Disobedience in the Seventh-Century Liber Pontificalis: The Exarch Isaac’s Roman Problem

At the end of the seventh century, the popes, with the aid of the military aristocracy of Rome, began to create a new state in central Italy, while remaining nominally part of the Byzantine Empire. The episodes of seventh-century papal dissent, and their consequences, are well known, as are the series of revolts in byzantine Italy. However, Roman attitudes towards disobedience earlier in the seventh century have been largely ignored. The seventh-century vitae of the popes, written as a series of contemporary additions from the reign of Honorius (625-638), give insight into the complex and changing relationships between the military and ecclesiastical aristocracy in Rome and the exarch in Ravenna, to whom they owed allegiance as the emperor’s representative. This paper will analyze the Liber Pontificalis’ treatment of the chartularius Maurice’s disobedience, first against the Roman church and then after against the exarch Isaac (625-643), the highest representative in Byzantine Italy.

The Liber Pontificalis condemned rebellions against Byzantine power in general, while praising papal dissent to imperial religious policies. At the same time, it portrayed as wicked disobedience any actions of the Byzantine military aristocracy that went against papal interests. This paper will argue that in the depiction of Maurice’s shifting obedience, or shifting disobedience as it is portrayed in the Liber Pontificalis, the authors try to discredit the exarch Isaac, stating that as a result of his wickedness he was struck down by divine will. The authors of the Liber Pontificalis downplayed problems in Byzantine Italy, between the exarch in Ravenna and the pope, and between the military and the ecclesiastical aristocracy, by ascribing negative attributes such as greed and wickedness to individual actors.