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Updated: June 12, 2025
Theodore took his captives to Constantinople where they were all slain save Felix, who, however, was blinded. Later he returned to Ravenna, was reconciled with the Holy See, and died archbishop in 725. The exarch in 710 was Joannes Rizocopus, and in that year pope Constantine visited Constantinople with the future pope Gregory II. in his train.
They met in Rome, the pope about to set sail, the exarch on his way to Ravenna, where he was apparently assassinated in a popular tumult, "the just reward of his wickedness." The people of Ravenna then elected a certain Giorgius as their captain, and all the neighbouring cities, Cervia, Forli, Forlimpopoli, and others, placed themselves under his government and turned upon the imperial troops.
The feeble Areobindus, unskilled in the affairs of peace and war, was raised, by his marriage with the niece of Justinian, to the office of exarch. He was suddenly oppressed by a sedition of the guards, and his abject supplications, which provoked the contempt, could not move the pity, of the inexorable tyrant.
Indeed the re-entry of Italy within the empire was accompanied by no important change in the provincial divisions of the peninsular because there was no necessity for it. Narses, who ruled just eleven years in Ravenna, was never known by the title of exarch. But it is obvious that there was something new in the official situation and that certain extraordinary powers were conferred upon Narses.
They dreamed of restoring Rome to the Eastern Empire, and of renewing the ancient office of Exarch for themselves. Benedict stood in their way and was doomed.
This man was not only a great Byzantine official, but the destined successor of Justin and one of the first personages of the empire. It is obvious, if at such a moment he commanded the imperial armies in Italy, he was supreme governor of the province And it seems certain that it was to mark the amalgamation in him of the two offices, military and civil, that the new title of exarch was created.
As the pope doubtless intended, the Romans were enraged against the exarch, the money was scraped together, and the holy vessels rescued. In all this we see the growing distrust and hatred of Constantinople, which the taxation had first aroused on the part of the Italian people and their champion the papacy.
Disappointed in the hope of a general and lasting treaty, he presumed to save his country without the consent of the emperor or the exarch. The sword of the enemy was suspended over Rome; it was averted by the mild eloquence and seasonable gifts of the pontiff, who commanded the respect of heretics and Barbarians.
It was governed by an Exarch in Ravenna, but often abandoned to its fate when the barbarians from the north amused themselves from time to time by raiding and pillaging it. For three hundred years no Emperor had visited Rome, and the former queen of the world lay despised in rubbish and ruin.
But the parsimony of the emperor, and his attempt to cure the inveterate evil of a military despotism, led to his undoing, and in 602 he was murdered with his children. A like fate befell the Emperor Phocas, who succumbed in 610 to the fortunes of Heraclius, the son of Crispus, exarch of Africa. For thirty-two years Heraclius ruled the Roman world.
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