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(Latin: Flavius Petrus Sabbatius
Iustinianus, Greek: Ιουστινιανός; commonly known as Justinian I,
or (among Eastern Orthodox Christians) as Saint Justinian the
Great; ca. 482/483 – November 13 or November 14, 565) was
Eastern Roman Emperor from 527 until his death, and second
member of the Justinian Dynasty, after his uncle Justin I, who
was chiefly under his influence.
Justinian is one of the most
historically significant rulers of Late Antiquity. His rule
marked an economical and military blooming of the Byzantine
Empire, with the recovery of the territories of the Western
Roman Empire, primarily through the campaigns of Belisarius. He
achieved what no other Byzantine Emperor had before or ever
would again after him, the reconquering of the city of Rome
itself. Partly, this was because he did not realize that a full
Roman empire was a concept of a bygone era. The new European
powers of the Goths, Franks, and even Saxons in the north were
inheriting the ancient Roman lands. Always at work, he was
called the "Emperor that never sleeps." His edification program
has left masterpieces as the church of Hagia Sophia in
Constantinople. Under Justinian's patronage, the Byzantine
culture produced historians of the likeness of Procopius and
Agathias, as well as poets like Paul the Silentiary. His
commission of the Corpus Iuris Civilis, a uniform rewriting of
the Roman law by Tribonian, is still the basis of civil law in
many modern states.
The devastating Plague of Justinian
in the early 540's marked the end of an age of splendor never to
be regained by the Empire. Justinian is considered a saint in
the Eastern Orthodox Church, commemorated on November 14
according to the Julian calendar, which currently equals to
November 27 on the Gregorian calendar. His administration had
world-wide impact, constituting a distinct epoch in the history
of the Byzantine Empire and the Orthodox Church.
****
Life
Justinian was born a Latin-speaking
peasant in a small village called Tauresium in Dardania, modern
Caričin Grad near Niš (modern Serbia), [1][2], probably on May
11.483[3] His mother was Vigilantia, the sister of the highly
esteemed General Justin. Justin, who was in the imperial guard
(the Excubitors), adopted Justinian and brought him to
Constantinople and ensured the boy's education. As a result,
Justinian was superbly educated in jurisprudence, theology and
Roman history. Justinian served for some time with the
Excubitors but the details of his early career are unknown.[2]
When Emperor Anastasius died in
518, Justin was proclaimed the new emperor, which Justinian
played a leading part in helping with negotiations. During
Justin's reign from 518-527, Justinian was the emperors close
confident and by the end, when Justin started to become senile,
Justinian had become the de-facto ruler in charge. Justinian was
appointed consul in 521, and later as commander of the army of
the east. He was functioning as virtual regent long before
Justin made him associate emperor on April 1, 527. Four months
later, upon Justin I's death on August 1, 527, Justinian became
the sole sovereign.
He surrounded himself with men and
women of extraordinary talent, "new men" culled not from the
aristocratic ranks, but those based on merit. In 523 he married
Theodora, who was by profession a courtesan about 20 years his
junior. He is said to have met her at a show where she and a
trained goose performed Leda and the Swan, a play that managed
to mock Greek mythology and Christian morality at the same
time.[citation needed] Justinian would have, in earlier times,
been unable to marry her because of her class, but his uncle
Emperor Justin I had passed a law allowing intermarriage between
social classes. Theodora would become very influential in the
politics of the Empire, and later emperors would follow
Justinian's precedent and marry outside of the aristocratic
class. The marriage was a source of scandal, but Theodora would
prove to be very intelligent, "street smart", a good judge of
character and Justinian's greatest supporter.
Other talented individuals included
Tribonian, his legal adviser; his finance ministers John of
Cappadocia and Peter Barsymes, who managed to collect taxes more
efficiently than any before thus funding Justinian's wars; and
finally, his talented general Belisarius.
Procopius provides our primary
source for the history of Justinian's reign, although the
chronicle of John of Ephesus, which survives as the basis for
many later chronicles, contributes many valuable details. Both
historians became very bitter towards Justinian and Theodora.
Aside from his main history, Procopius also wrote the Secret
History, which reports on various scandals at Justinian's court.
Other sources include the histories of Agathias, Menander the
Guardsman, John Malalas, the Paschal Chronicle, the chronicles
of Marcellinus Comes and Victor of Tunnunna.
Theodora died in 548; Justinian
outlived her for almost twenty years. During the later years of
his life, Justinian became increasingly devoted to religion.
When he died, on the night of November 13-November 14, 565, he
left no children. He was succeeded by Justin II, the son of his
sister Vigilantia, who was married to Sophia, the niece of
Empress Theodora.
Legal activities
Justinian achieved lasting
influence for his judicial reforms, notably the summation of all
Roman law, something that had never been done before in the mass
of unorganized Roman laws with no coherence. Justinian
commissioned quaestor Tribonian to the task, and he issued the
first draft of the Corpus Juris Civilis on April 7, 529 in three
parts: Digesta (or Pandectae), Institutiones, and the Codex. The
Corpus was in Latin, the traditional language of the Roman
Empire, but which most citizens of the Eastern Empire poorly
understood. The Authenticum or Novellae Constitutiones, a
collection of new laws issued during Justinian's reign, later
supplemented the Corpus. The Novellae appeared in Greek, the
common language of the Empire.
The Corpus forms the basis of Latin
jurisprudence (including ecclesiastical Canon Law: ecclesia
vivit lege romana) and, for historians, provides a valuable
insight into the concerns and activities of the remains of the
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 prudentum).
Tribonian's law code ensured the
survival of Roman Law; it would pass to the West in the 12th
century and become the basis of much European law code. 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.
Military activities
Like many of his predecessors in
the Roman-Persian Wars, Justinian initially engaged in war
against the Sassanid Empire. After this war had been concluded
with an "Eternal Peace" in 532, Justinian turned the main focus
of his military activities to the western Mediterranean Sea,
where his armies, spearheaded by the general Belisarius,
regained substantial parts of the territory of the former
Western Roman Empire during the next twenty years.
Belisarius had played a key role in
putting down the Nika riots in Constantinople in January of 532,
in which chariot racing fanatics had forced Justinian to dismiss
the unpopular Tribonian and two of his other ministers, and had
then attempted to overthrow Justinian himself. While the crowd
was rioting in the streets, Justinian considered fleeing the
capital, but he remained in the city on the advice of Theodora.
Shortly thereafter he had the rebellion bloodily crushed by his
generals Belisarius and Mundus.
With the Nika riot put down and the
Persians no longer a threat, Justinian turned his attention to
the West. In 533-534, Belisarius reconquered North Africa from
the Vandals after the Battle of Ad Decimum, near Carthage,
putting an end to the short-lived Vandal Kingdom. Belisarius
then advanced into Sicily and Italy, recapturing Rome (536) and
the Ostrogoth capital Ravenna (540) in what has become known as
the Gothic War. Then, facing renewed attacks by the Persians,
who had plundered Antioch in early 540, and unhappy with his
general’s somewhat independent course in Italy, Justinian
dispatched him to the East.
The war with the Persians, which
concentrated chiefly on Armenia, went on for some years, with
neither of the parties gaining the upper hand. When in 545 a new
peace was established, the war continued in Lazica, which king
Khosrau I sought to control. Generally, the Romans fared better
than the Persians in this war, and in 562 a treaty was concluded
in which the Persians agreed to evacuate Lazica.
While the main military efforts of
the empire were being directed to the East, the Ostrogoths had
reconquered most of Italy, including Rome. Belisarius, who had
returned to Italy in 544 but had been starved of troops, was
relieved and called back to Constantinople. (He would defeat the
Bulgars several years afterwards, when they appeared on the
Danube for the first time in 559.) Another general, Narses,
assumed the command with fresh troops. In 552 the resistance of
the Ostrogoths was finally broken. Meanwhile, Byzantine forces
had conquered part of southern Spain from the Visigoths (551).
Large parts of the conquests in the
West would be lost again soon after the emperor’s death;
nevertheless, under Justinian, the empire's territory had
expanded greatly, if only for a short time.
Religious activities
Suppression of non-Christian
religions
Justinian's religious policy
reflected the imperial conviction that the unity of the Empire
unconditionally presupposed unity of faith; and with him it
seemed a matter of course that this faith could be only the
Orthodox. Those of a different belief had to recognize that the
process which imperial legislation had begun from Constantius II
down would now vigorously continue. The Codex contained two
statutes (Cod., I., xi. 9 and 10) which decreed the total
destruction of paganism, even in the civil life; these
provisions were zealously enforced. Contemporary sources (John
Malalas, Theophanes, John of Ephesus) tell of severe
persecutions, even of men in high position.
Perhaps the most noteworthy event
occurred in 529 when the teaching Academy of Plato of Athens was
placed under state control by order of Justinian, effectively
strangling this training-school for Hellenism. Paganism was
actively suppressed. In Asia Minor alone, John of Ephesus
claimed to have converted 70,000 pagans (cf. F. Nau, in Revue de
l'orient chretien, ii., 1897, 482). Other peoples also accepted
Christianity: the Heruli (Procopius, Bellum Gothicum, ii. 14;
Evagrius, Hist. eccl., iv. 20), the Huns dwelling near the Don
(Procopius, iv. 4; Evagrius, iv. 23), the Abasgi (Procopius, iv.
3; Evagrius, iv. 22) and the Tzani (Procopius, Bellum Persicum,
i. 15) in Caucasia.
The worship of Amun at Augila in
the Libyan desert (Procopius, De Aedificiis, vi. 2) was
abolished; and so were the remnants of the worship of Isis on
the island of Philae, at the first cataract of the Nile
(Procopius, Bellum Persicum, i. 19). The Presbyter Julian (DCB,
iii. 482) and the Bishop Longinus (John of Ephesus, Hist. eccl.,
iv. 5 sqq.) conducted a mission among the Nabataeans, and
Justinian attempted to strengthen Christianity in Yemen by
despatching an ecclesiastic of Egypt (Procopius, Bellum
Persicum, i. 20; Malalas, ed. Niebuhr, Bonn, 1831, pp. 433
sqq.).
The Jews, too, had to suffer; for
not only did the authorities restrict their civil rights (Cod.,
I., v. 12), and threaten their religious privileges (Procopius,
Historia Arcana, 28); but the emperor interfered in the internal
affairs of the synagogue (Nov., cxlvi., Feb. 8, 553), and
forbade, for instance, the use of the Hebrew language in divine
worship. The recalcitrant were menaced with corporal penalties,
exile, and loss of property. The Jews at Borium, not far from
Syrtis Major, who resisted Belisarius in his Vandal campaign,
had to embrace Christianity; their synagogue became a church.
(Procopius, De Aedificiis, vi. 2).
The emperor had much trouble with
the Samaritans, finding them refractory to Christianity and
repeatedly in insurrection. He opposed them with rigorous
edicts, but yet could not prevent hostilities towards Christians
from taking place in Samaria toward the close of his reign. The
consistency of Justinian's policy meant that the Manicheans too
suffered severe persecution, experiencing both exile and threat
of capital punishment (Cod., I., v. 12). At Constantinople, on
one occasion, not a few Manicheans, after strict inquisition,
were executed in the emperor's very presence: some by burning,
others by drowning (F. Nau, in Revue de l'orient, ii., 1897, p.
481).
Religious policy
As with his secular administration,
despotism appeared also in the emperor's ecclesiastical policy.
He regulated everything, both in religion and in law.
At the very beginning of his reign,
he deemed it proper to promulgate by law the Church's belief in
the Trinity and the Incarnation; and to threaten all heretics
with the appropriate penalties (Cod., I., i. 5); whereas he
subsequently declared that he designed to deprive all disturbers
of orthodoxy of the opportunity for such offense by due process
of law (MPG, lxxxvi. 1, p. 993). He made the
Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan creed the sole symbol of the Church
(Cod., I., i. 7), and accorded legal force to the canons of the
four ecumenical councils (Novellae, cxxxi.). The bishops in
attendance at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553
recognized that nothing could be done in the Church contrary to
the emperor's will and command (Mansi, Concilia, viii. 970B);
while, on his side, the emperor, in the case of the Patriarch
Anthimus, reinforced the ban of the Church with temporal
proscription (Novellae, xlii). Justinian protected the purity of
the church by suppressing heretics. He neglected no opportunity
for securing the rights of the Church and clergy, for protecting
and extending monasticism.
Although the despotic character of
his measures is contrary to modern sensibilities, he was indeed
a "nursing father" of the Church. Both the Codex and the
Novellae contain many enactments regarding donations,
foundations, and the administration of ecclesiastical property;
election and rights of bishops, priests and abbots; monastic
life, residential obligations of the clergy, conduct of divine
service, episcopal jurisdiction, etc. Justinian also rebuilt the
Church of Hagia Sophia, the original site having been destroyed
during the Nika riots. The new Hagia Sophia, with its numerous
chapels and shrines, gilded octagonal dome, and mosaics, became
the centre and most visible monument of Eastern Orthodoxy in
Constantinople.
Religious relations with Rome
From the middle of the fifth
century onward increasingly arduous tasks confronted the
emperors of the East in ecclesiastical matters. For one thing,
the radicals on all sides felt themselves constantly repelled by
the creed adopted by the Council of Chalcedon to defend the
biblical doctrine of the nature of Christ and bridge the gap
between the dogmatic parties. The letter of Pope Leo I to
Flavian of Constantinople was widely considered in the East as
the work of Satan; so that nobody cared to hear of the Church of
Rome. The emperors, however, had a policy of preserving the
unity between Constantinople and Rome; and this remained
possible only if they did not swerve from the line defined at
Chalcedon. In addition, the factions in the East which had
become stirred up and disaffected because of Chalcedon needed
restraining and pacifying. This problem proved the more
difficult because, in the East, the dissenting groups exceeded
supporters of Chalcedon both in numerical strength and in
intellectual ability. Tension from the incompatibility of the
two aims grew: whoever chose Rome and the West must renounce the
East, and vice versa.
Justinian entered the arena of
ecclesiastical statecraft shortly after his uncle's accession in
518, and put an end to the Monophysite schism that had prevailed
between Rome and Byzantium since 483. The recognition of the
Roman see as the highest ecclesiastical authority (cf. Novellae,
cxxxi.) remained the cornerstone of his Western policy.
Offensive as it was to many in the East, nonetheless Justinian
felt himself entirely free to take a Despotic stance toward the
popes such as Silverius and Vigilius. While no compromise could
ever be accepted by the dogmatic wing of the church, his sincere
efforts at reconciliation gained him the approval of the major
body of the church. A signal proof was his attitude in the
Theopaschite controversy. At the outset he was of the opinion
that the question turned on a quibble of words. By degrees,
however, Justinian came to understand that the formula at issue
not only appeared orthodox, but might also serve as a
conciliatory measure toward the Monophysites, and he made a vain
attempt to do this in the religious conference with the
followers of Severus of Antioch, in 533.
Again, Justinian moved toward
compromise in the religious edict of March 15, 533 (Cod., L, i.
6), and congratulated himself that Pope John II admitted the
orthodoxy of the imperial confession (Cod., I., i. 8). The
serious blunder that he had made at the beginning by abetting a
severe persecution of the Monophysite bishops and monks and
thereby embittering the population of vast regions and
provinces, he remedied eventually. His constant aim now remained
to win over the Monophysites, yet not to surrender the
Chalcedonian faith. For many at court, he did not go far enough:
Theodora especially would have rejoiced to see the Monophysites
favored unreservedly. Justinian, however, felt restrained by the
complications that would have ensued with the West. But in the
condemnation of the Three Chapters Justinian tried to satisfy
both the East and the West, but succeeded in satisfying neither.
Although the pope assented to the condemnation, the West
believed that the emperor had acted contrary to the decrees of
Chalcedon. Though many delegates emerged in the East subservient
to Justinian, many, especially the Monophysites, remained
unsatisfied; all the more bitter for him because during his last
years he took an even greater interest in theological matters.
Building activities
Justinian was a very prolific
edification promoter. He strengthened the borders of the empire
by building fortifications along it. Constantinople was assured
of its water supply by Justinian building underground cisterns.
The emperor also built a bridge over the river Sangarius,
securing a major trade route. He restored cities damaged by
earthquake or war. The emperor built a new city near his place
of birth called Justiniana Prima. Most notably, he also built
the famous San Vitale in Ravenna and the Hagia Sophia in
Constantinople.[2]
****
Notes
-
^ See The
Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, Edited by
Michael Maas, Cambridge University Press 2005, p. 355 (with
figure of Justiniana Prima = Caričin Grad on p. 356)
-
^ a b c Robert
Browning. "Justinian I" in Dictionary of the Middle Ages,
volume VII (1986).
-
^ Comprehensive
Dictionary of Biography - Edward A. Thomas
****
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