Justinian I

Justinian I (reigned 527–565) sought to restore the Roman Empire in its old grandeur. He commissioned the codification of Roman law (the Corpus Juris Civilis), rebuilt Constantinople after riots — crowning it with the Hagia Sophia — and sent his general Belisarius to reconquer North Africa and Italy. He ruled with his powerful empress Theodora and died in 565.

His reign was battered by the Nika riots that nearly toppled him in 532, by the catastrophic plague that bore his name and devastated the empire, and by the ruinous cost of his endless western wars, which overstretched the treasury and the army.

Justinian's codification of Roman law preserved and systematized the legal heritage of Rome, becoming the foundation of the civil-law tradition of much of the world; a devout, theologically active Christian, he sought religious unity in his realm, sometimes by force.

His general Belisarius reconquered Vandal North Africa (533–534) and, in a long, destructive war, Ostrogothic Italy, while the eastern frontier saw recurring war with Sasanian Persia; the gains proved costly and largely impermanent.

As a political ruler he is judged directly. His wars of reconquest are debated as visionary restoration or as overreach that exhausted the empire and left Italy devastated; his religious coercion of pagans, Jews, and dissenting Christians, and his suppression of the Nika rioters (thousands killed), are recorded critically. The contemporary historian Procopius wrote both official praise and a venomous Secret History.

Justinian's legal codification shaped Western law for a millennium and more, and the Hagia Sophia stands as one of the world's architectural masterpieces; his reign is remembered as the last great flowering of the Roman imperial idea before the transformations of the medieval world.