[Footnote 1:  The fact that it was addressed to both surely seems to show that Narses at this time only held a military power in Italy.  This is interesting as touching the discussion later on of the genesis of the exarchate.]

It consists of twenty-seven articles, and first establishes what is to be considered as still having authority in that tempestuous past; what part of it is to remain and to be confirmed and what is to be utterly swept away.  Thus the emperor confirms all dispositions made by Amalasuntha, Athalaric, and Theodahad, as well as all his own acts—­and these would include Theodoric’s—­and those of Theodora.  But everything done by “the most wicked tyrant Totila” is null and void, “for we will not allow these law-abiding days of ours to take any account of what was done by him in the time of his tyranny."[1] Totila had indeed most cruelly attacked the great landed proprietors whom he suspected of too great an attachment for Constantinople; he had attacked them in their persons and in their wealth.  With a single stroke of the pen Justinian, as it were, effaced all the ordinances of the tyrant and rendered again to their legitimate masters, as far as it could be done, their lands, their flocks, their peasants, and their slaves which had been taken from them, or which fear had caused them to alienate.

[Footnote 1:  Cf.  Hodgkin, op. cit. vi. pp. 519-520.]

Such were the political achievements of the decree.  Nor were its financial provisions less far-reaching.  Something had to be done to meet the crisis resulting from the enormous quantity of debt.  Everywhere Justinian undertook great public works, and tried to repair the destruction caused by the war; but it is probable that in reality he achieved very little.  He had enriched the Church; he had re-established the great proprietors in their lands and their rights, but the industry and commerce of Italy, save perhaps at Ravenna and at Naples, he could not restore.  And we seem to understand that the mere lack of men left whole districts of Italy uncultivated and desert.

As for the administrative and legal clauses of the decree, they gave the Italian—­the Roman as he is called—­the right to have his suit heard by a civil judge instead of a military official.  This established the security of the Italian against the barbaric hosts the imperial armies had brought into the country.  But perhaps more important, and certainly more significant, is the twelfth clause of the decree which relates to the way in which the Judices Provinciarum are to be appointed.  “We order,” says Justinian, “that only fit and proper persons able to administer the local government shall be chosen, and this by the bishops and chief persons of each province from the inhabitants of that province.”  This clause was soon proved to contain so much wisdom that in 569 by Justinian’s successor it was extended to the provinces of the Eastern empire.