6.28 FC – Uneasy Siblings: Rome and Constantinople

Recent scholarship has reframed Byzantine rule as negotiated equilibrium rather than autocratic command. Yet the mechanisms that allowed disagreement to be voiced, contained, and converted into legitimacy remain underexplored. This paper – part of a pilot study for the group project plan DISSENT: Rumor, Protest, and Renewal in Byzantium (1025–1204) – investigates bishops and metropolitans…

Procopius of Caesarea remains our primary textual source for the Byzantine campaigns in Italy that took place during the reign of Justinian (r. 527-565). However, Procopius’ “Words on the Wars,” read against the grain in tandem with Italy’s archaeological record, reveal that the Byzantine ‘reconquest’ was a profoundly foreign incursion into an unfamiliar landscape: a…