ence. The Lombards, who had
crossed the Alps in the year 568, had obliged the emperors to yield the
north, and part of the middle of Italy, to them; and they continually
threatened the portions which still remained to the empire. No help
against them was to be got from Constantinople; and the governors whom
the emperors sent to manage their Italian dominions, instead of
directing and leading the people to resist the Lombards, only hindered
them from taking their defence into their own hands.

[55] Page 142.

The land was left uncultivated, partly through the loss of inhabitants,
and partly because those who remained were disheartened by the miseries
of the time. They had not the spirit to bestow their labour on it, when
there was almost a certainty that their crops would be destroyed or
carried off by the Lombard invaders; and the soil, when left to itself,
had in many places become so unwholesome, that it was not fit to live
on. Italy had in former times been so thickly peopled, that it had been
necessary to get supplies of corn from Sicily and from Africa. But now
such foreign supplies were wanted for a very different reason--that the
inhabitants of Italy could not, or did not, grow corn for themselves.
The city of Rome had suffered from storms, and from repeated floods of
the river Tiber, which did a great deal of damage to its buildings, and
sometimes washed away or spoiled the stores of corn which were laid up
in the granaries. The people were kept in terror by the Lombards, who
often advanced to their very walls, so that it was unsafe to venture
beyond the gates.

The condition of the Church too was very deplorable. The troubles of the
times had produced a general decay of morals and order both among the
clergy and among the people. The Lombards were Arians, and religious
enmity was added to the other causes of dislike between them and the
Romans. In Istria, there was a division which had begun after the fifth
general council,[56] and which kept the Church of that country separate
from the communion of Rome for a hundred and fifty years. The sunken
condition of Christianity in Gaul (or France) has been described in the
beginning of this chapter. Spain was just recovered from Arianism,[57]
but there was much to be done before the Catholic faith could be
considered as firmly established there. In Africa, the old sect of the
Donatists began again to lift up its head, and took courage from the
confusions of the tim