Justinian I

Assembled from 22 blocks · 2 evidence · 23 related

1. Story
2. Eastern Roman emperor 527-565 CE, whose jurists compiled the Corpus Iuris Civilis and whose armies reconquered Africa, Italy and part of Spain. He belongs in this journey for one reason above all: he ruled fifty years after 476 and did not consider the Roman Empire to have fallen. He legislated as Roman emperor, reconquered the western capital, and codified Roman law - which is the single most powerful argument that 476 is a periodisation choice made much later.
3. Knowledge
4. Roman Law
5. Justinian I
6. Connections
7. Roman Law
8. Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus - the contested 'fall' of the Western Roman Empire
9. Compilation of the Corpus Iuris Civilis
10. Rome
11. Latin as an Administrative Language
12. Justinian I
13. Traditional foundation of the Roman Republic
14. The Augustan settlement: Octavian becomes Augustus
15. The Antonine Constitution (Constitutio Antoniniana)
16. Administrative division of the empire on the death of Theodosius I
17. Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus - the contested 'fall' of the Western Roman Empire
18. Compilation of the Corpus Iuris Civilis
19. Ottoman capture of Constantinople
20. Evidence
21. Justinian's compilation preserves the bulk of surviving classical Roman jurisprudence and was issued from Constantinople in the name of the Roman emperor in the 530s CE - fifty-plus years after the conventional 476 'fall'. It is the transmission channel through which Roman law reached medieval and modern European legal systems.
22. Where to end the Roman Empire is an open scholarly question with several defensible answers - 476, 480, 554, 602, 800 and 1453 among them - and the choice reflects the historian's criterion (western imperial office, state continuity, material culture, self-identification) rather than a discoverable fact. A substantial 'continuity' school treats the eastern Roman state as unbroken to 1453.