Justinian's reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized renovatio imperii, or " restoration of the Empire ".

Justinian's ambition to restore the Roman Empire to its former glory was only partly realised.

The greater part of Italy would be lost to the invading Lombards three years after Justinian's death ( 568 ), the newly founded province of Spania was completely recovered by the Spanish Visigoths in 624 under the leadership of Suintila, and within a century and a half Africa would be forever lost for the empire to the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates during the Muslim conquests.

As was the case under Justinian's predecessors, the Empire's economic health rested primarily on agriculture.

Gelimer, ignorant or contemptuous of Justinian's plans, sent a large army consisting of most of the available army in Africa under his brother Tzazo to crush the rebellion, meaning that the landing of Belisarius was entirely unopposed.

The present name of Justinian's codification was only adopted in the 16th century, when it was printed in 1583 by Dionysius Gothofredus under the title " Corpus Juris Civilis ".

Justinian, a 1998 novel by science fiction author, and Byzantine scholar, Harry Turtledove, writing under the name HN Turtletaub, gives a fictionalized version of Justinian's life as retold by a fictional lifelong companion the soldier Myakes.

Gothic envoys spoke to Khosrau's court and spoke of Justinian's goal to unite the world under Roman rule.

When Justinian's army followed, the Maradites, under the leadership of John's nephew Ibrahim, defeated them decisively, sending them home empty-handed.

The plague weakened the Byzantine Empire at a critical point, when Justinian's armies had nearly wholly retaken Italy and the western Mediterranean coast ; this evolving conquest could have credibly reformed the Western Roman Empire and united it with the Eastern under a single emperor for the first time since the year 395.

In its present state it begins with the mythical history of Egypt and ends with the expedition to Roman Africa under the tribune Marcianus, Justinian's nephew, in 563 ( his editor Thurn believes it originally ended with Justinian's death ); it is focused largely on Antioch and ( in the later books ) Constantinople.

The offerings collected on this occasion were distributed, based on Metropolitan Justinian's decisions, to orphans, widows, invalids, school cafeterias, churches under construction, and to monasteries in order to feed the sick, and old or feeble monks.

Map of Justinian's Pentarchy, with almost all of modern Greece under Rome.

Under Justinian's patronage the San Vitale in Ravenna, which features two famous mosaics representing Justinian and Theodora, was completed.

Thus in 565 or 566 Justinian's successor Justin II sent his son-in-law Baduarius as magister militum ( field commander ) to lead a Byzantine army against Alboin in support of Cunimund, ending in the Lombards ' complete defeat.

Saint Sava began the work on the Serbian Nomocanon in 1208 while being at Mount Athos, using The Nomocanon in Fourteen Titles, Synopsis of Stefan the Efesian, Nomocanon of John Scholasticus, Ecumenical Councils ' documents, which he modified with the canonical commentaries of Aristinos and John Zonaras, local church meetings, rules of the Holy Fathers, the law of Moses, translation of Prohiron and the Byzantine emperors ' Novellae ( most were taken from Justinian's Novellae ).

IV, Issue 3 ( Jun / Jul, 2010 ), was devoted to " Justinian's fireman: Belisarius and the Byzantine empire ", with articles by Sidney Dean, Duncan B. Campbell, Ian Hughes, Ross Cowan, Raffaele D ' Amato, and Christopher Lillington-Martin.

According to Byzantine chronicles, on his abdication he achieved some degree of anecdotal fame by crying out the verse from Ecclesiastes, ' Vanity of vanities, all is vanity ' during Justinian's triumph in Contstantinople .< ref > Edward Gibbon,

Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis was distributed in the West but was lost sight of ; it was scarcely needed in the comparatively primitive conditions that followed the loss of the Exarchate of Ravenna by the Byzantine empire in the 8th century.

There is a theory that his close relationship with Emperor Justinian may date to Justinian's service as magister militum praesentalis in the 520s, prior to his elevation to the Byzantine throne.

Following Theodoric's death in 526AD, the Western half of the Empire became fully controlled by Germanic tribes until Justinian's Byzantine re-conquest, which included the province of Samnium, of which Histonium was a key town.

These ecclesiatical basilicas ( e. g., St. John Lateran and St. Peter's in Rome ) were themselves outdone by Justinian's Hagia Sophia, a staggering display of later Roman / Byzantine power and architectural taste.

The Ghassanid prince Al-Harith ibn Jabalah, Justinian's north Arabian vassal, sponsored Imru ' al-Qais in his appeal, and most accounts indicate that he won some promise of support from the Byzantine emperor, and perhaps even a contingent of troops.

At least the second edition contained some of Justinian's own legislation, including some legislation in Greek.

Justinian's scheme for a renovatio imperii ( renewal of the empire ) included, as well as ecclesiastical matters, a rewriting of Roman law in the Corpus Juris Civilis and an only partially successful reconquest of the West, including the city of Rome.

Procopius provides the primary source for the history of Justinian's reign.

Another contemporary chronicler, Procopius, compares Justinian's appearance to that of tyrannical Emperor Domitian, although this is probably slander.

Procopius was the author of a history in eight books of the wars fought by Justinian I, a panegyric on Justinian's public works throughout the empire, and a book known as the Secret History ( Greek: Anekdota ) that claims to report the scandals that Procopius could not include in his published history.

Justinian rebuilt his birthplace in Illyricum, as Justiniana Prima, more in a gesture of imperium than out of an urbanistic necessity ; another " city ", was reputed to have been founded, according to Procopius ' panegyric on Justinian's buildings, precisely at the spot where the general Belisarius touched shore in North Africa: the miraculous spring that gushed forth to give them water and the rural population that straightway abandoned their ploughshares for civilised life within the new walls, lend a certain taste of unreality to the project.

Procopius, historian at Justinian's court, considered that behind the laws were political motivations, as they allowed Justinian to destroy his enemies and confiscate their properties, and were hardly efficient stopping homosexuality between ordinary citizens.

Agathias ( Histories 2. 31 ) is the only authority for the story of Justinian's closing of the re-founded Platonic ( actually neoplatonic ) Academy in Athens ( 529 ), which is sometimes cited as the closing date of " Antiquity ".

Roman Dutch common law relies on legal principles set out in Roman law sources such as Justinian's Institutes and Digest, and also on the writing of Dutch jurists of the 15th century such as Grotius and Voet.

Centrally planned domed churches had been built since the 4th century for very particular functions, such as palace churches or martyria, with a slight widening of use around 500 AD, but Justinian's architects make the domed brick-vaulted central plan standard throughout the Roman east.

While Capito is hardly ever referred to, the dicta of Labeo are of constant recurrence in the writings of the classical jurists, such as Gaius, Ulpian and Iulius Paulus ; and no inconsiderable number of them were thought worthy of preservation in Justinian's Digest.

For several centuries, the armies and Exarchs, Justinian's successors, were a tenacious force in Italian affairs — strong enough to prevent other powers such as the Holy Roman Empire or the Papacy from establishing a unified Italian state, but too weak to drive out these " interlopers " and re-create Roman Italy.

Justinian's rule was not universally popular ; early in his reign he almost lost his throne during the Nika riots, and a conspiracy against the Emperor's life by dissatisfied businessmen was discovered as late as 562.

The Novellae, a collection of new laws issued during Justinian's reign, supplements the Corpus.

It was during the Eastern Roman Empire ( 5th century ) that legal studies were once again undertaken in depth, and it is from this cultural movement that Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis was born.

Ravaged by Vandals during the V century A. D., was annexed in VI century to Justinian's Empire, during this period the town lived dark centuries, marked by dysentery, neglect of Bisanzio and forays of pirates.

As the towns became the permanent seats of standing courts during the later Empire, the conventūs were superseded ( Justinian's Code, i. 40. 6 ) and the term conventus is lastly applied to certain bodies of Roman citizens living in a province, forming a sort of enfranchised corporation, and representing the Roman people in their district as a kind of gentry ; and it was from among these that proconsuls generally took their assistants.

Despite many difficulties, during the 29 years of Justinian's reign, a series of events and changes took place which greatly raised the prestige of Romanian Orthodoxy in the Christian world and made him a representative figure for all of Orthodoxy.