JUSTINIAN THE GREAT

[Jessie Phallon]

[Jessie Phallon]

While his brave generals were winning these victories for the Empire, Justinian himself was busy in making improvements of various kinds at the capital. He erected great public buildings, which were not only useful but ornamental to the city.  The most remarkable of them was the very magnificent cathedral of St. Sophia, for a long time the grandest church structure in the world. The great temple still exists in all its beauty and grandeur, but is now used as a Mohammedan mosque.

 

[Jessie Phallon]

But the most important thing that Justinian did--the work for which he is most celebrated--was the improving and collecting of the laws. He made many excellent new laws and reformed many of the old laws, so that he became famous as one of the greatest of the world's legislators. For a long time the Roman laws had been difficult to understand. There was a vast number of them, and different writers differed widely as to what the laws really were and what they meant. Justinian employed a great lawyer, named Tribonian, to collect and simplify the principal laws. The collection which he made was called the Code of Justinian. It still exists, and is the model according to which most of the countries of Europe have made their laws.

[Jessie Phallon]

Justinian also did a great deal of good by establishing a number of manufactures in Constantinople. It was he who first brought silk-worms into Europe.

 

To the last year of his life Justinian was strong and active and a hard worker. He often worked or studied all day and all night without eating or sleeping. He died in 565 at the age of eighty-three years.