Justinian I

Justinian I
Mosaic of Flavius Justinian dressed in a royal purple chlamys and jeweled stemma
Detail of a contemporary portrait mosaic of Justinian dressed in a royal purple chlamys and jeweled stemma in the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, AD 547
Byzantine emperor
Reign1 April 527 – 14 November 565
Coronation1 April 527
PredecessorJustin I
SuccessorJustin II
Co-emperorJustin I (until 1 August 527)
BornPetrus Sabbatius
482
Tauresium, Dardania, Eastern Roman Empire[1]
Died14 November 565 (aged 83)
Constantinople, Eastern Roman Empire
Burial
SpouseTheodora (m. 525; d. 548)
Names
Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus
Regnal name
Imperator Caesar Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus Augustus[a]
DynastyJustinian dynasty
FatherSabbatius (biological)
Justin I (adoptive)
MotherVigilantia
ReligionChalcedonian Christianity

Justinian I (/ʌˈstɪniən/ just-IN-ee-ən; Latin: Iūstīniānus, Classical Latin: [juːs.tiː.niˈaː.nʊs]; Greek: Ἰουστινιανός, translit. Ioustinianós, Medieval Greek: [i.us.ti.ni.aˈnos]; 482 – 14 November 565),[b] also known as Justinian the Great,[c] was the Eastern Roman emperor from 527 to 565.

His reign was marked by the ambitious but only partly realized renovatio imperii, or "restoration of the Empire".[5] This ambition was expressed by the partial recovery of the territories of the defunct Western Roman Empire.[6] His general, Belisarius, swiftly conquered the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa. Subsequently, Belisarius, Narses, and other generals conquered the Ostrogothic kingdom, restoring Dalmatia, Sicily, Italy, and Rome to the empire after more than half a century of rule by the Ostrogoths. The praetorian prefect Liberius reclaimed the south of the Iberian Peninsula, establishing the province of Spania. These campaigns re-established Roman control over the western Mediterranean, increasing the Empire's annual revenue by over a million solidi.[7] During his reign, Justinian also subdued the Tzani, a people on the east coast of the Black Sea that had never been under Roman rule before.[8] He engaged the Sasanian Empire in the east during Kavad I's reign, and later again during Khosrow I's reign; this second conflict was partially initiated due to his ambitions in the west.

A still more resonant aspect of his legacy was the uniform rewriting of Roman law, the Corpus Juris Civilis, which is still the basis of civil law in many modern states.[9] His reign also marked a blossoming of Eastern Roman (Byzantine) culture, and his building program yielded works such as the Hagia Sophia.

  1. ^ J. B. Bury (2008) [1889] History of the Later Roman Empire from Arcadius to Irene II. Cosimo, Inc. ISBN 1605204056, p. 7.
  2. ^ PLRE.
  3. ^ Cameron, Alan (1988). "Flavius: a Nicety of Protocol". Latomus. 47 (1): 26–33. JSTOR 41540754.
  4. ^ Abdy, John Thomas (1876). The Institutes of Justinian. Cambridge University Press. p. 21.
  5. ^ J. F. Haldon, Byzantium in the seventh century (Cambridge, 2003), 17–19.
  6. ^ On the western Roman Empire, see now H. Börm, Westrom (Stuttgart 2013).
  7. ^ "History 303: Finances under Justinian". Tulane.edu. Archived from the original on 9 March 2008. Retrieved 14 November 2012.
  8. ^ Evans, J. A. S., The Age of Justinian: the circumstances of imperial power. pp. 93–94
  9. ^ John Henry Merryman and Rogelio Pérez-Perdomo, The Civil Law Tradition: An Introduction to the Legal Systems of Europe and Latin America, 3rd ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), pp. 9–11.


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