United States or Portugal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In like manner, we find in Justinian's laws the relation of the bishop to his diocese, and especially to his clergy, recognised as we find it presented by the Church from the beginning, and as the lapse of time had more and more drawn it out. The law's recognition secured it from all attack.
This clause was soon proved to contain so much wisdom that in 569 by Justinian's successor it was extended to the provinces of the Eastern empire.
But now a state of things quite unknown before had ensued. Hitherto Rome had been the capital, of which even Constantine's Nova Roma was but the pale imitation. But the five times captured, desolate, impoverished Rome which came back under Narses to Justinian's sway, came back not as a capital, but as a captive governed by an exarch.
When these nations found out Justinian's disposition, they flocked to Byzantium from all parts of the world to present themselves to him. He, without any hesitation, overjoyed at the occurrence, and regarding it as a great piece of good luck to be able to drain the Roman treasury and fling its wealth to barbarians or the waves of the sea, dismissed them every day loaded with handsome presents.
Stoicism became the 'established' philosophy of Rome, and Roman lawyers well-nigh identified the 'ius gentium' with the ideal law of nature, describing it as that which natural reason has established among all men. Yet for at least one of the great classical lawyers, whose words have been enshrined in Justinian's legislation, the identification was incomplete.
The moment of Justinian's succession was coeval with great changes in the West.
Under the jurisdiction of the Consuls Roman law was everywhere substituted for Lombard statutes, and another strong blow was thus dealt against decaying feudalism. The school of Bologna eclipsed the university of Pavia. Justinian's Code was studied with passionate energy, and the Italic people enthusiastically reverted to the institutions of their past.
Exhausted, devastated, and unfilled, the prey, for half a generation, of a fundamental war, Italy was materially ruined by Justinian's Gothic campaigns, and so hopelessly that, when in 568 the Lombards fell upon her, she was almost unable to defend herself, to offer any resistance to what proved and in part for this reason the only barbaric invasion which had upon her any enduring consequences.
In the thirty-second winter of Justinian's reign, the Danube was deeply frozen: Zabergan led the cavalry of the Bulgarians, and his standard was followed by a promiscuous multitude of Sclavonians. * The savage chief passed, without opposition, the river and the mountains, spread his troops over Macedonia and Thrace, and advanced with no more than seven thousand horse to the long wall, which should have defended the territory of Constantinople.
The workmen straightway made the statue, and his wife, having received it from them, set it up in the street which leads up to the Capitol from the Forum, on the right hand side, where to this day one may see Domitian's statue, showing the marks of his tragic end. One may say that the whole of Justinian's person, his expression, and all his features can be traced in this statue.