Traditionally fixed at 476, the end of Antiquity is difficult to mark by a single date for a history “ sliced “. Sylvain Destephen proposes the year 542, marked by wars, plague and imperial mutations. A work of contextualization which highlights the little-known period of Late Antiquity.
Traditionally, Antiquity ends in the year 476, identified with the fall of the Roman Empire. However, if this date is well marked by the deposition of the last emperor located in Italy, completing the establishment of Germanic kingdoms throughout the Western Mediterranean, it is not that of the end of the Empire, whose existence continued all around the eastern basin – and which even regained possession of Rome and Italy under the reign of Justinian (527-565). Even more, it is difficult to see in which areas this date would mark such a major turning point that it must be considered as the end of an era. To this observation, Sylvain Destephen responds with an alternative proposal, putting forward the date of 542 to mark the end of Antiquity, while specifying that it applies mainly to the Mediterranean area and the regions directly connected to the late Roman Empire.
The year 542 indeed presents a concentration of events. Some are representative of major transformations underway, others mark the end of certain trends, and still others give rise to new dynamics. Like any attempt to define a pivotal date between two eras, this choice can be debated. Nevertheless, the one-year study finds its interest above all in the possibility of evoking an entire world at a moment in its future.
The end of Roman expansion
The author excels in presenting an event, in giving the necessary details to make it intelligible, in going back to place it in a medium or long term evolution, in drawing out its subsequent implications. As a result, this work on the year 542 constitutes a good introduction to the relatively unknown period of Late Antiquity, which extends from IIIe Or IVe century at the beginning of VIIe century throughout the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East. The events covered here mainly cover military, political, religious and demographic aspects.
On a military and geopolitical level, this year 542 marks the beginning of the stagnation of the enterprise of conquest of the Germanic kingdoms launched in 532 by the Emperor Justinian, from Constantinople. From 534, North Africa having been subjugated, the emperor ordered the Italian kingdom to be taken from the Ostrogoths ; in 542, they still held the region located between the Po and the Alps and seriously undermined the imperial armies. At the same time, the Frankish kingdom continued its expansion. In 536, the Franks obtained Provence from the Ostrogoths as a price for their neutrality. In 542, they led an expedition against the Visigoths to Zaragoza, which allowed them to acquire relics, in the absence of territories. This moment therefore marks the partial but definitive failure of the attempt to restore the Roman Empire in the West, at the same time as it establishes the Frankish kingdom as the main regional power.
In the East, 542 is the third year of a war restarted by the Sassanid Persian Empire. On this front, the absence of significant events is just as significant: the balance of power between the two empires being balanced, their common border consolidated by networks of fortresses and their spheres of influence stabilized, the successes of both sides always remained limited and the stakes of the fighting were reduced to the search for loot and the control of a few Caucasian kingdoms.
Changes in the empire
On the political level, the year 542 also marks the end of a vast attempt to renovate the Roman Empire. That year died the jurist Tribonien, mastermind of the drafting of the Corpus Juris Civilisa vast synthesis of Roman law commissioned by Justinian upon his accession, and drafter of his numerous laws which aimed to reform the government of the Empire, including by involving the Church. At the same time, the cessation of the appointment of consuls marked the completion of the long process of concentration of powers by the emperor, who from then on even monopolized the prerogative of offering sumptuous games to the people of the capital. This date can therefore be considered as a symbol of the progressive transformation of Roman imperial power since the IVe century: a power that claims the heritage of previous emperors but seeks to selectively recapitulate and adapt it ; a power which also assumes its autocratic character, justified in particular by the responsibility of the emperor towards God.
This responsibility towards God brings us to the religious events of the year 542, which can be considered a milestone in long-term processes. First of all, in the Christianization of the empire: if traditional religions have been in principle prohibited since the end of the IVe century, it was Justinian who led an aggressive policy to eradicate the last vestiges. In 542, he entrusted the monk John of Ephesus with the mission of evangelizing the remote countryside of western Asia Minor, if necessary using forceful means. The figure of John of Ephesus itself constitutes an interesting case which justifies the author devoting the entire chapter 3 to it: opposed, as a miaphysite, to the official line of the imperial Church on the way of formulating the articulation between the divinity and the humanity of Christ, victim of the persecutions launched against his current from 536, his choice manifests all the ambiguity of Justinian’s policy which attempts to re-establish the unity of the Church by force and pressure, but also through the persuasion and co-option of leading opponents. This choice of the emperor also shows that this theological conflict, which has lasted since the Ve century and led to the formation of dissident clergies, does not prevent a consensus on the majority of the articles of the Christian faith. This relative consensus justifies entrusting a competent miaphysite with a religious mission. In the same sense, in 542, Justinian accepted that miaphysites would set up the structures of the Church in the neighboring kingdoms of the Ghassanids (east of Syria-Palestine) and Nubia. 542 is finally the date of the death of Césaire, bishop of Arles, whose career well illustrates the integration of the Church into political life as well as the relative autonomy of its elites, also in the Germanic kingdoms.
Finally, the year 542 is that of the first wave of the Black Death which struck the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin until the middle of the VIIIe century. The author insists on its vast demographic consequences (although he recognizes the impossibility of evaluating them), economic, military (impossibility of sending reinforcements to Italy and stagnation on the eastern front, both adversaries being affected), even politico-religious (interpretation as a sign of the anger of God which pushes Justinian to react and fuels criticism against imperial policy). We would then move from a world (too) full of people to another where States would be weakened by demographic and productive decline, but where individuals would benefit from the reduction in pressure on resources and the increase in the cost of labor.
How to cut the story ?
This is a broad summary of how the year 542 appears to be a concentration of significant events in several areas. However, if the author shows that this year was significant and that his study highlights important developments, the reasons which incited him to choose it to close the ancient period remain largely implicit, in the absence of a clear characterization of what Antiquity and the Middle Ages are, and of what separates them – that is to say fundamental changes between which could lead us to see in the distinction between these two “ periods» more than a simple convention.
At the beginning of Ve century, the Mediterranean world is structured by cities polarized around relatively large towns, where small, mostly free peasant farms dominate, where a Christianized Greco-Roman culture is asserted which is expressed in different languages. The two great powers remain the Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire, both of which exert a variable influence beyond their borders. The Roman emperor can still claim to play a protective role over the majority of the Church. At VIIIe century, this world is politically and economically more fragmented and less urbanized; the great empires are no longer the same. The Church is both fragmented into a multitude of independent ecclesiastical hierarchies and faces serious competition from Islam. Cultural references as well as structures of production, domination and government are diversifying. These changes occurred gradually, with different inflection points depending on the space: thus, the establishment of the Germanic kingdoms accelerated urban decline in the West from the middle of the 5th century.e century while cities remained flourishing in the Orient. Can we nevertheless identify a decisive moment on the scale of the Mediterranean basin, or even beyond??
The outbreak of the Black Death in 542 could hardly constitute this tipping point. Its long-term demographic and economic effects are still poorly established, due to the lack of a serious synthesis of multiple regional studies. Above all, although it certainly harms populations and States, it does not appear to have caused structural transformations in itself. As for the various short-term consequences mentioned by the author, only the decline in population cannot be explained without resorting to the plague. Considering the major changes that we have just listed to characterize the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, many of those highlighted in the work may therefore seem of secondary importance. Furthermore, the events of 542 are often more illustrative than decisive. The enterprise is therefore only partly convincing, and other equally solid arguments can thus justify taking as the tipping point – by remaining attached to a set of events which would have given rise to or at least decisively accelerated dynamics with vast structural consequences – that used more habitually in a number of works and courses on Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: the rapid expansion of the caliphate outside the Arabian Peninsula in the 630s and 640s.
Conclusion
These objections should not make us forget what really constitutes the substance of the work: a work of contextualization of the events of the year 542 making it possible to show the logics in which they are part and to situate them in sequences of events and dynamics which extend sometimes over a few years, sometimes over several centuries. As such, this study of the year 542 constitutes a good introduction to Late Antiquity for the general public, evocative, concrete, pleasant to read, opening up varied perspectives and therefore playing a complementary role to more academic syntheses. We can bet that it will make more than one person want to continue exploring this period.