He had also sampled various special fields of learning, being unable to miss some study of divinity, Justinian ( law ), and Galen ( medicine ).

The regnal year of the emperor was also used to identify years, especially in the Byzantine Empire after 537 when Justinian required its use.

Justinian was also concerned with other aspects of the city's built environment, legislating against the abuse of laws prohibiting building within of the sea front, in order to protect the view.

However, the social fabric of Constantinople was also damaged by the onset of Plague of Justinian between 541 – 542 AD.

During his reign Justinian also subdued the Tzani, a people on the east coast of the Black Sea that had never been under Roman rule before.

Justinian is considered a saint amongst Orthodox Christians, and is also commemorated by some Lutheran Churches.

Justinian also rebuilt the Church of Hagia Sophia ( which cost 20, 000 pounds of gold ), the original site having been destroyed during the Nika riots.

By degrees, however, Justinian came to understand that the formula at issue not only appeared orthodox, but might also serve as a conciliatory measure toward the Monophysites, and he made a vain attempt to do this in the religious conference with the followers of Severus of Antioch, in 533.

Justinian also interfered in the internal affairs of the synagogue., and he encouraged the Jews to use the Greek Septuagint in their synagogues in Constantinople.

Justinian also strengthened the borders of the Empire from Africa to the East through the construction of fortifications, and ensured Constantinople of its water supply through construction of underground cisterns ( see Basilica Cistern ).

Justinian also tried to find new routes for the eastern trade, which was suffering badly from the wars with the Persians.

Enraged, Emperor Justinian II dispatched his magistrianus, also named Sergius, to Rome to arrest bishop John of Portus, the chief papal legate to the Third Council of Constantinople and Boniface, the papal counselor.

Already weakened by the Slavic invasions at the end of the 6th century, which ruined the agrarian economy of Macedonia and probably also by the Plague of Justinian in 547, the city was almost totally destroyed by an earthquake around 619, from which it never recovered.

Emperor Justinian I also created the offices of quaesitor, a judicial and police official for Constantinople, and the quaestor exercitus, a short-lived joint military-administrative post covering the border of the lower Danube.

Roman law as preserved in the codes of Justinian and in the Basilica remained the basis of legal practice in Greece and in the courts of the Eastern Orthodox Church even after the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the conquest by the Turks, and also formed the basis for much of the Fetha Negest, which remained in force in Ethiopia until 1931.

Biovar Antiqua is thought to correspond to the Plague of Justinian ; it is not known whether this biovar also corresponds to earlier or smaller epidemics of bubonic plague, or whether these were even truly bubonic plague.

It is also sometimes referred to as the Code of Justinian, although this name belongs more properly to the part titled Codex.

Consciously desiring to emulate Emperor Justinian I ( r. 527 – 565 ), Basil also initiated an extensive building program in Constantinople, crowned by the construction of the Nea Ekklesia cathedral.

This was linked to Justinian ’ s decision to unify the office of consul with that of emperor thus making the Emperor the head of state not only de facto but also de jure.

Probably also the property of the Platonist school, which in the time of Proclus was valued at more than 1000 gold pieces, was confiscated ; at least, Justinian deprived the physicians and teachers of the liberal arts of the provision-money which had been assigned to them by previous emperors, and confiscated funds which the citizens had provided for spectacles and other civic purposes.

The synthetic culture with Hellenistic Thracian, Roman, as well as eastern — Armenian, Syrian, Persian — traits that developed around Odessus in the 6th century under Justinian I, may have influenced the Pliska-Preslav culture of the First Bulgarian Empire, ostensibly in architecture and plastic decorative arts, but possibly also in literature, including Cyrillic scholarship.

Most likely Dionysius was also of local Thraco-Roman origin, like Vitalian's family to whom he was related, and to the rest of the Scythian Monks and other Thraco-Roman personalities of the era ( Justin I, Justinian, Flavius Aetius, etc.

He was also the author of rhetorical exercises on philosophical themes ; of a Quadrivium ( arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy ), valuable for the history of music and astronomy in the Middle Ages ; a general sketch of Aristotelian philosophy ; a paraphrase of the speeches and letters of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite ; poems, including an autobiography ; and a description of the square of the Augustaeum, and the column erected by Justinian in the church of Hagia Sophia to commemorate his victories over the Persians.

Justinian had given military authority to the governors of individual provinces plagued by brigandage in Asia Minor, but more importantly, he had also created the exceptional combined military-civilian circumscription of the quaestura exercitus and abolished the civilian Diocese of Egypt, putting a dux with combined authority at the head of each of its old provinces.

In particular the so-called Plague of Justinian had ravaged the region and conflict remained endemic, with the Three-Chapter Controversy sparking religious opposition and administration at a standstill after the able governor of the peninsula, Narses, was recalled.

Justinian would have, in earlier times, been unable to marry her because of her class, but his uncle Emperor Justin I had passed a law allowing intermarriage between social classes.

Justinian, who had always had a keen interest in theological matters and actively participated in debates on Christian doctrine, became even more devoted to religion during the later years of his life.

Justinian achieved lasting fame through his judicial reforms, particularly through the complete revision of all Roman law, something that had not previously been attempted.

On Theodora's insistence, and apparently against his own judgment, Justinian had Anastasius ' nephews executed.

The destruction that had taken place during the revolt provided Justinian with an opportunity to tie his name to a series of splendid new buildings, most notably the architectural innovation of the domed Hagia Sophia.

Having thus secured his eastern frontier, Justinian turned his attention to the West, where Arian Germanic kingdoms had been established in the territories of the former Western Roman Empire.

King Hilderic, who had maintained good relations with Justinian and the North African Catholic clergy, had been overthrown by his cousin Gelimer in 530.

Justinian saw the orthodoxy of his empire threatened by diverging religious currents, especially Monophysitism, which had many adherents in the eastern provinces of Syria and Egypt.

In the course of his reign Justinian, who had a genuine interest in matters of theology, authored a small number of theological treatises.

Justinian entered the arena of ecclesiastical statecraft shortly after his uncle's accession in 518, and put an end to the Monophysite schism that had prevailed between Rome and Constantinople since 483.

At the start of Justinian I's reign he had inherited a surplus 28, 800, 000 solidi ( 400, 000 pounds of gold ) in the imperial treasury from Anastasius I and Justin I.

It has been estimated that before Justinian I's reconquests the state had an annual revenue of 5, 000, 000 solidi in AD 530, but after his reconquests, the annual revenue was increased to 6, 000, 000 solidi in AD 550.

Justinian had the city rebuilt, but on a slightly smaller scale.

Some, including the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes, have claimed that Konon's family had been resettled in Thrace, where he entered the service of Emperor Justinian II, when the latter was advancing on Constantinople with an army of 15, 000 horsemen provided by Tervel of Bulgaria in 705.

As a result of the dispute, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian II ordered Sergius I's abduction ( as his predecessor Constans II had done with Pope Martin I ), but with the assistance of the exarch of Ravenna, Sergius I was able to avoid trial in Constantinople.

Peter the Deacon gives a list of some seventy books Desiderius had copied at Monte Cassino, including works of Saint Augustine, Saint Ambrose, Saint Bede, Saint Basil, Saint Jerome, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Cassian, the registers of Popes Felix and Leo, the histories of Josephus, Paul Warnfrid, Jordanes and Saint Gregory of Tours, the Institutes and Novels of Justinian, the works of Terence, Virgil and Seneca, Cicero's De natura deorum, and Ovid's Fasti.

In 554, Granada and southernmost Hispania Baetica were lost to representatives of the Byzantine Empire ( to form the province of Spania ) who had been invited in to help settle a Visigothic dynastic struggle, but who stayed on, as a hoped-for spearhead to a " Reconquest " of the far west envisaged by emperor Justinian I.

For example the title was applied to the Byzantine empress Theodora, who had started life as an erotic actress but later became the wife of the Emperor Justinian and, after her death, an Orthodox saint.

By the 6th century, Emperor Justinian had re-conquered the area for the Byzantine Empire.