DALLA DIVISIONE ALL’UNITÀ: UN PAPA, UN GENERALE, UNA PRINCIPESSA IN DIALOGO

In this paper, the political framework of the first two decades of the sixth century AD emerges through the documents that the imperi- al chancellery of Constantinople sent to Rome, and the personalities who dominated relations between West and East. The Collectio Avellana, with its collection of letters, Libelli and Indiculi, offers valuable evidence in this regard. Three personalities have emerged, who by their missives, the exercise of extensive patronage over crowds of pro-Chalcedonian believers in Constantinople and Pal- estine, but also by a series of uprisings and military attacks, which destabilised the political and social balance in the eastern capital, altered the power relations between the two parts of the empire: Pope Hormisda, the Thracian general Vitalian, the Theodosian Ani- cia Juliana. They were, however, able to act thanks to the power that the Goth king Theoderic had achieved in those years, and with the support of the Senate of Rome.