Justinian was born in Tollyshilm in about 483 AD, which is today's Yugoslavia. He was the nephew of Justin, the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. His uncle's favorite. In 527 AD, the uncle made his nephew his co-emperor, and the two men governed the government together. After Justin's death, Justinian continued to rule for 38 years.
When Justinian came to power, the territory of the Eastern Roman Empire included the Balkans, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and other places. The slave trade was still quite popular, and semi-feudal slave farmers had emerged, but they were suppressed and did not develop rapidly.
In the same period, in the homeland of the Western Roman Empire, the Germans had established a series of feudal kingdoms - such as the Ostrogothic Kingdom, the Visigothic Kingdom, the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa, the Frankish Kingdom, etc. Peasants have gained a certain degree of personal freedom, and the emerging feudal production relations have shown a strong vitality that is obviously superior to slavery, which is historical progress.
However, Justinian was deeply intoxicated by the power of the Roman Empire in the past and could not extricate himself. He dreamed of one day regaining the land of Western Rome. He never forgets that "the Ostrogoths violently seized our Italy and have not yet given it back."
In order to meet the needs of large-scale foreign wars, Justinian first plundered people domestically to accumulate necessary war materials. He appointed John of Cappadocia, a cruel official who "neither feared God nor cared about the world," as the supreme administrator in charge of finance. He implemented a policy of excessive taxation and expropriation in the empire for 10 years, and plundered the people to the point of "taking possession of people's homes." Not letting go of every bottle.” In addition, measures such as the monopoly system and increased land tax were implemented, which laid a solid foundation for him to launch foreign wars.
In order to relieve the worries of the war, in 532 AD, Justinian signed an armistice with Persia at the cost of 11,000 pounds of gold.
In 533 AD, Justinian first launched an attack on the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa, thus kicking off the 20-year war of conquest in the west.
Since the Vandals occupied the city of Carthage under the leadership of their leader Cesaric in 439 AD and established their country, they suppressed the Romans in the country, confiscated the lands of the nobility and the church, and persecuted the Romans. Religion, by the time of King Hilderick, he stopped persecuting the Romans for a time because of his good personal relationship with Justinian. In 530 AD, Gelimaeus, a nobleman of the Vandal Kingdom, led his troops to attack the palace, deposed Hildelik, and resumed harsh policies against the Romans. Justinian believed that the war opportunity was ripe, so in June 533 AD, he sent General Belisarius and 16,000 troops to sail from Constantinople to North Africa to conquer the Vandal Kingdom.
Because Gellimaeus did not make serious preparations for war in advance, this war, which was regarded as a disaster by the Eastern Roman ministers, soon came to an end. After Galimaeus executed Childerik, he hurriedly accepted the battle. Soon after, he was grieved because of his brother's death in the battle, which caused the entire army to fall into chaos and was defeated without a fight. Galimaeus fled to Numbia for refuge, and asked the Eastern Romans to give him a lyre to play the hatred of the country's subjugation, and a sponge to wipe away the tears of the country's subjugation. In 534 AD the Vandal Kingdom fell.
After Justinian regained the Vandal homeland, he completely restored Roman slavery, but was resisted by the Vandals. It was not until 548 AD that Eastern Roman rule in North Africa became stable.
In 535 AD, Justinian ordered Belisarius to mobilize troops in Italy and conquer the Ostrogothic Kingdom, thereby provoking the "Gothic War" that lasted nearly 20 years.
The cause of this war was that the Ostrogothic Queen Alamasunta, who was pro-Eastern Rome, was imprisoned and executed by her cousin Theodat, the new king she appointed. Justinian despised Diodat's peace terms, which were almost surrender, and vowed to avenge Alamasunta. In fact, he wanted to take the opportunity to restore the Western Roman slave system.
In September 535 AD, the Eastern Roman army occupied Dalmatia. In December, 8,000 Eastern Roman troops marched into Sicily. In June of the next year, they surrounded Naples. At this point, the Eastern Roman army The army encountered little serious resistance from the Ostrogoths and everything went smoothly. The residents of Naples are said to have resisted, but with little success.
The most powerful offensive the Eastern Roman army encountered was the siege of Rome from February or March of 537 AD to March of 538 AD. The Ostrogoths elected Viticius, who was born in the army, as their leader and raised 150,000 cavalry to garrison the Roman city. They withdrew Pele and besieged the city for a year. Later, due to the lack of food and grass for the Ostrogoths, their morale declined and the situation increased. The arrival of Justinian's reinforcements relieved Belisarius.
In 539 AD, Belisarius led his army to besiege Ravenna, the capital of the Ostrogoths. The defenders in the city fought hard for six months and resisted desperately, showing their bravery and unyielding heroism. It was not until 532 AD that the Eastern Roman army quelled the anti-Roman army led by the Ostrogoth king Totila. In 554 AD, they destroyed the rest and expelled the Franks to the north of the Alps. By 555 AD, Justinian's dream of conquering Italy became a reality.
In 554 AD, Justinian took advantage of the civil war in the Visigothic Kingdom of Spain and sent troops to the Visigoths to occupy southeastern Spain. In addition, Justinian's army also occupied Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean.
With the annihilation of the Vandal Kingdom and the Ostrogothic Kingdom, and the conquest of North Africa and Italy, Justinian also extended outdated slavery to these areas that had entered feudal society. Justinian expanded the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire in the name of restoring the old Roman system. Every time the Eastern Roman invaders occupied a land, they restored the administrative structure of the old Roman Empire and issued an edict announcing that: the land of the slave-owning nobles that had been confiscated , must be returned to themselves and their descendants; slave-owning nobles have the right to demand compensation for other property losses suffered. After conquering Italy, Justinian issued an edict announcing the laws and measures originally formulated by Totila to combat slavery. Invalid, the slave farmers who left the original land without authorization must be recovered, and the freed slaves must be returned to their original owners.
Justinian's war of aggression made the situation of the people in the conquered areas and the original slaves, peasants and craftsmen in Eastern Rome even more miserable. Justinian's foreign conquests were based on the exploitation of domestic people at all levels, which has been mentioned before. The slave-owning nobles not only resorted to militarism in foreign wars, but their domestic lives became increasingly luxurious and corrupt.
During the Justinian period, 50,000 migrant workers were recruited to build the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople alone. It took 5 years and cost 180 tons of gold to build. This magnificent building covering an area of ??25,000 square feet and 183 feet high has condensed the sweat and blood of slaves!
Slaves and slave farmers could not bear the oppression. The "Scamar Movement" that reached its climax in the early 6th century once shook Roman rule. In 532 AD, the largest slave uprising occurred in the Justinian era - the "Nika" (meaning victory) uprising. Racing was popular in Byzantium at that time, and racers were divided into blue teams and green teams based on the color of their clothing. From this emerged the Blue Party and the Green Party. The leaders of the Blue Party are mainly large landowners and Senate nobles, while the Green Party is mostly businessmen, craftsmen and loan sharks. On January 11, 532 AD, the Green Party kicked off the uprising against Justinian at the Races. Because before this, the government tried some backbone members of the Green Party to death, so that the two parties reconciled and discussed ways to jointly rescue the arrested members. According to Procopius's "History of the Persian Wars", the revolting masses captured the city and set fire to Hagia Sophia, Rexip Baths and other places. The city residents passed the uprising signal "Nika" to each other.
The revolting crowd besieged Justinian and the queen in the palace, demanding that the emperor remove John, the governor of the capital of Cappadocia, and Tribonian, the counselor. John was ignorant but greedy. He plundered the people while leading a life of debauchery and debauchery. "He will never stop drinking and chewing until he gets bored or vomits. He is always ready to steal money, and he is even more ready to abuse it."
Tribonian was also greedy for profit. As a law enforcer, he accepted bribes, changed laws at any time, and even made laws for sale. The people hated these two corrupt officials. As soon as the uprising began, the crowd rushed to their houses and wanted to kill them. In order to stabilize the people's hearts, Justinian issued an imperial edict and dismissed these two corrupt officials.
On the sixth day of the uprising, Hibbertius, one of the two nephews of the late Emperor Anastasia, was elected emperor by the masses, although his wife Mary screamed that this was to depose her husband. She went to the guillotine, but the revolting masses refused to listen to her. Hibbertius was rushed to the Forum of Constantine by the revolting crowd. Since he had not prepared a crown or royal robes in advance, the crowd put a gold necklace on him and declared him emperor of the Romans.
At the beginning of Heberdi's "accession to the throne", he ordered: "Attack the palace!"
Justinian, who was trapped in the palace, was helpless at the moment. He felt very frustrated and discouraged. Feeling cold. The ministers were also in a mess. Some advocated organizing armed forces to fight to the death with Heberdi, while others advocated finding a boat to cross the sea and escape.
At this critical moment, Justinian's wife and empress Theodora played a key role. She said: In my opinion, today, fleeing is the worst option; even if it can save us, it is far more disadvantageous to us than any other method. Death is inevitable in life, but once a person who once ruled others becomes a wanderer, it will be unbearable. It is a sadder thing than death! I hope God keeps me from changing this purple robe! So, Your Majesty! Escape is not difficult, we have a lot of money, the sea, and a boat! But please think about it: after you escaped, wouldn't you feel that it would be better to die instead of living like this? I love this quote: ‘The power of an emperor is the best shroud’. "Theodora's words immediately unified the scattered military morale, strengthened the confidence of the ministers, and also awakened Justinian. He summoned Belisarius, who had just returned from the Persian front, and led his elite troops to rush in. The racecourse. Although the rebels fought bloody battles, they were all alone and killed. The blood of 3,500 rebels turned the racecourse into a sea of ??blood.
The emperor supported by the rebels! Hibberdi and his brother Bomby were thrown into prison, and Justinian executed them to avoid further trouble.
The "Nika" uprising unfortunately failed. In this uprising, Nigeria eradicated dissidents and further strengthened its centralized rule. The Roman region has always been known for its sound laws, such as the Law of the Twelve Tables, the Civil Law, and the Law of the People. Later generations admired the Gregorian Code, the Hymogenian Code, and the Theodosian Code, which have a long history and are famous all over the world. However, the most respected by later generations is called the Foundation of The foundation of Western law should be the Encyclopedia of National Law (also known as the Encyclopedia of Civil Law).
On February 13, 528 AD, when Justinian ascended the throne, he convened ten legal experts to form a legal compilation. The committee was chaired by the former chief justice John (who was dismissed during the "Nika" uprising).
In 529 AD, the "Collection of Edicts", the "Justinian Code", officially came into effect. At the same time, all old laws were announced to be abolished. In November 533 AD, based on the works "Ladder of Law" and "Common Laws" written by Gaius, one of the five great jurists in Rome, and combined with the spirit of the works of other famous jurists such as Berbinian, It was compiled into "Ladder of Legal Studies" and published for use.
In December 533 AD, another outstanding legal work "Edicts" was published during the Justinian period. This work was written by more than 30 jurists. , compiled with three years of hard work, collected 2,000 volumes and 3 million laws of 38 famous jurists from the end of the 1st century BC to the beginning of the 4th century AD, and selected 9,200 paragraphs from 1,625 volumes, totaling 150,000 pieces of law.
The vastness of the "project" astonished future generations.
"Edicts" is the last legal book written in Latin in the Eastern Roman Empire.
After Justinian completed the compilation of the above three codes, he ordered that all previous works of jurists that had not been included in the Code be invalidated, and ordered the burning of the works written by Trebnian. "Collection of Doctrine" collects all the works of jurists of previous generations. At the same time, it was ordered that the interpretation of relevant laws from now on would be controlled by the emperor alone! This part of the explanation of the law was later included in the New Laws, which was published after Justinian's death. Most of the content of the New Code belongs to public law and canon law norms. In terms of private law, there are mainly decrees on marriage law and inheritance law. For the convenience of research, later scholars collectively referred to the above-mentioned "Justinian Code", "Justinian Legal Ladder", "Collection of Doctrines" and "New Code" as "Encyclopedia of National Law" or "Encyclopedia of Civil Law". It retained and developed the genius creative achievements of Rome in jurisprudence, and became the main basis for establishing legal systems in many countries on the European continent in the late Middle Ages. In contrast to the common law system in English-speaking countries, it was recognized by later generations that "no other code of law It has such a lasting impact on the world.”
Justinian himself is also remembered throughout the ages for his "Collection of State Laws", the most complete written code of slavery in history. Although he spent his whole life fighting in the north and south, with endless conquests, his greatest contribution to history was obviously not in the conquests themselves, but in the "Encyclopedia of National Law" that made him "famous in the world." For this reason, he was included in the "List of 100 People Who Impacted the Process of Human History".