4297 AM · 537 CE · world history
Justinian and Hagia Sophia
Byzantium reconquers part of the West, codifies Roman law, and builds the age's greatest church.
Justinian tries to rebuild the empire: his generals briefly recover Italy, North Africa and southern Spain. Far more durable is the Corpus Juris Civilis, the compilation of Roman law from which continental legal tradition grows. In Constantinople he raises Hagia Sophia, whose dome seemed to contemporaries suspended from heaven on a chain.
Sources
Documents of the period
- inscriptions and coinage of the Roman Empire — the coins of Justinian and the mosaics of Ravenna
Scholarship
- Procopius of Caesarea and the Byzantine chronicles — the Wars, the Buildings and the Secret History
Basis: documents and evidence.