Justinian I

Byzantine emperor (r. 527-565)

• Born: Probably May 11, 483
• Birthplace: Tauresium, Dardania, Illyricum (now in Serbia)
• Died: November 14, 0565
• Place of death: Constantinople, Byzantine Empire (now in Istanbul, Turkey)

A conscientious man of somber judgment and religious zeal, Justinian was the pivotal emperor in the transition from the later Roman Empire to the Byzantine Empire. He left a legacy of great buildings, a legal compilation that became the foundation of European law, and an enhanced autocratic tradition that helped the Byzantine Empire guard against the encroachment of Islam.

Early Life

Justinian I (Juh-STIN-ee-uhn) was born in Illyricum, but nothing else is known of his youth. His parents were from peasant families originally from Macedonia and had given their son the name Flavius Petrus Sabbatius. When Justinian was about twenty he was brought to Constantinople by his uncle, Justin I, who had risen through the ranks of the military and had become an important officer in the royal guard. Justin was married but had no children and had brought several of his nephews to the empire's capital, where they were given a good education and trained for the military. When Justinian proved the most adept and promising, he was adopted by his uncle and added the name Justinianus. In time, Justinian received a commission in the elite candidati, the emperor's personal bodyguard.

On July 8, 518, Emperor Anastasius I died with neither an heir nor any provision for the succession. Justin, who by this time commanded the royal guard, took advantage of the situation and arranged to have himself proclaimed emperor. He was not, however, experienced in administration or well educated (he may even have been illiterate); thus, his reign did not begin with much promise. Justinian, who had such capabilities in abundance, soon demonstrated his worth to his uncle and rose rapidly to become virtual emperor before succeeding his uncle on the throne when the latter died in 527. Justinian first commanded the military troops in Constantinople and kept order in the difficult early days of his uncle's reign. Justin had only one major rival for the throne, and Justinian arranged to have him assassinated by 520, with Justin's cooperation. Justinian then assumed the office of consul in 521 and of caesar in 525. Justinian was careful in these years to cultivate a popular following, which may have played a part in influencing his uncle to keep promoting him. When Justin became seriously ill in early 527, at the age of seventy-seven, he officially crowned Justinian coemperor, with the title of augustus, on Easter Sunday, April 4, 527. The old emperor died on August 1, 527, and Justinian, who had been the virtual ruler since almost 518, was now proclaimed emperor in name as well.

Shortly after Justin's accession to the emperor's throne, Justinian had met and fallen passionately in love with Theodora, one of the most remarkable women of history. She was of humble origins but a great beauty, highly intelligent and talented. There was some trouble with Justin's wife over the affair because of Theodora's questionable past as an actress, and marriage had to wait until after her death, shortly before Justin'. Although Theodora could be cruel, was often deceitful, and loved power, she had uncanny political judgment and an iron will. She was able to exercise more influence over Justinian than anyone else at court.

Life's Work

As emperor, Justinian surrounded himself with able, if somewhat flawed, advisers and assistants. Next to Theodora, John of Cappadocia, Justinian's chief financial officer, was the most important. John was infamous for his cruelty, ruthlessness, depraved personal life, and incredible greed, but Justinian ignored all that because John was also shrewd and endlessly resourceful in raising money. Justinian had inherited a full treasury, but the nearly constant warfare that faced him and the cost of his various grand projects soon depleted it. In John, Justinian found someone who could find new sources of revenue and administer the system more efficiently. John created misery and a crushing tax burden for the empire's subjects, which caused Theodora to believe that he was a threat to the public interest of the realm. For this reason, and probably because he was her rival for influence over Justinian, Theodora waged a ruthless campaign against him until she entrapped him in a bogus conspiracy against Justinian; John was banished in 541.

Another important person Justinian recruited into his service was Tribonian (d. 545), a lawyer reputed to have the finest legal mind in the empire. Although Tribonian was a pagan, Justinian made him chief of the imperial judicial system. Tribonian was very nearly as avaricious as John of Cappadocia and has been accused by scholars of corrupting the whole legal system. Nevertheless, he contributed significantly to the success of Justinian's reign by directing the remarkable legal reforms that took place. Belisarius (c. 505-565), the outstanding general of the age in tactics and administration and who excelled as a field commander also served Justinian well. An honest and honorable man with no ambitions beyond serving his emperor, he was trusted by everyone but the ever-suspicious Justinian.

Nearly all the major figures in Justinian's administration were of humble origins, as was the emperor himself. He was always on the lookout for talent and kept the offices of the empire filled with the best he could find. Justinian did not, however, delegate all the work to others. He was a serious and diligent monarch who paid careful attention to detail, supervised his chief officers closely, and worked such long hours that he became known popularly as “the emperor who never sleeps.”

The great crisis of Justinian's reign was the Nika Riots of 532. The Blues and Greens were organizations that supported rival chariot racing teams at the Hippodrome but represented different political positions as well. When rioting broke out between the two, they forgot their differences and joined forces against Justinian when he intervened to end the violence. It looked for a time as though Justinian would be forced to flee, and several chief ministers recommended that he leave. Theodora, however, never vacillated and convinced Justinian to stand firm and await the proper moment to crush the rioters. As many as thirty thousand people may have died before Belisarius brought Constantinople under control again, and much of the city was in ruins. Two important results came from the Nika Riots. Neither the aristocratic nor the popular faction ever fully recovered, and Justinian was able to rule as an absolute monarch thereafter. Furthermore, the destruction of so much of the city provided Justinian with the opportunity for an epic building program.

Justinian was at war defending the empire's borders for most of his reign. His most celebrated military project, however, was the recovery of the territories of the Western Roman Empire that had been overrun by barbarians. In June of 533, Justinian sent Belisarius with a small force of sixteen thousand to Carthage, where he gained an easy victory over the unprepared and incompetently led Vandals. In 535, Justinian decided to attempt the next and major step by overthrowing the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy and reestablishing imperial rule. Belisarius again had an easy victory in Sicily and in southern Italy, reaching Rome late in 536. From that point onward, however, Justinian's refusal to entrust Belisarius with adequate troops and supplies prolonged the war and brought terrible hardships to the Italian people. Believing the situation hopeless, Belisarius arranged to have himself recalled to Constantinople in 548 and went into retirement. In 550, Justinian sent Narses to Italy. Although Narses was not the military genius Belisarius was, he was given more adequate supplies, and in 552, he was able to defeat decisively the Ostrogoth forces at Taginae and had pacified Italy by 554. By this time, much of Italy had been destroyed or ravaged.

There was constant trouble from the various peoples living on the northern and eastern borders, which kept the empire almost constantly at war. In Spain, the Visigoths maintained constant pressure on the shrinking area in the south that remained under imperial rule. The Franks and others constantly harassed Italy. In the Balkans, the Slavs and Avars were a constant threat. The Persians to the east and Arabs to the southeast were at war with the empire on and off throughout Justinian's reign. The revenues required to sustain this military effort were actually beyond the empire's capabilities. Justinian had to use diplomacy and tribute to supplement the military effort, particularly in the Balkans and with Persia.

The role of caesaropapist emperor, one who exercises supreme authority over ecclesiastical matters, was well suited to Justinian's personality and temperament. His education had included theological training, an interest he maintained all of his life, especially after Theodora's death. Christianity was beset with schismatics, and in this age of intolerance and willingness of so many to fight and die for their particular interpretation, these divisions threatened to disrupt the empire. The chief problem was the conflict between the Monophysites, who denied that Jesus Christ had human attributes, and the orthodox Chalcedonians, who claimed that Christ was both human and divine. Justinian tried, through a variety of means, to find a compromise but never succeeded for long. In the process, however, he acquired considerable authority over the Church and its councils, including even the pope on occasion. In the end, he probably did as much as anyone to ensure the eventual split between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches.

The legal system developed by the Roman Empire has been called its grandest contribution to history. By Justinian's time, the practical application of Roman law had come to be based on various collections of imperial edicts and constitutiones. This development made it difficult to research points of law, and much of it was obsolete or inadequate to the changed circumstances of the empire. On February 13, 528, some six months after becoming emperor in his own name, Justinian called together a commission of legal scholars led by Tribonian. Their first assignment was to prepare a new edition of the laws. The new code was to be updated, with repetitions and contradictions removed, and organized in a clear and rational manner. The first edition of Codex Iustinianus (529, 534; English translation, 1915; better known as {I}Justinian's Codification{/I}) was published in 529, but revision became necessary after later parts of the whole work were completed. The second part was a compilation of all the interpretations of the laws written by renowned Roman jurists over the centuries. These opinions, explaining the law, were important guides for the lawyers and others who applied the laws.

In 533, Tribonian and his assistants had finished the work of collating, abridging, and modernizing the old texts, and the {I}Digesta{/I} (533 c.e., also known as Pandectae; The Digest of Justinian, 1920) was published. At the same time, Tribonian finished revising and updating Gaius's older commentaries on Roman law. This third part, known as the Institutiones (second century c.e.; Institutes of Gaius, 1946-1953, also known as Institutes), was to serve as a textbook or handbook for law students. At this point Justinian's Codification had to be revised to bring it in line with The Digest of Justinian and the Institutes. Together, Justinian's Codification, The Digest of Justinian, and the Institutes made up the Corpus juris civilis (body of civil law), which was intended to serve all the legal needs of the empire. It was in this form that Roman law was passed on to succeeding generations and Western civilization. Justinian's Codification contained the actual laws, The Digest of Justinian the definitive literature of jurisprudence, and the Institutes the official manual for law students. In time, 160 Novels, or new laws adopted by Justinian, were added. The historical impact of the Corpus juris civilis on the development of Western law has been enormous and stands as Justinian's greatest achievement.

Although Justinian was a conservative who perceived his duty to include preserving the empire intact in form as well as in territory, he was actually something of an innovator. In the same manner as he combined control of the political and religious life into a powerful caesaropapist concept of the emperor's office, he also streamlined and consolidated the authority of imperial administration. He dropped the now-meaningless office of consul, discarded the principle of strict separation between civil and military authority, and, in general, established precedents for future emperors to tighten imperial authority to make it more autocratic. He insisted that all subordinates be loyal and efficient servants of the state and rewarded and promoted anyone with talent. He also sought to reduce the abuses by officials of their offices but found the goal of honest government elusive, not to mention compromised by his own toleration of corrupt but efficient revenue officers. The problem with the tax system, however, was not unusual. Emperors had been trying for two centuries before Justinian to bring reform with no greater success.

Following the example of many of his predecessors, Justinian was determined to leave his mark on the empire by a building program that included practical as well as ornamental structures. Among the practical buildings, military forts on the frontiers, and sometimes in the interior of the empire as well, made up the largest category. Justinian also built many bridges, aqueducts, and roads, and various buildings for general public use, such as law courts, baths, great cisterns, storehouses, and asylums. Ornamental buildings included additions to the imperial palace and numerous monasteries and churches, many of which still stand. The great fortress-monastery of Saint Catherine of Mount Sinai is among those that have survived, and its original parts remain an invaluable repository of early Christian and Byzantine art.

Besides Constantinople, the primary focus of Justinian's church building was in and around Jerusalem and Ravenna, Italy. It is in the unusually richly decorated octagonal Church of San Vitale in Ravenna that the best portraits of Justinian and Theodora were discovered. They are full-length portraits in mosaic panels. These are not particularly detailed portraits and no detailed descriptions of the two monarchs have survived. From what is known, he was of moderate height and medium build, with a pleasant, round face that seems to have been without any particularly remarkable features.

The destruction that accompanied the Nika Riots created the need for the most important category of Justinian's building projects and provided him with the opportunity to begin the process of turning the city into the most splendid of medieval Christendom. He built several giant colonnaded cisterns, two of which still survive, all manner of public buildings, and the great Augustan forum. He also substantially enlarged the Grand Palace of the Emperors and, in general, beautified the area around the city. His greatest passion seems to have been building or rebuilding churches and monasteries. The monumental Church of the Holy Apostles, which no longer exists, was the regular site for the emperors’ tombs and is reputed to have looked like the Church of San Marco in Venice.

Two other churches of particular note, both of which have survived, were also reconstructions of buildings originally erected by Constantine the Great. Hagia Eirene (Holy Peace) has suffered over the years, but Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) still demonstrates the glory of Byzantine art and architecture. The Turks made it into a mosque in 1453, when they took Constantinople, covering its magnificent mosaics with whitewash. The Turkish statesman and president Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) converted it into a museum in 1935, and some of its former beauty has been painstakingly restored in the years since. It was a complex building of a then radically new design featuring a great central dome resting on a square base through the use of pendentives, semidomes on each side of the nave to add spaciousness, colonnades, and galleries. It was the greatest church of Christendom in its day and remains one of the world's great architectural masterpieces.

Theodora died of cancer on June 28, 548. The loss of her stabilizing influence and support seems to have signaled the end of the positive and creative part of Justinian's reign. Although he was to have some temporary successes in resolving the theological disputes that so plagued the empire, a permanent solution eluded him, and the problem was nearly out of control by the time he died. The crushing effects of his fiscal policies on the populace were becoming more noticeable, and the brilliance of his earlier days was giving way to exhaustion in the empire. Justinian was increasingly unable to defend the empire's borders and had to resort to diplomacy and bribes. The problem became critical in the Balkans, where the Avars and Slavs had begun pushing into the empire's territory during Justin's reign. The defensive capabilities of the empire had degenerated so far that Justinian was forced to call Belisarius out of retirement in 559 to defend the capital, while the remainder of the Balkan people were left to fend off the invaders as best they could. The Italian reconquest was brought to a successful conclusion, but at the cost of an impoverished Italy. Even the Blues and Greens circus factions reappeared to disturb Justinian's last years.

On November 14, 565, when Justinian died at the age of eighty-two, the news was greeted with relief by his subjects. He and Theodora had had no children, and Justinian made his nephew Justin his heir. Amid popular rejoicing that the old tyrant was dead and a new era was dawning, Justinian was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles. In truth, a great age had ended, and a terrible one was to follow.

Significance

Justinian I misunderstood the changing nature of his time. Reconquering the Western Roman Empire was a doomed effort to re-create a Christian version of the classical Roman state that left the surviving eastern part of the empire exhausted and dangerously exposed. His lavish building program made the economic situation worse while he failed to protect adequately the empire's borders. By becoming personally involved in the theological disputes of his time, he did expand the role of emperor to a caesaropapist autocracy but at the expense of contributing significantly to the permanent split in the Christian community between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches. His misplaced religious zeal extended even to requiring adherence to Orthodox Christianity as a prerequisite to teaching in the empire and to closing the schools of higher learning in Athens in 529. Not only were those subjects with a classical education deprived of a living, but they were also driven from the empire, destroying the tradition of Plato's Academy and thus breaking an important link with antiquity. Yet he is not entirely to blame for these mistakes. Justinian was acting within the Roman tradition of what was expected of an emperor. It was only toward the end of his reign, when the consequences of these policies began to pile up, that his subjects began to complain so bitterly, not during the early years of glory and achievement.

Whatever blame may be assigned for Justinian's mistakes, it is clear that he left a remarkable legacy for the future of Western civilization, one any monarch would envy. He set a standard of dedication to duty, personal honor, and integrity rarely matched by an emperor. He sought little for himself and everything for the empire's welfare as he understood it. The Corpus juris civilis strengthened the empire by improving the administration of justice, establishing legal standards by which most other law in Western civilization would come to be measured, and ultimately becoming the foundation of most modern European legal systems. His building projects helped make Constantinople one of the great cities of the medieval world and an inspiration that helped sustain Byzantine civilization for centuries. These achievements, and the improvements in imperial administration, contributed to the longevity of the empire and its historic role as the bastion of Christendom in the East, guarding Europe from conquest by Islam.

Byzantine Emperors: Justinian Line, 518-610

Reign

• Emperor

518-527

• Justin I

527-548

• Theodora (empress)

527-565

• Justinian I the Great

540

• Khosrow I sacks Antioch

565-578

• Justin II

578-582

• Tiberius II Constantinus

582-602

• Maurice

602-610

• Phocas (non-Justinian)

Bibliography

Baker, G. P. Justinian: The Last Roman Emperor. 1931. Reprint. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002. A biographical account of Justianian’s reign and the history of the Roman and Byzantine Empires during his time. Maps, bibliography, index.

Barker, John W. Justinian and the Later Roman Empire. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966. An excellent, balanced biography of Justinian and his reign. Begins with an illuminating background chapter on the Roman world before Justinian and ends with a discussion of the long-term results of his reign.

Calkins, Robert G. Medieval Architecture in Western Europe: From A.D. 300 to 1500. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Explores the history of Western European architecture of the Middle Ages, including the buildings of Justinian. Illustrations, extensive bibliography, index.

Downey, Glanville. Constantinople in the Age of Justinian. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960. An excellent description of Justinian’s empire and its base in Constantinople. A useful introduction especially to the history of the city. Part of the Centers of Civilization series.

Evans, James Allan. The Age of Justinian: The Circumstances of Imperial Power. New York: Routledge, 1996. Surveys the imperial tactics of Justinian’s empire, with discussion of the early years of power; the empire’s people; the Nika Revolt; the wars in Africa, Persia, and Italy; and the empire’s administration. Maps, extensive bibliography, and index.

Evans, James Allan. The Empress Theodora: Partner of Justinian. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. A brief look at the life of Theodora and her role as empress. Maps, bibliography, index.

Grant, Michael. From Rome to Byzantium: The Fifth Century A.D. New York: Routledge, 1998. Contextualizes the history of the Byzantine Empire in the era immediately preceding Justinian’s reign, from the fall of the Roman Empire to the rise of Byzantium. Maps, bibliography, and index.

Jones, A. H. M. The Later Roman Empire, 284-602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey. 2 vols. 1964. Reprint. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Analytical survey from Diocletian and the conversion of the empire to Asian despotism and the final collapse and loss of the western half of the empire. Includes the reign of Justinian.

Procopius. The Anecdota: Or, Secret History. Vol. 6 in Procopius. Translated by H. B. Dewing. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960-1962. The original source for much of the historical knowledge about Theodora, written by a contemporaneous historian. Perhaps the most important eyewitness account of Justinian’s reign.

Runciman, Steven. Byzantine Civilization. 1933. Reprint. London: E. Arnold, 1966. A brief essay by an accomplished scholar that provides an excellent introduction to the sweep of Byzantine history.

Ure, P. N. Justinian and His Age. 1951. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979. A balanced and detailed evaluation of accounts by Procopius and other eyewitnesses of Justinian’s reign but not a chronological narrative history. Recommended for those engaged in an in-depth study of Justinian.

Veyne, Paul, ed. From Pagan Rome to Byzantium. Vol. 1 in A History of Private Life, edited by Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. A rewarding historical survey of the hidden and intimate daily life of people rich and poor. Especially interesting is the startling contrast of the triumph of Christianity with the undisciplined private lives of so many in Byzantium.