SYNOPSIS:

The Roman Empire had many emperors. Justinian was perhaps one of the most enigmatic. He created a law code, sponsored a massive building campaign, survived the plague, and restored the empire more than any in his time. Yet, despite that he was regarded as setting up his civilization for a major fall. In this video we cover the life of Emperor Justinian - from humble beginnings to impactful end. 

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#emperor #justinian #romanempire

Previously, on the History of Byzantium, The Eastern Roman Empire was enjoying its first spell of peace, prosperity and relative calm in many a year under the rule of the elderly Emperor Anastasius.

Known for his frugality, the Emperor had boosted the Byzantine economy by issuing new coins and was slowly filling the treasury as he felt was his duty.

The Emperor's monophysite beliefs began to cause problems towards the end of his reign.

With the Bishop of Antioch Severus egging him on, Anastasius tampered with the liturgy in Constantinople's churches, setting off riots and a rebellion in Thrace by 1 of the army commanders, Vitalian.

Although Vitalian was defeated when he marched on the capital, he was not killed and remains at large.

Then on the night of the 9th of July 518, Anastasius died after a 27 year reign.

It's Surprising to learn that the Emperor, so fastidious with much of imperial business, had no succession plan in place.

Some of the histories claim that he did have an illegitimate son, but that he died during 1 of Constantinople's major riots.

However, Anastasius did have 3 nephews, Probus, Pompeius and Hypatius, the latter we've already met.

He was sent out to put down Vitalion after the initial revolt but was defeated, captured and ransomed.

This setback can't have hurt Hypatius' standing too much, as by the time of the Emperor's death he was serving as master of the soldiers in the East, 1 of the most important jobs in the empire.

However, Hypatius was not to become emperor, nor apparently can he have wanted to be.

After all, a man who both had a legitimate claim to the throne and commanded the Eastern Army would surely have been in a position to press his case.

In fact, Hypatius and the other nephews continued to take official positions in service of the new regime.

Although it's complete speculation on my part, I wonder if Anastasius felt that he perhaps didn't have the right to begin a new dynasty of his own.

He was after all only chosen to become Emperor by Zeno's widow Ariadne.

He might have felt that he was merely an imperial stopgap.

There were still relatives of the Theodosian line alive and just maybe Anastasius felt the crown would return to them.

We'll never know of course but what we do know is that once the Emperor was found dead, the palace was gripped with the fever of ambition.

The chance to become head of the civilized world was up for grabs and with Hypatia several hundred miles away, The time to act was now.

A palace filled with senators and officials jockeying for position, and the 3 key men were Sella, the master of offices, Amantius, the imperial chamberlain, and Justin, count of the ex-cubitors, the Imperial bodyguard.

On the morning of the 10th of July, Sella began to hold discussions with the Senate while news filtered around the capital and the Hippodrome filled with an expectant crowd.

Sensing an opportunity, Amantius, who was a eunuch, put forward 1 of his men, Theocritus, as a candidate.

Theocritus was not well known and so the Chamberlain decided to oil the decision making wheels by spreading some cash around.

He needed to secure the support of the imperial guards who would naturally have a key role in the proceedings, and also wanted to get his bribes out to well placed men outside of the palace.

He had to make sure that the crowds would not begin chanting anything embarrassing, such as, who is Theocritus?

He decided to hand the cash over to Justin, Count of the Excubators.

Who could be better to have on your side at this stage than the man commanding the best troops in the city?

Of course Justin, upon receiving a bag full of cash, asked himself the question, who better to become the new emperor than, well, me?

Justin dispersed the money as requested, but instead of telling the recipients to support Theocritus, it was his name they were to acclaim.

The crowd in the Hippodrome were becoming restless and the guards present in the imperial box began yelling out the names of potential candidates to much booing and cheering.

On the other side of the door leading from the box back to the palace, the Chamberlains refused to open up until they had word from the senators as to who they should deliver the imperial regalia to.

With pressure growing on Sella and the assembled senate, the name of Justin was dropped into the conversation.

Here, surely, was the best compromise candidate.

A fellow senator, a well-respected, if hardly noble man, who the palace soldiers would happily support.

Justin agreed and made his way through the passageway to the imperial box and emerged dressed in the robes of the emperor.

The ex-cubitors lifted him on their shields and placed a gold chain on his head to many cheers.

Justin promised good government and a donative to the troops of course, before leading a procession to the Hagia Sophia and then back to the palace for a banquet of celebration.

We don't know if that's exactly how it happened as the histories have slight variations in the order of events.

But what is in little doubt is that when an Emperor dies with no successor, the Imperial bodyguard will more often than not have the final say.

Flavius Justinus, known to us in English as simply Justin, was around 66 when he became emperor.

His hometown was Bediriana in the province of Dardania.

He came from a family of peasant farmers and was probably a swineherd.

The Western Empire was still around, just, and his hometown was a place where the Pope's influence on church life was strong, and the people spoke Latin rather than Greek.

When he turned 20, Justin and 2 friends walked all the way to Constantinople to seek a better life.

He joined the army and was able to sign up for the new palace regiment, the Excubators, which had just been formed by the Emperor Leo.

He served with distinction in the Isaurian and Persian wars and rose through the ranks to become the leader or count of the elite palace regiment.

If Justin's story was the ultimate rags to riches tale, then his wife Lupikina could claim to have topped him.

She was an ex-slave, an ex-concubine slave, who Justin had purchased and then married.

Now she was the Empress and changed her name to the more imperial sounding euphemia.

At first glance, the new emperor would seem distinctly lacking in pedigree.

A senator he may have been, but educated he was not.

It's possible that he was illiterate, he certainly had no formal education, nor did he have any experience of governing.

He might have seemed to some a disastrous choice.

However, Justin had several important advantages which helped smooth over his less-than-aristocratic appearance.

The first was that he was uncompromisingly orthodox in his beliefs.

For those who had risen against Anastasius' monophysitism, Justin was a reassuring sight.

Second, he was well respected by the army, 1 of the most important constituencies to please in these situations.

Third, Justin was in his 60s, older than Anastasius had been when he donned the purple and he had no son.

If Justin turned out to be a terrible administrator, perhaps no 1 would have to suffer for very long.

Of course, if the Emperor really was illiterate, then he was going to need an educated colleague to help him manage the affairs of state, and fortunately for Justin he had an energetic, ambitious, and highly educated nephew named Justinian.

A member of the palace guards at this stage, we don't know what role Justinian played in the elevation of his uncle, but no 1 would be surprised if he had been wheeling and dealing with the best of them.

Justinian was to prove himself a highly motivated campaigner for his uncle's interests and by extension his own.

While the older man was settling comfortably into the palace his wily nephew was building a political base of support to make sure that the new regime laid down firm roots.

I'll introduce Justinian properly in the next episode, but he was certainly involved in the administration from day 1.

The first thing to do was to get rid of Amantius and Theocritus.

If Justin really had spectacularly defrauded the Grand Chamberlain, he could hardly leave a bitter and vengeful rival just hanging around.

So Amantius was accused of heresy and was executed along with Theocritus, while several of his domestics were exiled.

That was the only blood spilt, initially at least.

Many of Anastasius' ministers were kept in place, including Marinus, the man behind the most important financial reforms, who now became Praetorian Prefect of the East.

Anastasius' nephews were assured of their safety too, and then came the big moment.

Vitalian was invited to come to Constantinople and put a formal end to his rebellion.

While the message went out to the rogue general, the ground was prepared in the capital.

Justin let it be known that he would be happy if pressure was brought to bear on the Patriarch to overturn Anastasius' ecclesiastical policies.

A crowd soon gathered around the Hagia Sophia and began agitating for the Patriarch John II to restore the names of the Patriarchs Euphemius and Macedonius, who had been dismissed by the late emperor, and to set a day when the Council of Chalcedon could be commemorated.

Chalcedon of course being the ecumenical council which had defined orthodoxy against monophysitism.

The patriarch agreed amidst much excitement and chanting, particularly of the Trisagion with no monophysite alterations.

2 days later, John assembled a council of all the bishops he could find and began undoing much of the ecclesiastical legislation since the Council of Chalcedon.

In other words, the Henotikon was to be ignored and the Monophysites were not to be appeased.

Jesus had 2 natures, 1 human and 1 divine and that was that.

So now Justin's Orthodox credentials were seen to be as impeccable as Vitalian's.

The general should abandon his hideout and come home.

Doubtless nervous about this invitation, Vitalian asked for some kind of concrete reassurance of his safety.

So Justin, Justinian and Vitalian exchanged oaths of allegiance and with that the general was welcomed back into the fold.

More than that, Justin greeted him warmly and appointed him commander of 1 of the pre-central armies for good measure.

Justin of course wanted more than just the restoration of orthodoxy.

He wanted to put an end to the occasion schism and get the church back in communion with the Pope.

Growing up as a Latin speaker in the Western Balkans, it was anathema to Justin and his countrymen to be cut off from their spiritual leader.

An embassy was sent to Rome to begin negotiations, though this was not as simple as it might sound.

1 of the men who was not happy to see Justin become Emperor was Theodoric over in Italy.

Now in his 60s, the great Ostrogoth knew that upon his death, the Byzantines might try to repudiate Gothic rule in Italy and take it back for the Empire.

The Roman clergy were not interested in any compromise with heretic monophysites, so as long as the emperors were pushing compromises like the Hannoticon, the Italians might actually prefer to have Goths guarding their churches.

However, with a true champion of orthodoxy on the throne, there was every likelihood that the Italians would revert back to seeing the Emperor as their true ruler and the Goths as foreign interlopers.

Sensitive to this situation, Justin wooed Theodoric with 2 offers.

The first was that Theodoric's chosen successor, his son-in-law Euthyric, would share the consulship with Justin himself the following year.

Moreover, Justin would adopt Euthyric according to German custom, so not a legal adoption in Roman law, but still enough to assure his succession to the throne.

Euthyric, by accepting the adoption, would also give formal submission of the Gothic state to the Empire.

With the diplomatic path cleared, Pope Hormizdas could finally get what he wanted.

The Hynoticon was no more and the memories of Acacius, Zeno and Anastasius were all damned for their part in it.

They weren't erased from history, as Augustus had once tried to do to Mark Antony, their names would just no longer be remembered by the Orthodox Church during its annual celebrations.

The schism was at an end, and Justin set in motion a persecution of Monophysite monks and clergy.

Throughout the East, men were asked to either accept the Orthodox Creed as laid out at the Council of Chalcedon or leave their posts.

This worked out adequately in the case of the bishops, with only 55 reportedly refusing to accept.

However, nothing was done about Egypt, whose monophysite majority were too firmly entrenched to be easily removed.

Justin left the patriarch of Alexandria, Timothy, alone to guard his flock, which by now included the agitator Severus, who had fled Antioch upon Justin's accession.

Bishops were 1 thing, monks were another.

The reason Zeno had come up with the Hanotikon was because attempts to force monophysites to change their views had conspicuously failed.

Half a century later and their beliefs were as firmly held as ever.

Jesus had warned his followers that there would be pain in store and so the brave or the pious now became martyrs for their monophysite beliefs.

1 monastic community at Omeda were driven from their home but were still campaigning to be reinstated a decade later.

Some monks were forced to live amongst the people once more but of course continued to practice and preach their beliefs, in some cases converting citizens who would otherwise have remained orthodox.

The persecutions would rumble on for some time, and we will return to them again.

As I mentioned earlier, we will deal with Justinian's rapid political rise in the next episode.

But by 520, he had been given command of the other praescental army, so that he and Vitalian would be comrades at meetings in the palace.

An interesting aspect of Vitalian's revolt was that he had not done what practically every other rebellious soldier in Roman history had.

He had simply styled himself as the defender of orthodox belief and had never stated officially his desire to replace Anastasius.

Vitellian had therefore become a powerful figure, his cause had won the day even if he had not been personally victorious.

He was made consul for the year and his position at court seemed assured.

In July of 520, on his way to dinner at the palace, Vitellian was ambushed and killed.

Gibbon reports that he was stabbed 17 times.

No official verdict was given on who was responsible, but the fact that the deed was done near the palace and that Justinian was the 1 who most benefited from his death, the verdict of historians is unanimous.

Vitalian had rebelled against an emperor and could not be trusted and now there was no longer any serious rival to Justin or his nephew.

Last time, we introduced the man who became emperor after Anastasius, Justin, a Balkan peasant turned soldier whose first acts upon securing the throne were to reorient the imperial attitude toward Christianity.

Justin's firmly held Orthodox beliefs led him to restore communion with Rome and persecute those Eastern Monophysites who he could get his hands on.

The power behind the throne, it has always been assumed, was that of Justin's nephew, Justinian.

These next few podcasts are all going to feature fairly detailed introductions to the characters who will inhabit Justinian's court.

Some of the books on the period almost list off a dramatist's personae, like the program of a play, to make sure you know who everyone is and how they relate to 1 another.

I'm trying to spread these introductions out amongst the narrative so you don't have to memorise too much all at once.

Stay with me and future podcasts will be far more rewarding because of the work we put in now.

Flavius Petrus Sabbatius was born around 483 to Justin's sister Vigilantia and her husband Sabatius.

They were a family of peasant farmers in the village of Tiresium, not far from where Justin had been born.

We know nothing of his early years, but at some point while he was a teenager, his family headed east at the invitation of Uncle Justin, who now that he had become a respectable soldier in the capital, was determined to find positions for his family.

This included Justinian's sister, also called Vigilantia, and Germanus.

It was young Petrus though who Justin clearly favoured as he formally adopted the boy and in gratitude Flavius Petrus Sabbatius added the name Justinianus to his name and so is known to us in English as Justinian.

It was that last name that he would be known as by his contemporaries and by history.

Justinian's face is more familiar to us than perhaps any other Roman emperor because of the survival of the famous mosaic in Ravenna.

He was described as of medium height, neither fat nor thin, with a round shaved face, a sharp nose and curly hair.

Like many a poor man made good, Justin wanted to ensure that his adopted son had the kind of advantages that he didn't.

This meant that young Justinian received the best Roman education which money could buy.

This would of course have included the traditional liberal arts with grammar, rhetoric, law, history and so on, but by now this education would also involve plenty of religious instruction and some exposure to the neo-platonist philosophy which had tried to marry classical philosophy with Christian theology.

Some threads of this thought sought to identify the 1 true God with the concept of a transcendent realm where the conflicts of lower domains, such as ours, were reconciled.

Historians have surmised that Justinian's education helped shape the distinctive worldview he would later demonstrate, and so a little speculation on what his education may have taught him could be valuable.

Born in the West, like his uncle, Justinian would have inherited his family's predisposition toward orthodoxy, the Pope, and a nostalgia for the Western Empire.

Once his education took hold, he would have been steeped in the history of a people who throughout their writings saw their empire and their laws as upholding civilization against barbarity.

His philosophy teachers spoke of a realm where the 1 true God brought everything to peace, and his religious education would have taught him that the job of the Roman Empire was now to mirror the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

For Justinian, therefore, an ideology may have been developing which saw the Roman Empire as needing to retake what was lost, not just for civilization's sake, but because it was what God willed.

The unity and peace of that higher realm should be brought to the earthly empire where all people should unite under 1 law and 1 belief in 1 God.

A little armchair psychology also gives us clues as to what drove the young man once power was within his grasp.

Justinian was, after all, an outsider in Constantinople.

He grew up on a farm in a Latin-speaking village that no 1 had ever heard of.

He stepped into a Greek-speaking world where many of his classmates would have had an intrinsic understanding of language and culture that he didn't.

It's easy to imagine in Justinian an insecurity stemming from this disadvantage and a feverish desire to prove that he was as good, if not better than others.

William Rosen, who writes very entertainingly about Justinian, suggests that he may have had a convert's enthusiasm for Constantinople and the circles he was now moving in.

It must all have seemed so exciting compared to the rural surroundings of his formative years.

To bring us back from speculation closer to the evidence, the sources described Justinian as a good student, bright, alert and interested in multiple topics.

He would turn into a workaholic and insomniac as time went on.

Contemporaries refer to him as being constantly at work, and Procopius reports stories of his late-night fretting around the corridors of the palace.

We should note, however, that Justinian was keen to emphasize this himself, writing in some of his edicts about his tireless work to restore the empire.

There is little evidence to suggest otherwise, though.

1 law which Justinian was directly involved in drafting concerns the regulation of the price that Constantinople's small farmers could charge for fresh vegetables.

If there was something he could work on personally, than he would.

We're also sure of his devotion to Christianity.

Procopius tells us that he took Lent very seriously, fasting for 2 days and then abstaining from wine for the rest of the season, living off wild herbs dressed with oil and vinegar.

The personal writing of Justinian, which survives, reveals frantic theological speculations on Christian doctrine.

Through this and the laws he passed, we see a genuine concern for his faith and a real hostility to the enemies of the Church.

This has been, of course, a far more thorough introduction than most Emperors receive, which as I pointed out last time, is a reflection of both the length of his coming reign and the sheer amount of sources that have come down to us.

Once his education was complete, Justinian was enrolled in various palace regiments, simultaneously avoiding hard military campaigning, while also gaining a good deal of insight into the politics and intrigue of court life.

Justinian may well have used this knowledge to ensure that Justin would emerge as Anastasius' successor.

Justinian was about 36 at the time of Justin's accession, and was 1 of the imperial guards.

2 months later, we get a pretty clear insight into how close nephew and uncle were when we find Justinian himself writing to the Pope, inviting him not just to send representatives to Constantinople but to come himself to end the schism.

Clearly Justinian felt confident in his uncle's support to make so bold a venture and he wasn't done there.

In 519, a group of monks from the province of Scythia gained notoriety by formulating a new explanation of Christ's nature that might be able to heal the rift between the Orthodox and the Monophysites.

This doctrine became known as the Theopaschite formula and argued that 1 of the Trinity had been crucified.

This formula, in theory, could satisfy both sides of the theological divide.

Basically, there was a divine part of Jesus and by occupying his human body, it could be brought to suffer on the cross.

The key here was to keep the 1 nature of Christ, the mono nature of Christ, as divine, to keep the monophysites happy, while also showing that he did genuinely suffer in a human body to satisfy the Orthodox.

The relevant point here for us is not really the theology but the politics.

The Orthodox in Constantinople were very wary of any doctrine that looked to be compromising what they had just celebrated the restoration of.

However the Theopaschite formula received the support of Vitalian, whose Orthodox credentials could not be doubted and the delegation of monks were encouraged to make their case to the papal delegates who had arrived to end the schism.

They were of course not in the capital to negotiate and turn the monks away.

The monks though, determined in their beliefs, headed for Rome where they were to remain for 14 months, irritating the Pope until he could expel them.

In the meantime though, Justinian listened to them, and wrote to the Pope to oppose the new formula.

Then, a few days later, after thinking it over, he changed his mind, and wrote again, urging the Pope to accept the proposal for the peace of the church.

Of course the Pope wasn't interested in any of this, but it tells us several interesting things about Justinian.

Of course there is the sheer brazenness of the Emperor's nephew writing to the Vicar of Christ to tell him his opinions on theological matters.

There is also some suspicion that Justinian didn't want Vitalian to be the man who had supported the formula which unified the church.

But perhaps less cynically, we can see this incident as evidence of Justinian's flexibility and genuine desire to unite the church.

Despite the persecution that his uncle was unleashing on the Monophysites, Justinian could already see the value in a formula which would allow the church to be brought back together.

Justinian would not forget the potential he saw in the Theopaschite formula and will return to it down the road.

By 519, Justinian had been promoted to count of the domestics and a year later he was master of 1 of the pre-central armies, from bodyguard to general in 2 years.

It's Now that we catch up with the narrative from the last podcast, and the verdict of history remains unanimous that Justinian engineered Vitalian's murder in order to secure his own position as heir presumptive.

However pious a Christian he might be, we can be sure that moral concerns didn't stand in the way of his ambitions.

Justinian had risen from peasant to potential Caesar, and he wasn't about to let that slip from his grasp.

Soon afterwards, he gained the rank of patrician, which paved the way for him to become a senator, and in 521 he was made consul.

1 of the few responsibilities left to this once-great office was to host and pay for the consular games to be held at the start of the new year.

Justinian was determined to win the favor of the crowds and also wanted to draw a contrast between the new regime and the prudish penny-pinching era of Anastasius.

Estimates suggest Justinian splashed out about 4, 000 pounds of gold on decorations, stage machinery, 20 lions, 30 panthers, and a number of other exotic beasts who were to be fought and killed in the Hippodrome.

A certain amount was laid on in handouts and freebies for the people.

The games were intended to be the most lavish public spectacles that Constantinople had ever seen, and few claimed that they weren't.

The chariot races were said to be of such superb quality and caused such excitement that the final contest had to be cancelled for fear of serious public disturbances.

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The Life of Emperor Justinian - Vol 1-9 - The History of Byzantium