⛪Justinian I
Emperor of the Byzantine Empire, Systematizer of Roman Law, Builder of the Hagia Sophia
Those Who First Drew the Borders on the Map · Founders of Civilizations
The Byzantine EmpireThe Code of JustinianThe Hagia Sophia
Who they are
Justinian I (reigned 527–565) was emperor of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, who devoted his life to the grand ambition of "restoring Rome," and through the military conquests of generals such as Belisarius briefly recovered parts of the old lands of North Africa, Italy, and southern Spain, momentarily reviving the former glory of the Roman Empire. He ordered the systematic compilation of the Code of Justinian, systematically gathering and ordering the vast and tangled edicts, precedents, and jurists’ writings of the earlier Roman legal tradition, which became one of the most important legal sources of the later continental European civil-law tradition, profoundly shaping the construction of the modern civil-law systems of European nations. The Hagia Sophia he had built at Constantinople astonished the whole Christian world of the time with its grand dome design, and, through many changes of role across Byzantine, Ottoman, and modern Turkish history, is still the greatest representative work of Byzantine architectural art.
Primary sourcesProcopius, History of the Wars and Secret HistoryThe Code of Justinian
Key stories
The Nika Riot and the Empress Theodora
In 532 the great "Nika riot" broke out in Constantinople, the mob once storming near the palace; Justinian for a time considered abandoning the city and fleeing, but his wife the Empress Theodora firmly said, "the purple robe is the finest shroud," rousing Justinian to order the suppression and at last stabilizing the situation — this harrowing political crisis also displayed, from the side, the weighty real influence of the Empress Theodora in Byzantine court politics.
The Code of Justinian
Justinian ordered jurists to systematically compile the Roman legal literature accumulated over the previous centuries into the Code of Justinian (comprising the Codex, the Institutes, the Digest, and other parts), systematically clearing away the vast contradictory and obsolete provisions of earlier Roman law; this legal compilation thereafter became the most important historical source of the development of the medieval and modern continental European civil-law tradition, and is still the core text for the study of Roman law in law schools worldwide.
Version differences
The contemporary historian Procopius, on the one hand, praised Justinian’s civil and military achievements in his officially commissioned History of the Wars, and on the other hand, in his privately written Secret History, criticized him and the Empress Theodora with the utmost harshness; the sharp contrast between the two works’ judgments of the same emperor is a classic case in the study of the reliability of Byzantine court sources.
Echoes today
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.
The Code of Justinian and the civil-law traditionThe Roman law code Justinian directed the compilation of is the direct historical source of the later continental European civil-law tradition (as distinct from the Anglo-American common-law tradition), and is still the core text for teaching the Roman-law tradition in law schools in most countries of the world.