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The year 533 marked the beginning of a series of military expeditions undertaken by Constantinople aimed at reconquering the "lost west". After North Africa. Italy, with its powerful symbolism, became the main target of Justinian's generals. According to Procopius's history, the wars started as a series of almost unplanned events, while modern scholars tend to emphasize its military nature. This paper analyses the complexity of the reasons which led to the war and how they were used to support it from different ideological and practical points. We will see how these points reflected a crucial aspect of Justinian policy and how this was portrayed by the propaganda and perceived by contemporaries. In the end, the paper will discuss if we can consider Justinian's operations in the West as a restauratio of the Empire or a war of expansion that created new provinces without changing the eastern-focused trends of Constantinopolitan policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the analyses carried out on the medieval copper alloy door (1111–1118 AD) of the mausoleum of Boemondo d'Altavilla in Canosa di Puglia (Southern Italy). The studied door is the smallest medieval bronze door extant in Italy and, unlike the other Byzantine doors, was most probably made in Canosa di Puglia and not in Constantinople. Analyses were performed to assess the chemical composition of the alloy patinas using a portable energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (ED-XRF) instrument designed at the University of Salento. The experimental results suggested that the two door leaves have the same chemical composition, even if they appear different in both style and size. Furthermore, the alloy used for the door is different from the other previously-analyzed Byzantine bronze doors. The obtained results can be used in the future to compare the chemical composition of other Byzantine doors in order to better understand the manufacture of these precious artifacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]