RAVENNA, EXARCHATE OF, the official name of that part of Italy which remained , the allegiance of the Roman emperors at Constantinople from the closing years of the 6th to the middle of the 8th century. The civil and military head of these possessions, the exarch (q.v.), was stationed at Ravenna. The territory round the town, from the southern border of the modern Venetia to the beginning of the Pentapolis at Rimini, was under his direct administration and formed in a limited sense the exarchate. The other provinces were governed by dukes and magistri militum, titles which were generally, but not always, borne by the same person. But as all were subject to his authority, they were included in the exarchate of Ravenna, which was therefore another name for the province of Italy. Sicily formed a separate government. Corsica and Sardinia belonged to the exarchate of Africa. The organization of the exarchate is placed by modern in vestigators under the reign of the emperor Maurice (582-602), when the imperial Government was confronted by the new prob lems created by the settlement of the Lombards (q.v.). At the end of the 6th century it included Istria; the maritime part of Venetia as distinct from the interior which was in the hands of the Lom bard kings at Pavia ; the exarchate proper, or territory around Ravenna on the eastern side of the Apennines, to which was added Calabria, which at that period meant the south-east and not the south-west of Italy; the Pentapolis, or coast from Rimini to Ancona with the interior as far as the mountains; the duchy of Rome, or belt of territory connecting the Pentapolis with the western coast, the coast of Naples, with Bruttium, the modern Calabria, and Liguria, or the Riviera of Genoa. Piedmont, Lom bardy, the mainland of Venetia, Tuscany and the interior of Naples belonged to the Lombards. The superior organization of the imperial Government enabled it to regain lost territory and delay complete ruin. In 590 it recovered much of Venetia. But
these revivals were not permanent. In 64o the Ligurian seacoast fell under the power of the Lombards. About a century later the exarchate had been greatly reduced, though the imperial officials endeavoured to conceal the fact by retaining and transferrint, names when the reality of possession was lost. About 74o it consisted of Istria, Venetia, Ferrara, Ravenna (the exarchate in the limited sense), Pentapolis, Perusia, Rome, the coast of Naples and the south-west of Italy, which was being overrun by the Lom bards of the duchy of Beneventum, which with Spoletum held the interior. In Rome the pope was the real master. These f rag ments of the "province of Italy" were almost all lost either to the Lombards, who finally conquered Ravenna itself about 75o, or by the virtual independence of the papacy. Subsequent Frankish intervention (see ITALY) made a revival of the exarchate impos sible. It disappeared, and the small remnants of the imperial possessions on the mainland, Naples and Calabria, passed under the authority of the "patricius" of Sicily, and when Sicily was con quered by the Arabs in the loth century were erected into the themes of Calabria and Langobardia. Istria was attached to Dalmatia.
In its internal history the exarchate was subject to the influences which were everywhere, in central and western Europe at least, leading to the establishment of feudalism. The great imperial officials gradually became landowners, and conversely the great landowners intruded on the imperial administration. The local militias, organized under imperial authority for defence against the Lombards, tended to become independent. These bodies formed the exercitus romanae militiae, who were the forerunners of the free armed burghers of the Italian cities of the middle ages.
See C. Diehl, Etudes sur l'administration Byzantine dans l'exarchat de Ravenne (1888).