Justinian comes to power, thanks to his uncle, Emperor Justin, and a law has to be changed in order for him to wed a forbidden woman. Opulence fills Justinian’s court, and he is faced with early revolt, but surviving this, he overhauls the entire Roman law code—which has since been adopted by much of the world. Finally, he suffers disasters that devastate his realm and drains the Treasury.
Show Transcript
Shalom, and welcome to our history podcast. This is a production of Kingdom Preppers.org. I’m your host, Kingdom Prepper, and you’re listening to: Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. We continue with our history.
Part 12: Justinian and Theodora
In the Eastern Roman Empire, which would later be called Byzantium, a strange thing began to happen during the reign of Emperor Anastasius. The love of gladiatorial combat, which was long a favored Roman sport, eventually declined, being replaced by chariot-racing. Much like today (and all of this has a modern equivalent) chariot-racing permeated medieval eastern Roman society, particularly in the larger cities. Like the modern abominations of stock car racing, or soccer, or American football, chariot-racing dominated the entertainment scene for eastern Roman sports fans. It was part of daily life and figured largely in the lives of non-fans as well. Put another way, everyone living in Constantinople could name the star chariot-drivers, and almost everyone knew the winning racing teams from a given chariot race.
The teams, however, were not defined by drivers and their horses. In fact, the origin of modern sports sponsorship has its foundation in the Eastern Roman Empire, as chariot-racing teams were backed by various associations and companies who sponsored each race. But the symbols these sponsors used in their branding was a simple color, in this case, red, white, blue, or green. Therefore, spectators were not fans of individual chariot-drivers, but the color under which pairs of drivers and their horses would race, and these fans would be associated with those colors themselves. Therefore, fans who cheered for a particular color would be labeled the Reds, or the Greens, etc. What is more, these color-coded fans despised one another.
“By the time Anastasius died of old age in 518 …”
Writes Susan Wise Bauer in her book, The History of the Medieval Word.
“… the fans had settled into two opposed factions: the Blues, who had absorbed the Reds, and the Greens, who now encompassed the Whites. They were increasingly violent, always ready to seize any excuse to murder fans in the other faction. In fact, three thousand Blues had been killed at Constantinople in a 501 riot over chariot-race results, and other riots in 507 and 515 had been almost as bloody.
“Anastasius left no son, although he had nephews who were anxious to claim the right to rule. In their place, though, the imperial bodyguard elected its own commander, the seventy-year-old career army officer Justin, as the new emperor.
“Justin was shrewd, experienced, and had the support of the Blues. He also had the firm support of his nephew Justinian, a soldier who was in his thirties. In 521, Justin made his nephew consul, the highest official position in Constantinople below that of emperor, and Justinian began to take a greater and greater part in the government of the empire.”
By the year 527, Justinian, an avid member of the Blues himself, would be emperor of the east. A few years earlier, he had fallen in love with a forbidden woman named Theodora.
“Theodora’s life is chronicled by Procopius, the Roman historian who gives such a sober and trustworthy chronology of Byzantium’s military history in his History of the Wars.”
Writes Susan Wise Bauer.
“Procopius was a man’s man; he admired strength and force, he scorned uncertainty and compromise, and he believed that a real emperor should be free of female influence. His joint biography of Justinian and Theodora, The Secret History, was written after Justinian married his actress, and after it became clear that Justinian—brilliant and mercurial—depended on his wife. It drips with vitriol.
“Despite the acidic tone, there is little reason to think that Procopius got his basic facts wrong; Theodora’s past was well known to her contemporaries. Her father had been a bear-trainer who worked in the half-time shows given by the Greens between chariot races.”
As a side note, here we have another ancient reference that has a modern shade: the infamous half-time show. As we have hinted in other materials, modern sports—all of them—are based on ancient pagan practices. And, as Torah-observant believers, we are commanded to not do as the heathen nations concerning these matters. At any rate, citing Procopius, Susan Wise Bauer goes on to say that Theodora’s father took ill and died …
“… leaving his wife with three small girls under the age of seven. The Greens had hired another trainer, and in order to survive, the mother had forced the girls to appear before the Blues as entertainers. Entertainment led to prostitution….”
… And a life of ill repute. Being both fatherless and absent the protection of brothers, Theodora, like other Roman women doomed to such a life, went down this infamous path and eventually found her way to Alexandria, which was still a Christian center at the time, though a controversial one. Alexandria was the haven for Christians who found themselves on the opposing side of the current theological debate that surrounded yet another position viewed as heretical, this time a belief of the Nestorians, who held that the Messiah had two separate and distinct natures: human and divine. Of this, Susan Wise Bauer writes:
“The priests at the Council of Chalcedon thought of themselves as monophysitic, and they had carefully rejected language that might make it sound as though Christians worshipped more than one divinity.”
The Chalcedonian Creed proposed that the Messiah was one with the Father; that they existed as one being with one subsistence, but that he himself had two natures, and those natures were not divided or separate. Christians who were far to the east, and were nearer to the Persian Empire, which was inhabited by a people who believed in a pantheon of deities, wanted nothing to do with a theology that sounded like they served more than one being. Alexandrian Christians believed that the Messiah was human but that his divine nature overwhelmed his human nature and thus overcame his natural limitations. Those who held the other popular stance that originated in Antioch believed that his humanity and divinity were not really joined in one, and he was human through his mother and divine through his heavenly Father. These debates led to excommunications of several bishops and the exile of one—Nestorius himself. In fact, quoting Susan Wise Bauer …
“In the theological wars of the previous century, Alexandria had lost prestige. Despite the age and size of the city’s Christian community, the bishop of Alexandria had been placed below both the bishop of Rome (the pope) and the bishop of Constantinople (the patriarch) in the Christian hierarchy.”
Theodora, while in Alexandria, was converted to the extreme monophysitic form of Christianity and thereby abandoned her undesirable profession. But lacking means to support herself, she was forced to live with an old acquaintance who was also a former actress and a Christian convert as well. Her name was Macedonia and she lived in Antioch. Having abandoned an undesirable profession equal to Theodora’s, Macedonia found a new way to earn her living in Antioch: she was a Roman spy, a member of the imperial secret police.
“Antioch was the third most important city in Byzantium (just behind Constantinople and Alexandria), and Justinian apparently had a network of spies and informers to keep him abreast of any unseen developments. Macedonia was one of these informers; Procopius says that she reported to her boss by writing letters, but at some point Justinian must have visited the city and asked for a personal update, because Macedonia introduced him to her friend.”
Justinian was smitten with Theodora, who was two decades younger than him. He made a promise of marriage and set her up in a house in Constantinople in the year 522, while he attempted to persuade his aunt and uncle, the current emperor, to approve the marriage. There was one little hitch—well, really two. Constantine, some two hundred years earlier, had passed a law, on moral grounds, forbidding his officials to marry actresses, given the demands of their profession. Justinian, who was consul at the time—number two in the empire behind his uncle—could not wed Theodora by law. But that was a small matter compared to the objection of his aunt Euphemia.
“Euphemia announced that she would never approve of the marriage—not because the young woman had been in a brothel, but because she was a monophysite.”
Euphemia died around 524, and Emperor Justin immediately passed a new law revoking Constantine’s original marriage ban between Roman officials and actresses. Though they had to be former actresses.
“ ‘Women who have been on the stage,’ he decreed, ‘but who have changed their mind and have abandoned a dishonorable profession … shall be entirely cleansed of all stain.’ Legally redeemed by imperial fiat, retired actresses could marry anyone they pleased, and as soon as the law passed, Justinian and Theodora were married at the Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople.”
The aging Justin later made his nephew co-emperor, crowning him on April 1, 527. He was now the official emperor and heir to his uncle, and his new wife, Theodora, was empress, and she would prove to be a powerful one.
Justinian, before becoming emperor, was given to much study and was a man of divided interests. At once he studied to become a musician and an architect (his interest in buildings resulted in what is considered one of the greatest architectural feats to date: the Hagia Sophia); he also had an interest in becoming a theologian, a poet, and a lawyer, all in addition to his ambition to one day becoming emperor, which he achieved. He possessed an active mind that seemed to constantly be at work, yet one cannot say the same for his physical activity. He was not very brave, and though he commanded many battles he never took the field in any of them.
Indeed, those very battles, part of a deeply held desire for conquest of the western part of the empire, which he intended to reunite with the east, was a costly affair. Of this, Professor Paul Freedman of Yale University says:
“The conquest of the west: folly or grandeur? And it’s both. It is a classic example of overextension—overextension of empires—meaning that empires weaken themselves at some point, fatally, by simply getting either too big, or spending too much money, and the two are linked. You get too big you have to spend more money to defend yourself, not really having the resources to keep what you have—the British Empire, a reasonably clear and neutral example, at some point, is simply too large for the resources of a weakened Great Britain.”
It had been Anastasius, the wise emperor who died in the year 518, who had paved the way for the successes Justinian enjoyed during his reign. Anastasius had ended the gladiatorial contests that pit men against wild beasts at the Roman games, and he had erected a forty-mile wall that fortified Constantinople against barbarian invaders, which stretched from the sea of Marmara to the Black Sea. He also built up the fiscal base of the eastern empire through wise administration, which restored its finances and left the treasury bursting with 320,000 pounds of gold, this while reducing taxes. Justinian was able to dip into the treasury to fund his wars against the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, and the Persians on his northern frontier.
In his book, Medieval Europe, Chris Wickham writes.
“[T]he fiscal system was arguably not robust enough to fight several wars at once as well as building on a considerable scale, and Justinian’s administrative reforms did not achieve the root-and-branch streamlining which he sought; his successors were far less ambitious, doubtless as a result. But his reign certainly shows the possibilities that a determined emperor could contemplate, and partially achieve.”
We’ll be back with more exciting scriptural history . . . in a moment.
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Justinian was both anointed and crowned by the patriarch of Constantinople in a grand ceremony, and he wore a costly diadem of pearls. Yet he allowed lowly citizens to approach him, perhaps being that he was an emperor of low birth himself. These contradictory natures are highlighted by the author Will Durant, in his book, The Age of Faith: The Story of Civilization Volume 4.
“[Even] men of low estate and altogether obscure had complete freedom not only to come before him but to converse with him. At the same time, he promoted the pomp and ceremony of his court even beyond the precedents of Diocletian and Constantine. Like Napoleon, he keenly missed the support of legitimacy, having succeeded to a usurper; he had no prestige of presence or origin; consequently, he resorted to an awe-inspiring ritual and pageantry whenever he appeared in public or before foreign ambassadors. He encouraged the Oriental conception of royalty as divine, applied the term sacred to his person and his property, and required those who came into his presence to kneel and kiss the hem of his purple robe, or the toes of his buskined feet.”
Justinian’s court was one of opulence and splendor, unrivaled by few other imperial courts in all the annals of history. But its opulence was part of government policy, meant to draw reverence from the populace, and it was effective to a degree. While the citizens at large were awed by the solemnity, the court officials were not, and past coups were incited by members of the court. Notwithstanding this, Justinian did experience revolts during his long reign, the most significant of which came just five years in, and nearly led to his death.
“The Greens and Blues—the factions into which the people of Constantinople divided, according to the dress of their favorite jockeys—had brought their quarrels to the point of open violence.”
Writes Will Durant.
“The streets of the capital had become unsafe, and the well-to-do had to dress like paupers to avoid the nocturnal knife. Finally, the government pounced down upon both factions, arresting several protagonists. The factions thereupon united in an armed uprising against the government. Probably a number of senators joined in the revolt, and proletarian discontent strove to make it a revolution. Prisons were invaded, and their inmates freed; city police and officials were killed; fires were started that burned down the church of St. Sophia, and part of the emperor’s palace. The crowd cried out, ‘Nika!’ (victory)—and so gave a name to the revolt.”
Early success emboldened the rioters to demand that Justinian hand over two unpopular city officials, who they intended to execute. The fighting only grew more violent, and buildings were burned, along with the marketplace and dozens of houses belonging to wealthy citizens. Justinian and Theodora, as well as high officials of Constantinople, “shut themselves up in the palace and remained quietly there,” writes Procopius. Whether they expected the riot to die down on its own or not, the trouble only worsened. The rebels sought a new ruler, and so selected Hypatius, the nephew of the deceased and wise Anastasius, who Justin had usurped.
Hypatius, who was a senator, lived in Constantinople with his wife and was forced to bar his doors, but the rebels managed to drag him out of his house against his wishes and declare him emperor. A throne had been set up in the Hippodrome, the venue at the center of the city where chariot-racing events were held, and there Hypatius was escorted to take the imperial seat. Justinian contemplated flight by heading for the nearest harbor and sailing off on one of his royal ships. But …
“The empress, Theodora, dissuaded him, and called for active resistance.”
Writes Will Durant.
“Belisarius, leader of the army, took the assignment, assembled a number of Goths from his troops, led them to the hippodrome, slaughtered 30,000 of the populace, arrested Hypatius, and had him killed in jail. Justinian restored his dismissed officials, pardoned the conspiring senators, and restored to the children of Hypatius their confiscated property. For the next thirty years Justinian was secure.”
Those thirty-plus years would be remembered not so much for Justinian’s costly and destructive wars or the early revolt, but for his laws. Over the centuries, many Roman laws had been passed that had been rendered obsolete by the changing times, and others were contradictory or downright confusing. A hundred years before Justinian, Emperor Theodosius II had called for a new codification of the Roman laws dating back to the accession of Constantine to address just such a problem. The church, which was a powerful institution in its own right, had modified its own legislation and could readily interpret it. Yet, the civil laws of Rome often ran contrary to those of the nations that comprised the empire. And laws based on ancient Roman times were ill-suited for Hellenic life in the east. The body of Roman law was a muddle of legislation. Justinian, as ever, stoked his desire to unify—he sought to unify the western and eastern churches despite their ongoing debate on theological matters; he sought to unify the empire through conquest; now he sought to unify the law code.
In the year 528, Justinian commissioned a body of ten jurists to collect and reform the Roman laws, as well as bring clarity to the code as they systematized it. The first volume was completed the next year, but other volumes would come later. In all, the revised code comprised four parts, the Codex, Digest, Institutiones, and Novellae.
“All these publications came to be known as the Corpus iuris civilis, or Body of Civil Law, and were loosely referred to as the Code of Justinian.”
Writes Will Durant.
“This code, like the Theodosian, enacted Orthodox Christianity into law…. It acknowledged the ecclesiastical leadership of the Roman church, and ordered all Christian groups to submit to her authority. But ensuing chapters proclaim the dominion of the emperor over the Church. All ecclesiastical, like all civil, law, was to emanate from the throne.”
The sheer weight and importance of this revelation should not be understated, and should not be missed by those with discerning hearts. Justinian did what no emperor before him had done. Constantine had made Christianity legal, thereby ending the persecution of the church. Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Roman state, and he crushed its opponents while granting it greater freedoms that led to its independence from imperial jurisdiction. Yet, while Justinian was asserting ecclesiastical authority over that of the bishops, he did not reverse the independent status of the church. What he did add to the equation, however, is the legal preeminence of the Roman church. On the books, we can say that the beginning of the Papal powers gaining their prophesied authority to rule for a given period comes in the time of Justinian, with this very law. The fact is that Justinian, who was both emperor and the ecclesiastical authority, represents the state first and foremost. His law code actually declared that he was the Roman law, just as Yah is his set apart law.
“Something had happened, almost invisibly, in the eighteen months that Justinian had been on the throne.”
Writes Susan Wise Bauer.
“[H]is word had become law. And not just secular law, but sacred law as well. Despite his claim to wield the ancient Roman imperium, Justinian’s assertion that his authority was sacred was a new assertion.”
Therefore, Justinian is not merely a horn on the beast pictured in Daniel 7 and Revelation 13, he is the beast itself, as a representative of the beast empire. Justinian sees himself as equal to Yah in authority by being able to dictate ecclesiastical as well as imperial matters. This is why we see the beast in Revelation 13—not just the horn in Daniel 7—speaking blasphemies. This would be repeated by later rulers who would come to represent the Roman beast state and not just exist as a horn power.
The Justinian code was far-reaching in its sweep, from ordering lawyers, plaintiffs, and defendants to swear on Bibles prior to court proceedings—which we still see today—to property laws; penalties against heretics and offending clerics, starting with bishops, and even monks.
“Of all the emperor’s work, the making of the Corpus Juris Civilis is the best known and most important in its impact on civilization.”
Writes Norman F. Cantor in his book The Civilization of the Middle Ages.
“The Justinian code is perhaps the outstanding accomplishment in the history of jurisprudence. It consists of nothing less than the codification into a few volumes of the legal life of a great world empire over many centuries.
“… The Justinian code greatly favors absolutism: The emperor is considered the living law, and his will has the unchallenged force of law. ‘The emperor alone can make laws [and] it should also be the province of the imperial dignity alone to interpret them.’
“… Although the Justinian code was not studied in the West in the early Middle Ages, after the middle of the eleventh century it slowly became the basis of the legal systems of all the European countries, with the exception of England.”
It is also the principle on which the Canadian and American legal systems rest. Now, for all his boasting and blaspheming; with the throwing of his imperial weight around and exhibiting among the greatest earthly authority seen under heaven, Justinian and his imperial city had it coming. Judgment had to be meted out for his sins. Ezekiel 14:21 highlights Yah’s four disastrous acts of judgment. Justinian suffered all four, plus earthquakes. Will Durant writes:
“In the end, death won all arguments. Theodora’s passing in 548 was to Justinian the heaviest of many blows that broke down his courage, clarity, and strength. He was then sixty-five, weakened by asceticism and recurrent crises; he left the government to subordinates, neglected the defenses he had so labored to build, and abandoned himself to theology. A hundred disasters darkened the remaining seventeen years during which he outlived himself. Earthquakes were especially frequent in this reign; a dozen cities were almost wiped out by them; and their rehabilitation drained the Treasury. In 542, plague came; in 556, famine, in 558, plague again. In 559 the Kotrigur Huns crossed the Danube, plundered Moesia and Thrace, took thousands of captives, violated matrons, virgins, and nuns, threw to the dogs the infants born to women captives on the march; and advanced to the walls of Constantinople.”
These four acts are repeated in the book of Revelation, which gives you a clue as to their prophetic time frame. But during Justinian’s reign, Yah’s judgment wasn’t restricted to Constantinople.
That wraps it up for this episode of Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. A production of Kingdom Preppers.org, this episode was written, produced, and hosted by yours truly, Kingdom Prepper. All praise, honor, and glory are due to my boss, Yah Elohim, and to his right hand, Yahushua HaMashiach. You can access the transcript for this episode on our website. Yah willing, our history will continue in the next podcast. Shalom.
Keywords: Anastasius, chariot-racing, Byzantium, sports, Procopius, Council of Chalcedon, Monophysite, Monophysitic, Hagia Sophia, Belisarius, Corpus Juris Civilis, Justinian Law Code, Kotrigur Huns, churchianity, two thousand years of leaven, history of Christianity, church history, Hebrew history, kp, kingdom preppers
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