the north. However, the lands

over which the campaigning took place, especially in Italy and the Balkans, were

increasingly devastated and unable to support prolonged military activity. Maurice

cleverly exploited a civil war in Persia in 590-1 by supporting the young, deposed

king Chosroes II. When, with Roman help, the war ended in the defeat of Chosroes'

enemies, the peace arrangements between the two empires rewarded the Romans

with the return of swathes of territory and a number of fortresses which had been

lost in the previous conflicts.

Maurice was unpopular with the army in the Balkans because of the hard nature

of the campaigning there, as well as because of his efforts to maintain some control

over the expenses of this constant warfare. This was, rightly or wrongly, perceived as

miserly and penny-pinching by the soldiers, and in 602 the Danube army mutinied,

marched on Constantinople, and imposed their own candidate as emperor, the centurion

Phokas. Maurice's entire family was massacred, and the tyranny of Phokas

(602-10) began. While he appears to have been a fairly incompetent politician, his

armies seem to have held their own in the Balkans, and against the Persians who,

on the pretext of avenging Maurice, had invaded the eastern provinces. Phokas

was popular in many regions of the empire, but in 610 Herakleios, the military

governor (exarch) of Africa, at Carthage, set out with a fleet to depose him, while his

cousin Niketas took a land force across the North African provinces, through Egypt

and northwards into Asia Minor. Phokas was deposed with little opposition, and

Herakleios was crowned emperor. Some troops remained loyal to Phokas, and his

deposition was followed by a short period of civil war in Egypt and Asia Minor. But

the empire was now unable to maintain its defences intact, and within a few years

the Avars and Slavs had overrun much of the Balkans, while the Persians occupied

Syria and Egypt between 614 and 618, and continued to push into Asia Minor.

Italy was now divided into a number of military commands isolated from each

other by Lombard enclaves; these commands became increasingly autonomous,

and eventually independent in all but name. In 626, a combined Persian-Avar

siege of Constantinople was defeated (contemporaries attributed the victory to the

intercession of the Mother of God), while from 623 Herakleios boldly took the war

into Persian territory and, in a series of brilliant campaigns, destroyed Chosroes'

armies and forced the Persian generals to sue for peace (Chosroes was deposed and

murdered). The status quo ante was re-established, and the dominant position of

the Roman Empire seemed assured. Although the Danube remained nominally

the frontier, the Balkans were, in practice, no longer under imperial authority,

except where an army appeared; while the financial situation of the empire, whose

resources were quite exhausted by the long wars, was desperate (Whitby 2000:

86-111; Whittow 1996: 69-82; Haldon 1997: 41-53).

The complex ecclesiastical politics of the Church continued to play a crucial

role. The disaffection brought about by Constantinopolitan persecution of the

Monophysites in particular—under Justin II, for example—rendered some sort of

compromise formula an essential for the reincorporation of the territories whose

populations had been largely Monophysite and which had been lost to the Persians.

Under Herakleios, the patriarch Sergios and his advisers came up with two possible

solutions, the first referred to as 'monoenergism', whereby a single energy was

postulated in which both divine and human aspects were unified. At this point,

the arrival of Islam on the historical stage made the need for a compromise which

would heal the divisions even more urgent. Even more importantly, the defeats

at the hands of the Arabs were interpreted (in keeping with the fundamental

assumptions of the era) as a sign of God's displeasure, requiring some sort of

action on the part of the Romans, or their guardian and God's representative

on earth, the emperor, to make amends. Herakleios and his patriarch, Sergios,

undoubtedly framed their proposals for compromise with monophysitism with

these considerations in mind. But monoenergism was rejected by several leading

churchmen. The alternative, the doctrine of a single will—'monotheletism'—

although supported by moderate Monophysites, was eventually rejected, both by

hard-line Monophysites and by the majority of the western Chalcedonian clergy,

surviving as an imperial policy which had to be enforced by decree after Herakleios'

death in 641. By this time, of course, the Monophysite lands had been lost

to the Arabs and the point of the compromise no longer existed (Haldon 1997:

48-59).