Paul (; ; before 717/18 – 726/27) was a senior

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

official under Leo III the Isaurian, serving as the ''

strategos ''Strategos'' (), also known by its Linguistic Latinisation, Latinized form ''strategus'', is a Greek language, Greek term to mean 'military General officer, general'. In the Hellenistic world and in the Byzantine Empire, the term was also use ...

'' of

Sicily Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...

, and then as the Exarch of Ravenna from 723 until his death.

Life

Paul is first mentioned in 717/18. Theophanes the Confessor calls him the private '' chartoularios'' of Emperor Leo III the Isaurian, while Patriarch Nikephoros I of Constantinople calls him a loyal and close confidant ('' oikeios'') of Leo's, and that he was experienced in military matters. As a result, when the governor (''

'') of

, Sergios, driven by a false message that

Constantinople Constantinople (#Names of Constantinople, see other names) was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman Empire, Roman, Byzantine Empire, Byzantine, Latin Empire, Latin, and Ottoman Empire, Ottoman empire ...

had fallen to the Arabs, declared a rival emperor in the person of Basil Onomagoulos, Leo named him as Sergios' replacement and sent him to Sicily to restore control. It was probably on this occasion that he was raised to the rank of '' patrikios'', although Patriarch Nikephoros implies that he already held the title. He is commonly held to have been the same as the Paul appointed as Exarch of Ravenna in , and consequently to have held the office of ''strategos'' of Sicily continuously until then. Although both suppositions are likely, neither is certain. If the identification is true, then Paul was responsible for the defeat of an Arab attack on the island in 720/21. As exarch, he had to face the resistance of the local inhabitants, led by Pope Gregory II, to the high taxation demanded by Leo. According to the '' Liber Pontificalis'', the Emperor ordered Paul to either kill or imprison the Pope, but both failed and led to a renewed wave of rebellion against imperial authority in Italy; the Pope even anathematized Paul. In 726/27, the Ravenna itself rose in revolt, denouncing both Exarch Paul and Emperor Leo III, and overthrew those officers who remained loyal. Paul rallied the loyalist forces and attempted to restore order, but was killed. The armies discussed electing their own emperor and marching on

, but when they sought the advice of the Pope, he dissuaded them from acting against the sitting emperor. According to Roberto Cessi, the person that John the Deacon's chronicle gave as the first doge of Venice, Paolo Lucio Anafesto, was actually the Exarch Paul. It is thought that this doge was a fictive invention extracted from a source John used to make this claim. Paul's ''

magister militum (Latin for "master of soldiers"; : ) was a top-level military command used in the late Roman Empire, dating from the reign of Constantine the Great. The term referred to the senior military officer (equivalent to a war theatre commander, the e ...

'', Marcellus Tegallianus was given as the second doge and this is thought to be part of the same fictive elaboration. More recent historians think that this Paul was a Lombard duke, probably the duke of Treviso.Pazienza, A., "Archival Documents and Narrative", in Gelichi S. and Gasparri S. (eds), ''Venice and its Neighbours from the 8th to the 11th century'', 2017, p. 43

References

Sources

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Paul 727 deaths Byzantine governors of Sicily 8th-century exarchs of Ravenna Patricii Year of birth unknown Leo III the Isaurian