Justinian I

Life

According to his contemporary Procopius, Justinian was born in the hamlet of Tauresium in the province of Dardania, near the fortress of Bederiana, and close by the city of Justiniana Prima that he later founded. Later scholarship places his birth around 482. Tauresium is most commonly identified with the archaeological site of Gradište, by the village of Taor about 20 km (12 mi) southeast of Skopje, in what is now North Macedonia, with Bederiana placed at nearby Bader. This identification was first advanced by Arthur Evans and later confirmed by excavations directed by the archaeologist Kiro Ristov. By contrast, the prevailing identification of Justiniana Prima remains the site of Caričin Grad, which is located near Naissus (modern Niš) in Serbia, a location supported by the site's correspondence to Procopius' description and by lead seals of its archbishop. The considerable distance between the two sites, which is at odds with Procopius' statement that Justinian built the city close to his birthplace, has prompted scholarly debate about the place of his birthplace.

A native speaker of Latin (possibly the last Roman emperor to be one), he came from a peasant family thought to have been of either of Thraco-Roman or Illyro-Roman origin. The name Iustinianus, which he took later, is indicative of adoption by his uncle Justin. During his reign, he founded Justiniana Prima not far from his birthplace. His mother was Vigilantia, the sister of Justin. Justin, who was commander of one of the imperial guard units (the Excubitors) before he became emperor, adopted Justinian, brought him to Constantinople, and ensured the boy's education. As a result, Justinian was well educated in jurisprudence, theology, and Roman history. Justinian served as a candidatus, one of 40 men selected from the scholae palatinae to serve as the emperor's personal bodyguard. The chronicler John Malalas, who lived during the reign of Justinian, describes his appearance as short, fair-skinned, curly-haired, round-faced, and handsome, with receding hairline and greying hair and beard. Another contemporary historian, Procopius, describing him in similar terms, compares Justinian's appearance to that of Emperor Domitian although this can be a pun for being one of the most despised men in Roman history .

When Emperor Anastasius died in 518, Justin was proclaimed the new emperor with significant help from Justinian. Justinian showed a lot of ambition, and several sources claim that he was functioning as virtual regent long before Justin made him associate emperor, although there is no conclusive evidence of this. As Justin became senile near the end of his reign, Justinian became the de facto ruler. Following the general Vitalian's assassination in 520 (orchestrated by Justinian or Justin), Justinian was appointed consul and commander of the army of the east. Justinian remained Justin's close confidant, and in 525 was granted the titles of nobilissimus and caesar (heir-apparent). He was crowned co-emperor on 1 April 527, and became sole ruler after Justin's death on 1 August 527.

Reign

Legislative activities

Justinian remains well-known for his judicial reforms, particularly through the complete revision of all Roman law, something that had not previously been attempted. The total of Justinian's legislation is known today as the Corpus juris civilis. It consists of the Codex Justinianeus, the Digesta or Pandectae, the Institutiones, and the Novellae.

Early in his reign, Justinian had appointed the quaestor Tribonian to oversee this task. The first draft of the Codex Justinianeus, a codification of imperial constitutions from the 2nd century onward, was issued on 7 April 529. (The final version appeared in 534.) It was followed by the Digesta (or Pandectae), a compilation of older legal texts, in 533, and by the Institutiones, a textbook explaining the principles of law. The Novellae, a collection of new laws issued during Justinian's reign, supplements the Corpus. As opposed to the rest of the corpus, the Novellae appeared in Greek, the common language of the Eastern Empire.

The Corpus forms the basis of Latin jurisprudence (including ecclesiastical Canon Law) and, for historians, provides a valuable insight into the concerns and activities of the later Roman Empire. As a collection it gathers together the many sources in which the leges (laws) and the other rules were expressed or published: proper laws, senatorial consults (senatusconsulta), imperial decrees, case law, and jurists' opinions and interpretations (responsa prudentium).

Tribonian's code ensured the survival of Roman law. It formed the basis of later Byzantine law, as expressed in the Basilika of Basil I and Leo VI the Wise. The only western province where the Justinianic code was introduced was Italy (after the conquest by the so-called Pragmatic Sanction of 554), from where it was to pass to Western Europe in the 12th century and become the basis of much Continental European law code, which was eventually spread by European empires to the Americas and beyond in the Age of Discovery. It eventually passed to Eastern Europe where it appeared in Slavic editions, and it also passed on to Russia. It remains influential to this day.

His legislations restricted avenues of divorce, including divorce by mutual consent. The latter was overturned by his immediate successor, Justin II.

Nika riots

In January 532, partisans of the chariot racing factions in Constantinople, normally rivals, united against Justinian in a revolt that has become known as the Nika riots. They forced him to dismiss Tribonian and two of his other ministers, and then attempted to overthrow Justinian himself and replace him with the senator Hypatius, who was a nephew of the late emperor Anastasius. While the crowd was rioting in the streets, Justinian considered fleeing the capital by sea, but eventually decided to stay, apparently on the prompting of his wife Theodora, who refused to leave. In the next two days, he ordered the brutal suppression of the riots by his generals Belisarius and Mundus. Procopius relates that 30,000 unarmed civilians were killed in the Hippodrome. Justinian had Anastasius' nephews executed.

The damage caused by the riots was extensive. The rioters destroyed governmental buildings, state archives, hospices, hospitals and charitable institutions. The patients of the Hospice of Samson were all killed during the riots and the fires caused by the rioters reached as far as the Baths of Zeuxippus, which contained famous statues and monuments. The destruction that took place during the revolt provided Justinian with an opportunity to carry out his building program in Constantinople, most notably the architectural innovation of the domed Hagia Sophia.

Military activities

Justinian's reign was marked by the recovery of large stretches of land around the Western Mediterranean basin that had slipped out of imperial control in the 5th century. Although he never personally took part in military campaigns, he boasted of his successes in the prefaces to his laws and had them commemorated in art. The re-conquests were in large part carried out by his general Belisarius.

From his uncle, Justinian inherited ongoing hostilities with the Sassanid Empire. In 530 the Persian forces suffered a double defeat at Dara and Satala, but the next year saw the defeat of Roman forces under Belisarius near Callinicum. To counter the growing influence of the Persians in the Arabian Peninsula, Justinian occupied the Tiran Island and established a client network across the coast of Western Arabia, Central Arabia, and attempted to bring Himyar (the South Arabian kingdom) and Aksum (the Ethiopian kingdom) under his sway. However, his attempts to make alliances with the Axumites of Ethiopia and the Himyarites of Yemen against the Persians failed. When king Kavadh I of Persia died (September 531), Justinian concluded an "Eternal Peace" (which cost him 11,000 pounds of gold) with his successor Khosrau I (532). Having thus secured his eastern frontier, Justinian turned his attention to the West, where Germanic kingdoms had been established in the territories of the former Western Roman Empire.

The first of the western kingdoms Justinian attacked was that of the Vandals in North Africa. King Hilderic, who had maintained good relations with Justinian and the North African Catholic clergy, had been overthrown by his cousin Gelimer in 530 AD. Imprisoned, the deposed king appealed to Justinian. Justinian protested Gelimer's actions, demanding that Gelimer return the kingdom to Hilderic. Gelimer replied, in effect, that Justinian had no authority to make these demands. Angered at this response, Justinian quickly concluded his ongoing war with the Sassanian Empire and prepared an expedition against the Vandals in 533.

In 533, Belisarius sailed to Africa with a fleet of 92 dromons, escorting 500 transports carrying an army of about 15,000 men, as well as a number of barbarian troops. They landed at Caput Vada (modern Ras Kaboudia) in modern Tunisia. They defeated the Vandals, who were caught completely off guard, at Ad Decimum on 14 September 533 and Tricamarum in December; Belisarius took Carthage. King Gelimer fled to Mount Pappua in Numidia, but surrendered the next spring. He was taken to Constantinople, where he was paraded in a triumph. Sardinia and Corsica, the Balearic Islands, and the stronghold Septem Fratres near Mons Calpe (later named Gibraltar) were recovered in the same campaign.

Religious activities

Justinian saw the orthodoxy of his empire threatened by diverging religious currents, especially miaphysitism, which had many adherents in the eastern provinces of Syria and Egypt. Miaphysitism rejected the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which ruled that Jesus Christ has two natures (one divine and one human), instead maintaining that he has one nature that is both fully divine and fully human. The tolerant policies towards Miaphysitism of Zeno and Anastasius I had been a source of tension in the relationship with the bishops of Rome.

Justin reversed this trend and confirmed the Chalcedonian doctrine, openly condemning the Miaphysites. Justinian, who continued this policy, tried to impose religious unity on his subjects by forcing them to accept doctrinal compromises that might appeal to all parties, a policy that proved unsuccessful as he satisfied none of them.

The empress Theodora, herself a Miaphysite, sympathized with the Miaphysites and was accused of being constant source of pro-Miaphysite intrigues at the court in Constantinople in the earlier years. In the course of his reign, Justinian, who had a genuine interest in matters of theology, authored a small number of theological treatises.

As in his secular administration, despotism appeared also in the Emperor's ecclesiastical policy. At the very beginning of his reign, he promulgated by law the Church's belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation, and to threaten all heretics with the appropriate penalties, whereas he subsequently declared that he intended to deprive all disturbers of orthodoxy of the opportunity for such offense by due process of law. He made the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan creed the sole symbol of the Church and accorded legal force to the canons of the four ecumenical councils. The bishops in attendance at the Council of Constantinople (536) recognized that nothing could be done in the Church contrary to the emperor's will and command, while, on his side, the emperor, in the case of the Patriarch Anthimus, reinforced the ban of the Church with temporal proscription. Justinian protected the purity of the church by suppressing heretics. He neglected no opportunity to secure the rights of the Church and clergy, and to protect and extend monasticism. He granted the monks the right to inherit property from private citizens and the right to receive solemnia, or annual gifts, from the imperial treasury or from the taxes of certain provinces and he prohibited lay confiscation of monastic estates.

Architecture, learning, art and literature

Justinian's reputation as a prolific builder is attested in the works of Procopius, Paul the Silentiary, John Malalas and Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor. Under Justinian's reign, the San Vitale in Ravenna, which features two famous mosaics representing Justinian and Theodora, was completed under the sponsorship of Julius Argentarius. Most notably, he had the Hagia Sophia, originally a basilica-style church that had been burnt down during the Nika riots, splendidly rebuilt according to a completely different ground plan, under the architectural supervision of Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles. On 26 December 537, according to Pseudo-Codinus, Justinian stated at the completion of this edifice: "Solomon, I have outdone thee" (in reference to the first Jewish temple). The church had a second inauguration on 24 December 562, after several reworks made by Isidore the Younger. This new cathedral, with its magnificent dome filled with mosaics, remained the centre of eastern Christianity for centuries.

Another prominent church in the capital, the Church of the Holy Apostles, which had been in a very poor state near the end of the 5th century, was likewise rebuilt. The Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, later renamed Little Hagia Sophia, was also built between 532 and 536 by the imperial couple. Works of embellishment were not confined to churches alone: excavations at the site of the Great Palace of Constantinople have yielded several high-quality mosaics dating from Justinian's reign, and a column topped by a bronze statue of Justinian on horseback and dressed in a military costume was erected in the Augustaeum in Constantinople in 543. Rivalry with other, more established patrons from the Constantinopolitan and exiled Roman aristocracy might have enforced Justinian's building activities in the capital as a means of strengthening his dynasty's prestige.

Justinian also strengthened the borders of the Empire from Africa to the East through the construction of fortifications and ensured Constantinople of its water supply through construction of underground cisterns (see Basilica Cistern). To prevent floods from damaging the strategically important border town Dara, an advanced arch dam was built. During his reign the large Sangarius Bridge was built in Bithynia, securing a major military supply route to the east. Furthermore, Justinian restored cities damaged by earthquake or war and built a new city near his place of birth called Justiniana Prima, which was intended to replace Thessalonica as the political and religious centre of Illyricum.

Economy and administration

As was the case under Justinian's predecessors, the empire was an agrarian-based economy. In addition, long-distance trade flourished, reaching as far north as Cornwall where tin was exchanged for Roman wheat. Within the empire, convoys sailing from Alexandria provided Constantinople with wheat and grains. Justinian made the traffic more efficient by building a large granary on the island of Tenedos for storage and further transport to Constantinople. Justinian also tried to find new routes for the eastern trade, which was suffering badly from the wars with the Persians.

Silk was an important luxury product, which was imported and then processed in the empire. In order to protect the manufacture of silk products, Justinian granted a monopoly to the imperial factories in 541. In order to bypass the Persian landroute, Justinian established friendly relations with the Abyssinians, whom he wanted to act as trade mediators by transporting Indian silk to the empire; the Abyssinians, however, were unable to compete with the Persian merchants in India. Then, in the early 550s, two monks succeeded in smuggling eggs of silk worms from Central Asia back to Constantinople, and silk became an indigenous product.

Gold and silver were mined in the Balkans, Anatolia, Armenia, Cyprus, Egypt and Nubia. At the start of Justinian I's reign, he had inherited a surplus 28,800,000 solidi (400,000 pounds of gold) in the imperial treasury from Anastasius I and Justin I. Under Justinian's rule, measures were taken to counter corruption in the provinces and to make tax collection more efficient. Greater administrative power was given to both the leaders of the prefectures and of the provinces, while power was taken away from the vicariates of the dioceses, of which a number were abolished. The overall trend was towards a simplification of administrative infrastructure. According to Brown (1971), the increased professionalization of tax collection did much to destroy the traditional structures of provincial life, as it weakened the autonomy of the town councils in the Greek towns. It has been estimated that before Justinian I's reconquests the state had an annual revenue of 5,000,000 solidi in AD 530, but after his reconquests, the annual revenue was increased to 6,000,000 solidi in AD 550.

Throughout Justinian's reign, the cities and villages of the East thrived, although Antioch was struck by two earthquakes (526, 528) and sacked and evacuated by the Persians (540). Justinian had the city rebuilt, but on a slightly smaller scale. His reconstruction included the construction of the Iron Gate, a still-active arch dam integrated into the city wall which protected the city from seasonal floods.

Death

Justinian spent his final years on the throne marked by increasing isolation and reliance on a small circle of advisors, many of whom he had brought into the palace nearly 40 years earlier. He became increasingly fixated on religion and intolerant, believing his actions were justified by a higher cause and driven by piety and philanthropy. In Justinian's later life, he became much less ruthless, evidenced by his refusal to execute suspected conspirators, instead opting to display Christian charity and forgiveness. Following a major earthquake in 557, Justinian demonstrated his piety by abstaining from wearing his crown and giving to the poor. In the 560s, Justinian gave clemency to the conspirators who had aimed to murder him, and eventually pardoned Belisarius, who was accused of participating in the plot. Justinian died on the night of 14 November 565 in his sleep. News of Justinian's death quickly reached his nephew Justin II, who hurried to the palace with his wife Sophia and a coterie of senatorial supporters. Justin was soon acclaimed as emperor and he received the bishop's blessing. According to Corippus, Justinian's death triggered widespread mourning throughout the streets of the imperial capital, and Justinian was laid to rest in a golden tomb in the Church of the Holy Apostles following a grand procession.

Natural disasters

The extreme weather events of 535–536 led to a famine such as had not been recorded before, affecting both Europe and the Middle East. These events may have been caused by an atmospheric dust veil resulting from a large volcanic eruption.

The historian Procopius recorded in 536 in his work on the Vandalic War "during this year a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness ... and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear".

The causes of these disasters are not precisely known, but volcanoes at the Rabaul caldera, Lake Ilopango, Krakatoa, or, according to a 2018 finding, in Iceland are suspected.

Seven years later in 542, a devastating outbreak of Bubonic Plague, known as the Plague of Justinian, was traditionally believed to have killed tens of millions, second only to Black Death of the 14th century. Justinian and members of his court were afflicted, with Justinian himself contracting and surviving the pestilence. The impact of this outbreak of plague has recently been disputed, since evidence for tens of millions dying is uncertain.

In July 551, the Beirut earthquake struck the eastern Mediterranean and triggered a tsunami. The combined fatalities of both events likely exceeded 30,000, with tremors felt from Antioch to Alexandria.

Historical sources

Contemporary sources include the writings of Procopius, John Malalas, John of Ephesus, Agathias, John the Lydian, Menander Protector, Evagrius Scholasticus, Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor, Jordanes, Marcellinus Comes, Corippus and Victor of Tunnuna. The Paschal Chronicle and Theophanes the Confessor also provide accounts of his reign though written in a later period.

Procopius provides some of the primary sources for the history of Justinian's reign, although his works show a growing disillusionment and bitterness toward Justinian and his empress Theodora. While he glorified Justinian's architectural achievements in his panegyric (Buildings) and offered a more reserved account in his historical work (Wars), Procopius also wrote a hostile text, Anecdota (the so-called Secret History), in which Justinian is portrayed as cruel, corrupt, incompetent, and even demonic. The chronicle of John Malalas is another widely used source, offering a summary of the events of Justinian's reign; it generally reflects a more neutral to favorable perspective, emphasizing Justinian’s building activity, legislation, and piety.

Veneration

Justinian is widely regarded as a saint by Eastern Christians. In various Eastern Orthodox Churches, such as the Orthodox Church in America, Justinian and his empress Theodora are commemorated on the anniversary of his death, 14 November.

In Eastern Churches that use the Julian calendar, the commemoration falls on 27 November. The Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod and the Lutheran Church–Canada also commemorate Justinian on 14 November.

Cultural depictions

Poetry

In the Paradiso section of the Divine Comedy, Canto (chapter) VI, by Dante Alighieri, Justinian I is prominently featured as a spirit residing on the sphere of Mercury. The latter holds in Heaven the souls of those whose acts were righteous, yet meant to achieve fame and honor. Justinian's legacy is elaborated on, and he is portrayed as a perfect rulerwho was a defender of the Christian faith, a great lawgiver and the restorer of Rome to the Empire. Justinian confesses that he was partially motivated by fame rather than duty to God, which tainted the justice of his rule in spite of his proud accomplishments. In his introduction, "Cesare fui e son Iustinïano" ("Caesar I was, and am Justinian"), his mortal title is contrasted with his immortal soul, to emphasize that "glory in life is ephemeral, while contributing to God's glory is eternal", according to Dorothy L. Sayers. Dante also uses Justinian to criticize the factious politics of his 14th-century Italy, divided between Ghibellines and Guelphs, in contrast to the unified Italy of the Roman Empire.

In the early 560s, Paul the Silentiary wrote a poem that praised the emperor and the Hagia Sophia.

Books

Justinian is a chief protagonist of Belisarius in Empire in Apocalypse by Robert Bruton (Legend Books 2023), though the emperor's jealousy and envy of Belisarius eventually prompted him to undermine his best general.

Justinian is a major character in the 1938 novel Count Belisarius, by Robert Graves. He is depicted as a jealous and conniving Emperor obsessed with creating and maintaining his own historical legacy.

Justinian appears as a character in the 1939 time-travel novel Lest Darkness Fall, by L. Sprague de Camp.

The Glittering Horn: Secret Memoirs of the Court of Justinian was a novel written by Pierson Dixon in 1958 about the court of Justinian.

Justinian is featured in Stella Duffy's historical novel, Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore which was published in 2010. Justinian and Theodora are portrayed as having a loving and effective partnership.