Senate of Rome

Senate in the West

It is not known exactly when the Roman senate disappeared in the West, but it appears to have been in the early 7th century, when Rome was under the dominion of the Exarchate of Ravenna. Records show that in both 578 and 580, the politically-impotent senate of Rome sent envoys to Constantinople along with pleas for help against the Lombards, who had invaded Italy ten years earlier. Later, in 593, Pope Gregory I gave a sermon in which he bemoaned the almost complete disappearance of the senatorial order and the decline of the prestigious institution, suggesting that by this date, the senate had officially ceased to function as a body.