Erected on the site of pagan temples and three previous St. Sophias, the first of which was begun by Constantine, this fourth church was started by Justinian in 532 and completed twenty years later.

Actually an underground cistern, its roof supported by rows and rows of pillars, it was built by Justinian in the Sixth Century to supply the palace with water.

Moreover, Justin II was moving away from the foreign policy of Justinian, and believed in dealing more strictly with bordering states and peoples.

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.

Anthemius of Tralles ( c. 474 – before 558 ; ) was a Greek professor of Geometry in Constantinople ( present-day Istanbul in Turkey ) and architect, who collaborated with Isidore of Miletus to build the church of Hagia Sophia by the order of Justinian I. Anthemius came from an educated family, one of five sons of Stephanus of Tralles, a physician.

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

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.

During the Samaritan revolt of 529, Bethlehem was sacked and its walls and the Church of the Nativity destroyed, but they were rebuilt on the orders of the Emperor Justinian I.

One of the first and throughout its history one of the most significant treatises of the common law, Bracton ’ s De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae ( On the Laws and Customs of England ), was heavily influenced by the division of the law in Justinian ’ s Institutes.

The region was then ruled by the Ostrogoths up to 535, when Justinian I added the territory to the Byzantine Empire.

The emperor Justinian I ( 527 – 565 ) was known for his successes in war, for his legal reforms and for his public works.

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

In its preparation, centuries of material was examined, scrutinized for authenticity by leading experts, and harmonized as much as possible with opposing canons and even other codes, from the Codex of Justinian to the Napoleonic Code.

In the 6th century, the Neoplatonist philosopher Simplicius, who was persecuted for his pagan beliefs during the reign of Justinian, wrote an extant commentary on the Enchiridion.

Isidore of Miletus was one of the two main Byzantine Greek architects ( Anthemius of Tralles was the other ) that Emperor Justinian I commissioned to design the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople from 532-537A. D.

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.

Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles originally planned on a main hall of the Hagia Sophia that measured 230 feet by 250 feet, making it the largest church in Constantinople, but the original dome was nearly 20 feet lower than it was constructed, “ Justinian suppressed these riots and took the opportunity of marking his victory by erecting in 532-7 the new Hagia Sophia, one of the largest, most lavish, and most expensive buildings of all time .” Although Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles were not formally educated in architecture, they were scientists that could organize the logistics of drawing thousands of laborers and unprecedented loads of rare raw materials from around the Roman Empire to create the Hagia Sophia for Emperor Justinian I.

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

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 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.

Conscious of her unpopularity she banished, and afterwards put to death, three Gothic nobles whom she suspected of intriguing against her rule, and at the same time opened negotiations with the emperor Justinian I with the view of removing herself and the Gothic treasure to Constantinople.

Justinian commissioned Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus to replace it with a new and incomparable St Sophia.

The Historian Procopius, in his Secret History, claims that the emperor Justinian attempted to interfere with the Jewish calendar in the 6th century, and a modern writer has suggested that this measure may have been directed against the protopaschites.

Emperor Justinian I ensured that his new structure would not be burned down, like its predecessors, by commissioning architects that would build the church mainly out of stone, rather than wood, “ He compacted it of baked brick and mortar, and in many places bound it together with iron, but made no use of wood, so that the church should no longer prove combustible .”

Justinian served for some time with the Excubitors but the details of his early career are unknown.

When Emperor Anastasius died in 518, Justin was proclaimed the new Emperor, with significant help from Justinian.

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 ".

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.

From his uncle, Justinian inherited ongoing hostilities with the Sassanid Empire.

When king Kavadh I of Persia died ( September 531 ), Justinian concluded an " Eternal Peace " ( which cost him 11, 000 pounds of gold ) with his successor Khosrau I ( 532 ).

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

Then, having been recalled by Justinian, Belisarius returned to Constantinople, taking the captured Vitigis and his wife Matasuntha with him.

Justinian, however, felt restrained by the complications that would have ensued with the West.

In order to bypass the Persian landroute, Justinian established friendly relations with the Abyssinians, whom he wanted to act as trade mediators by transporting Indian silk to the Empire ; the Abyssinians, however, were unable to compete with the Persian merchants in India.