The best edition of the Digest is that of Mommsen (Berlin 1868-1870), and of the Codex that of Krüger (Berlin 1875-1877).
2. In his financial administration of the empire, Justinian is represented to us as being at once rapacious and extravagant. His unwearied activity and inordinate vanity led him to undertake a great many costly public works, many of them, such as the erection of palaces and churches, unremunerative. The money needed for these, for his wars, and for buying off the barbarians who threatened the frontiers, had to be obtained by increasing the burdens of the people. They suffered, not only from the regular taxes, which were seldom remitted even after bad seasons, but also from monopolies; and Procopius goes so far as to allege that the emperor made a practice of further recruiting his treasury by confiscating on slight or fictitious pretexts the property of persons who had displeased Theodora or himself. Fiscal severities were no doubt one cause of the insurrections which now and then broke out, and in the gravest of which, (532) thirty thousand persons are said to have perished in the capital. It is not always easy to discover, putting together the trustworthy evidence of Justinian’s own laws and the angry complaints of Procopius, what was the nature and justification of the changes made in the civil administration. But the general conclusion seems to be that these changes were always in the direction of further centralization, increasing the power of the chief ministers and their offices, bringing all more directly under the control of the Crown, and in some cases limiting the powers and appropriating the funds of local municipalities. Financial necessities compelled retrenchment, so that a certain number of offices were suppressed altogether, much to the disgust of the office-holding class, which was numerous and wealthy, and had almost come to look on the civil service as its hereditary possession. The most remarkable instance of this policy was the discontinuance of the consulship. This great office had remained a dignity centuries after it had ceased to be a power; but it was a very costly dignity, the holder being expected to spend large sums in public displays. As these sums were provided by the state, Justinian saved something considerable by stopping the payment. He named no consul after Basilius, who was the name-giving consul of 541.
In a bureaucratic despotism the greatest merit of a sovereign is to choose capable and honest ministers. Justinian’s selections were usually capable, but not so often honest; probably it was hard to find thoroughly upright officials; possibly they would not have been most serviceable in carrying out the imperial will, and especially in replenishing the imperial treasury. Even the great Tribonian labours under the reproach of corruption, while the fact that Justinian maintained John of Cappadocia in power long after his greed, his unscrupulousness, and the excesses of his private life had excited the anger of the whole empire, reflects little credit on his own principles of government and sense of duty to his subjects. The department of administration in which he seems to have felt most personal interest was that of public works. He spent immense sums on buildings of all sorts, on quays and harbours, on fortifications, repairing the walls of cities and erecting castles in Thrace to check the inroads of the barbarians, on aqueducts, on monasteries, above all, upon churches. Of these works only two remain perfect, St Sophia in Constantinople, now a mosque, and one of the architectural wonders of the world, and the church of SS Sergius and Bacchus, now commonly called Little St Sophia, which stands about half a mile from the great church, and is in its way a very delicate and beautiful piece of work. The church of S. Vitale at Ravenna, though built in Justinian’s reign, and containing mosaic pictures of him and Theodora, does not appear to have owed anything to his mind or purse.
3. Justinian’s ecclesiastical policy was so complex and varying that it is impossible within the limits of this article to do more than indicate its bare outlines. For many years before the accession of his uncle Justin, the Eastern world had been vexed by the struggles of the Monophysite party, who recognized only one nature in Christ, against the view which then and ever since has maintained itself as orthodox, that the divine and human natures coexisted in Him. The latter doctrine had triumphed at the council of Chalcedon, and was held by the whole Western Church, but Egypt, great part of Syria and Asia Minor, and a considerable minority even in Constantinople clung to Monophysitism. The emperors Zeno and Anastasius had been strongly suspected of it, and the Roman bishops had refused to communicate with the patriarchs of Constantinople since 484, when they had condemned Acacius for accepting the formula of conciliation issued by Zeno. One of Justinian’s first public acts was to put an end to this schism by inducing Justin to make the then patriarch renounce this formula and declare his full adhesion to the creed of Chalcedon. When he himself came to the throne he endeavoured to persuade the Monophysites to come in by summoning some of their leaders to a conference. This failing, he ejected suspected prelates, and occasionally persecuted them, though with far less severity than that applied to the heretics of a deeper dye, such as Montanists or even Arians. Not long afterwards, his attention having been called to the spread of Origenistic opinions in Syria, he issued an edict condemning fourteen propositions drawn from the writings of the great Alexandrian, and caused a synod to be held under the presidency of Mennas (whom he had named patriarch of Constantinople), which renewed the condemnation of the impugned doctrines and anathematized Origen himself. Still later, he was induced by the machinations of some of the prelates who haunted his court, and by the influence of Theodora, herself much interested in theological questions, and more than suspected of Monophysitism, to raise a needless, mischievous, and protracted controversy. The Monophysites sometimes alleged that they could not accept the decrees of the council of Chalcedon because that council had not condemned, but (as they argued) virtually approved, three writers tainted with Nestorian principles, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret, and Ibas, bishop of Edessa. It was represented to the emperor, who was still pursued by the desire to bring back the schismatics, that a great step would have been taken towards reconciliation if a condemnation of these teachers, or rather of such of their books as were complained of, could be brought about, since then the Chalcedonian party would be purged from any appearance of sympathy with the errors of Nestorius. Not stopping to reflect that in the angry and suspicious state of men’s minds he was sure to lose as much in one direction as he would gain in the other, Justinian entered into the idea, and put forth an edict exposing and denouncing the errors contained in the writings of Theodore generally, in the treatise of Theodoret against Cyril of Alexandria, and in a letter of Bishop Ibas (a letter whose authenticity was doubted, but which passed under his name) to the Persian bishop Maris. This edict was circulated through the Christian world to be subscribed by the bishops. The four Eastern patriarchs, and the great majority of the Eastern prelates generally, subscribed, though reluctantly, for it was felt that a dangerous precedent was being set when dead authors were anathematized, and that this new movement could hardly fail to weaken the authority of the council of Chalcedon. Among the Western bishops, who were less disposed both to Monophysitism and to subservience, and especially by those of Africa, the edict was earnestly resisted. When it was found that Pope Vigilius did not forthwith comply, he was summoned to Constantinople. Even there he resisted, not so much, it would seem, from any scruples of his own, for he was not a high-minded man, as because he knew that he dared not return to Italy if he gave way. Long disputes and negotiations followed, the end of which was that Justinian summoned a general council of the church, that which we reckon the Fifth, which condemned the impugned writings, and anathematized several other heretical authors. Its decrees were received in the East but long contested in the Western Church, where a schism arose that lasted for seventy years. This is the controversy known as that of the Three Chapters (Tria capitula, τρία κεφάλαια), apparently from the three propositions or condemnations contained in Justinian’s original edict, one relating to Theodore’s writings and person, the second to the incriminated treatise of Theodoret (whose person was not attacked), the third to the letter (if genuine) of Ibas (see Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, ii. 777).
At the very end of his long career of theological discussion, Justinian himself lapsed into heresy, by accepting the doctrine that the earthly body of Christ was incorruptible, insensible to the weaknesses of the flesh, a doctrine which had been advanced by Julian, bishop of Halicarnassus, and went by the name of Aphthartodocetism. According to his usual practice, he issued an edict enforcing this view, and requiring all patriarchs, metropolitans, and bishops to subscribe to it. Some, who not unnaturally held that it was rank Monophysitism, refused at once, and were deprived of their sees, among them Eutychius the eminent patriarch of Constantinople. Others submitted or temporized; but before there had been time enough for the matter to be carried through, the emperor died, having tarnished if not utterly forfeited by this last error the reputation won by a life devoted to the service of Orthodoxy.
As no preceding sovereign had been so much interested in church affairs, so none seems to have shown so much activity as a persecutor both of pagans and of heretics. He renewed with additional stringency the laws against both these classes. The former embraced a large part of the rural population in certain secluded districts, such as parts of Asia Minor and Peloponnesus; and we are told that the efforts directed against them resulted in the forcible baptism of 70,000 persons in Asia Minor alone. Paganism, however, survived; we find it in Laconia in the end of the 9th century, and in northern Syria it has lasted till our own times. There were also a good many crypto-pagans among the educated population of the capital. Procopius, for instance, if he was not actually a Pagan, was certainly very little of a Christian. Inquiries made in the third year of Justinian’s reign drove nearly all of these persons into an outward conformity, and their offspring seem to have become ordinary Christians. At Athens, the philosophers who taught in the schools hallowed by memories of Plato still openly professed what passed for Paganism, though it was really a body of moral doctrine, strongly tinged with mysticism, in which there was far more of Christianity and of the speculative metaphysics of the East than of the old Olympian religion. Justinian, partly from religious motives, partly because he discountenanced all rivals to the imperial university of Constantinople, closed these Athenian schools (529). The professors sought refuge at the court of Chosroes, king of Persia, but were soon so much disgusted by the ideas and practices of the fire-worshippers that they returned to the empire, Chosroes having magnanimously obtained from Justinian a promise that they should be suffered to pass the rest of their days unmolested. Heresy proved more obstinate. The severities directed against the Montanists of Phrygia led to a furious war, in which most of the sectaries perished, while the doctrine was not extinguished. Harsh laws provoked the Samaritans to a revolt, from whose effects Palestine had not recovered when conquered by the Arabs in the following century. The Nestorians and the Eutychian Monophysites were not threatened with such severe civil penalties, although their worship was interdicted, and their bishops were sometimes banished; but this vexatious treatment was quite enough to keep them disaffected, and the rapidity of the Mahommedan conquests may be partly traced to that alienation of the bulk of the Egyptian and a large part of the Syrian population which dates from Justinian’s persecutions.
4. Justinian was engaged in three great foreign wars, two of them of his own seeking, the third a legacy which nearly every emperor had come into for three centuries, the secular strife of Rome and Persia. The Sassanid kings of Persia ruled a dominion which extended from the confines of Syria to those of India, and from the straits of Oman to the Caucasus. The martial character of their population made them formidable enemies to the Romans, whose troops were at this epoch mainly barbarians, the settled and civilized subjects of the empire being as a rule averse from war. When Justinian came to the throne, his troops were maintaining an unequal struggle on the Euphrates against the armies of Kavadh I. (q.v.). After some campaigns, in which the skill of Belisarius obtained considerable successes, a peace was concluded in 533 with Chosroes I. (q.v.). This lasted till 539, when Chosroes declared war, alleging that Justinian had been secretly intriguing against him with the Hephthalite Huns, and doubtless moved by alarm and envy at the victories which the Romans had been gaining in Italy. The emperor was too much occupied in the West to be able adequately to defend his eastern frontier. Chosroes advanced into Syria with little resistance, and in 540 captured Antioch, then the greatest city in Asia, carrying off its inhabitants into captivity. The war continued with varying fortunes for four years more in this quarter; while in the meantime an even fiercer struggle had begun in the mountainous region inhabited by the Lazi at the south-eastern corner of the Black Sea (see [Colchis]). When after two-and-twenty years of fighting no substantial advantage had been gained by either party, Chosroes agreed in 562 to a peace which left Lazica to the Romans, but under the dishonourable condition of their paying 30,000 pieces of gold annually to the Persian king. Thus no result of permanent importance flowed from these Persian wars, except that they greatly weakened the Roman Empire, increased Justinian’s financial embarrassments, and prevented him from prosecuting with sufficient vigour his enterprises in the West. (See further [Persia]: Ancient History, “The Sassanid Dynasty.”)
These enterprises had begun in 533 with an attack on the Vandals, who were then reigning in Africa. Belisarius, despatched from Constantinople with a large fleet and army, landed without opposition, and destroyed the barbarian power in two engagements. North Africa from beyond the straits of Gibraltar to the Syrtes became again a Roman province, although the Moorish tribes of the interior maintained a species of independence; and part of southern Spain was also recovered for the empire. The ease with which so important a conquest had been effected encouraged Justinian to attack the Ostrogoths of Italy, whose kingdom, though vast in extent, for it included part of south-eastern Gaul, Raetia, Dalmatia and part of Pannonia, as well as Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, had been grievously weakened by the death first of the great Theodoric, and some years later of his grandson Athalaric, so that the Gothic nation was practically without a head. Justinian began the war in 535, taking as his pretext the murder of Queen Amalasuntha, daughter of Theodoric, who had placed herself under his protection, and alleging that the Ostrogothic kingdom had always owned a species of allegiance to the emperor at Constantinople. There was some foundation for this claim, although of course it could not have been made effective against Theodoric, who was more powerful than his supposed suzerain. Belisarius, who had been made commander of the Italian expedition, overran Sicily, reduced southern Italy, and in 536 occupied Rome. Here he was attacked in the following year by Vitiges, who had been chosen king by the Goths, with a greatly superior force. After a siege of over a year, the energy, skill, and courage of Belisarius, and the sickness which was preying on the Gothic troops, obliged Vitiges to retire. Belisarius pursued his diminished army northwards, shut him up in Ravenna, and ultimately received the surrender of that impregnable city. Vitiges was sent prisoner to Constantinople, where Justinian treated him, as he had previously treated the captive Vandal king, with clemency. The imperial administration was established through Italy, but its rapacity soon began to excite discontent, and the kernel of the Gothic nation had not submitted. After two short and unfortunate reigns, the crown had been bestowed on Totila or Baduila, a warrior of distinguished abilities, who by degrees drove the imperial generals and governors out of Italy. Belisarius was sent against him, but with forces too small for the gravity of the situation. He moved from place to place during several years, but saw city after city captured by or open its gates to Totila, till only Ravenna, Otranto and Ancona remained. Justinian was occupied by the ecclesiastical controversy of the Three Chapters, and had not the money to fit out a proper army and fleet; indeed, it may be doubted whether he would ever have roused himself to the necessary exertions but for the presence at Constantinople of a knot of Roman exiles, who kept urging him to reconquer Italy, representing that with their help and the sympathy of the people it would not be a difficult enterprise. The emperor at last complied, and in 552 a powerful army was despatched under Narses, an Armenian eunuch now advanced in life, but reputed the most skilful general of the age, as Belisarius was the hottest soldier. He marched along the coast of the Gulf of Venice, and encountered the army of Totila at Taginae not far from Cesena. Totila was slain, and the Gothic cause irretrievably lost. The valiant remains of the nation made another stand under Teias on the Lactarian Hill in Campania; after that they disappear from history. Italy was recovered for the empire, but it was an Italy terribly impoverished and depopulated, whose possession carried little strength with it. Justinian’s policy both in the Vandalic and in the Gothic War stands condemned by the result. The resources of the state, which might better have been spent in defending the northern frontier against Slavs and Huns and the eastern frontier against Persians, were consumed in the conquest of two countries which had suffered too much to be of any substantial value, and which, separated by language as well as by intervening seas, could not be permanently retained. However, Justinian must have been almost preternaturally wise to have foreseen this: his conduct was in the circumstances only what might have been expected from an ambitious prince who perceived an opportunity of recovering territories that had formerly belonged to the empire, and over which its rights were conceived to be only suspended.
Besides these three great foreign wars, Justinian’s reign was troubled by a constant succession of border inroads, especially on the northern frontier, where the various Slavonic and Hunnish tribes who were established along the lower Danube and on the north coast of the Black Sea made frequent marauding expeditions into Thrace and Macedonia, sometimes penetrating as far as the walls of Constantinople in one direction and the Isthmus of Corinth in another. Immense damage was inflicted by these marauders on the subjects of the empire, who seem to have been mostly too peaceable to defend themselves, and whom the emperor could not spare troops enough to protect. Fields were laid waste, villages burnt, large numbers of people carried into captivity; and on one occasion the capital was itself in danger.
5. It only remains to say something regarding Justinian’s personal character and capacities, with regard to which a great diversity of opinion has existed among historians. The civilians, looking on him as a patriarch of their science, have as a rule extolled his wisdom and virtues; while ecclesiastics of the Roman Church, from Cardinal Baronius downwards, have been offended by his arbitrary conduct towards the popes, and by his last lapse into heresy, and have therefore been disposed to accept the stories which ascribe to him perfidy, cruelty, rapacity and extravagance. The difficulty of arriving at a fair conclusion is increased by the fact that Procopius, who is our chief authority for the events of his reign, speaks with a very different voice in his secret memoirs (the Anecdota) from that which he has used in his published history, and that some of the accusations contained in the former work are so rancorous and improbable that a certain measure of discredit attaches to everything which it contains. The truth seems to be that Justinian was not a great ruler in the higher sense of the word, that is to say, a man of large views, deep insight, a capacity for forming just such plans as the circumstances needed, and carrying them out by a skilful adaptation of means to ends. But he was a man of considerable abilities, wonderful activity of mind, and admirable industry. He was interested in many things, and threw himself with ardour into whatever he took up; he contrived schemes quickly, and pushed them on with an energy which usually made them succeed when no long time was needed, for, if a project was delayed, there was a risk of his tiring of it and dropping it. Although vain and full of self-confidence, he was easily led by those who knew how to get at him, and particularly by his wife. She exercised over him that influence which a stronger character always exercises over a weaker, whatever their respective positions; and unfortunately it was seldom a good influence, for Theodora (q.v.) seems to have been a woman who, with all her brilliant gifts of intelligence and manner, had no principles and no pity. Justinian was rather quick than strong or profound; his policy does not strike one as the result of deliberate and well-considered views, but dictated by the hopes and fancies of the moment. His activity was in so far a misfortune as it led him to attempt too many things at once, and engage in undertakings so costly that oppression became necessary to provide the funds for them. Even his devotion to work, which excites our admiration, in the centre of a luxurious court, was to a great extent unprofitable, for it was mainly given to theological controversies which neither he nor any one else could settle. Still, after making all deductions, it is plain that the man who accomplished so much, and kept the whole world so occupied, as Justinian did during the thirty-eight years of his reign, must have possessed no common abilities. He was affable and easy of approach to all his subjects, with a pleasant address; nor does he seem to have been, like his wife, either cruel or revengeful. We hear several times of his sparing those who had conspired against him. But he was not scrupulous in the means he employed, and he was willing to maintain in power detestable ministers if only they served him efficiently and filled his coffers. His chief passion, after that for his own fame and glory, seems to have been for theology and religion; it was in this field that his literary powers exerted themselves (for he wrote controversial treatises and hymns), and his taste also, for among his numerous buildings the churches are those on which he spent most thought and money. Considering that his legal reforms are those by which his name is mainly known to posterity, it is curious that we should have hardly any information as to his legal knowledge, or the share which he took in those reforms. In person he was somewhat above the middle height, well-shaped, with plenty of fresh colour in his cheeks, and an extraordinary power of doing without food and sleep. He spent most of the night in reading or writing, and would sometimes go for a day with no food but a few green herbs. Two mosaic figures of him exist at Ravenna, one in the apse of the church of S. Vitale, the other in the church of S. Apollinare in Urbe; but of course one cannot be sure how far in such a material the portrait fairly represents the original. He had no children by his marriage with Theodora, and did not marry after her decease. On his death, which took place on the 14th of November 565, the crown passed to his nephew Justin II.