The Reign of Justinian I

Few rulers in history have stamped their personalities on an age as firmly as Justinian I did on the sixth century. Between 527 and 565, the emperor Justinian presided over a state that, at its height, stretched from the Atlantic coast of Spain to the deserts of Syria and from the Danube to the Atlas Mountains. He compiled a legal code that has shaped civil law across the modern world. He commissioned the most ambitious building program of the ancient and medieval centuries. He presided over the most consequential theological debates of his age. He survived a riot that nearly cost him his throne, a devastating plague, and the burden of an empire almost too large to govern.

The reign of Justinian was, in many ways, the climax of late antiquity, the moment when the late Roman state made its last great attempt to be a Mediterranean universal empire. It was also the foundation on which the Byzantine future was built. The history of the Byzantine Empire is, in a real sense, the history of what came after Justinian.

The Making of an Emperor

From Illyricum to the Throne

Justinian was born around 482 in Tauresium, in the Roman province of Illyricum, of peasant Slavic or Thracian ancestry. He was brought as a young man to Constantinople by his uncle, the general Justin, who rose through the ranks of the imperial guard to become emperor in 518. Justinian received an excellent education, was adopted by his uncle, and was named co-emperor in 527. When Justin died later that year, Justinian became sole ruler of the eastern Roman state.

Justinian’s preparation for power was unusual. Unlike many of his predecessors, he had a deep knowledge of theology, law, and administration, and he was determined from the start to leave a mark on the empire. He believed that the Roman Empire, although diminished, remained the divinely appointed political order of the world, and that the emperor’s duty was to restore and expand it.

The Woman Behind the Throne

Empress Theodora

Justinian’s most important collaborator was his wife, Empress Theodora, whom he married in 525. Theodora was the daughter of a bear keeper of the Hippodrome of Constantinople, and she had worked as an actress, mime, and possibly prostitute in her youth before becoming the mistress, and then the wife, of the heir to the throne. The marriage scandalized the upper classes, who regarded actresses as little better than slaves, but Justinian was devoted to her.

Theodora was, in her own right, one of the most powerful women in Byzantine history. She had political acumen that often exceeded her husband’s, and she exercised a powerful influence on imperial policy, especially in religious matters. She actively supported the Monophysite Christians, who were concentrated in the eastern provinces, against the Chalcedonian orthodoxy favored by the court, and she persuaded Justinian to moderate his anti-Monophysite policies. The famous scene at the outbreak of the Nika Riots of 532, when Theodora reportedly refused to flee and urged her husband to resist, established her reputation as a partner in imperial power.

The Wars of Restoration

The Vandalic War (533–534)

Justinian’s military program aimed at recovering the lost western provinces of the Roman Empire. The first major campaign was against the Vandal kingdom of North Africa. Belisarius, the brilliant young general who would become the most important commander of the age, was sent with a fleet and a relatively small force to North Africa. He defeated the Vandals in two decisive battles, captured their king Gelimer, and annexed the Vandal kingdom. The reconquest of North Africa restored the empire’s grain supply, removed a Vandal naval threat, and gave Justinian a launchpad for the invasion of Italy.

The Gothic War (535–554)

The reconquest of Italy from the Ostrogoths was a far more difficult enterprise. The Gothic War lasted nearly twenty years and devastated the Italian peninsula. Belisarius, the principal Byzantine general, was a brilliant but cautious commander, and the long campaign wore him down. He was eventually replaced by the eunuch Narses, who defeated the Goths decisively at the Battle of Taginae in 552. By the end of the war, Italy was restored to imperial control, although the cost in lives and treasure was enormous.

The Gothic War also produced one of the most famous episodes of late antiquity: the siege of Rome, which the Goths besieged repeatedly and which Belisarius defended with great skill. The prolonged fighting and the cutting of the aqueducts by the Goths left Rome depopulated and physically devastated, a decline from which it did not recover for centuries.

The Frontier Wars

In addition to the wars of reconquest, Justinian had to defend the empire’s long eastern frontier against the Sassanid Persians. The famous “Eternal Peace” of 532, brokered by the two sides, gave Justinian a respite to pursue his western campaigns, but it required a substantial annual payment to Persia. The peace broke down in 540, when the Persian king Khosrow I invaded the Roman province of Syria, sacked Antioch, and forced a new peace on humiliating terms.

The later years of Justinian’s reign were marked by constant warfare on multiple frontiers. The Slavs and Antes attacked the Balkans, the Bulgars raided across the Danube, and the Persians renewed their attacks. The treasury, drained by the wars of reconquest, could not support the simultaneous defense of the empire’s wide frontiers, and the empire began to lose territory almost as quickly as Justinian had gained it.

The Nika Revolt and the Great Church

The Nika Riots of 532

The most serious crisis of Justinian’s reign came in January 532, with the outbreak of the Nika Riots. The riots began in the Hippodrome as a confrontation between the two circus factions, the Blues and the Greens, but they quickly turned against the imperial government. The crowds proclaimed a new emperor and laid siege to the imperial palace. For five days, the city of Constantinople was in the hands of the rioters, and only the personal intervention of the emperor and empress restored order.

The riot was suppressed with great violence. Some 30,000 rioters were killed in the final assault, and the city was reduced to a smoking ruin. Yet the catastrophe was turned to opportunity. Justinian used the destruction as a pretext to rebuild Constantinople on a monumental scale, and the centerpiece of the rebuilding was the great church of the Hagia Sophia, which was dedicated in 537 and which became the supreme architectural achievement of the Byzantine world.

The Codification of Roman Law

The most enduring achievement of Justinian’s reign was the codification of Roman law. The legal tradition of Rome had accumulated over a millennium, and by Justinian’s time it was a chaotic mass of imperial constitutions, senatorial decrees, juristic writings, and customary law. The emperor appointed a commission of jurists, headed by Tribonian, to compile and reform the law. The result was the Corpus Juris Civilis, comprising four parts:

• The Codex, a compilation of imperial constitutions from Hadrian to Justinian.
• The Digest, a synthesis of juristic writings, especially those of the classical jurists of the second and third centuries.
• The Institutes, a textbook for use in legal education.
• The Novellae, the new laws issued by Justinian himself.

The Justinian Code was the most sophisticated legal code of the medieval world. It preserved the legal thinking of Rome and synthesized it with Christian and Greek elements. It was the basis of legal education in Byzantium and, after its rediscovery in the West, of the civil law tradition in continental Europe. The Napoleonic Code, the German civil code, and dozens of other modern legal systems derive from the Justinianic tradition.

Faith and Theology

The Council of Constantinople II (553)

Justinian took an active interest in theology, often more than his advisors thought wise. He was determined to reconcile the Monophysite Christians of the eastern provinces, who rejected the Chalcedonian definition of two natures in Christ, with the Chalcedonian orthodoxy that was the official position of the church. He issued the so-called Edict of the Three Chapters, condemning the writings of three theologians who had favored Monophysitism, in the hope of conciliating the Monophysites. The edict was opposed by many Western bishops, who saw it as an attack on the Council of Chalcedon. The emperor’s response was to convene a fifth ecumenical council in Constantinople in 553, which upheld the condemnation and hoped to heal the schism. The hope was not realized, and the Monophysite churches of Egypt, Syria, and Armenia remained separate from the imperial church.

The Apatheia and the Closing of the Philosophical School

Justinian was also remembered for the closure of the last great philosophical school in the ancient world, the Neoplatonist Academy in Athens, in 529. The closure is often cited as the symbolic end of ancient philosophy, although the Neoplatonist tradition continued in Byzantium and migrated to Persia and the Islamic world.

Architecture and the Arts

Justinian was a great builder. In addition to the Hagia Sophia, he rebuilt or repaired hundreds of churches, monasteries, and public buildings throughout the empire, including the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, the monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai, and the churches of San Vitale and Sant’Apollinare in Classe in Ravenna. The works of Justinian in Ravenna, in particular, are the most important surviving examples of early Byzantine art outside Constantinople.

The building program was not simply an aesthetic project. It was also a religious and political statement. The great church of the Hagia Sophia, with its vast central dome, was an image of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the emperor who built it was presented as the representative of Christ on earth, the builder of the new creation.

The Plague and the End of an Age

In 541, a devastating pandemic, known as the Plague of Justinian, struck the eastern Mediterranean. The plague, which historians have identified as bubonic plague, recurred repeatedly over the next two centuries, killing perhaps tens of millions across Eurasia. The plague weakened the empire at the very moment when it was struggling to defend its overextended frontiers. Population decline reduced the tax base, the army, and the labor supply, and made the wars of Justinian’s later reign far more difficult.

By the time of Justinian’s death on 14 November 565, the empire was overextended, depopulated, and exhausted. Many of the conquests of his reign were lost within a generation, especially in Italy and Spain. Yet the legacy of Justinian endured. The legal code remained the foundation of Byzantine law. The Hagia Sophia remained the great church of Orthodox Christianity. The idea of the Christian Roman Empire remained the central political idea of the Byzantine state, and the figure of Justinian remained, for later Byzantines, the model of the ideal emperor.

Related Articles

• History of the Byzantine Empire — the broader context of Justinian’s reign
• Byzantine Emperors: A Study of Power — the men who ruled the empire
• Empress Theodora: Power Behind the Throne — the woman who shaped Justinian
• The Nika Riots of 532 AD — the revolt that nearly ended the reign
• Byzantine Law: The Justinian Code — the legacy of Roman law
• Hagia Sophia: Architecture and Meaning — the great church of Justinian