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See store for details. Today's

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episode is brought to you by audible.com.

1:17

To get Justinian Emperor Soldier Saint

1:19

for free, go

1:21

to audibletrial.com/Byzantium. Hello

1:32

everyone and welcome to the history of

1:35

Byzantium, episode 281,

1:38

Justinian Emperor Soldier

1:40

Saint with Peter Sarris.

1:45

Ah Justinian, my old friend.

1:48

Yes, a new book has come out

1:50

about that most famous of Byzantines. The

1:53

book is by Peter Sarris and it is excellent.

1:56

It's not a dramatization of his career,

1:58

but a brilliantly- researched account

2:01

of his life and time in office. Justinian

2:05

is the only emperor where we can go

2:08

granular as I

2:10

discussed with Professor Coldellis in

2:13

some of our recent episodes. We can actually

2:16

track his words in real time so

2:18

to speak as the Nica

2:20

riots happen or the bubonic

2:22

plague hits. We just have so

2:24

many more sources for

2:27

that period than any other in

2:30

part because of Justinian's relentless

2:32

legislation. Let's

2:34

hear more about the great man

2:36

from Professor Sarris himself and

2:39

if you prefer to listen to books

2:41

then rather than read them then this

2:43

one is available on Audible.

2:46

To listen to it for free

2:48

go to audibletrial.com/Byzantium and

2:50

I can give you more details after the

2:52

interview. Professor Peter

2:54

Sarris welcome to the history of

2:57

Byzantium podcast. Hi thank you for

2:59

the invitation to speak to you. It's a

3:01

real pleasure I really enjoyed reading

3:03

the book it's been many years since

3:05

I covered Justinian on the

3:08

podcast so it was really nice to revisit

3:10

that era and the listeners

3:12

know him very well he is of

3:14

course the most famous Byzantine figure I

3:16

don't think there's too much argument about

3:19

that and so

3:22

I don't need to ask you why did you

3:25

find Justinian interesting but why don't you

3:27

tell the listeners about his place in

3:30

your academic career and why

3:32

you decided to write this book now.

3:35

Well Justinian has been something

3:37

of a preoccupation of mine really since I

3:40

was an undergraduate back in

3:42

Oxford in the early 1990s and I was first set up

3:44

I was studying a general

3:46

paper on early medieval Europe and

3:49

my old tutor Patrick Wormald gave me an essay

3:51

on Justinian asking the classic question we

3:53

really get from Edward Gibbon did

3:56

Justinian ruin the Empire he says out

3:58

to restore. And I

4:01

found Justinian from that moment on a fascinating

4:03

figure because in so many ways, his

4:06

reign seemed to confound the narrative

4:08

of decline that was still

4:10

very embedded in the way that many historians tended

4:12

to approach the early Middle

4:14

Ages in the, even in the

4:16

1990s. And

4:19

so I got by virtue of that really increasingly

4:22

interest in Justinian and I began to study him

4:24

more closely, first of all, with

4:27

James Howard Johnston from a primarily military

4:29

perspective, looking at Byzantine relations with Persia,

4:31

and also of course, the great impact

4:33

of his Western campaigns.

4:36

Then as a graduate student, it occurred

4:39

to me that whilst one could ascertain

4:41

a fair amount of Justinian's attempted overhauling

4:43

of the Roman state, we

4:46

had difficulty really contextualizing that and

4:48

putting that reform program in

4:50

its social and economic context. So as

4:53

a graduate student, then a young academic,

4:55

that was my main focus, drawing on

4:57

the documentary papyri from Egypt and the

4:59

archeology and the charismatic evidence from elsewhere

5:01

to try to contextualize the regime. Then

5:04

more recently, I got more interest in Justinian from

5:06

a more full blown legal perspective, and then through

5:09

some of my doctoral students really from a more doctrinal

5:11

perspective. So over the course of the period of the

5:13

1990s, I've been approaching

5:15

Justinian from a whole series of directions. And

5:19

it occurred to me that with

5:21

the 1500th anniversary of his

5:23

accession to the throne coming up, it

5:26

was a good moment for a stocktake to

5:28

step back and think what I, and reconsider

5:31

what I thought of his reign as

5:33

a whole. And in a sense, circumstances and pushed

5:35

me further in that direction. In that

5:37

due to COVID, I had to find myself a lockdown

5:39

project, which I could write

5:41

with the libraries closed and inaccessible. And so I

5:44

sat down and cracked on with the

5:46

Justinian book. Well,

5:48

at least that led to one good thing.

5:53

So, but that's interesting. And your answer has kind

5:55

of led naturally to my next

5:57

question, because particularly the further off.

6:00

on you go into Byzantine history. It's

6:02

very hard to reconstruct

6:04

the personalities of emperors,

6:07

whereas Justinian, we have this rare

6:09

glimpse, this insight into what he

6:11

might have been like because of

6:14

the sheer amount of evidence

6:16

we have. And you covered some of it there. From

6:21

everything you've read, can

6:23

you tell the listeners how you see his personality

6:26

and maybe lead into what the

6:29

strengths and weaknesses of that personality

6:32

was when it came to being emperor? Yes,

6:35

I think Justinian is one of the

6:37

few individuals for whom we can

6:39

really trace the outline of his personality and

6:42

capture some of his voice from late antiquity.

6:45

The other obvious ones would be Julian

6:47

the apostate, whose reign is much shorter.

6:51

And from a religious perspective, say, from

6:53

that in West St. Augustine. But for

6:55

Justinian's reign, we have such a massive

6:57

material, both material expressed

7:00

in the emperor's voice, propagandizing

7:02

on behalf of his regime and setting

7:04

out his policy agenda. We have this

7:07

with respect to internal

7:09

reforms, doctrinal matters, military

7:11

affairs. We also have, of course, a

7:14

huge amount of contemporary literature responding to

7:17

him as well. We sometimes think, as

7:19

scholars of Byzantium, that compared to historians

7:21

working on the high Roman empire, that

7:23

we suffer from apostasy material. This is

7:26

not the case with respect to Justinian.

7:28

We have more

7:31

evidence for Justinian and his reign

7:33

than we do for almost any previous

7:35

Roman emperor. And I

7:37

think if we take the legal

7:39

sources, the doctrinal sources, the literary

7:41

sources together, quite a clear picture

7:44

of the man emerges. He

7:46

is, as the sixth century

7:49

historian Vakopius emphasizes, in many

7:51

ways reflecting back imperial propaganda,

7:53

a workaholic. He

7:55

is obsessed with the minutiae of

7:57

government, showing an interest in the fine

7:59

grave. of Imperial administration,

8:01

even on the Empire's distant

8:04

frontiers in Egypt and elsewhere.

8:07

He is aware

8:09

that for the Imperial system to operate,

8:12

he has to delegate power, but he

8:14

has great difficulty letting go. And there

8:16

are only a very small number of

8:18

individuals he's really willing to trust in

8:21

that process of delegation. He

8:23

is fantastically loyal, as we see

8:26

in his devotion to his wife, the

8:28

Empress Theodora, whom he treats really as

8:30

a co-ruler. He has

8:32

enormous reserves of energy. He

8:34

is impatient of failure. He

8:36

doesn't understand others who do

8:39

not share his vision of

8:41

a purified, more Christianised Roman

8:43

Empire. And he has, I think,

8:46

an ability to exhaust even those

8:48

who share the Empress' own enthusiasm

8:50

for his project. And these aspects

8:52

of his personality come

8:55

across very strongly from our sources. I

8:57

think like a lot of ideological

9:00

visionaries and like a lot of workaholic

9:03

administrators, one problem with

9:05

Justinian, and it's a

9:08

problem which is emphasised, for example,

9:10

in the early legislation of his

9:12

successor Justin II, who reverses some

9:14

of Justinian's measures, is that Justinian

9:16

doesn't really understand human frailty, doesn't

9:19

really understand human weakness, and

9:22

often demands too much of both

9:24

his subjects and his own courtiers.

9:27

And you see this very clearly, for example, in the very

9:29

high moral standards, which

9:32

from his very aggressively Christianising perspective, we

9:34

see him trying to apply to his

9:37

subjects. So, for example, Justin II's critique

9:40

of Justinian's demands is made in

9:42

the context of his reversing of

9:44

Justinian's attempts to effectively make it

9:46

illegal for Romans to divorce by

9:48

mutual consent. He has a very

9:50

Christianising view of marriage tied

9:53

up with a broader moral agenda, which

9:55

I think we can see driving a

9:58

lot of his domestic. political

10:00

background. Yeah, it's

10:03

interesting, isn't it? Some emperors

10:06

might think if a, you know,

10:08

long serving official had only embezzled

10:10

a little and had one affair,

10:12

that would be a good result.

10:17

Well, this, that sort of leads into the

10:22

Nika riots in my mind, which

10:26

when I first covered, you know, I, I hadn't

10:28

sort of got the whole sweep of Byzantine history

10:30

under my belt yet. So I thought, well, this

10:32

is what rulers do, you

10:35

know, they might have to turn on their

10:37

own subjects and in order to keep power.

10:40

But having studied many

10:42

centuries of sort of Constantinople's

10:45

usurpers and rebellions, it

10:47

just struck stood out to me ever more

10:49

that no other Emperor had done what Justinian

10:51

did. Now, of course, maybe

10:53

if they'd had troops on hand, they

10:55

would have. But do

10:58

you feel he deserves

11:01

extra criticism for making that choice? Or

11:03

do you think, well, that's just power

11:06

politics? I

11:08

think at the end of the day, the Nika,

11:10

Justin, his response to the Nika riots was

11:12

informed by a decision he had

11:14

to make as to whether as the

11:17

historian Procopius presents it, whether he was to

11:19

hold onto the throne or not. And

11:22

I think given the objective

11:24

political circumstances, which

11:26

presented him during that struggle

11:28

for power that ensued across the course

11:31

of that bloodthirsty week in 532, all

11:33

but any Emperor who wanted

11:37

to hold on to power would have

11:39

had to do essentially the same thing.

11:41

I think Justinian is responding here to

11:43

in the context of my career, so

11:46

a series of objective circumstances, which were

11:48

partly the result of an inheritance in

11:50

the reign of his predecessors, and partly

11:52

the specific circumstances through which he had

11:55

helped to engineer his own rise to

11:57

power. As my

11:59

friend colleague Jeffrey Greatricks has emphasized

12:01

in the early sixth century, the

12:04

circus factions of Constantinople, these sporting

12:06

associations, which also become important points

12:08

of contact and affinity between upper

12:10

class and lower class youths in

12:12

the cities of the

12:14

empire, were increasingly drawn into both

12:16

the doctrinal and more general imperial

12:19

politics of the day. And we see

12:21

this already very clearly in the reign

12:23

of the emperor Anastasius, particularly in terms

12:25

of the doctrinal politics of the day.

12:28

Now, as a young man at the court of

12:30

his uncle, the unadopted father, the end

12:32

for Justin I, Justinian had had to

12:35

engage in a concerted program of machination

12:37

in order to build up his own

12:39

support base in the city and secure

12:41

his own claim to the throne. It's

12:43

by no means the case that upon

12:46

the accession of Justin I and 518,

12:48

that Justinian was already regarded as the

12:50

heir apparent. He has to really work

12:52

on the political circles in Constantinople to

12:54

achieve that. And we see him reaching

12:57

out to elements in the church through

12:59

church building, reaching out to elements

13:01

in the army to build up a support

13:03

base there, but also crucially building up a

13:06

support base on the streets of Constantinople by

13:08

associating himself with the blue faction. So

13:11

the circus factions have played an important

13:13

part in his political rise to power.

13:15

Now, when he comes to power, a

13:17

sole emperor in 527, it's necessary really

13:19

politically for him to disengage then from

13:21

the circus factions and to try to

13:23

put them back in the box as

13:25

it were. Otherwise his association with the

13:27

blues will be regarded as destabilizing.

13:30

So that already starts to lead to,

13:32

I think that's the context of the

13:34

rising grievances against him by

13:37

the circus factions. I don't really understand why

13:39

it is that having been so important to

13:41

Justinian earlier, he now is trying to disengage

13:43

from them. And what

13:45

will then happen in the context of the

13:47

rise is that the growing alienation

13:50

of the mob and the alienation

13:52

of the circus factions will of

13:55

course be taken advantage of by

13:57

some of Justinian senatorial opponents in

13:59

the highest political circles in Constantinople

14:01

who will try to redirect the

14:04

rioting into a full-blown attempted coup.

14:06

And once it's quite clear to

14:08

those within the palace, loyal

14:10

to Justinian, that the riots are now

14:13

a full-blown attempt at regime change, Justinian

14:15

at that point has the choice either

14:17

of fleeing and losing control of the

14:20

empire, because once he's outside the capital,

14:22

once he's outside the palace, that's the

14:24

regime finished, or of, as it

14:26

were, throwing caution to the wind and taking

14:28

battle to his opponent by unleashing Belisarius

14:31

and his other allies onto the

14:33

streets and engaging in the mass

14:35

bloodshed, which will then secure Justinian's

14:37

place on the throne. So it's

14:39

a combination of general political tendencies

14:41

and then the specific circumstances that

14:43

have led Justinian to power and

14:45

the way in which these circus

14:47

factions can be bought up and

14:49

used by different political factions across

14:51

Constantinople, both pro-Justinian and anti-Justinian. And

14:55

one of the things I really, really enjoyed about

14:57

the book was the way you saw

15:00

his legislation sort

15:03

of changing things in real time. And,

15:05

you know, obviously, I

15:07

want to know, did he feel guilty about what happened

15:09

and that sort of thing? And whether

15:12

you can say that or not, but you did

15:14

detect a change in his, the

15:16

way he was conceiving of what had happened

15:18

through the way he was writing laws. Is

15:20

that right? I think

15:22

both in terms of the legislation, but

15:25

also we see it in terms of

15:27

pro-regime literature that's being produced and circulated

15:29

on the streets of Constantinople, such as

15:31

the hymns of Romanos, the Meno, for

15:33

example, who is a contemporary hymn writer

15:35

whose hymns are performed on the streets

15:37

of the capital and which are used

15:39

then to convey political messages. Justinian's

15:43

own propaganda and

15:45

his initial take on the Naikum riot is

15:47

to interpret them as what they clearly were,

15:49

I think, at the end

15:51

of the day, an attempted coup orchestrated by his

15:53

opponents within the Senate and within political circles across

15:55

Constantinople. But then as the 530s proceeds, he starts

15:58

to to

16:00

interpret the riots more as a

16:02

sort of form of divine punishment

16:04

for human sinfulness and for the

16:06

sinfulness of his subjects which informs

16:08

a broader determination which has already

16:10

been informing his legislation from the

16:12

moment he comes to the throne

16:14

to as it were try to

16:16

purify and more fully Christianize the

16:18

Roman state from a hardline Christian

16:20

perspective. I would agree with

16:22

other historians here that I think that

16:25

Justinian thinking is informed by a determination

16:27

to seek to regain divine favor, aware

16:30

that hopes of imperial restoration to

16:32

the west or success against Persia

16:34

require the favor of God which

16:36

can only be achieved through taking

16:38

moral reform and religious reform at

16:41

home more seriously. It may also

16:43

be informed by the deep-rooted apocalyptic

16:45

sensibilities which we can see in

16:47

some Christian circles in the early

16:49

sixth century and which may well

16:51

inform Justinian's own sort, the belief

16:53

that mankind is on the verge

16:55

of divine judgment and so the

16:57

emperor must prepare himself and his

17:00

subjects for judgment. In terms

17:02

of guilt I think that Justinian is like many

17:04

other ideologically

17:09

or religiously driven autocrats

17:11

across history that he regards

17:13

almost any amount of bloodshed

17:16

as justifiable if it serves

17:18

the purposes of his higher

17:20

moral or imperial vision. This

17:23

is exactly how the critique of

17:25

someone like Jacobus and other contemporary critics

17:27

of the regime but also I think

17:30

that matches the ruthlessness of

17:32

the emperor as we see in

17:34

the context of Mac and Riots,

17:36

as we see in the context

17:38

of the Western mute conquests, as

17:40

we see in his clear belief

17:42

that unleashing

17:46

military manpower to restore Roman

17:49

might is a fundamentally moral

17:51

concern and a fundamentally moral

17:54

objective which thereby justifies

17:56

enormous amounts of slaughter. ends

18:00

will justify the means. For

18:02

himself, yes. Yeah. Very

18:05

good. Well, let's move on

18:07

to the other big sort

18:10

of famous dark incident of his reign,

18:13

the bubonic plague. And

18:16

you talked about his response

18:18

to that big challenge in the

18:20

book in a way I hadn't fully taken in at

18:23

the time. Can you tell the listeners a

18:25

bit about his response and whether you think he did a

18:27

good job? Yes, again, the Justin

18:29

Yannick plague is a very long standing interest

18:32

of mine. The first seminar

18:34

paper I gave as a graduate student was on it

18:37

back in 1994, in

18:39

fact, and I've been working on the topic periodically ever

18:41

since. I think

18:43

that there's been an unfortunate tendency

18:46

in recent years on the part

18:48

of some scholars to downplay the

18:51

significance of the Justin Yannick plague and

18:54

to downplay the potential consequences

18:56

of the plague. I

18:59

don't think those approaches are fully rooted in

19:01

understanding of the science. I don't think they're

19:03

rooted in a full appreciation

19:05

of the extraordinary body material we

19:08

have pertaining to the

19:10

plague. I think what is we

19:12

have no reason but to concur

19:14

with our contemporary eyewitness accounts that

19:17

the bubonic plague which strikes the Empire

19:20

for the first time in the five quarters struck

19:22

the Mediterranean world as a hammer blow and potentially

19:25

really posed the risk of

19:27

knocking the entire imperial project

19:29

off kilter. It would of course

19:31

lead to a dramatic reduction in

19:33

the number of taxpayers on whom

19:35

the Empire and the Emperor could

19:38

depend. It would start posing mounting

19:40

problems to military recruitment. It would

19:42

also intensify the apocalyptic apprehensions and

19:44

fears that hovered at the background

19:47

of the thought processes of the

19:49

Emperor and many of his subjects.

19:51

However, as you say in the

19:53

book, what I tried to bring

19:55

out was the remarkably focused and

19:57

effective nature of certain of

19:59

the policy responses which Justinian and

20:01

his circle were able to develop

20:04

in the face of this unprecedented

20:06

cataclysm. And I think that

20:08

the way in which we see the

20:11

imperial authorities, first of all, focusing on

20:14

trying to control the

20:17

medical consequences of

20:20

mass mortality in Constantinople, getting rid of

20:22

bodies and so on is very impressive.

20:24

But more impressive still were the fiscal

20:26

measures taken to try to once

20:29

again regain fiscal composure

20:31

on the Roman state as tax

20:33

revenues started to dry up, introducing

20:36

price and wage controls, manipulating

20:39

the currency to try to stretch limited reserves

20:41

ever further. And I think what we can

20:43

see if we turn to the legal evidence

20:45

and the numismatic evidence is that

20:48

even at the worst initial impact

20:50

of the Justinianic plague, the imperial

20:53

authorities were able to effectively prevent

20:56

a collapse of the imperial system

20:58

and ensure that instead what they faced with was

21:01

a cataclysm, as it were. But

21:03

they managed to keep the state holding together.

21:05

And I think it's only once we get into the late 540s

21:08

and into the 550s that the

21:10

cumulative effect of the plague starts to

21:13

become increasingly debilitating. But I think what

21:15

is most striking is, as it were,

21:17

the way in which Justinian

21:19

and his administrators are able to keep

21:21

the ship of the Roman state on

21:23

course. It's

21:26

really testing to the state's friendship

21:28

and state craft of the sixth

21:30

century Byzantine imperial system and those

21:32

around Justinian. This

21:34

is quite a big open-ended question. But

21:38

as a legislator in

21:41

general, do you see

21:43

him as an impressive figure? Or

21:47

does his lack of realism

21:49

come through in what he thought he

21:51

could achieve by

21:53

changing the law? Well,

21:55

I think there are two very important aspects here.

21:57

First of all, Justinian... I've

22:00

seen his two main interests, the two

22:02

most consistent interests of the emperor across

22:04

his reign were law and

22:06

legal reform on the one hand, or

22:09

the analogy and doctrine on the other. And

22:12

when he comes to power, we have an

22:14

explosion of legal creativity and

22:16

activism on the part of the emperor,

22:18

reforming fundamental aspects of illustration and life

22:21

in the Roman world, in the early

22:23

by the time of old, but that

22:25

is happening alongside, of course, also the

22:28

codification project, whereby Justinian

22:30

is taking the inherited texts

22:32

and body of Roman law

22:34

and recasting it and boiling

22:36

it down and condensing it

22:39

to serve contemporary needs and

22:41

to convey one

22:43

unified vision and voice that of

22:45

Justinian himself. Now, in terms of

22:47

the ad hoc piecemeal reforms,

22:49

the overhauling of the provinces and

22:52

so on, one could argue that

22:54

a number of those reforms will

22:56

end up being reversed, but as

22:58

circumstances changed across the course of

23:00

his reign, not all of the legal

23:02

remedies that he introduced to affect things

23:05

like problems in tax collection and so

23:07

on, but not all of those would

23:09

deliver. But on

23:11

the other hand, the codification project, which

23:14

many contemporaries, Justinian's court tells

23:16

us, regarded as impossible to

23:18

achieve, the boiling down of

23:21

inherited Roman juridical texts by

23:23

95%, the recasting

23:25

of all the legal materials inherited from previous

23:27

emperors, the creation of a new textbook for

23:30

the law in the form of the Institute.

23:32

Not only would that codification

23:34

program be successful, but it

23:36

would define how Roman law

23:38

would be transmitted in Byzantium

23:41

and beyond in the medieval West,

23:44

really until the age of Napoleon. So

23:46

in terms of the most ambitious

23:49

part of his reform program legally,

23:51

the codification project, the success was

23:53

really quite remarkable and plays

23:56

a fundamental role in the contribution that

23:58

Justinian made to the- future development

24:01

of Western civilization. Yeah,

24:03

I'll give you a chance to kind of give your

24:07

final verdict on Justinian at the end of this

24:09

interview. Let me put two things to you which

24:11

I suspect you will see very differently than I

24:13

did at the time. I mean

24:15

two things sort of towards the end of his reign that gave

24:18

me a slightly negative view of

24:20

Justinian in my in my very amateur level

24:23

of research. One was the decision to

24:25

send troops to Spain when

24:28

things already seem very stretched in

24:30

Italy and and in the Balkans where

24:32

there seem to be sort of Slavic

24:34

groups and perhaps what we

24:36

would call Bulgarian groups or nomads sort of

24:38

raiding the Balkans. And so I just thought

24:41

this was very odd because it seemed to

24:43

me even if your Spain expedition

24:45

succeeds you you won't be able to keep

24:47

control of it if you're struggling

24:49

to keep control of Italy and the Balkans.

24:51

Is that a fair criticism

24:54

or am I looking at it through the wrong

24:56

lens? Well, I think

24:58

that the the

25:00

Spanish adventure the sending of

25:02

forces to establish a new imperial foothold

25:04

in southern Spain that we see in

25:06

the 550s. This I don't think

25:08

what this is is an attempt to reconquer

25:12

the entirety of the Visigothic kingdom of Spain.

25:15

I think with as with quite

25:17

a lot of Justinian Western four

25:19

ways it's an opportunistic campaign taking

25:21

advantage of a succession dispute in

25:23

the Visigothic kingdom in the same way taking

25:26

advantage of succession disputes in the Vandal Kingdom

25:28

of Africa and the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy

25:31

to initially restore imperial control over

25:33

the core coast the most important

25:35

coastal zones of the Mediterranean which

25:40

helped to secure the empire's

25:42

control of the Mediterranean sea

25:44

routes. He's restoring imperial control

25:46

over what is economically still

25:48

the most economically developed

25:50

and sophisticated part of the Visigothic Kingdom

25:52

of Spain. So on the basis of

25:55

relatively little military outlay he is acquiring

25:57

territories which could make a net contribution.

26:00

to imperial tax revenues. But also

26:02

I think those Spanish territories where

26:04

we see the military focus being

26:06

directed by Justinian in the five

26:08

fifties, were really of interest to

26:10

him in terms of consolidating control

26:12

over Africa and preventing

26:14

any Visigothic forces or any forces from

26:16

the West from crossing the straits of

26:19

Gibraltar and beginning to challenge Roman authority

26:21

there. So in certain respects, it's the

26:23

final consolidation of the imperial position that's

26:25

been restored in Africa. And I think

26:28

it's a necessary follow on from that.

26:30

Whilst also in putting, showing

26:33

an opportunistic interest in putting feelers

26:35

out to seeing how far along

26:37

the coastal zone and how far

26:39

into the hinterland imperial power

26:41

can be restored at the relatively little

26:43

outlay. So

26:45

I don't think it's a major means of sap

26:48

on imperial resources at that moment in time.

26:51

Right. Well, the other

26:53

criticism I strongly suspect you'll

26:55

disagree with, was

26:57

the succession that I felt, shouldn't

27:01

he put someone in place who largely

27:04

agrees with his policy

27:06

programs so that he

27:09

has confidence it will continue on after his death.

27:12

What do you think of that? Well, I

27:14

think that as with his

27:17

uncle Justin the first, Justinian having

27:19

spent most of his career, almost

27:22

his entire life in and around the palace,

27:25

has a very keen understanding of

27:27

how the power dynamics and the

27:29

power politics of life in the

27:32

palace of Constantinople really work. Now,

27:34

if we go back and think about his uncle Justin the

27:36

first for a moment, as I said earlier,

27:39

it was by no means clear when Justin the first

27:41

became emperor in 518, that

27:43

Justinian was going to be his successor. And

27:46

Justin the first himself appeared to have taken quite

27:48

a long time before he

27:50

decides to line Justinian up. He only

27:52

makes him Caesar, deputy

27:55

in 525, for seven years after

27:57

he's come to power. And he only makes him

27:59

co-emperor. when illness

28:01

obliges him to do that just a few

28:03

months before his death. Why would that be

28:05

the case? Well, if you're an elderly emperor

28:07

in particular, like Justin the first was, you

28:10

don't want there to be an obvious

28:12

successor because then you start

28:14

looking extremely expendable. Fewer

28:16

people will defer to you, fewer people will

28:18

listen to you. Ultimately, those

28:21

around your successor may want to

28:23

do away with you. And

28:25

likewise, whilst on the one hand, Justinian,

28:27

I think, understood that it was useful

28:29

for him to surround himself with members

28:31

of his broader extended kin. So,

28:33

for example, we see a lot of his

28:36

nephews and cousins being put

28:38

into the high ranking military positions.

28:42

By virtue of the fact that they're

28:44

always anti-Justinianic factions of court, by virtue

28:46

of the fact that there are always

28:48

people machinating and plotting against him, the

28:51

emperor is much safer not to have a successor

28:53

lined up for the same reasons I mentioned with

28:55

respect to Justin the first, because at that point

28:57

Justinian would have become much more vulnerable. You

29:00

have a single figure around whom

29:02

hopes of regime change can coalesce.

29:05

Now, again, his success of Justin the

29:08

second will, through his court propagandists, want

29:10

to give the impression that Justinian favoured

29:12

him as his successor and anointed him

29:14

as subtle and signalled

29:17

that he would be such prior to his death. But

29:20

we've got no real evidence for

29:22

that. If anything, his cousin, also

29:24

called Justin, would have been a

29:26

stronger claimant. But I

29:28

think this is all part of how,

29:31

if you are particularly an elderly emperor

29:33

in Constantinople, you secure your position on

29:35

the throne by making sure there's no

29:37

one person whom people can rally behind.

29:41

Very interesting. Before

29:43

we get to your

29:46

final verdict, let's just

29:48

have a very brief word on modern

29:50

comparisons. I know

29:52

one scholar compared Justinian to Stalin,

29:55

which has sort of led

29:58

to some discussion. Do

30:00

you see any modern comparisons as

30:02

helpful? Even that we're not asking

30:05

that modern figures would actually be

30:07

like Justinian. But I

30:09

know in one interview someone asked you whether

30:11

he was like Margaret Thatcher, which really amused

30:14

me. But yeah, are there any? Anatomy

30:17

to autocracy, which one can study

30:19

across time comparing different historical societies

30:21

and different political cultures in a

30:24

way that is useful. Tony

30:27

Oleray, who compared Justinian to

30:30

Stalin and what he was getting at

30:32

there was Justinian. I'd say Justinian's obsession

30:34

with detail, his obsession

30:36

with the minutiae of government, the

30:39

difficulty he had letting go. And

30:41

I think actually that comparison is

30:44

quite useful. And in many ways, a useful point

30:46

of comparison between literary

30:49

culture, say in Stalinist Moscow,

30:51

and literary culture in sixth century Constantinople,

30:53

whereas I try to draw out in

30:56

the book. It's actually possible to get

30:58

away with much more public criticism of

31:00

the regime than we might sometimes think.

31:03

And that comparison with Moscow under Stalin

31:05

was one I remember Symmando

31:07

making to me when

31:09

I was a student. Again,

31:14

I think that when I was writing the

31:16

final section of the book, I was

31:19

really writing it at the same time

31:21

as the Russian

31:23

invasion of Ukraine. And

31:26

of course, the ideological legacy of

31:29

Byzantium in the Russian world is

31:32

immense. And there is

31:34

a great interest in

31:36

Byzantium, the part of some modern

31:38

nationalist elements in Russian

31:40

politics. But it is very hard not to

31:43

be reading about

31:45

Justinian's armies liberating people that didn't

31:47

really necessarily want to be liberated

31:49

or view the invasion of their

31:51

territory as liberation and not

31:54

be thinking, to some extent, about

31:56

what was also going on in Ukraine at the time. So

31:59

I do think these points of... historical comparison can be

32:01

useful. But not least because, as it

32:03

were, Justinian also plays a vital part

32:05

in, I think, establishing the

32:08

agenda of autocracy

32:11

and of Christian autocracy in

32:13

particular, not only in the Byzantium

32:15

of his own lifetime, but also

32:18

in the Western tradition moving forward.

32:22

Yeah, yeah, interesting. Well,

32:25

getting to sort of summing Justinian up then,

32:27

I think you argued quite nicely in the

32:29

book, you know, that instead of applying modern

32:32

criteria for whether he was a good emperor,

32:36

we should look at whether he lived up to

32:38

his own goals and ambitions. And I think you

32:40

think largely he did. Yes,

32:43

I think talk of good or bad emperors can

32:47

be sort of dangerous

32:49

and unhelpful. I think that

32:52

one of the key aspects of Justinian,

32:55

which I tried to bring out in the book, is to

32:57

emphasize both the, when I

32:59

turn the light and the shade of

33:01

his regime and of his agenda. So

33:05

on the one hand, for example,

33:07

the emperors Christianizing agenda would lead

33:09

to a dramatic intensification of persecution,

33:12

of religious

33:14

minorities, nonconformist groups within the

33:17

empire, of pagans, of Jews,

33:19

of Samaritans, of Christians he

33:21

deemed heretical. We see

33:23

unprecedented persecution of people on grounds

33:26

of sexual morality

33:28

and lifestyles under Justinian.

33:30

At the same time, the same

33:32

Christianizing agenda also informed an unprecedented

33:34

degree of charity on the part

33:36

of the regime towards groups such

33:38

as the urban poor,

33:41

vulnerable women, women who want to

33:43

escape lives as prostitutes, ex-slaves,

33:45

and so on and so forth. So on the

33:47

one hand, I think you have to look at

33:49

the impact of Justinian's policy on his subjects in

33:51

the round. And what you thought of

33:53

the regime at the time probably

33:56

being informed by which ends of

33:58

Justinian policy agenda you are the receiving end on. And

34:01

then in terms of the success of the regime,

34:03

which I think is a more useful way to

34:05

think about it, rather than whether he was good

34:07

or bad, how successful was he? But

34:10

I think there's been a

34:12

tendency on the part of

34:14

historians to overemphasize the relatively

34:16

short-lived nature of Justinian's Western

34:18

reconquest in terms of making

34:20

sense of his legacy, that the

34:22

territories that are reconquered in

34:24

Africa, Italy, part of Spain, would

34:26

not stay under imperial control for

34:29

many generations, for the most

34:31

part, after his death. And of course, the empires

34:33

are whole, would suffer a major era of military

34:35

collapse in the seventh century at the hands of

34:37

both the Persians and the Arabs. So I think

34:39

as it were, particularly by virtue of the loss

34:42

of these Western territories, people often regard

34:45

Justinian as in some sense a political failure. But

34:47

as I came across to me

34:49

really, as I tried to look at his reign in the

34:51

round, those Western reconquests

34:54

are really, for the most

34:56

part, opportunistic military forays, often

34:58

on the cheap. The outlay of

35:00

resources in those Western campaigns is very limited.

35:03

Justinian's most consistent priorities and the priorities which

35:05

he's most determined to bring to the fore

35:08

of imperial policy when he comes to the

35:10

throne in 527 were law and legal

35:14

reform, including the codification of the

35:16

inherited body of the Roman law,

35:18

and doctrinal matters, trying to

35:21

redefine and resolve the

35:23

doctrinal disputes at the heart of the

35:25

church politics of the day in the

35:27

sixth century. Once again, solving

35:30

those doctrinal disputes were to Justinian's

35:32

mind of fundamental significance

35:34

in terms of securing divine favor

35:36

for the empire and salvation for

35:39

himself and his subject. And I

35:41

think in terms of law and

35:43

doctrine, Justinian's legacy was one

35:45

of much greater success. As I mentioned

35:47

earlier, at the end of the day,

35:49

the way in which Roman law would

35:51

be transmitted both

35:54

within Byzantium and beyond the way in

35:56

which Roman law be transmitted in

35:58

the centuries ahead is as a it leaves the

36:00

hands of his law commissioners. Roman law's

36:03

student study today is really just in

36:05

the Anachronyan law. And so he would

36:07

really establish the legal bedrock upon

36:10

which Reston and Christendom

36:12

and medieval Byzantium would be built. And

36:14

likewise, the doctrine of the Byzantine church

36:16

and the doctrine of the early medieval

36:19

papacy that we see represented, for example,

36:21

in the writings of the greatest of

36:23

the early medieval Popes, Pope Gregory the

36:26

Great at the end of the sixth

36:28

century, is Christian doctrine as it left

36:30

the hands of Justinians, called theologians, and

36:33

as Justinian enforced it on the imperial

36:35

church at the great council, the second

36:37

council of Constantinople, which he

36:39

convened in the year 553. So

36:42

in terms of what mattered most to

36:44

Justinian, in his own terms, law and

36:46

doctrine, his legacy would be immense. And

36:49

his reign would be, from the

36:51

empress perspective, one of enormous success

36:53

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