Download The Reign of Justinian, 527-565

The Reign of Justinian, 527-565
Nelson, Lynn Harry, Prof. Emeritus, University of Kansas. “The Reign of Justinian, 527-565.”
Lectures in Medieval History. 1 January 2001. Web. 4 August 2015.
http://www.vlib.us/medieval/lectures/justinian.html
The reign of Justinian was an extremely significant period. It marked the final end of the
Roman empire; the establishment of the new, Byzantine empire; the beginning of Western
Europe's unique position within the civilizations of the Old World; and made possible the
spread of Islam and the rise of the Franks. Although this article concentrates on the role
played by the Gothic Wars in Justinian's reign, there is a great deal more to be known about
this remarkable man and about Theodora, his even more remarkable wife. Procopius, a
prominent historian of Justinian's time, has left a Secret History of those days, a book which
is rather scandalous and may even be true.
The empire was united under the Eastern emperor in theory; Justinian tried to make it so in
fact. His armies invaded the Vandal [North Africa], Ostrogothic [Italy], and Visigothic [Spain] kingdoms in
turn, and, in a series of bitter wars (540-554), reconquered much of the Mediterranean lands of the
West. At the time, it seemed as if he had very little choice in the matter. In theory at least, the
Germanic kings ruled as viceroys of the Eastern emperors. There was a difficult problem in
that the Germans were Arians, practicing and preaching a form of Christianity considered
heretical by the established Roman Church. The Vandals were the most zealous of the Arians
and were quick to seize orthodox churches in order to convert them into Arian places of
worship. The Vandals were so few in number that they resorted to terror in order to keep their
subjects in order. The Vandal kingdom became a police state in which orthodox Christians
were stripped of property, rights, and even freedom and life. When a delegation of orthodox
Christians from Africa appealed to Justinian to fulfill his role as defender of the faith, he
decided that the time had come to resolve the peculiar situation and bring the West back
under real Roman control.
But the Westerners did not want a return of Roman taxation, Roman justice, and imperial
interference in their affairs. Consequently, even the Roman inhabitants of some areas joined
their German overlords in attempting to fight back the eastern armies determined to restore a
situation that many people simply did not want to see restored. The Easterners did not want
to waste money defending these western conquests and were impoverished by the cost of
these wars.
One should note, however that even when he was sending tribute in gold to the
Persians and spending immense sums in the Gothic Wars, Justinian still had enough money to
embark on an unprecedented building program. Justinian's dreams of conquest have long ago
been forgotten by most people. What he is remembered for it the magnificent Church of the
Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia, mistakenly called St. Sophia) that still dominates the skyline of
Istanbul, the former Constantinople, and his project of collecting and codifying the scattered
laws, imperial edicts, decisions of the early Roman Senate, and opinions of learned jurists
and organizing them into a written law code. Centuries later, this code, the Corpus Iuris
Civilis was "rediscovered" in the West and sparked the growth of a legal profession that established the
basis for many of the modern world's systems of justice and law.
When Justinian died in 565 and new invaders entered the west, the eastern empire did very
little to stop them. Neither westerners nor easterners had any further interest in restoring the
empire.
Although committed to the idea of a Roman empire, Justinian recognized that his realms
were basically Greek and that the imperial administration would be more effective, if the fact
were recognized. Once the government stopped forcing the use of the Latin language and
Roman institutions upon its people, the Eastern empire rapidly became more Eastern in its
customs and outlook.
In the course of the sixth century, the other classical civilizations recovered from the
barbarians the lands they had lost in the fifth. The Sui dynasty of China reunited North and
South China by 589, the [Sassanid] Persians recovered the Iranian plateau by 557; and by 606, Harsha
had established a new Indian empire. Only in the Mediterranean did the wars of reconquest
fail. Western Europe was the only part of a classical empire to fall permanently under
barbarian control. The continuity of imperial institutions was broken only in Western Europe.
It was the only area to begin an independent development.
During his Western wars, Justinian had bought peace with the [Sassanid] Persians through regular
payments of gold. This sort of policy is almost always a mistake, and Justinian's adoption of
it was a disaster. While the Byzantines poured out money, men and materiel in their Western
wars, the Persians sat back and allowed Byzantine bullion to swell their treasury. The Eastern
empire was steadily drained of coinage and its economy began to falter. The government had
to become more and more aggressive in collecting taxes from a economically exhausted
people, and the oppressed taxpayers - who saw no benefits coming from the emperor's
Western conquests - became deeply resentful. The Persians recognized that the Eastern
empire had been badly weakened by the Gothic Wars, and attacked the empire soon after
Justinian's death in 565, before the empire had had a chance to recover from its exertions.
The Persians managed to devastate and/or occupy much of the Byzantine empire until the
emperor Heraclius turned the tide of battle against them. In a brilliant action, he took what
troops he could gather and, leaving the Persians besieging Constantinople, he went by sea to
Syria and marched overland to capture the virtually undefended Persian capitals of Persepolis
and Ctesiphon. By 632, the Byzantines were triumphant, but both the Persian and Byzantine
peoples and economies were exhausted and were quite unready to fight the confident and
dedicated Muslim armies who soon appeared on their frontiers.
Heraclius' subjects had been oppressed by both religious and political regimentation as well
as a ruinous burden of taxes. Many welcomed the tolerant Muslims, with their light taxes, as
liberators and quickly converted to Islam.
Justinian's reconquests in the west were not permanent, but his destruction or weakening
of the most sophisticated and highly-Romanized of the Germanic invaders was. The
Ostrogothic and Vandal states were eliminated and the power of the Visigothic kingdom
greatly diminished. The only culturally advanced German tribe left untouched were the
Burgundians [east-central France], and they were too few in number to exercise any real power.
Justinian's abortive "Reconquest" had left the [Merovingian] Franks as the most powerful force in the
West. This left the direction of Western affairs in the hands of those people least able to maintain
Roman traditions. Only the Frankish alliance with the Church of Rome preserved some
measure of continuity with Europe's classical past.
We often view history as a series of "achievements," and think that great men and women
control the course of events. In the case of Justinian, the view may be partly true. The results
of his decisions were crucial in the development of Western Europe. One might well argue
that the Middle Ages would never have happened had it not been for Justinian. But it was not
because of his "achievements," but because of his failures that history turned out the way that
it did. His ill-conceived western venture led to a clear split between the Westerners and the
Eastern Romans; his abandonment of the Latin language as the language of government and
administrations made that division permanent, and so he failed to reunite the Roman empire
as the leaders of the other classical civilizations had done for their empires. He weakened the
Eastern empire and strengthened the Persians, setting a stage for a devastating war that
weakened the Eastern empire to such an extent that it could not effectively resist the spread
of Islam. Finally, he overthrew those Western Germanic governments that were committed to
attempting to preserve as much of the Roman imperial civilization as possible. And this led,
indirectly, to the rise of the medieval Church.