540s

The 540s decade ran from January 1, 540, to December 31, 549.

Millennium:	1st millennium
Centuries:	5th century 6th century 7th century
Decades:	520s 530s 540s 550s 560s
Years:	540 541 542 543 544 545 546 547 548 549
Categories:	Births Deaths Establishments Disestablishments

Events

540

By place

Byzantine Empire

• Emperor Justinian I offers to make peace with Vitiges, but Belisarius refuses to transmit the message. The Ostrogoths then offer to support Belisarius as emperor of the West.
• May – Gothic War: Belisarius conquers Mediolanum (modern Milan) and the Gothic capital Ravenna. Vitiges and his wife Matasuntha are taken as captives to Constantinople.
• Belisarius consolidates Italy and begins mopping-up operations, capturing the Gothic fortifications. The cities Ticinum and Verona north of River Po remain in Gothic hands.
• Ildibad succeeds Vitiges as king of the Ostrogoths, and installs his nephew Totila as commander of the Gothic army. He recaptures Venetia and Liguria in Northern Italy.[1]

Europe

• In Britain various kingdoms are united by a ruler (High King) or overlord, while wars are fought between others.
• King Custennin ap Cado is deposed, and returns to Dumnonia in the south-west of Great Britain.

Persia

• King Khosrau I, jealous of Justinian's victories in the West, receives an embassy from the Ostrogoths at Ctesiphon, urging him to act before the Byzantines become too powerful.
• Khosrau I breaks the Eternal Peace after eight years. The Persian army marches up the River Euphrates, and follows a path to extract tributes from towns along the way to Antioch.
• Khosrau I captures Antioch after a fierce siege; he systematically plunders the city to the extent that marble statues and mosaics are transported to Persia.[2]

Africa

• Solomon captures the Aurès Mountains from the Moors and extends Byzantine authority over Numidia and Mauretania Sitifensis. The city of Theveste (Algeria) is restored and fortified.

Asia

• Jinheung becomes king of the Korean kingdom of Silla.[3]

By topic

Religion

• Cassiodorus, former Roman statesman, establishes a monastery at his estate in Italy. The Vivarium "monastery school" is for highly educated and sophisticated men, who copy sacred and secular manuscripts, intending for this to be their sole occupation (approximate date).
• Pope Vigilius rejects Monophysitism in letters to Justinian I and patriarch Menas of Constantinople.
• Benedict of Nursia writes his monastic rules, containing precepts for his monks (approximate date).

World

• Global environmental cooling occurs, due either to a comet impact or volcanic eruption in Central America, evidenced by global tree ring growth diminution.[4][5][6][7] Recent evidence from Swiss ice core points to volcanic eruptions in Iceland.[8] Historical evidence records this earlier as the Extreme weather events of 535–536.

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Significant people

• Totila

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References

1. Herwig Wolfram, History of the Goths (University of California Press), 1990
2. Rome at War (p. 56). Michael Whitby, 2002. ISBN 1-84176-359-4
3. "List of Rulers of Korea". www.metmuseum.org. Retrieved 21 April 2019.
4. "In 1986 I discovered that a series of Irish oaks exhibited their narrowest rings in the immediate vicinity of." 080205 aryabhata.de
5. Baillie, M.G.L. (2007). Tree-Rings Indicate Global Environmental Downturns that could have been Caused by Comet Debris, Chap. 5 in Bobrowsky, Peter T. and Hans Rickman (eds.), Comet/Asteroid Impacts and Human Society: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Springer-Verlag, Berlin. ISBN 3-540-32709-6, pp. 105–122.
6. Highfield, Roger; Robert Uhlig and David Derbyshire (9 Sep 2000). "Comet caused Dark Ages, says tree ring expert". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 6 November 2011.
7. "El Chichon eruption implicated in Mayan upheaval - BBC News". BBC News. Retrieved 2016-04-20.
8. GibbonsNov. 15, Ann; 2018; Pm, 2:00 (2018-11-15). "Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive'". Science | AAAS. Retrieved 2020-06-19.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Bibliography

• Bury, John Bagnell (1923) [1889]. History of the Later Roman Empire: From Arcadius to Irene (395 A.D. to 800 A.D.). II. New York, New York and London, United Kingdom: Macmillan & Company Limited.
• Bury, John Bagnell (1958). History of the Later Roman Empire: From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian, Volume 2. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc. ISBN 0-486-20399-9.
• Kazhdan, Alexander, ed. (1991). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504652-8.
• Martindale, John Robert; Jones, Arnold Hugh Martin; Morris, J., eds. (1992). The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, Volume III: A.D. 527–641. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-20160-5.
• Pringle, Denys (1981). The Defence of Byzantine Africa from Justinian to the Arab Conquest: An Account of the Military History and Archaeology of the African Provinces in the Sixth and Seventh Century. Oxford, United Kingdom: British Archaeological Reports. ISBN 0-86054-119-3.