Anastasius died in 518, leaving the question of his succession undecided.He
was succeeded by Justin I (518–27), a peasant from Illyria, who had risen
through the ranks to become count of the excubitors. He was uneducated,
perhaps even illiterate, and Procopius would have us believe that the real
power behind the throne was Justin’s nephew, Peter Sabbatius, who took
the name of Justinian; Justin had earlier brought him to the capital and
lavished an expensive education on him. It is hard to say how true this is,
for there is no independent evidence to support the claim.7
Justin’s first act was to repudiate his predecessors’ attempts to achieve
unity among the Christians by ignoring, or even implicitly condemning, the
council of Chalcedon: theHenotikon was revoked and Chalcedonian orthodoxy
became imperial policy. Justin announced his election and religious
policy to Pope Hormisdas (514–23), who sent legates to Constantinople;
a council was held there to confirm the ending of the Acacian schism
and to condemn those who had promoted it. These included not only
Acacius and those successors who had agreed with him, but also – and
in this exceeding papal demands – the emperors Zeno and Anastasius.
Prominent non-Chalcedonian monophysites, including Severus of Antioch
and Philoxenos of Mabbug, were deposed and exiled. Reconciliation with
Rome only reopened the wounds that the Henotikon had tried to heal,
but very soon a refinement of Chalcedonian orthodoxy was put forward
that was to become the focus of Justinian’s endeavours to achieve religious
unity. A group of monks from Scythia, led by John Maxentius, brought
their proposal to Constantinople: it involved supplementing the Chalcedonian
definition with the affirmation that ‘one of the Trinity suffered in the
flesh’. This affirmation would appeal to the monophysites’ conviction of
the indivisible unity of Christ, which had found expression in the theopaschite
addition to the Trisagion. Justinian was attracted by this proposal and
sent the monks off to Rome, where they failed to convince Pope Hormisdas,
though others found it acceptable, notably Dionysius Exiguus and
Boethius. The proposal remained dormant until the 530s, when Justinian’s
religious endeavours began in earnest.
In spring 527 Justin fell ill, and Justinian was proclaimed augustus in
April; four months later Justin died, and Justinian succeeded him.His reign
lasted until 565, thirty-eight years in all – or forty-seven, if one includes
his stint as the power behind Justin’s throne. This was an exceptionally
long reign and its duration would have been an achievement in itself.
But there was much else besides: reform of the legal code; reconquest of
Roman territories in North Africa, Italy and Spain; grandiose rebuilding
projects, notably the rebuilding of the centre of Constantinople, including
the Great Church of the Holy Wisdom, St Sophia; the closure of the
Platonic Academy in Athens; and a religious policy culminating in the
fifth ecumenical council, held at Constantinople in 553 (or, to adopt a
different perspective, in his lapse into heresy in his final months). The
temptation to see all these as parts of a jigsaw which, when correctly fitted
together, yield some grand design is hard to resist. And then there
is glamour, in the person of Theodora, the woman he married. In doing
this, Justinian circumvented the law forbidding marriage between senators
and actresses; even Procopius acknowledges her beauty, while regarding her
as a devil incarnate. He wrote a malicious account of Theodora’s meddling
in the affairs of state in his Secret history. Procopius also relates how
during the so-called Nika riot in 532, when Justinian was terrified by the
rioting against his rule and was contemplating flight, Theodora persuaded
him to stay and face either death or victory with the dramatic words, ‘the
empire is a fair winding-sheet.’ All this prepares the way for assessments of
Theodora that rank her with Byzantine empresses like Irene or Zoe, both of
whom (unlike Theodora) assumed imperial power in their own right, albeit
briefly.8
The ‘grand design’ view of Justinian’s reign sees all his actions as the
deliberate restoration of the ancient Roman empire, though a Roman
empire raised to new heights of glory as a Christian empire confessing
the orthodox faith. According to this view, reconquest restored something
like the traditional geographical area of the empire; law reform encapsulated
the vision of a Christian Roman empire, governed by God’s vicegerent,
the emperor; the capital’s splendid buildings, not least the churches,
celebrated the Christian court of New Rome, with the defensive buildings
described by Procopius in the later books of his Buildings serving
to preserve in perpetuity the newly reconquered Roman world. The
defining of Christian orthodoxy, together with the suppression of heterodoxy,
whether Christian heresy or pagan philosophy, completes the
picture.
In discussing Justinian’s reign it is therefore difficult to avoid the notion
of a grand design. Virtually all our literary sources reflect something of this
idea. It is there in Procopius (even the Secret history sees Justinian as a grand
designer, albeit malign), in the legal texts and even in the ecclesiastical
texts written by those who experienced persecution at Justinian’s hand: the
monophysites shared with those who embraced imperial Christianity the
vision of a Christian empire ruled by a Christian emperor.9 It is hardly to
be denied that there were moments when Justinian fancied he was fulfilling
some such grandiose design. In 536, after reconquering Sicily, Justinian
affirmed, ‘we have good hope that God will grant us to rule over the rest of
what, subject to the ancient Romans to the limits of both seas, they later lost
by their easy-going ways.’10 Whether we should think of Justinian’s reign
as the fulfilment of a consciously preconceived grand design is another
matter. This raises two interrelated questions: do all the above-mentioned
elements fit together into some grand design; and, even if they do, did
Justinian really have the means to bring this grand design to fruition? As
we shall see, neither of these questions can be answered in the affirmative
without heavy qualification.
Perhaps the most convincing evidence for such a grand design, at least
at the beginning of Justinian’s reign, is found in his revision of Roman law.
Justinian set this in hand as soon as he could, strikingly fulfilling one of the
recognised roles of a ruler: that of ultimate judge and legislator. This was
a task especially associated with the Roman emperor, for Romans prided
themselves on living under the law, something given signal expression in
Priscus’ account of the embassy to the court of Attila in the fifth century.11
Within months of assuming sole rule, Justinian had announced to the
senate in a formal legal enactment (a ‘constitution’) his intention of having
a new law-code prepared, that would bring matters up to date, reconcile
contradictions, winnow out irrelevant legislation, and introduce clarity.
He set up a ten-man commission, led by the quaestor Tribonian, which
completed its work in little over a year. This code no longer survives, but
five and a half years later, in 534, it was issued in revised form, arranged in
twelve books and containing constitutions from the intervening period; it
is this edition that has survived to exercise such an influence on subsequent
European law. By the time of the second edition, there had been a further
contribution to the work of legal revision, the publication of the Digest or
Pandects, which reduced to order the legal opinions of centuries of Roman
lawyers. This was published in December 533. A further part of the legal
reform was the publication of the Institutes, a revision of the Commentaries
of the second-century jurist, Gaius, which was to be the official textbook
for students of law at the two official schools of law, in Constantinople and
Beirut. This revision and clarification of Roman law was complemented
by the later laws of Justinian, the novellae. Whereas the main body of
Tribonian’s work was in Latin, most of the novellae are in Greek, for the
reign of Justinian marks a watershed between the Roman empire with Latin
as the official language and the so-called Byzantine empire, in which Greek
was the principal and eventually the sole language.
The purpose of this legal reform should be seen as twofold. It was
practical: the code and the novellae provided legal norms to be interpreted
by judges with the use of the Digest. It seems, however, that this function
was not to continue much beyond the middle of the next century.
But its other purpose was to delineate a world-view, enshrining the inheritance
of Roman civilisation, the embrace of Christian orthodoxy, and the
paramount position of the emperor. This was an enduring legacy, and at
its heart was a vision of the complementarity of empire and priesthood,
basileia and hierosyn¯e, imperium and sacerdotium. This is expressed nowhere
better than in novella 6 (535):
The greatest of God’s gifts to men, given from on high in accordance with his
loving kindness, are priesthood and empire; the one ministers to things divine,
the other rules and cares for matters human, both proceed from one and the same
source, and set in order human life. So nothing is more sought after by kings than
the dignity of priests, if they beseech God continually on their behalf. For if the
one is always unblemished and has open access to God, while the other rightly and
fitly orders the received form of government, then there will be a fair harmony, and
everything that is good for the human race will be granted.We therefore have the
greatest care for the true dogmas of God, as well as for the dignity of the priests,
which we believe cares for them, as through it good gifts are given us from God, so
that what we have we possess securely, and what we have not yet attained we shall
come to acquire. Thus everything will be done rightly and fitly, if the beginning
of everything is proper and acceptable to God. We believe that this will be so,
if the observance of the holy canons is preserved, which has been handed down
by the apostles, who are rightly praised and venerated as eyewitness and ministers
of the word of God, and which has been safeguarded and interpreted by the holy
fathers.
Such comprehensive legislative activity can hardly be regarded as other than
part of a grand design of imperial rule.
The next essential ingredient, reconquest of lost imperial territory, as we
have seen above (p. 107), also inspired in Justinian the conviction that he
was the divine agent in reconstituting the Roman empire in a Christian
form. But was this a settled conviction, or a passing hope? The facts about
Justinian’s reconquest of North Africa, Italy and Spain are not in doubt,
although we are poorly informed about the Spanish expedition; their interpretation
is much more hazardous. In 533, Justinian despatched his general
Belisarius to North Africa with an impressive force of 10,000 infantry and
5,000 cavalry.12 However, the reasons for his determination that this enterprise
should not fail are perhaps more down-to-earth than the fulfilment
of some grand design of imperial restoration. Justinian had only just recovered
from the Nika riot, and Emperor Leo’s disastrous attempt in 468 to
dislodge the Vandals made it imperative that Belisarius’ expedition should
succeed if Justinian’s credibility as emperor were to recover. Even Procopius’
celebratory account seems to depict Belisarius’ swift success as fortuitous.
The Italian expedition, which followed up this success, seems to have been
a much more modest affair: only 7,000 troops were involved, compared to
the 6,000 sent with Narses in the same year to Alexandria, to protect the
monophysite patriarch Theodosius (535–6). At this stage it would seem that
the expedition was little more than a matter of showing the flag, even if its
early successes, following so closely on the victory over the Vandals, conjured
up in Justinian’s mind ideas of a grand design, as witness the novellae
of the period. In reality, the reconquest of Italy proved to be a long-drawnout
affair, during which Italy itself was devastated.13 By 554, however, when
Italy was formally restored to Byzantine rule (by a ‘pragmatic sanction’),
most of the Mediterranean littoral belonged to the Roman empire once
more.
Justinian’s rebuilding programmes likewise fit uneasily into the idea of a
grand design. Our principal source for Justinian’s extensive building activity
is Procopius’ Buildings, which takes the form of a panegyric and consequently
presents the fullest and most splendid account, drawing no distinction
between new building work, restoration or even routine maintenance.
As we saw earlier, the building of fortresses along the frontier, along the
Danube and in Mesopotamia, to which Procopius devotes so much space,
should not all be attributed to Justinian himself: as archaeological surveys
have shown (and indeed other contemporary historians assert, even
Procopius himself in hisWars),14 much of this was begun by Anastasius. And
the great wonders with which Procopius begins his account, when describing
the reconstruction of the centre of Constantinople, were consequent
upon the devastation wrought by the Nika riot of 532, which Justinian can
hardly have planned. But however fortuitous the occasion, the buildings
erected in the wake of the riot are works of enduring magnificence, none
more so than the church of the Holy Wisdom, St Sophia. Contemporary
accounts are breathtaking. Procopius says:
The church has become a spectacle of marvellous beauty, overwhelming to those
who see it, but to those who know it by hearsay altogether incredible. For it soars
to a height to match the sky, and as if surging up from amongst the other buildings
it stands on high and looks down on the remainder of the city, adorning it, because
it is a part of it, but glorying in its own beauty, because, though a part of the city
and dominating it, it at the same time towers above it to such a height that the
whole city is viewed from there as from a watch-tower.
He speaks too ‘of the huge spherical dome which makes the structure exceptionally
beautiful. Yet it seems not to rest on solid masonry, but to cover the
space with its golden dome suspended from heaven.’ Contemporaries were
struck by the quality of light in theGreat Church: ‘it abounds exceedingly in
sunlight and in the reflection of the sun’s rays from the marble. Indeed one
might say that its interior is not illuminated from without by the sun, but
that the radiance comes into being within it, such an abundance of light
bathes the shrine.’15 Paul the Silentiary, speaking of the church restored
after the collapse of the dome in 558, says ‘even so in the evening men are
delighted at the various shafts of light of the radiant, light-bringing house
of resplendent choirs. And the calm clear sky of joy lies open to all driving
away the dark-veiled mist of the soul. A holy light illuminates all.’16 This
stress on light as an analogy of divinity chimes in well with the vision found
in the writings ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite (commonly known as
Pseudo-Dionysius); a fact surely with bearing on the huge popularity these
writings were soon to assume.
The novel design of the church, with its dome forming an image of
the cosmos, was immensely influential: there are many smaller Byzantine
imitations of St Sophia, and the suggestion of the church as a mim¯esis of
the cosmos influenced later interpretations of the liturgical action taking
place within (see theMystagogia of the seventh-centuryMaximus the Confessor
and the commentary on the liturgy ascribed to the eighth-century
patriarch of Constantinople, Germanos).17 But it may not have been novel:
recent excavations in Istanbul have revealed the church of St Polyeuktos,
built by the noblewoman Anicia Juliana in the late 520s, which seems in
many respects to have foreshadowed Justinian’s Great Church.18 Original
or not, St Sophia and Justinian’s other buildings in the capital created a
public space in which to celebrate a world-view in which the emperor
ruled the inhabited world (the oikoumen ¯ e), with the support of the court,
the prayers of the church and to the acclamation of the people. These
buildings included more churches, the restored palace (in front of which,
in a kind of piazza, was erected a massive pillar surmounted by a bronze
statue of an equestrian Justinian), an orphanage, a home for repentant
prostitutes, baths and, finally, a great cistern to secure an adequate water
supply in summer. According to Procopius’ description of the mosaic in
the great Bronze Gate forming the entrance to the palace, there, amid
depictions of Justinian’s victories achieved by his general Belisarius, stood
Justinian and Theodora, receiving from the senate ‘honours equal to those
of God’.
World History
