Italy was now populated, according to the contemporary formula, by Goths and Romans. The areas in which the newcomers lived were the most sensitive regions militarily, and Goths and Romans could be distinguished with reference to the functions which they fulfilled in society, military and civilian respectively: While the army of the Goths makes war, the Roman may live in peace. The Gothic general Tuluin, who had gained large estates after the war in Burgundy, was elevated to the rank of patricius praesentalis. From about the time of the death of Theoderic a Germanic people, the Lombards, had been settling south of the Danube in the old province of Pannonia. They had, in general, been allies of the Byzantines, but had enjoyed less exposure to Roman ways than the Ostrogoths. This chapter discusses the extent of change in Italy during the sixth century.

At the beginning of the fifth century the Sueves had remained within the western limits of the province of Gallaecia, but after the departure of the Vandals they initiated a process of expansion to increase their territory. In short, ten years after their initiation, the Sueve wars had resulted in the Sueve kingdom being driven back to its original limits and reduced in its autonomy by the interference, not of the Romano-imperial authorities, but of the Visigoths, who after this established new and powerful interests in Hispania. The advent of Euric, the new Visigothic monarch of Toulouse, was to mark a change in Visigoth-Sueve relations. The era of Leovigild marks the apogee of the Visigothic kingdom of Toledo in its Arian phase. In the first years of his reign Leovigild focussed his attention on the south of the peninsula, those regions where Visigothic dominion had been endangered as a consequence of the civil war and the Byzantine occupation.

By the later third century, when it began to be widely persecuted, the Christian community of believers had already created within the Roman Empire the basic forms of church organisation. The big councils, which were used as arenas for opinions and as a stage for the development of the church, were all held in the Greek East and only superficially concerned themselves with the modest Christianity of the West. The liturgy had its first flowering in the period 500-700 and it grew out of the variety of prayer and church services which had evolved under Byzantine influence. The Acacian and Henotikon schisms were a legacy of the fifth century, in which the papacy was embroiled up to the end of the century. The synod in Rome had a special position because it brought together all the bishops in suburbicarian Italy. The churches in the West were self-assured in their Christian belief and respected Rome as the city of the apostle.

Throughout the political history of western Europe, there have been few periods of such dramatic change as the fifth century. In 400 the borders of the Roman Empire in the West, by then distinct from the Empire in the East which was governed from Constantinople, stood reasonably firm. The Byzantines, as speaking the one language and looking the same, saw them, along with the Gepids, as nations that could be distinguished only by their names. The Mediterranean lands were occupied by powers that threatened Byzantine interests, but it was sometimes within the power of the Empire to act so as to destabilise its enemies. The nomadic Berbers had been pressing increasingly on the Vandal kingdom, and they were to pose a major problem to Byzantine Africa, for their practice of lightly armed and mobile combat made them difficult opponents for the Byzantine cavalry. The Gothic war had lasted far longer than the Vandal war, but its outcome was the same.

The people we call Byzantines called themselves as Romans, and the art and architecture of Byzantium between c.500 and c.700 developed from traditions established under the Roman Empire, with regional variations. In Constantinople alone, four major churches stand at least in part. Churches in the Holy Land were also rebuilt in this period. The role of holy portraits (icons) in Orthodox theology developed over the course of the sixth and seventh centuries. Over thirty icons, mostly preserved at the monastery on Mount Sinai, have been attributed to the sixth or seventh century. Little silver coinage was minted between 395 and 615, leaving the silver supply available for plate. A high proportion of preserved Byzantine silver dates from the fourth to the seventh century. Greek religious manuscripts with figural imagery are limited to the fragmentary Cotton Genesis, the Vienna Genesis, with large purple-stained pages each containing a condensed version of Genesis written in gold and silver script, and two Gospel-books.

The process of Ottoman expansion was halted by the Anatolian campaign of the Mongol khan, Timur. The Ottoman Empire disintegrated in Anatolia as the various Turkish states, which had been annexed by the Ottomans, were restored by Timur to their previous lords. The Christian states, particularly the Byzantines, the Venetians and the Wallachians, tried to secure maximum advantage from the division of the Ottomans by supporting one prince against the others. Dynastic clashes and social upheaval were to continue within the Ottoman Empire until 1425. The civil wars gave the opportunity to the Turkish emirs to move against the Ottomans. About 1430, the Ottoman state had sixteen provinces in Anatolia and twelve in Rumelia. Agriculture, constituting the basis of the Ottoman economy and the financial support of the army, was closely connected to the timar system. Murad II was generally described as a ruler who preferred peace to war.

The successive expeditions of Constantine V against the Bulgars in the later years of his reign are mostly depicted in Byzantine chronicles as fatuous and vainglorious affairs. The turn of the eighth and the ninth centuries is celebrated for a series of invasions and counter invasions on the part of Byzantines and Bulgars. In 827 a Bulgar fleet sailed up the river Drava and an attempt was made to wrest control of the local Slavs from the Franks. Imperial propaganda inclined to treat the adoption of the Orthodox creed by the Bulgar khan as a triumph for the Byzantine state: Boris and his people had now submitted to the emperor. The church in Bulgaria gained the ambivalent status of an 'autocephalous' archbishopric: the only other such see encompassed the island of Cyprus. To all appearances, the Byzantines and the Bulgarians were united in the body of Christ.