Justinian I

Justinian I (Latin: Flavius ​​Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus, Tauresium, 482-Constantinople, November 14, 565), better known as Justinian I the Great, was emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire from August 1, 527 until his death. death. During his reign he sought to revive the former greatness of the classical Roman Empire, reconquering much of the lost territories of the Western Roman Empire.

Considered one of the most important personalities of late antiquity and the last emperor to use Latin as his mother tongue, Justinian's rule marks a milestone in the history of the Eastern Roman Empire. The impact of his administration extended beyond the borders of his time and his domain. His reign is marked by the ambitious, if partial, recuperatio imperii, or "restoration of the empire".

Due to his policies of restoration of the empire, Justinian has sometimes been called "the last of the Romans" by modern historiography. This ambition was embodied in the recovery of part of the territories of the former Western Roman Empire. His general Belisarius achieved a rapid conquest of the kingdom of the Vandals in North Africa, and later Belisarius himself, along with Narses and other generals, conquered the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy, restoring after more than half a century of barbarian control the territories of Belisarius. Dalmatia, Sicily and the Italian peninsula, including the city of Rome, in the territory of the empire.

For his part, the praetorian prefect Liberius claimed much of the south of the Iberian Peninsula, establishing the province of Spania. These campaigns re-established the empire's control over the western Mediterranean, increasing annual revenues by more than a million solids a year. During his reign, Justinian also conquered the Tzani, a people on the eastern shore of the Black Sea who had never before they had been under Roman control.

Another of his most impressive legacies was the uniform compilation of Roman law in the Corpus Iuris Civilis, which is still the basis of the civil law of many modern states. This work was carried out for the most part by the quaestor sacri palatiiTribonian. His reign also marked a high point in Byzantine culture, and his building program bore such works of art as the Hagia Sophia, which would be the center of the Orthodox Church for many centuries. However, a devastating epidemic known as the Plague of Justinian in the early 540s marked the end of an age of splendor. It is believed that it was an outbreak of the black plague, although it is not known for sure. The empire would enter a period of loss of territory that would not be reversed until the 9th century.

The chronicler Procopius of Caesarea constitutes the main primary source for the history of Justinian's reign. The Syriac-language chronicler, John of Ephesus, also wrote a chronicle about the time that has not survived, but is used as a source by later chroniclers, adding many details of historical value. Both historians ended up showing much rancor against Justinian and his empress Theodora. Other sources include the histories of Agathias, Menander Protector, John Malalas, the Chronicon Paschale, and the chronicles of Count Marcellin and Victor of Tunnuna.

The Orthodox Church venerates him as a saint on November 14, and he is also venerated by some Lutheran groups on the same date.

Biography

Justinian was born in a small Dacian village called Tauresio near the ruins of Sardica (modern Sofia in Bulgaria), around 482. His family, of humble origins and Latin-speaking, is believed to have been of Thracian origins. or Illyrians.

He took the cognomen iustinianus (Justinian) after being adopted by his uncle Justin. During his reign Justiniana Prima founded a city near his birthplace and which is currently in southeastern Serbia.

His mother, Vigilantia, was Justino's sister. Justinian was part of the imperial guard (the Excubitors) before being named emperor in 518, he adopted Justinian and took him with him to Constantinople, ensuring that he received a good education. Justinian thus followed the usual educational curriculum, focusing on in jurisprudence, theology, and history. Justinian served for some time with the Excubitors, but the details of this early period are unknown.The chronicler John Malalas, a contemporary of Justinian, describes his appearance as short, curly-haired, round-faced, and handsome. Another contemporary chronicler, Procopius, compares his appearance to that of the tyrannical emperor Domitian, though in this case it is likely a calumny.

He advanced rapidly in his military career, and a great future lay before him when in 518 Emperor Anastasius I died. Justin was proclaimed the new emperor, with significant help from Justinian. During Justin's reign (518–527), Justinian was the emperor's closest confidant. Justinian showed great ambition, and is believed to have functioned as virtual regent long before Justin named him co-emperor on 1 April 527, although no evidence exists to support this view. When Justin began to show symptoms of senility late in his reign, Justinian became the de facto ruler. Justinian was appointed consul in 521, and later commander-in-chief of the army of the east.On Justin I's death on August 1, 527, Justinian would become sole ruler of the empire.

As a ruler, Justinian displayed great energy. He was known as "the emperor who never sleeps" due to his work habits. In any case, it seems that he was a friendly and close person. Justinian's family came from a provincial background and not very high, and for that reason did not base his power on the traditional aristocracy of Constantinople. In his place, Justinian surrounded himself with people of extraordinary talent, whom he chose not so much for their aristocratic origins but for their own merits.

Around the year 525 he married his mistress, Empress Theodora, a former courtesan twenty years his junior. Justinian would not have been able to marry her due to her class difference, but her uncle Justin I enacted a law allowing marriage between different social classes.Theodora would become a highly influential figure in imperial politics, and later emperors would follow Justinian's precedent for marrying non-aristocratic women. The marriage caused great scandal, but Teodora proved to be a very intelligent, prudent and good person judging people, becoming her husband's main support. Other highly talented individuals in Justinian's service included Tribonianus, his legal adviser, Peter the Patrician, diplomat and head of the palace bureaucracy, his finance ministers John of Cappadocia and Peter Barsime, who managed to collect taxes with great efficiency, financing the projects and wars of Justinian, and finally great generals like Belisario or Narsés.

Since his coronation as emperor, Justinian has distanced himself from the traditionalist elements of Constantinople, adopting an autocratic style of government. To better cement his solo power, the ancient Roman ceremonies were eliminated. The institution of the consulship, which he himself had enjoyed a few years earlier with pride, was abolished in 541. Justinian's rule was not without opposition. Early in his reign he nearly lost his throne because of the Nika riots, and a conspiracy against his life instigated by businessmen dissatisfied with his advanced rule and his reign was discovered, in the year 562.

The second half of his reign was overshadowed by the plague epidemic that became virulent from 542. Justinian himself fell ill early in that decade, but recovered. Theodora died in 548, possibly of cancer, at a relatively young age, and was outlived by Justinian by nearly twenty years. Justinian, who had always shown great interest in theological discussions and who had been active in debates on Christian doctrine, became even more devout during the last years of his life. He died on November 14, 565 without issue. He was succeeded on the throne by Justin II, son of his sister Vigilantia and married to Sofia, the niece of Empress Theodora. Justinian's body was buried in a mausoleum in the Church of the Holy Apostles.

His reign would have a great impact on world history, ushering in a new era in the history of the Byzantine Empire and the Orthodox Church. He was the last emperor who tried to recover the territories that the Roman Empire possessed in the time of Theodosius I, and to this end he launched great military campaigns. He also developed a colossal constructive activity, emulating that of the great Roman emperors of the past.

Nika riots

Justinian's policies and choices, and especially his choice to use efficient but unpopular advisers, nearly cost him the throne early in his reign. In January 532, chariot-racing factions in Constantinople, normally divided and at war with each other, united in a revolt against Justinian that was named the Nika riots, after the war cry used by the chariot racers. rebels (nika, meaning 'victory'). They forced Justinian to dismiss Tribonian and two other of his ministers, and then tried to overthrow Justinian himself to replace him with Senator Hypatius, nephew of the previous Emperor Anastasius I. As crowds rioted in the streets, Justinian even valued the possibility of escaping from the city, but he remained there encouraged by the words of his wife Theodora who, according to Procopius, claimed to prefer death to losing the imperial dignity. Over the next two days, he ordered a brutal suppression of the riots by his generals Belisarius and Mundus. Procopio relates that 30,000 unarmed citizens died at the racecourse. At Teodora's insistence, and apparently against her initial judgment,Anastasio's nephews were also executed.

The destruction that spread through the city of Constantinople during the riots was very high. However, it did allow Justinian the opportunity to create a host of splendid new buildings, most notably the admired Hagia Sophia.

Military activity and campaigns of Belisarius

One of the most spectacular achievements of Justinian's reign was the recovery of large territories in the western Mediterranean, which had been falling out of imperial control throughout the 5th century. As a Christian Roman Emperor, Justinian considered it his divine duty to restore the Empire. Roman to its ancient borders. Although he would never personally participate in military campaigns, he boasted of his victories in the prefaces to his laws and had them commemorated in the artistic works of his reign.The reconquests were carried out mainly by the general Warbringer of him.

The ideology of the Recuperatio Imperii is a formulation that responds to widespread feelings among broad layers of the population of the Pars Occidentalis (especially among the urban senatorial element and sectors linked to the administration) and part of the government of the Eastern Empire, that intellectually it played with imperial continuity in the West; in fact, the sentiment of romanitas is —in the 6th century— widely spread throughout the Empire and is reciprocated by the official ideology of the imperial government —according to which it did not sink into the West but that the barbarians rule there in the name of the emperor of the East—and by the intelligentsiaof Constantinople (for example, it is the case of the writer Juan Lido, contemporary of Justiniano). These feelings are used by the Justinian administration to carry out, precisely, a policy in line with them (whether sincere or self-interested). Justinian was king of all and he saw it as his duty to restore the Roman empire to its former borders.

War against the Sassanid Empire (527-532)

Justinian inherited from his uncle a series of ongoing hostilities between the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanian Empire. In 530, the Byzantine Empire managed to defeat a Persian army at the Battle of Dara, although the following year Roman forces commanded by Belisarius were defeated. defeated at the Battle of Calinico. On the death of King Kavad I in September 531, Justinian concluded an indefinite peace treaty known as the Eternal Peace with his successor, Khosroes I (532), which was finally broken by the Persian king in the spring of 532. year 540. This treaty would serve to secure the eastern frontier, allowing Justinian to turn his attention to the west, where the Germanic peoples of the Arian religion had settled in the territories of the former Western Roman Empire.

Campaigns against the Vandal Kingdom (533-534)

In May 530, the Prozantine monarch Hilderic was deposed by his cousin Gelimer on the grounds that his lack of personality had led the Vandals to be defeated by the Moorish tribes. Justinian's protests that Hilderic could return to Constantinople went unheeded, so he carefully prepared a campaign that would combine military efficiency and cost sobriety. Juan de Cappadocia, responsible for the finances of the Empire and opposed to the war, agreed in the end to carry the expenses of the campaign in a rigid way. Belisarius, the most brilliant general in the East, was in charge of bearing arms.

The decision to attack the Vandal kingdom coincided with the appearance of a series of weaknesses. The symbiosis between invaders and invaded was never consolidated, which generated hostilities with the latter. The fear of internal revolts had led to the defortification of urban centers for fear that they would host revolts. In turn, a Gothic general who ruled Sardinia on behalf of the monarch of Carthage, tried to govern independently with Eastern military help, but was stopped by Gelimer, before said help arrived.

The eastern fleet, made up of 92 drones escorting 500 transports, left the ports of Constantinople in mid-June 533 and, via Sicily, reached the African coast after three months, landing in the city of Caput Vada, in present-day Tunisia., with an army of about 15,000 men, plus an unknown number of auxiliary barbarian troops. Belisarius met little resistance, and defeated the Vandals, who had been taken completely by surprise, at the Battle of Ad Decimum on September 14, 533. He would later defeat them again at the Battle of Tricameron in December, after which Belisarius took the city of Carthage. Gelimer, fearful that the deposed king would be enthroned, had Hilderic executed before the fall of Carthage and fled to the mountain ridges on Mount Pappua in Numidia. Finally he chose to surrender at the end of March 534. Belisarius led him to Constantinople, where the general was received with great honors and even with the celebration of a Roman triumph, a ceremony that for centuries had been reserved for the emperor. The province was annexed to the Empire. The islands of Sardinia, Corsica, the Balearic Islands, and the fortress of Ceuta, near the Strait of Gibraltar, also came under Byzantine control in the same campaign.​

An African prefecture, centered on Carthage, was created in April 534, although it would find itself near collapse for the next 15 years, mired in wars against the Berbers and military mutinies. The area would not be fully pacified until 548, although it would remain pacified for a long time after that, enjoying some prosperity. The recovery of the province of Africa cost the empire around 100,000 pounds of gold.

Campaigns against the Ostrogothic kingdom, first phase (535-540)

As in Africa, dynastic troubles in the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy provided an opportunity for military intervention by the Byzantine Empire. On the death of Theodoric the Great, control of Ostrogothic politics fell into the hands of his daughter Amalasunta, who exercised power on behalf of the child king Athalaric, until he died on October 2, 534. The regency was characterized by a political shift towards the East, generating strong internal opposition. The prompt disappearance of her son forced the regent to search for a formal monarch, after whom she would continue pulling the strings of the government. The chosen one was Theodatus, whom she married at the end of 534. However, Theodatus took the queen prisoner, locking her in a residence on Martana Island, in Lake Bolsena, where he had her assassinated in 535,casus belli for the intervention of Justinian.

That same year Justinian would give two coups that allowed him to take Sicily, under the command of Belisarius and Dalmatia, by Ilírico Mundo. Theodatus resorted to a papal embassy, ​​but a parallel Imperial embassy was sent to the Ostrogothic monarch himself to establish a secret agreement for the cession of Italy to the empire. The various setbacks that the Empire was going through at the time, such as the revolt in Africa and the recovery of territories by Germans in Dalmatia, induced Theodatus to break off the engagement and face Justinian's armies. Justinian reorganized the military hierarchy to be able to put Belisarius at the head of the Italian campaigns since Mundo had died in the Dalmatian offensive. In his place was Constantinian, who resumed the offensive in Dalmatia,

Belisarius invaded Sicily that same year in command of 7,500 men and advanced into Italy, sacking Naples and capturing the city of Rome on December 9, 536. By this time, Theodatus had been deposed by his army, who elected King Vitiges, commander of his personal guard, instead. He assembled a large army and besieged Rome between February 537 and March 538, but was unable to retake the city.

Justinian sent another general to Italy, Narses, but tensions between Narses and Belisarius damaged the progress of the campaign. Milan was taken, but was soon recaptured and razed to the ground by the Ostrogoths. Justinian recalled Narses in 539, by which time the military situation had once again turned in favor of the Byzantines, and in 540 Belisarius reached the Ostrogothic capital of Ravenna. There he received the offer of the Ostrogoths to be proclaimed Roman Emperor of the West at the same time that Justinian's envoys arrived to negotiate a peace that would place the region north of the Po River in control of the Goths. Belisarius pretended to accept the offer and entered the city in May 540, to claim it at that time for the empire.He was then recalled to Constantinople, where he went with Vitiges and his wife Matasunta as captives.

War with the Sassanid Empire (540-562)

Belisarius had been recalled to Constantinople in view of a return to hostilities with the Sassanid Empire. Following a revolt against the empire in Armenia in the late 530s, and possibly prompted by the pleas of Ostrogothic ambassadors, King Khosro I broke the "Eternal Peace" and invaded Roman territory in the spring of 540. He first sacked Aleppo and then Antioch (where he allowed the 6,000-man garrison to leave the city), besieged Daras, and then moved on to attack the small but strategically significant kingdom of Lazica near the Black Sea, drawing tribute from the cities he was leaving behind. He forced Justinian to pay 5,000 pounds of gold, plus an additional 500 pounds a year.

Belisarius reached the East in 541, but after some success he was recalled to Constantinople in 542. The reasons for his recall are unknown, though it may have been due to rumors of disloyalty on his part reaching the Imperial Court. An outbreak of a serious plague caused hostilities to subside in 543. The following year Costroes defeated a Byzantine army of 30,000 men,but he was unsuccessful in besieging the city of Edessa. Neither side made any headway, and in 545 a truce was agreed for the southern part of the Roman-Persian border. The war in Lazica continued in the north for several years, until a second truce was agreed in 557, which was to continue with the fifty-year peace agreement of 562. In the treaty, the Persians agreed to leave Lazica in exchange for the Byzantine Empire paid an annual tribute of 400 or 500 pounds of gold (30,000 solidi).

Campaigns against the Ostrogothic kingdom, second phase (541-554)

The situation in Italy worsened as the war effort focused on the East. The Ostrogoths, led by Kings Hildibald and Eraric (both assassinated in 541) and especially Totila, made rapid advances. Following their victory at the Battle of Faventia in 542, they reconquered the major cities of southern Italy, soon dominating most of the peninsula. Belisarius was sent back to Italy at the end of 544, but he lacked enough troops to turn the situation around. Making no headway, he was deprived of command in 548, though he had previously won a naval battle against two hundred Gothic ships. During this period, the city of Rome changed hands three more times: first it was occupied and depopulated by the Goths in December 546, then reconquered by the Byzantines in 547,

Finally, Justinian dispatched an army of approximately thirty-five thousand men (two thousand of whom were dispatched to invade the southern Iberian peninsula held by the Visigoths) under the command of Narses. The army reached Ravenna in June 552 and defeated the Ostrogoths decisively at the Battle of Mons Lactarius in October of that year, ending Gothic resistance. In 554 a major Frankish invasion was thwarted at the Battle of Casilino, which secured control of Italy, though it would take Narses several years to subdue the remaining pockets of Gothic resistance. At the end of the war, Italy was protected by an army of sixteen thousand men; the conquest had cost approximately three hundred thousand gold pounds.The price of the conquest of the Ostrogothic kingdom could perhaps be considered excessive. There were continuous campaigns of attrition, whose main victim was the Italian population, which suffered the destruction of its social, productive and political fabric and was hit by the plague. The twenty years of fighting dramatically accelerated the transition to the medieval world. Rome lost its urban entity and ceased to be the city par excellence of the Mediterranean world.

The Pragmatic Sanction of 554, by which Italy was reintegrated into the Roman Empire, ratified the de facto situation by giving bishops control over various aspects of civil life (such as the activity of civil judges) and the administration of cities, putting them in charge of provisioning, annona, and public works, while exempting them from the authority of imperial officials.

Campaigns against the Visigoth kingdom (552)

In addition to the other conquests made, the empire managed to establish its presence in a part of Visigothic Hispania. When the usurper Atanagildo requested help in his civil war against King Agila I, Justinian sent for a force of 2,000 men who, according to the historian Jordanes, were commanded by the praetorian prefect Liberius.The Byzantines took Cartagena and other cities on the southeast coast, founding the new province of Spania that they would finally agree with Atanagildo, once he became king, the eastern collaboration having been decisive in decanting the civil war in the Hispanic peninsular kingdom in favor of that candidate against Agila. But territorial compensation was never a platform for the conquest of ancient Hispania, in fact, the areas granted in 552 began to decline in the following decades, especially during the reign of Leovigildo, until their evaporation in 624, when the Byzantines were definitively expelled by King Suintila. However, the conquest of the province of Spania marked the apogee of the expansion of the Byzantine empire in the Mediterranean.

Facing the nomads

Events late in Justinian's reign demonstrated that Constantinople itself was not safe from barbarian incursions from the north, to the point that even the relatively benevolent historian Menander Protector is forced to explain the emperor's inability to protect his capital on the basis of the weakness of his body in old age. In his efforts to renew the Roman Empire, Justinian dangerously stretched his resources without regard to the realities of 6th-century Europe. Paradoxically, the large scale of Justinian's successes likely contributed to the later decline of the empire.

The cutriguros came to cross the frozen Danube in winter and came unopposed to Thrace which they plundered. The warlord Zabergán appeared in Constantinople with his forces and Belisarius had to come out of retirement to lead a counteroffensive that averted the threat.

Justinian Compilation

The imperial majesty should not only be honored with arms, but also strengthened by laws, so that at one time and another, both in war and in peace, they can be well governed, and the Roman principle remains victorious not only in the combats with the enemies (...) And so after fifty books of the Digest or the Pandects in which all that ancient law was compiled and which we made using the same Tribonian (...), we ordered that the same Institutions be divided into these four books so that they constitute the first elements of the entire science of law...

The Institutes of Justinian Proemio; "Imperial Majesty "

Justinian gained great fame as a result of his legislative reforms, and especially as a result of the revision and compilation of all Roman law. Starting from the premise that the existence of a political community was based on arms and laws, Justinian he paid special attention to legislation and passed down to posterity as the inspirer of the Corpus iuris civilis. The intention of this code was to compile a series of laws of the Roman jurisdiction and harmonize it as much as possible with the Christian one in order to create a homogeneous Empire. His thought circled, throughout his activity as emperor, in the idea of ​​imperial power sustained by divine grace, that is, that the emperor was the representative of God on Earth.

The monumental compilation of Roman law, made at the beginning of the Emperor's reign (years 528 to 534) in a predominantly Latin language, concludes the legal evolution of Roman law. On it, the reborn roman studies will be carried out, from the eleventh century, and the reception of Roman law in the Greco-Latin countries and in Germany will be founded.

The entirety of Justinian's legislative work is known today as the Corpus iuris civilis. It is made up of the Codex Iustinianus, the Digest or Pandectas, the Institutas, and the Novellae.

Justinian 's Institutes will be the conclusion of repeated previous attempts to bring together the current law in a legal body, collecting both the leges and the iura. The schools of Berito and Constantinople will collaborate in such undertaking, through jurists who are members of them.

Code

By the constitution Haec Quae Necessario, of February 13, 528, the emperor Justinian appoints a commission to which he commissions him to make a code, using the previous ones (Gregorian, Hermogenian and Theodosian), as well as the later constitutions.

They had the power to modify the constitutions by gathering several into one, or dividing them according to the matters, depending on whether they had been repealed or did not respond to the needs. The task was brief and the Code was published on April 9, 529 (Summa Reipublicae constitution), entering into force seven days later. However, five years later it was modified because the first compilation of laws was outdated. The 529 code is known as the Codex Verus. The new code (Codex Novis or Codex Iustinianus Repetitae Praelectionis) is divided into 12 books, which are further subdivided into titles. Some constitutions are written in Greek, the oldest being that of Emperor Hadrian.

The first book deals with ecclesiastical and public law in general; from the second to the eighth of private law; the ninth of criminal law and the corresponding procedure; the latter administrative law. When the code of the year 529 was sanctioned, the prohibition of resorting to previous codes and novels was established. Thus, in the constitution Codex confirming, Justinian provides:We forbid those who litigate and lawyers under penalty of being guilty of falsehood, to cite other constitutions that are inserted in our code, and to cite them in another way than in which they are found in it; the invocation of these constitutions, adding to them the works of the ancient interpreters of the law, should suffice to resolve all lawsuits, even if they lack a date, or have only been private rescripts in another time.

Digest o Pandectas

Of the different parts that make up the Corpus iuris civilis, the Digest would turn out to be the only unprecedented one, as Justinian himself would point out. After the first code was published, through a series of constitutions, the Emperor ordered the Digest. On December 15, 530, by the constitution Deo Auctore the quaestor sacri palatii Triboniano is authorized to organize a commission to face this task. The monumental work was completed on December 30, 533. For this they had to write a legal body that contained the work of the jurisprudents (iura). This would give rise to the Digest, a Latin word that means whatever has been methodically located, or Pandectas, of Greek etymology, means that which includes everything.But when proceeding to the examination of all the material, the aforementioned excellence (Tribonian) informed us that the ancients had written almost 2,000 books, covering more than 3 million lines that it was necessary to read and carefully investigate in its entirety, to choose the best of all of them (...).Justinian

The work is integrated with 50 books; each book is divided into titles (except numbers 30, 31 and 32), subdivided into fragments and in turn into paragraphs. Two thirds of the fragments contained in the Digest belong to the jurists of the law of citations (Gaius, Ulpiano, Paulo, Papiniano and Modestino). Of these, most belong to Paulo. From seven other jurists emanate a quarter of the Iura (Cervidio Seavola, Juliano, Marciano, Pomponio, Jaboleno, Africano and Marcelo). The rest of the work is divided into opinions of 27 other jurists (such as Celso, Florentino, Labeón, Neracio, Próculo, Sabino, among others).

Institute

It is an elementary treatise on law intended for teaching aimed at youth eager to study law. This work should smooth out the difficulties that, due to the volume and complexity of the Digest, prevented the study of legal institutions, directly from the Pandectas. Replacing works used by then, especially the Institutes of Gaius.

Before the Digest was completed, the commission finished the task, which was published on November 21, 533 by the constitution Imperatoriam Maiestatem. By the Tanta constitution, together with the Digest, the validity of the Institutes was established as of December 30, 533.

For the Institutes, they were based on elementary works of classical and postclassical law, such as the Institutes of Gaius, those of Marciano, Ulpiano and Florentino.

Its content was mandatory for Roman citizens and turns out to be a real source of law.

They are divided into four books, addressing the essential issues of legal art: people, things and actions.

New Constitutions

In the Middle Ages, it began to include, integrating the Corpus iuris civilis, a comprehensive legislative body of a series of constitutions issued after the codes (Vetus and Novis), the Quinquaginta decisions, the Digest and the Institutes.

It includes the legislative work of Justinian from 534 until his death in 565, most of it in Greek and some in Latin. They covered different matters, with few referring to private law. And they were published privately by some authors under the name of Novelles or Novellae leges (New Laws).

It should be noted that during the Emperor's lifetime, there was no official compilation, limiting the quaestor of the sacred palace to register them to be published periodically.

• Around the year 535 a collection known as the Epitome Juliani appears, because it is attributed to Julian, a professor of law at Constantinople. In this collection there are 124 constitutions in Latin, reduced to 122 by repeating two of them. Includes the constitutions issued between the years 535 and 555.
• In the year 556 a second collection is known, with an unknown author, of 134 constitutions in Latin, known as the Authentic ones.
• The Greek Collection concentrates both Greek and Latin novels in their original language. It would have been made in 578 and is made up of 158 novels by Justinian and other later emperors, such as Justin II and Tiberius II. In this collection appears a group of 13 Justinian Novels incorporated as an appendix, which are known as Edicta Justiniani.
• Another work was known for the arrival of Byzantine jurists and Greek manuscripts, once the Eastern Empire had fallen. With 168 constitutions it had its origin in Constantinople.
• Juan Antioqueno (The Scholastic, patriarch of Constantinople) made a collection of canons extracted from the Holy Scriptures, the patristic, the councils and synods. After Justinian's death and before the year 578 he correlated his work with the provisions of the Novellae Constitutiones of Justinian I.

Religious policy

Justinian's religious policy reflected the imperial conviction that the unity of the Empire necessarily presupposed the unity of faith; and this undoubtedly meant that this faith could only be orthodox. Justinian saw the orthodoxy of the imperial religion threatened by various religious currents, and especially by Monophysitism, which had many adherents in the eastern provinces of Syria and Egypt. Monophysite doctrine had been condemned as heresy by the Council of Chalcedon in 451, and the tolerant policies against this current of Emperor Zeno and Anastasius I had been a source of tension in the empire's relationship with the bishops of Rome. Justin reversed the trend, confirming the Chalcedonian doctrine, and openly condemning the Monophysites. Justinian continued this policy,

Towards the end of his life, Justinian leaned even more towards the Monophysite doctrine, especially in his current of Aphtharthodocetism, but he died before enacting any legislation that could elevate his teachings to the status of dogma. Empress Theodora was early on sympathetic to the Monophysites and it is said that she may have been a constant source of Promonophysite intrigues at the imperial court during the early years. In the course of his reign, Justinian, who had a genuine interest in theological subjects, even wrote various treatises on the subject.

Ecclesiastical politics

As with secular administration, imperial despotism also passed into Justinian's ecclesiastical policy, which regulated absolutely everything related to the imperial religion.

In the early years of his reign, Justinian saw fit to enact into law the Church's belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation, threatening heretics with appropriate penalties; while declaring that he intended to prevent those who would seek to disturb orthodoxy had the opportunity to do so through the corresponding legal process. He made the Nicene Creed the only symbol of the Church, and gave the force of law to the canons of the four ecumenical councils. The bishops who attended the Second Council of Constantinople of 553 recognized that nothing could be done in the Church that could be contrary to the will or the orders of the emperor;while, for his part, the emperor, in the case of Patriarch Antimus I of Constantinople, enforced this prohibition with a temporary ban. Justinian protected the purity of the Church by eliminating heresy, and missed no opportunity to secure the rights of the Church and of the clergy, and to protect or extend monasticism. He guaranteed monks the right to inherit the property of private citizens and the right to receive annual gifts from the imperial treasury or even from the taxes of certain provinces, prohibiting by law the confiscation of monastic property.

Although the despotic character of his measures is contrary to modern sensibilities, he was in fact an important protector of the Church. Both in the Codex and in the Novellae numerous norms appear regulating donations, foundations and the administration of ecclesiastical property, the election and rights of bishops, priests and abbots, monastic life, the obligations of the clergy, the form of liturgical service, episcopal jurisdiction, and a long etcetera. Justinian also rebuilt the Hagia Sophia, which became the center and most visible monument of the Orthodox Church of Constantinople.

Relationship with Rome

From the middle of the 5th century onwards, the emperors of the East engaged in increasingly difficult tasks in ecclesiastical matters. On the one hand, the radicals on both sides always felt rejected by the creed adopted at the Council of Chalcedon to defend the biblical doctrine of Christ and to establish bridges between the different dogmas. The letter of Pope Leo I to Flavian of Constantinople was considered in the East as a work of Satan, causing the population to stop feeling attached to the Roman Catholic Church. The emperors, however, maintained a conciliatory policy, seeking to preserve the unity between Constantinople and Rome, which was possible as long as they did not deviate from the line defined in Chalcedon. The problem was accentuated because in the East the groups that dissented from the decisions of the Council exceeded their defenders, both in number and in intellectual ability. The tension due to the incompatibility of both creeds was growing: those who chose the western Roman creed had to renounce the eastern one, and vice versa.

Justinian entered ecclesiastical politics shortly after his uncle's accession to power in 518, ending the Monophysite schism that had prevailed between Rome and Constantinople since 483. Recognition of the Holy See as the highest ecclesiastical authorityIt remained the cornerstone of his Western policy, although Justinian was in any case free enough to adopt despotic positions in relation to some popes such as Silverius or Vigilius. Although a dogmatic compromise was never to be achieved, his sincere efforts in seeking reconciliation won him the approval of the main body of the Church. A proof is the case of his attitude towards the controversy of Theopaschism: At first he thought that the question was centered on a mere semantic question. Little by little, however, Justinian realized that the formula in question not only seemed orthodox, but could serve as a conciliatory measure towards the Monophysites, and he made an attempt, which would be in vain,

Again, Justinian focused his support on the religious edict of March 15, 533, and congratulated himself on obtaining from Pope John II an admission of the orthodoxy of the imperial confession.The main mistake he made in the beginning by his collusion in a persecution of the Monophysite bishops and monks, getting popular opposition from vast regions and provinces, was eventually remedied. His main objective was to gain the support of the Monophysites, without actually accepting the Chalcedonian faith. For many of the members of the court, however, Justinian did not go as far as he should have gone: Empress Theodora especially would have been delighted to see the Monophysites receiving unreserved imperial favour. However, Justinian was limited by the complications that this would have entailed in the West.

With the condemnation of the Three Chapters Justinian tried to satisfy both East and West, but failed to satisfy either. Although the pope agreed to the sentence, the West believed that the emperor acted contrary to the decrees of Chalcedon. Although many delegates emerged in the East supporting Justinian, many others, especially the Monophysites, remained dissatisfied.

Suppression of other religions

Justinian's religious policy reflected the imperial conviction that the unity of the Empire unconditionally presupposed a unity of faith, and that this faith could only be the faith described in the Nicene Creed. Those who professed a different faith would directly suffer the process initiated in the imperial legislation that began during the reign of Constantius II. The Codex contained two laws that decreed the total destruction of paganism, even in private life, and its provisions would be jealously enforced. Contemporary sources such as John Malalas, Theophanes of Byzantium or John of Ephesus refer to serious persecution against non-Christians, including people of high social status.

Perhaps the most striking event took place in 529 when the Academy of Athens, founded by Plato and operating from 362 B.C. C. came under state control by order of Justinian, thus achieving the actual extinction of this Hellenistic school of thought. Paganism would be actively suppressed: in Asia Minor alone, John of Ephesus claims to have converted 70,000 pagans.

The cult of Amun at Augila in the Libyan desert was banned, as were the remains of the cult of Isis on the island of Philae, near the first cataract of the Nile. The presbyter Julian and Bishop Longinus led a mission to the land of the Nabataeans, and Justinian tried to strengthen Christianity in Yemen, sending a bishop from Egypt there.

The Jews also suffered from these measures, seeing their civil rights restricted, and their religious privileges threatened. Justinian interfered in the internal affairs of the synagogue and tried to get the Jews to use the Septuagint Bible, in Greek instead of Hebrew, in the synagogues in Constantinople. Those who opposed these measures were threatened with corporal punishment, exile, and the loss of their property. The Jews of Borium, near the Great Sirte, who had resisted Belisarius during his campaign against the Vandals, had to convert to Christianity and their synagogue was transformed into a church.

The emperor encountered greater resistance among the Samaritans, who were more resistant to the imposition of Christianity and repeatedly rebelled. Justinian met them with harsh edicts, but could not prevent hostilities against the Christians in Samaria late in his reign. Justinian's policy also involved the persecution of the Manichaeans, who suffered exile and the threat of the death penalty. In Constantinople, on one occasion, a number of Manichaeans were tried and executed in the presence of the emperor himself: some burned and others drowned.

Architecture, education, art and literature

Justinian was a prolific builder, and the historian Procopius testifies to his activities in this area of ​​government. Under his rule the construction of the church of San Vital de Ravenna in Ravenna was completed, in which two famous mosaics appear in which Justinian and Theodora are depicted.His most famous work, however, would be the reconstruction of the Hagia Sophia, which had been destroyed in the fires of the Niká riots. Its reconstruction, carried out under a completely different plan, was carried out under the supervision of the architects Isidoro de Mileto and Antemio de Tralles. The Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea described the construction of the temple in his work On Buildings—Latin: De aedificiis; Greek: Peri ktismatōn—. More than ten thousand people were employed for the construction, and the emperor had material brought from all over the empire, such as the Hellenistic columns of the temple of Artemis in Ephesus, great stones from the porphyry quarries of Egypt, green marble from Thessaly, black stone from the Bosporus region and yellow stone from Syria. According to Procopius, Justinian stated, at the completion of the building, the phrase "Solomon, I have surpassed you", alluding to the construction of the temple in Jerusalem. This new cathedral, with its magnificent mosaic-filled nave, became the center of Eastern Christendom for centuries.

Justinian also rebuilt another prominent church in the capital, the Church of the Holy Apostles, which was in a poor state towards the end of the 5th century. The city's beautification work, however, was not limited to churches: the Excavations at the site of the Great Palace of Constantinople have uncovered several high-quality mosaics dating from the time of Justinian, and a column was erected on which a bronze statue of Justinian was placed in the Augustaeum, in Constantinople, in 543.It is possible that rivalry with other patrons of the city and with some exiled Roman aristocrats (such as Anicia Juliana) may have fueled Justinian's building activities in the capital, as a means of strengthening the prestige of his own dynasty.

With regard to construction of a military nature, Justinian reinforced the African borders of the empire with new fortifications, and ensured the supply of water to the capital through the construction of underground cisterns. To prevent flooding in the strategic Dara region he built an advanced arch dam. He also built for himself during his reign the great bridge of Sangarius in Bithynia, which would serve as the main passageway for military supplies to the east. Justinian also restored cities damaged by earthquakes and wars, and built a new city near his birthplace that he would name Justiniana Prime, intended to replace Thessalonica as the political and religious center of the Illyrian Prefecture.

In Justinian's era, and partly under his patronage, several notable historians emerged in Byzantine culture, including Procopius and Agathias, and poets such as Paul Silencerius and Romanos the Melod flourished during his reign. On the other hand, important educational centers such as Plato's Academy in Athens or the famous law school in Beirut lost their importance during his reign. Despite Justinian's passion for the Roman past, the practice of choosing a Roman consul ended from the year 541.

Economy and administration

As it had happened historically, the economic health of the empire was essentially based on agriculture. Long-distance trade flourished, reaching as far north as Cornwall where tin was traded for Roman wheat. Justinian made this traffic more efficient by building a large granary on the island of Tenedos for storage and later transport to Constantinople. Justinian also tried to find new routes for trade with the East, which was being greatly affected by the wars against the Persians.

An important luxury product was silk, which was imported and then processed in the empire. In order to protect the manufacture of silk products, Justinian created a state monopoly in 541. In order to avoid the route through Persia, Justinian established friendly relations with the kingdom of Aksum, who intended them to act as trade brokers for the silk that was transported from India to the empire. These were however unable to compete with Persian merchants in India. Later, in the early 550s, two monks succeeded in smuggling silkworm eggs from Central Asia to Constantinople, allowing that silk became a domestically manufactured product.

Gold and silver were mined in the Balkans, Anatolia, Armenia, Cyprus, Egypt, and Nubia.

At the beginning of the reign of Justinian I, the state had a surplus of 28,800,000 solidi from the reigns of Anastasius I and Justin I. Measures were taken under Justinian to counter corruption in the provinces and to make more efficient tax collection. Greater administrative power was given to the leaders of the prefectures and provinces, while the power of the vicars of the dioceses was withdrawn, some of which were even eliminated. The general movement sought a simplification of the administrative infrastructure.According to historian Peter Brown (1971), the professionalization of tax collection did much to destroy the traditional structures of provincial life, since it weakened the autonomy of Greek city councils. It has been estimated that before the Justinian's conquests the state received an annual income of 5,000,000 solidi, while after them the annual income increased to 6,000,000 solidi.

Throughout the reign of Justinian, the cities and towns of the East prospered, despite the fact that Antioch suffered two earthquakes (526, 528) and was sacked and evacuated in the war against the Persians (540). Justinian rebuilt the city, although on a slightly smaller scale.

Despite all these measures, the empire suffered serious setbacks in the course of the sixth century. Chief among these was the severe plague that lasted between 541 and 543 and decimated the Empire's population, likely creating severe labor shortages and rising costs. The lack of labor also led to a significant increase in the number of "barbarian" conscripts who joined the Byzantine army after that date. The war in Italy and the wars against the Persians placed a significant strain on the Empire's resources, and Justinian was criticized for underemphasizing the West. than to the East, to which he gave much greater military importance.