Chapter 6 explores the light cast on cities and their administration by the collection of administrative papyri from Italy from the fifth to seventh centuries. Frequently revolving round the sale or donation of property, they show the crucial role of local councils in registering such property transactions, and their relevance to the raising of local taxes. The same world emerges from the official correspondence of Pope Gregory at the turn of the sixth and seventh centuries in which a network of links with cities emerges as the means of holding together the church. A collection of documents from French cities similar to the Ravenna papyri imply that city administrations remained essential to property transactions in Merovingian Gaul. Rather than seeing the city administrations that were an instrument of imperial rule as now irrelevant, the conscious retention of old structures suggests a process of adaptation to new conditions.

Through the lens of the Variae, official letters written by Cassiodorus on behalf of the Ostrogothic ruler, Theoderic, and his successors, Chapter 4 examines the concerted attempts of a ‘barbarian’ regime which took the place of Roman emperors to preserve the traditions of Roman imperial rule and support the fabric and traditions of city life. Rather than either a sham or futile nostalgia, the letters are read as an exercise in bridge-building between Roman traditions and new political realities. The emphasis placed on cities is embodied in the ideal of civilitas, based on the rule of law, city life, and a mutual respect between Roman and Goth. While betraying both the strains of urban life and the decay of much urban fabric, Cassiodorus offers a vision of the ‘modern’ based on respect for and imitation of antiquity.

The chapter explores the varying iconographies of the personification of the River Jordan in Late Antiquity, particularly in the Orthodox and Arian baptisteries in Ravenna, focusing on how these depictions relate to biblical exegesis, and represent the standpoint of Ravenna’s Christian elite. Peter Chrysologus’s Sermon 160 is highlighted for its unique interpretation of the River Jordan, which, the chapter argues, has influenced the dome mosaic of the Orthodox baptistery by presenting the river as a converted, formerly pagan entity. In contrast to the previous case studies, the dome mosaic of the Orthodox baptistery openly condemns the Roman past as pagan but still acknowledges the pre-Christian classical heritage as relevant to Christianity. The Arian baptistery offers an alternative interpretation of the same depiction. The differences in the Orthodox and Arian representations of the River Jordan suggest that the attitude of Ravenna’s Arian clergy towards the Roman past was more positive than that of the Nicene clergy.

The earliest preserved painted icons in the Adriatic date from the thirteenth century.In fact, apart from Rome, the entire Latin West seems to have embraced icons simultaneously overnight as soon as they started coming in great numbers from Byzantium following the capture of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204. This chapter argues that the Adriatic was particularly responsive to these painted icons because it had already embraced Byzantine relief icons in the eleventh century. The examination includes both the material and written evidence for the existence of icons in the eleventh-century Adriatic, such as the extant marble Hodegetria icon from Trani and the recorded commission of a gilt silver icon for Siponto Cathedral in 1069. When it comes to Dalmatia, this investigation looks into a donation document recording five icons, one of which was made of silver, in a church built and furnished by a Croatian dignitary in the 1040s. The analysis demonstrates that by the thirteenth century, the Adriatic was conditioned by relief icons to embrace easily portable painted icons reaching its shores after the fall of Constantinople and that this area as a whole experienced a strong prestige bias towards Byzantine artefacts.

The Exarchate of Ravenna has usually been seen as peripheral to Carolingian Italy because of its ’alien’ character, stemming from its position as a province of the eastern empire up to 751. This chapter first argues that, while the area retained many distinctive ‘Roman’ institutions that were quite distinct from the those of the old Lombard kingdom, it is unhelpful to regard these as ‘Byzantine’, and that enduring links with Constantinople were limited. The chapter goes on to argue that the area came to play an increasing role in the political and ecclesiastical life of Carolingian Italy, for a number of reasons, including the archbishops’ conflicts with the papacy and the attractiveness of Ravenna’s heritage to rulers keen to enhance their claims to imperial authority. Also, by the late ninth century various factors led to the settlement in the Exarchate of several powerful families of Lombard and Frankish descent.