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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 lecture 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.
![[Map of the Mediterranean world in
530]](images/nelson/0530.gif)
Map of the Mediterranean World in 530
1. The empire was united under the Eastern emperor in theory, Justinian
tried to make it so in fact. His armies invaded the Vandal, Ostrogothic,
and Visigothic 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 Vandalic kingdom became a police state in which orthodox Christians
were striped 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. Sophy) 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 bases for
many of the modern world's systems of justice and law.
![[Map of the Mediterranean
world in 565]](images/nelson/0565.gif)
Map of the Mediterranean World in 565
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.
2. 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.
3. 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 Persians
recovered the Iranian plateau by 557; and by 606, Harsha has 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.
![[Map of the Mediterranean world in 600]](images/nelson/0600.gif)
Map of the Mediterranean World in 600
4. During his Western wars, Justinian had bought peace with the 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.
5. 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, and they were too few in
number to exercise any real power.
Justinian's abortive "Reconquest" had left the 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.
6. Conclusion
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.
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