Theodoric died in 526, bequeathing his crown
to his only daughter's son. Eight years afterwards the boy king, worn out by
premature excess, was laid in the grave; his mother was murdered to clear the
path of an ambitious kinsman; and, while the succession was still in doubt, the
Emperor Justinian launched upon Italy the still invincible armies of the Empire,
led by Belisarius, the greatest general of the time and already famous as the
deliverer of Africa from the Vandals (536). The intrigues of his court rivals,
rather than the resources of the divided Ostrogoths, robbed Belisarius of a
decisive victory, and prolonged the struggle for years after he had been
superseded. But in 553 the last embers of resistance were quenched in blood.
Italy, devastated and depopulated, was reorganised as an imperial province with
an elaborate hierarchy of civil and military officials. The change was welcome
to the orthodox clergy, the more so because Justinian gave large powers in local
administration to their bishops.
Of outward pomp there was enough to gild
corruption and inefficiency with a deceptive splendour; but in fact the
restored Empire was little more civilised, in the true sense of the word, than
the barbarian states of the past and future. Upon the Italians the Emperor
conferred the boon of his famous Corpus Juris, a compendium of that
legal wisdom which constitutes the best title of Rome to the world's gratitude.
For the future it was momentous that Italy learned, at this early date, to
regard the Corpus as the perfection of legal wisdom. Through the Italian
schools of later times (Ravenna, Bologna, etc.) the Corpus has
influenced the law of every European state and has dictated the principles of
scientific jurisprudence. But in the sixth century good laws availed nothing
for want of good government.
