Rome under barbarian and Byzantine rule
The fall of the Western Roman Empire made little difference to Rome. Odoacer and then the Ostrogoths continued, like the last emperors, to rule Italy from Ravenna. Meanwhile, the Senate, even though long since stripped of wider powers, continued to administer Rome itself, and the Pope usually came from a senatorial family. This situation continued until the Eastern Roman Empire, under Justinian I, captured the city in 536.
In 546, the Ostrogoths under Totila recaptured and sacked the city. The Byzantine general Belisarius recaptured Rome but the Ostrogoths took it again in 549. Belisarius was replaced by Narses, who captured Rome from the Ostrogoths for good in 552. It was as a result of the constant war around it in the 530s and 540s that Rome at last fell into total disrepair, becoming nearly abandoned and desolate.
Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I (reigned 527565) granted Rome subsidies for the maintenance of public buildings, aqueducts and bridges – though, being mostly drawn from an Italy impoverished by the recent wars, these were not always fully sufficient. He also styled himself the patron of its remaining scholars, orators, physicians and lawyers in the stated hope that in time more youths would seek for a better education. After the wars, the Senate was in theory restored, but under the supervision of a prefect and other officials appointed by and responsible to the Byzantine authorities in Ravenna.
However, the Pope was now one of the leading religious figures in the entire Byzantine Empire and effectively more powerful locally than either the remaining senators or local Byzantine officials. In practice, local power in Rome devolved to the Pope and, over the next few decades, both much of the remaining possessions of the senatorial aristocracy and the local Byzantine administration in Rome were absorbed by the Church.
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