This survey of the reign of the Emperor Justinian and the Byzantine Empire dissects the complicated political and military environment surrounding Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire in the 6th Century CE, and discusses the ambitions and achievements of the Emperor Justinian.

At the opening of the sixth century, large segments of the Roman Empire had fallen to barbarian warlords. The Churches of Rome and Constantinople were locked in a schism rooted in different attitudes towards the decrees and definitions of the Fourth Ecumenical council held at Chalcedon in 451. The emperor Justinian (527-565) dreamed of reunifying and restoring the Empire; but to accomplish this he needed a unified Church. Before Justinian ascended the throne the schism between Rome and Constantinople had been healed, largely due to Justinian's influence, but a significant segment of the Eastern population (dubbed monophysites) would not accept the union and the imperial church remained divided.

From one of the nation's leading Byzantine scholars comes a fictional look at the vicious reign of Justinian II, Emperor of the Romans in the seventh century and one of history's most desperate and brutal rulers. "Electrifying...An artfully styled narrative and painstaking attention to historical detail vivify this mesmerizing account of one of history's most remarkable rulers." --Booklist At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

From the acclaimed author of Miracle Cure and The Third Horseman, the epic story of the collision between one of nature's smallest organisms and history's mightiest empire During the golden age of the Roman Empire, Emperor Justinian reigned over a territory that stretched from Italy to North Africa. It was the zenith of his achievements and the last of them. In 542 AD, the bubonic plague struck. In weeks, the glorious classical world of Justinian had been plunged into the medieval and modern Europe was born. At its height, five thousand people died every day in Constantinople. Cities were completely depopulated. It was the first pandemic the world had ever known and it left its indelible mark: when the plague finally ended, more than 25 million people were dead. Weaving together history, microbiology, ecology, jurisprudence, theology, and epidemiology, Justinian's Flea is a unique and sweeping account of the little known event that changed the course of a continent.

“An exceptional, well written, exhaustively researched, and detailed biography” of the controversial Roman emperor—from the author of Constantius II (Midwest Book Review). Justinian II became Roman emperor at a time when the Empire was beset by external enemies. His forces gained success against the Arabs and Bulgars but his religious and social policies fueled internal opposition which resulted in him being deposed and mutilated (his nose was cut off) in 695. After a decade in exile, during which he strangled two would-be assassins with his bare hands, he regained power through a coup d’etat with the backing of the erstwhile Bulgar enemy (an alliance sealed by the marriage of his daughter, Anastasia). His second reign was seemingly harsher and again beset by both external and internal threats and dissension over doctrinal matters. An energetic and active ruler, his reign saw developments in various areas, including numismatics, administration, finance and architecture, but he was deposed a second time in 711 and beheaded. Drawing on all the available evidence and the most recent research, Peter Crawford makes a long-overdue re-assessment of Justinian’s colorful but troubled career and asks if he fully deserves his poor reputation.

The book explores the history of Justiniana Prima, a city built by Emperor Justinian I (527-565) in his birthplace near Niš in present-day Serbia. Previous studies focused on determining the city's location, underestimating the significance of analyzing written sources for the reconstruction of this city's genesis and importance. Using information from Emperor Justinian's Novels XI and CXXXI, as well as Book IV of Procopius of Caesarea's De aedificiis, Stanislaw Turlej endeavors to show that Justiniana Prima's historic significance resulted from granting its Church the status of an archbishopric with its own province in 535, which was independent of Rome. Justinian wanted to introduce profound changes to the ecclesiastical organization based on state law.

Two of the most famous mosaics from the ancient world, in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna, depict the sixth-century emperor Justinian and, on the wall facing him, his wife, Theodora (497-548). This majestic portrait gives no inkling of Theodora's very humble beginnings or her improbable rise to fame and power. Raised in a family of circus performers near Constantinople's Hippodrome, she abandoned a successful acting career in her late teens to follow a lover whom she was legally forbidden to marry. When he left her, she was a single mother who built a new life for herself as a secret agent, in which role she met the heir to the throne. To the shock of the ruling elite, the two were married, and when Justinian assumed power in 527, they ruled the Eastern Roman Empire together. Their reign was the most celebrated in Byzantine history, bringing wealth, prestige, and even Rome itself back to the Empire. Theodora was one of the dominant political figures of her era, helping shape imperial foreign and domestic policy and twice saving her husband from threatened deposition. She played a central role trying to solve the religious disputes of her era and proactively assisted women who were being trafficked. An extraordinarily able politician, she excited admiration and hatred from those around her. Enemies wrote extensively and imaginatively about her presumed early career as a prostitute, while supporters elevated her, quite literally, to sainthood. Theodora's is a tale of a woman of exceptional talent who overcame immense obstacles to achieve incredible power, which she exercised without ever forgetting where she had come from. In Theodora: Actress, Empress, Saint, David Potter penetrates the highly biased accounts of her found in the writings of her contemporaries and takes advantage of the latest research on early Byzantium to craft a modern, well-rounded, and engaging narrative of Theodora's life. This fascinating portrait will intrigue all readers with an interest in ancient and women's history.

"Translated into English with an index."--T.p.