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

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 also had Anthemius and Isidore demolish and replace the original Church of the Holy Apostles built by Constantine with a new church under the same dedication.

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 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.

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.

Inside over the first door I saw one of these, which shows Constantine offering the city to the Virgin Mary and Justinian offering the temple.

The city was sacked by the Samaritans in 529, but rebuilt by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. Bethlehem was conquered by the Arab Caliphate of ' Umar ibn al-Khattāb in 637, who guaranteed safety for the city's religious shrines.

Isidore of Miletus was a renowned scientist and mathematician before Emperor Justinian I hired him, “ Isidorus taught stereometry and physics at the universities, first of Alexandria then of Constantinople, and wrote a commentary on an older treatise on vaulting .” Emperor Justinian I appointed his architects to rebuild the Hagia Sophia following his victory over protesters within the capital city of his Roman Empire, Constantinople.

While the crowd was rioting in the streets, Justinian considered fleeing the capital, but he remained in the city on the stirring words of Theodora ( according to Procopius, she said " For an Emperor to become a fugitive is not a thing to be endured ... I hold with the old saying that the purple makes an excellent shroud ".

Furthermore, Justinian restored cities damaged by earthquake or war and built a new city near his place of birth called Justiniana Prima, which was intended to replace Thessalonica as the political and religious center of the Illyricum.

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.

After Scupi was almost completely destroyed by an earthquake in 518 AD, Justinian, according to his historian Procopius in " De Aedificiis " ( On the Buildings ), built a new city near his birthplace Tauresium and Bederiana ( believed to be today's villages Taor and Bader ) at the fertile entry point of the River Lepenec into the Vardar, making Skopje the city of Justiniana Prima.

In the spring of 544 the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I sent his general Belisarius to Italy to counterattack, but Totila, captured Rome in 546 from Belisarius and depopulated the city after a yearlong siege.

With a great military campaign in 688 – 689, Justinian defeated the Bulgars of Macedonia and was finally able to enter Thessalonica, the second most important Byzantine city in Europe.

The Emperor Justinian II's son and co-emperor Tiberios ( along with Patriarch Kyros, senators, nobles, clerics, and many others ) greeted Constantine at the seventh milestone from the city in the style of an imperial adventus.

The church of Hagia Sophia was built by Justinian I in the middle of the city in the 6th century ( modelled after the larger Hagia Sophia in Constantinople ), and it was there that the Second Council of Nicaea met in 787 to discuss the issues of iconography.

It has been suggested that the 681 peace treaty with the Byzantine Empire that established the new Bulgarian state was concluded at Varna and the first Bulgarian capital south of the Danube may have been provisionally located in its vicinity — possibly in an ancient city near Lake Varna's north shore named Theodorias ( Θεοδωριάς ) by Justinian I — before it moved to Pliska 70 km to the west.

Khosrau sacked and burned the city at which point Justinian sued for peace, giving Khosrau a large amount of money.

Agathias or Agathias Scholasticus () c. AD 530-582 / 594 ), of Myrina ( Mysia ), an Aeolian city in western Asia Minor ( now in Turkey ), was a Greek poet and the principal historian of part of the reign of the Roman emperor Justinian I between 552 and 558.

The ruins of the ancient city " Hierapolis Bambyce ," also known as " Hierapolis Euphratensis " or " Hierapolis in Euphratesia ", are 20 km north, where remains of aqueducts and the Byzantine walls of Justinian are still to be seen.

In the sixth century under Emperor Justinian I the city was extended with new public buildings.

After the Nika Revolt destroyed much of the city of Constantinople in 532, Justinian had the opportunity to rebuild.

The forces of Emperor Justinian I were sent in to quell the revolt, which ended with the slaughter of the majority of the Samaritan population in the city.

In the 6th century Byzantine emperor Justinian I fortified the city in an effort to protect it from barbaric raids.

With an army of 15, 000 horsemen provided by Tervel, Justinian suddenly advanced on Constantinople and managed to gain entrance into the city in 705.

The imperial forces and guards in the city could not keep order without the cooperation of the circus factions which were in turn backed by the aristocratic families of the city ; this included some families who believed they had a more rightful claim to the throne than Justinian.