seems to have cooperated closely. In 686 he dedicated
to the king his most signifi cant surviving book, On the
Proof of the Sixth Age, a polemical reply to Jewish de-
nials of Christ’s messiahship. This work redefi ned the
chronological framework of human history within an
apocalyptic context, and was to be highly infl uential in
Spain and western Europe throughout the Middle Ages.
He died in Gao.
Other extant writings by Julian include the Anti-
keimenon and the Prognosticum futuri saeculi. In these,
as in lost collections referred to in the “Eulogy,” Julian
is revealed as an assiduous reader of the works of Au-
gustine. Like Ildefonsus, Julian is credited by Felix with
the composition of verse and also of a substantial body
of liturgy. The latter cannot be disentangled from the
vast corpus of Mozarafaic liturgical texts.
During his episcopate Julianus presided over four
Councils of Toledo: the twelfth (680–681), thirteenth
(683), fourteenth (684), and fi fteenth (688). The fi rst
of these formalized the primacy of Toledo over all the
other churches of the Visigothic kingdom. Julian himself
contributed to this by his emphasis on the role of the
anointing of the king in the “royal city” as a precondi-
tion for a new ruler’s legitimacy.
Further Reading
Collins, R. “Julian of Toledo and the Royal Succession in Late
Seventh-Century Spain.” In Early Medieval King-ship. Eds.
P. Sawyer and I. Wood. Leeds, 1977. 30–49.
Hillgarth, J. N. “St. Julian of Toledo in the Middle Ages.” Journal
of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958), 7–26.
Murphy, F. X. “Julian of Toledo and the Fall of the Visigothic
Kingdom in Spain.” Speculum 27 (1952), 1–21.
Roger Collins
JUSTINIAN I
(c. 482 or 483–565, r. 527–565)
Justinian I (Flavius Sabbatius) was the sovereign of the
eastern Roman, or Byzantine, empire during an age
of vast transition and was a fi gure of both glory and
paradox. Born a peasant, he appreciated the awesome
Roman heritage as few others could appreciate it; but in
seeking to be its steward and restorer, he also opened the
way to its transformation. His reign—one of the longest
in the Byzantine empire—saw achievements that were
substantial and enduring but brought ruin and disaster as
their price. In his very quest to restore the territorial and
doctrinal unity of the Roman world, Justinian guaranteed
its further fragmentation.
Justinian was of Thracian-Illyrian stock and was born
in a Latin-speaking district of the Macedonian Balkans.
His uncle, Justin, having achieved success as a member
of the new imperial guards in Constantinople, sent for
the boy and several other nephews in order to give them
an education, and opportunities, in the capital. Adopting
a new name in tribute to his uncle, Justinian learned
Greek, took a liking to intellectual pursuits such as
theology, and learned the workings of the military and
the court. In 518, by a quirk of fortune, Justin seized the
throne, and Justinian quickly emerged as his right-hand
man, becoming heir-designate in 525 and full successor
two years later.
By that time, Justinian had met and married Theodo-
ra, the remarkable woman who was to be his invaluable
partner in rule. He had also identifi ed administrators and
commanders on whom he could rely and had formulated
the main lines of his policies. During the fi rst four years
of his reign, he was trapped in an unwanted war with
his powerful eastern neighbor, Persia; and just as he
was winning peace and freedom there, the devastat-
ing Nika riots of January 532 nearly swept him off the
throne. He recovered quickly, however, thanks partly to
the advice of Theodora and to the soldiers of the young
general Belisarius, and was then in a stronger position
that allowed him to initiate an array of projects. These
included a codifi cation of the Roman legal tradition as
Corpus juris civilis, schemes to end the religious and
political dissent of the Monophysites and other hetero-
dox movements, and a large-scale building program that
was to culminate in the triumphant cathedral of Hagia
Sophia in the capital.
Justinian’s chief project, though, was his program of
reconquest, aimed at recovering the western provinces
that had been detached by various Germanic tribes dur-
ing the previous century. He was inspired in this by his
duty to rescue the orthodox provincials in those districts
from their Arian Christian rulers, and he was also prod-
ded by dispossessed landowners who sought the restitu-
tion of their property; more broadly, he was motivated
by his broad perception that the barbarian “successor
states” in the west were only a temporary aberration,
and by a sense that he was responsible for restoring the
Roman empire to its former scope, encompassing the
entire Mediterranean.
Exploiting diplomatic opportunities, Justinian dis-
patched the brilliant Belisarius to North Africa, where
the destruction of the Vandal kingdom was effected
with lightning speed (533–534). Meanwhile, given the
deterioration of relations with the Ostrogoths in Italy
during the last years of their king, Theoderic, and the
dynastic crisis attending the succession of Theodoric’s
daughter Amalasuntha, Justinian was next able to ad-
dress the conquest of the Ostrogoth kingdom. While
another general was sent to seize the Ostrogoths’
holdings in the Balkans, Belisarius landed in Sicily in
the summer of 535, beginning the long episode of the
Gothic wars in Italy.
Uneasy about Belisarius’s popularity and military
prowess, Justinian vacillated in his support for hisJULIAN OF TOLEDO