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= Justinian I =
 * This article is about the Roman emperor. For other uses, see Justinian (disambiguation).



Justinian I (Latin: Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus, Greek: Ιουστινιανός; May 11 482–November 13 565) was Eastern Roman Emperor from April 1, 527 until his death, and member of the Justinian Dynasty.

Justinian is one of the most important rulers of Late Antiquity. His long-standing legacy is the Corpus Iuris Civilis, a uniform rewrite of the Roman law that is still at the basis of civil law, the legal system of many modern states. 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. His edification program has left masterpieces as the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Under Justinian patronage, the Byzantine culture produced historians of the likelyness of Procopius and Aghatias, as well as poets like Paul the Silentiary.

The devastating bubonic plague that hit at the end of Justinian rule marked the end of an age of splendour never to be regained by the Empire.

Rise to power


Petrus Sabbatius was born in the Latin-speaking village of Tauresium (near modern day Skopje). He was the son of Sabbatius and Vigilantia, and had a sister called Vigilantia as well; her mother was the sister of Justin, who had moved to Constantinople from his native town, and had entered in the excubitores, the imperial bodyguard, rising throught the ranks reaching the command. Justin took care of his nephew's education, and adopted him before 521, so that Petrus Sabbatius received the names Flavius and Iustinianus.

Justinian entered in the scholares (palace guards), and was a candidatus (honorary guard) under the command of the magister officiorum in 518, when Emperor Anastasius I died, and his uncle Justin became emperor; Justinian took part in the epurations following the coronation, being involved in the death of the imperial chamberlain Amantius, who had put a bid for power against Justin. According to Peter the Patrician, Justinian refused the purple offered to him by the excubitores in that occasion, but this account is considered not credible by historians. The support of his uncle allowed him a quick career: Justinian is comes in 519. In 520, the magister militum praesentalis and consul Vitalian, who had been exiled by Anastasius for his anti-Monophysite attitude and later restored by Justin, was murdered. Justinian succeeded to Vitalian both as magister militum (520) and as consul (521); the timely death of Vitalian, who put down Justinian's strongest rival to the purple, was attributed to Justinian's orders by Procopius.

Justinian played an important role during his uncle's reign, so important that some historians, such as Procopius, even claimed he actually ruled in place of his uncle. He started a building program, spending great deals of money, lavishingly decorating churches and palaces: among his buildings, the church of the Holy Apostoles in Constantinople. Justinian gave gifts to the barbarians: he was in good terms with the king of the Vandals Hilderic, who was Catholic instead than Arian as his people. The support for the Council of Chalcedon was another important characteristic of his rule. Justinian excanged several letters with Pope Hormisdas, with the aim of reducing the fraction caused by Acacius schysm.

In this period, a fourty years old Justinian celebrated his marriage to the twenty years old Theodora, a mime actress. The wedding was initially obstacled by Justin's wife, Empress Euphemia, since at the time actresses were considered at the same level as prostitutes. After the death of Euphemia (524), Justin helped his favourite nephew, by passing a law that allowed repented actresses to marry anyone, giving birth to legitimate offsprings.

On 1 April 527, Justinian was made co-emperor with Justin. The two Augusti appeared together on the coins. On August 1, Justin died for the complicancies of an old battle wound to a foot, and on the same day Justinian smoothly succeeded him.

Early years of reign (527-532)
Khosrau I, with whom Justinian signed the "Endless Peace", that marked the end of the Iberian War (526-532). Khosrau's father, Kavadh I, asked Justinian to adopt his son, but Justinian refused. When Khosrau became king, he was forced to sign a peace with Justinian, since his power was not stable: however, in order to start the "Endless Peace" with the Sassanid Empire, Justinian accepted to pay the huge sum of 11,000 pounds of gold to Khosrau.]]

The early years of reign of Justinian were characterized by activities both in foreign relationships and internal politics. He fought a war against Sassanid Persia, ended with an expensive peace that would let him turn his attention to the west, and produced a religious jurisdiction against Pagans and Samaritans.

Iberian War (526-531)
The Iberian War had been started in 526, when the Iberian king asked for help to Anastasius against the Sassanid Persians, and had evolved around the border fortresses of Dara and Nisbis. After Justinian's ascession, the Sassanid King Kavadh I tried to make peace with the new emperor, proposing him to adopt his own favourite son, Khosrau, but Justinian refused. After the Romans ended their siege of Nisbis and the Saracens' raid on Antiochia failed, in 529, Justinian replaced the magister militum Hypatius, a nephew of Anastasius, with the dux Mesopotamiae Belisarius. Belisarius' campaign, recorded by his legal advisor Procopius in his History of Justinian's Wars, started with a major Byzantine victory in the Battle of Dara (Syria, 530), near the fortress that Anastasius had built on the Persian border. Belisarius, however, lost the two subsequent battles (Nisbis, 530, and Callinicum, 531), and Justinian recalled him to Constantinople. The death of Kavadh (September 531), and the ascession to an insecure throne of Khosrau marked an end to the war: Justinian and Khosrau signed the "Endless Peace" treaty, according to which the Byzantine Empire was to pay 11,000 pounds of gold in exchange for peace.

Laws against Pagans and Samaritans
On the religiuos side, Justinian issued decrees against Paganism that gave a severe blow to the ancient religion. Making a secret sacrifice to the Pagan gods was punished with death, and Christians who lapsed into Paganism were executed as well. The Pagans could not hold civil offices; Pagan teachers would not receive money from the imperial treasure, and they would lose their properties and be exiled if refused conversion. One effect of these laws was the end of the Neoplatonic Academy in Athens (529). Seven scholars from the Academy, among whom its head Damascius, emigrated to the Persian court of Khosrau, but left soon because of the conditions they lived in and of the "Endless Peace", according to which Justinian had promised to the philosophers to practice undisturbed their religion within the empire.

Another target of Justinian religious policy were the Samaritans, followers of a religion derived by the Torah who lived as farmers in the provinces Palestina Prima and Secunda. Before 529, Justinian issued a law that ordered the destruction of Samaritan synagogues and forbade the Samaritans to bequath their properties to non-Orthodoxes. The Samaritans, under the leadership of the self-proclaimed "King of Israel" Julianus ben Sabar, revolted. The rebellion was initially successful, and the Samaritan army ravaged the cities of Scythopolis, Caesarea Palestina, Neapolis, Bethlehem, and Emmaus, while the Persian ally al-Mundhir IV ibn al-Mundhir, the sheikh of the Arab Lakhmid tribe, raided into Syria (530). However, the Byzantine army succeeded into crushing the Samaritan forces, with the help of the Ghassanid philarch Abu Kharab, and by 531 the rebellion had been put down. Julianus himself was killed, and 20,000 Samaritans were enslaved. The quelling of the rebellion, even if a success for Justinian, caused the devastation of the agricultural economy of Palestine, and two decades later Procopius was still lamenting the decadence of the deserted farms of that region.

"Nika" revolt (532)
The "Nika" revolt was a city-wide rebellion that took Constantinople for a week in January 532, and almost caused the fall of Justinian. The rebellion was sedated with a bloodbath. In the end, the rebellion let Justinian gain two very important collaborators, his general Belisarius and, above all, his wife and conselour Theodora.



In Roman times, chariot racing gathered much interest in the population. The supporters were divided into four factions, Whites, Reds, Greens and Blues, each responsible of the organization of a chariot team, but involved in other business as well. The factions collected people from different social classes: Anastasius was a supporter of the Reds, while Justinian and Theodora supported the Blues. In the past, the antagonism among the faction had been cause of street violence: Procopius says that Theodora and Justinian favoured the unrest of the Blues under Justin.

Seven members of the Blue and Green factions had been arrested and sentenced to death by the city prefect Eudaemon for murder. On 10 January 532 they were hanged outside the city, but the scaffold collapsed, and two of them, a Blue and a Green, found safety in a nearby church, which was immediately encircled by police forces. Three days later, on 13 January, while the two men were still blocked inside the church, the Blue and Green members asked to Justinian, present at the Hippodrome of Constantinople for a race day, to release their fellows and to dismiss the prefect Eudaemon, the praetorian prefect of the East John the Cappadocian, responsible for the heavy taxation, and the Quaestor of the Sacred Palace Tribonian. Justinian ignored the requests of the mob. At the twenty-second (out of twenty-four) race, the partisan chants "Green" and "Blue" changed into a unified "Nika" (a Greek exhortation meaning "win", "conquer", or "achieve victory"), a watchword for the start of the uprising. Justinian and the court were forced to flee from the Hippodrome to the Palace.

Justinian tried to calm the situation, by having the planned races on the following day, but this move caused the factions to increase the violence, and Justinian was forced to leave the city in the hands of the rebels, who set to fire the praetorium, the palace of the prefect, and kept on destroying the city for a week. On January 18, Justinian appeared before the people, offering an amnesty for all the crimes, but the two factions refused, as not even the arrival of loyal troops from Thrace in the previous days had quell the revolt. The revolt had also the support of the senatorial opposition to Justinian, whose modest origins were not welcomed by the aristocracy: Hypatius, the nephew of Emperor Anastasius, who had been dismissed by Justinian against his will the evening before, was elected by the mob as new emperor in the Hippodrome. Justinian was keen to flee the capital, but Theodora convinced him to stay and try to recover his power. Justinian took the initiative and ordered his generals Belisarius and Mundus to divide the troops into two columns and enter in the Hippodrome from different directions. The revolt was ended in a bloodbath, with thirty thousand rioters killed; also Hypatius and his senatorial supporters were put to death.

The end of the Nika riots left Justinian firmly in power, with the popular and senatorial oppositions vastly weakened. The devastation suffered by his capital was great, as the rioters did not save even the churches, but this gave Justinian the occasion to start his construction program: few days later, Justinian started the reconstruction of the old and small church of Hagia Sophia into a great and lavishingly decorated building. Of the two commanders that lead the massacre in the Hippodrome, Mundus was sent to Illyricum as magister militum, while Belisarius started his impressive campaign in Africa.

Reconquest of Africa
After settling the Eastern frontier with the "Endless Peace"" bought from the Sassanids, and after the dismissal of the short-lived but huge danger posed by the Nika revolt, Justinian moved the focus of his military policy towards the West, onto the African Kingdom of Vandals. The Vandals occupied the African provinces formely belonged to the Roman Empire. From their bases, the Vandal fleets had plundered the Mediterranean cities, in an escalation including the sack of Rome (410). In the past, the empire had already tried to get rid of the Vandals, but with no success and with a major defeat in 468, when a huge fleet and a huge army commanded by Basiliscus, had attacked Carthage by order of Emperor Leo I, but had been defeated and decimated: This old disaster was still present in Byzantine memory.

The relationship with the Vandals had improved since the rise to power of King Hilderic (523–530). The Vandals were of Arian faith, and they had persecuted the Catholics, but Hilderic had ended this persecution, recalling exiled bishops, reopening Catholic churces, and allowing Catholic synods to be held in Africa again. In 530, however, Hilderic had been deposed by his cousin Gelimer, and imprisoned. Justinian, having received a request for help by Hilderic, wavered between the suggestion of John the Cappadocian to avoid a war in Africa, and the pression from African merchants, churchmen and dispossessed landowners to recover the former provinces. It is possible that the final decision to move against the Vandals was due to religious considerations, for defeating them would end persecutions against the African Catholics.

The African campaign was entrusted to Belisarius, whose consideration with Justinian had raised back from the Sassanian defeats with the termination of the Nika revolt. The Byzantine army was formed by 10,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry, and 3,000 barbarian foederati, and set sail towards Sicily in 533, on the summer solstice (21 June). At his arrival in Sicily, Belisarius received the news that Gelimer did not expect the Roman attack, and had therefore sent his brother Tata with an army of 5,000 men and 120 ships to quell a revolt in Sardinia. Belisarius moved towards Africa, landing at Caput Vada (modern Ras Kaboudia in Tunisia), and from there marching towards the Vandal capital, Carthage. Gelimer put to death Hilderic, then moved of of his capital to fight on open field, but was defeated in the Battle of Ad Decimum, and forced to flee, while Belisarius entered Carthage. A second victory was achieved by Belisarius at the Battle of Ticameron, against Gelimer and Tata, and after a winter siege put to Gelimer hideout in the Berber territory, the last Vandal king surrended, thus ending the Kingdom of Vandals. There were rumors that Belisarius wanted to become king of an independent kingdom in Africa, so the general returned Constantinople, despite Justinian had allowed him to stay in Africa. Justinian organized a triumph for Belisarius, and Theodora and he received the homage of Belisarius and Geiseric.

Moorish Wars
The Vandals had been destroyed, and some of them even incorporated into the Byzantine Empire, but the province of Africa was not safe, since the Berbers had been raiding the territories of the newly created African prefecture. The successor of Belisarius, his domesticus Solomon, succeeded in countering the Berber raids with the construction of a line of fortresses, but a rebellion in the army (536) threatened the Byzantine power in the region, forcing Salomon to flee to Sicily. Belisarius, at the time involved in the Ostrogothic campaign, was recalled to Africa, and defended Carthage, but was obliged to leave. In his place, Justinian appointed his own cousin Germanus Justinus, who succeeded in sedating the rebellion. After two years of peace, in 539 Solomon returned to Africa, appointed by Justinian as governor of the province of Mauretania Prima.

Another revolt of the Berbers broke out in 543, because of the govern of the nephew of Solomon and the favourite of Theodora, the dux Tripolitaniae Sergius. Sergius, who became governor after the death of Solomon in 544, was disliked by civilian and militars alike, and Justinian was obliged to appoint (545) an incompetente commander, Aerobindus, murdered the following year, before finding the right man for the job. In 546, Justinian entrusted the leadership of the Roman forces in Africa to John Troglita, who won a major victory over the Berbers in 548, thus ending the rebellion of the Berbers and giving to the province of Africa a peaceful and prosperous period that lasted until the Arab conquest of North Africa.

Conquest of Rome


In 535, Justinian had already accomplished several results. He had secured the Eastern frontier with the "Endless Peace"; he had survived to the dangerous internal treath posed by the Nika revolt and the senatorial opposition; he had punished the Vandals, who had sacked the ancient capital of the Roman Empire, regaining the African province. He now dedicated himself to the conquest of Italy, the ancient root of his empire, and was probably sure of succeeding: the situation among the Ostrogoths was not easy, as the deaths of Theodoric the Great (526), his nephew and heir Athalaric (2 October 534), and of his daughter Amalasuntha had left on the throne Theodahad, who had not the firm grasp of Theodoric of the Gothic nobles. The war, however, was to last several years, and at the time of its end (552), the land of Italy was devastated.

Justinian organized a double attack to the Ostrogothic kingdom, ordering the magister militum per Illyricum Mundus to move to Dalmatia, and to Belisarius to invade Sicily. Belisarius occupied the island, finding opposition only in Palermo, and completed the conquest entering in Syracuse (31 December 535). Theodahad tried to negotiate a peace, sending Pope Agapetus I to Justinian, who refused.

The following spring, despite the death of Mundus in a battle and after a quick return in Africa to deal with the military mutiny (last days of March), Belisarius undertook the conquest of continental Italy, crossing into Southern Italy, and quickly reaching Naples, putting in under siege, and conquering and sacking it. For is inability to contrast Belisarius' advance, Theodahad was deposed and killed by his nobles, who elected Witiges king (November 536). Justinian had moved also diplomatically, and had obtained the support of the Franks against the Ostrogoths. Witiges, having large part of his army blocked in Provence and Venetia, decided it was wise to settle the matter first with the Franks, boughting them, and left Rome for Ravenna. Here he exchanged the Ostrogothic territory in Gaul with peace, and tried, unsuccessfully, to negotiate a peace with Justinian too. Belisarius entered in Rome peacefully (December 9 536), and sent the leader of the Ostrogothic garrison to Justinian with the key of the city. Rome had returned back to the Empire.

Falls of Milan and Ravenna


The conquest of Rome triggered the answer of Witiges. The Gothic king gathered an army and put the city under siege. Justinian sent some troops and supplies in support of Belisarius: on their arrival, Witiges, whose men had been struck by hunger and diseases just as the sieged men of Belisarius, retreated, asking for truce, in order to sent an embassy to Constantinople (March 537). When Witiges broke the truce, Belisarius ordered to John, nephew of Vitalian and commander of a Byzantine force wintering in Picenum, to attack the Gothic territory. John quickly reached Rimini, at one day from Ravenna, and Witiges was obliged to leave Rome and defend his capital. John, disobeying to Belisarius, did not retreat in front of the stronger Gothic army, and was put under siege in Rimini. Belisarius did not help the sieged Byzantine general until the arrival with fresh troops of the eunuch General Narses, a friend of John, when he succeeded in breaking the Gothic siege (mid-538). Justinian had now two generals in command in Italy, and the situation was worsened by their rivalship: the lack of cooperation between Belisarius and Narses caused the fall of Milan in Gothic hands and the destruction of the city (539). Justinian had sent a letter to his commanders, a passage of which is reported by Procopius:
 * "In sending Narses our purser of Italy we do not invest him with the command of the army. It is our wish that Belisarius alone shall lead the whole army as seems good to him, and it behoves you all to obey him in the interest of our State." — Procopius, De Bello Gothico, ii.18.28

The letter gave Belisarius the overall command of the Byzantine forces, but Narses used that "in the interest of our State" as a way to limit Belisarius' power, and to act independently every time he felt Belisarius' plans were not "in the interest of our State". Bury suggests the possibility that Justinian had added that sentence to guarantee independence of command to Narses (who was not a general, but rather Justinian's trusted praepositus sacri cubiculi and "keeper of the Emperor's privy purse") and to limit the authority of Belisarius, whom Justinian suspected after the rumors of the African campaign. However, the tragic fate of Milan caused Justinian to recall Narses, leaving to Belisarius the leadership of the Byzantine army in Italy.

Witiges sent an embassy to Khosrau, asking him to end the "Endless Peace", with the aim of opening a second front and of forcing Justinian to end the war in Italy to counter the threath in the East. In the mean time, as the Gothic embassy (two Ligurian priests) moved towards the Sassanid court, Belisarius sieged and conquered Auximum, moving towards the Gothic capital of Ravenna. Witiges received the proposal of Belisarius and of the Franks, who had invaded Northern Italy: rejecting the proposal of the latters, who had proposed an alliance against the Byzantines in exchange of a division of Italy between Franks and Goths, Witiges looked for an agreement with Justinian. As Justinian was worried with the prospect of a war in the East, the Byzantine emperor proposed to Witiges to divide both Italy (with the Po River as frontier) and the treasure in Ravenna. Witiges accepted, but later proposed Belisarius to take the purple and rule over Italy as Western Emperor. Belisarius entered in Ravenna (May 540), claiming to come to take the purple and reign over the Goths and Italy, but took Witiges as prisoner, and ruled over most of Italy. As Belisarius was to leave Italy to lead the Byzantine troops against the Sassanids, the Goths elected Ildibad as their king. When Belisarius reached Constantinople with Witiges, his queen Matasuntha, and the treasure, he did not receive the triumph he wanted. This was considered as the effect of Justinian's jealousy of his general's successes, but another explanation is possible: Justinian had proposed a peace that would have left a peaceful Witiges ruling over Northern Italy, and allowed the Byzantine armies to deal with the Sassanid menace; On the other side, Belisarius' move, originated by his will to take a total victory over Goths, had left Ildibad ruler of some territory in Italy, not bound by any obligation, and close to become another menace to the recently recovered province. With Belisarius far away, and the leadership of the Byzantine army divided among several generals, Ildibad managed to recover the Gothic army, and to conquer Treviso, before being killed by a man of his own royal guard (May 451).

Totila and the end of the war


After a short rule of the Rugian Eraric, the Goths elected as their king Totila. Totila was to prove a great opponent for Justinian: he was a good general and he tried to decrease the burden of the war on the population, thus gaining in popularity; on the opposite, the Byzantine generals in Italy were less skillful, and the Byzantine administration leveraged a heavy taxation on the new province. Justinian also made several mistakes in the choice of his men, leaving his best general, Belisarius, far from the Italian teathre and appointing the inane Maximin as Praetorian Prefect of Italy. The end result was that Totila recovered Tuscany, part of Umbria, Naples, Bruttii, Apulia and Calabria in three years (541-543), inflicting a major defeat to a larger Byzantine army and obliging the Byzantine generals to stay behind the safety of the walls of major cities.

In the end, Justinian decided to send back Belisarius to Italy. Even if the emperor did not trust his best general (Belisarius had spent a year in prison, suspected of treason), Belisarius was the only Byzantine leader able to match Totila. However, Justinian did not want to weaken the Eastern frontier (where the Second Persian War was being fought), nor to provide him with too much power, so he allowed Belisarius to bring few men with him in Italy (summer 544). The lack of troops, however, did not allow Belisarius to defend the Byzantine territories in Italy. After a year long siege, Rome fell in Totila's hands (17 December 546), but Belisarius retook the deserted city and, after defing it from Totila's attack, sent the keys of the city to Justinian (May 547). The emperor started sending small contingents of renforcements to Italy, but larger forces were needed to win against Totila, so Belisarius, whose letters to Justinian had gone unheard, sent his wife to Constantinople, to ask for Theodora's help, but the woman arrived to the capital when the empress had already dead (June 29). The death of the empress meant the rise of the fortunes of Germanus, Justinian's cousin, who had been ostracized by Theodora, but now was the most probable candidate to the succession of the 77 years old emperor: Antonina, the wife of Belisarius, convinced Justinian to recall Belisarius (early 549), and to send in Italy Germanus, with a strong army.

Totila, in the mean time, put Rome under siege for the third time, and conquered it by bribes (January 16 550). Germanus gathered troops, and married Matasuntha, the granddaughter of Theodoric: he would have brought a Gothic empress to the throne, and with this calim he expected to have a good influence on the Ostrogoths: however Germanus died before arriving to Italy. At this point, Justinian decided to raise Narses to the rank of commander-in-chief of the Gothic War, and, to counter his counselor's lack of experience in military operations, put his friend John nephew of Vitalian to the lead of the troops.

The arrival of Narses in Italy (late 551) marked the change of wind for the Gothic fortunes.

Judgments on Justinian


Bury considered Justinian responsible for the length of the Gothic War, which devastated Italy and left this important and newly recovered province in a state of decline. He accused Justinian, who did not trust Belisarius after his tricky conquest of Ravenna and his rejection of the peace agreed upon by Justinian himself, to have recalled his best general from Italy in 540, preventing a quick conquest of its Northern territories; furthemore, Justinian did not appoint a new commander in chief of the Byzantine army in Italy, but allowed his generals to act independently, so that the uncoordinated Byzantine acts caused the plundering of the Italian lands and ended in a Gothic recovery, needing twelve years more to end the war in a definitive way.

He is considered a saint in the Orthodox Church, commemorated on November 14.