It was the time when Italy was again at the feet of the barbarians. The Lombards, the last of the Teutonic nations to settle in the West, established at Pavia a kingdom which lasted for two centuries (568-774), and which again rent away much of the fair Italian lands from the unity of the Empire, leaving the Exarchate at Ravenna in a state half isolated and wholly perilous. [Sidenote: The effect on Italy.] Gradually the onward sweep of the new barbarians, who called themselves Arians, but were not strongly bound by any creed, swept away all power save their own and the pope's. The destruction of Monte Cassino was typical of one side of their work--the turning aside from Rome at Gregory's intercession of another. The Empire struggled to retain its hold on Italy and to govern the Western world from Ravenna, with instructions from the New Rome; but it failed. The papacy studied to be quiet. And the close of the sixth century showed that power would return in the end to the city which had founded the Empire, and to the Church which was now claiming to teach and to unite the nations. A period of papal insignificance was gradually ended by the progress of new ideals for the papacy. This came about in three ways. [Sidenote: The popes and the exarchate.] 1. It was the aim of each pope to set up his power against that of the imperial exarchate, by which Italy was ruled after its reconquest by Belisarius and Narses. Gradually, step by step, the popes claimed cognisance of secular matters, intervened in politics, and stood forth as a leaders in Italian affairs. The imperial administration saw the danger, and, from time to time, made definite {62} opposition to the papal pretensions. It endeavoured to restore the unity of the Church, to secure the universal condemnation of the Three Chapters, but under sanction of Ravenna rather than of Rome. Thus the exarch Smaragdus, in 587, led Severus, patriarch of Aquileia, before the Ravennate prelates to make submission;[1] and later the emperor Maurice interfered to present the pope compelling the patriarch to submission. But these endeavours were futile; and the great Gregory, statesman and administrator of the first order, made the papacy the most important political power in the western provinces of the Empire. In 599 this was apparent in Gregory's negotiation with the Lombard king, Agilulf. [Sidenote: The Benedictines in South Italy.] 2. The papal influence was increased, and the Greek power diminished, by the direct replacement of Eastern monks by Benedictines.[2] The monasteries founded by Greeks during the imperial restoration, no longer replenished from Constantinople, fell into the hands of the great papal force founded by the greatest saint, and marshalled by the greatest administrator of the century. [Sidenote: Missions from Rome.]