Justin II

Solidus Justins II.

Justin II ( Latin Flavius ​​Iustinus , Middle Greek Ἰουστίνος ; * 520 ; † October 5, 578 ) was (Eastern) Roman Emperor from November 14, 565 to October 5, 578 .

Life

Accession to government and domestic political measures

Justin's parents were Dulcidius and Vigilantia, the sister of Emperor Justinian . Thanks to his position at the court as curopalatus since 552 and the help of his wife Sophia , who was a niece of the emperor's wife Theodora , who died in 548 , he got the imperial title in an apparently smooth manner. However, Justinian did not designate him as his successor through an elevation to Caesar or co-emperor: The praepositus sacri cubiculi - the "head of the holy bedchamber" and private secretary of the deceased emperor - had informed Justin first of the death of Justinian, so that he secretly in get to the palace and thus forestall any rivals. The later emperor Tiberius Constantinus acted as a guard commander during this time . Justin was proclaimed the new Augustus by senators and soldiers three days after Justinian's death . Another possible candidate was a successful general who was also named Justin , but who was only a great cousin of Justinian's family. This Justin had an excellent career, but he was passed over. In 566 he was deported to Alexandria and eliminated shortly afterwards: As a successful general he could have been dangerous to the new emperor, so Justin II had him first removed from his command and then murdered in his sleep.

The first months of Justin II's reign were quite promising: he paid off Justinian's debts, for his part waived tax debts, demonstratively took care of the judiciary personally and called for religious tolerance. Internally, however, his uncompromising anti- Monophysite religious policy soon caused him difficulties, which caused growing tensions between the central office and the rich Syrian and Egyptian provinces; In addition, he made himself unpopular through a rigid (but apparently not entirely unsuccessful) financial policy. It is noteworthy that Justin II broke with a centuries-old tradition and ordered that the governors of the provinces should no longer be determined by the emperor, but by an assembly made up of local bishops and potentes .

Foreign policy

In terms of foreign policy, Justin II did not neglect the West, but tried to keep the Roman territories there; and he gave the impression that he wanted to pursue a more aggressive foreign policy again than Justinian in his last years. The new emperor was demonstratively condescending towards foreign ambassadors, which may be an indication that he wanted to compensate for the rather dubious legitimacy of his rule with foreign policy trumps.

On the occasion of the destruction of the Gepid Empire of Kunimund by the Longobards under Alboin , allied with the Avars , Justin had Sirmium occupied in 567 , with which the Eastern Roman Empire reached its greatest extent under his rule, if only for barely a year. However, because of the insubordinate provincial governor and the tense financial and military situation, his - probably superficial - reform efforts were largely ineffective. There had been a reason why Justinian had ultimately focused primarily on diplomatic and less on military solutions, because the forces of the empire were already extremely tense; the aggressive behavior of the Romans under Justin II aggravated the situation. The Avarenkhagan Baian would have liked to become a Roman federate , but he did not want to hold his children hostage, as Justin had requested.

A decisive event in his reign was the invasion of Italy by the Lombards in 568 under their king Alboin . The cause was perhaps the destruction of the Gepid Empire by the Lombards, who shared the Gepid territory with the Avars. Allegedly, the Lombards fled to Italy from the aggressively expanding Avars, who represented a considerable power factor in this area; however, according to other researchers, the invasion had been planned for some time, and this assumption is probably the more plausible one. It is also possible that Narses , the Eastern Roman commander in Italy, actually wanted to hire the warriors as federates. In any case, the Lombards conquered large parts of Italy in a few years and thus almost completely destroyed Justinian's restoration work there. Your idea is generally considered to be the last train of the so-called mass migration and also as one of the possible dates for the “ end of antiquity ”. Justin could do little to oppose the invaders in the west, since his attention had to be directed primarily to the north and east of the empire: On the Danube he had several unsuccessful campaigns against the Avars carried out.

568/69 gave Justin II to an embassy in Radegundes a relic of the Holy Cross for their monastery in Poitiers . This is very likely in connection with previous peace negotiations between Ostrom and the Merovingian king Sigibert I , who now had to fend off the Lombards and Avars at his borders. In this context, Justin seems to have been interested in binding Sigibert and his sub-kingdom more closely to Constantinople.

Persian war and contacts with the Kök Turks

The Roman-Persian border when Justin II began to rule in 565.

The foreign policy situation on the eastern border of the empire also came to a head. In 572 the war against the Persian Sassanids broke out again, who had last concluded a peace treaty with Ostrom in 562 (see also Roman-Persian Wars ). The reason was unresolved disputes in the Caucasus region , and there were repeated attacks by the Arabs from the Lachmid tribe, allied with the Persians . Late ancient authors accuse Justin of having carelessly provoked the war by supporting a rebellion in the Persian-controlled part of Armenia ( Persarmenia ), but it is unclear whether the emperor, who pretended to be the patron of the Christians, really did the call for help from the Armenian Christians could have ignored without losing reputation. Above all, however, there was probably dissatisfaction among the Romans about the peace of 562, which Justinian had bought with tributes: 572, according to the provisions of 562, annual payments to the Persians should have been made; Instead, Justin refused the levy and even demanded the 300,000 gold pieces that had already been paid back. This gesture was the decisive factor, the Persian king, who had wanted peace, did not accept this affront, and open war began.

The magister militum per Orientem Marcianus, a relative of the emperor, invaded the Persian province of Arzanene in 572. However, the Roman attack quickly stalled. Even if both sides were equally poorly prepared for the battle, the Persians under their aged Great King Chosrau I soon achieved significant successes: The king first repelled a Turkish invasion in the east of his empire, then the Sassanid troops overran in their counter-offensive in the west the Roman Mesopotamia , took the rich city of Apamea and in the year 573 conquered the important fortress Dara .

As early as 568/69, a delegation of the Kök Turks led by the influential Sogdier Maniakh had made contact with Constantinople. The Turkish ruler was outraged by his treatment by Chosrau I and, in retaliation, planned an alliance with the Romans against the common enemy. Justin gladly took up this offer and in August 569 sent the high military Zemarchus to the Turkish ruler Sizabulos in Sogdia. However, the concluded alliance did not have the desired result; on the contrary, the Turks soon turned against East Stream and occupied the city of Bosporos in the Crimea. It may be that the Turks never really intended to take action against the Persians and rather used their own advantage in the conflict between Eastern and Persia.

Insanity and end of independent reign

This accumulation of bad news seems to have affected Justin's mental health: Since the beginning of 574, the emperor has been showing signs of serious mental illness, according to the sources. While Euagrios and Theophylact Simokattes name the military setbacks as the cause, the monophysite Johannes interpreted the emperor's madness as a divine punishment for Justin's religious policy:

Yet he did not escape the righteousness of God, who, however, because he is gracious, did not wish that he should perish entirely, but merely to be kept from his wicked deeds; He sent him, in the words of the Scriptures, "anger, tribulation and fear". And these came over him through an evil demon who suddenly entered him and filled him. This ruled him cruelly and made him fearful, almost as an example of the evil of demons. Because suddenly he destroyed his mind, and his soul was both excited and darkened, and his body was exposed to visible and invisible torments and tortures and terrible agony. He was screaming like wild animals now; he barked like a dog, moaned like a goat, meowed like a cat, or crowed like a rooster. ( John of Ephesus , Church History , 3.2-5).

It is unclear whether the reports about the emperor's madness are correct; in some research it is considered that the reports of the sources could in truth hide a coup against the unsuccessful ruler. At the urging of the court and his wife Sophia, Justin finally elevated the comes excubitorum (guard commander) and successful general Flavius ​​Tiberius Constantinus to his Caesar (co-emperor) on December 7, 574 . From then on, he led all government affairs.

A little later, the Romans finally achieved some success in the fight against the Sassanids: Justin's general Justinian , the brother of Justin , who had been pretender to the throne years earlier by the emperor, was able to defeat the Persians in the battle of Melitene in 575 or 576 . It was one of the heaviest Persian defeats against the Romans to date, and King Chosrau apparently found it difficult to escape. Nevertheless, the success did not prove to be decisive for the war; the Persians quickly recovered from defeat. Ostrom was eventually forced to buy an uncertain truce by resuming the 562 annual tributes agreed upon . This only applied to Mesopotamia; Armenia was excluded from its regulations and the ceasefire did not last long. The fighting flared up again as early as 578.

When Justin, who is judged largely negatively in modern research (contrary to some statements in the sources), died in 578, Tiberius Constantinus succeeded Augustus without difficulty .

Justin II seems to have been a rather moderately gifted emperor. A very prudent financial policy is offset by setbacks in foreign policy. Justin seems to have acted aggressively and undiplomatically towards all "barbarians" - perhaps due to a weak position inside - without having an eye for the real power relations and what is feasible in each case. His offensive demeanor against the Persians, in turn, embroiled the empire in a long and costly war that tied most of the Roman troops at a time when they were urgently needed in the Balkans to defend themselves against the Slavs. The use of the Avars against the Slavs, encouraged by the emperor, in turn resulted in further Avar thirst for plunder. Only Emperor Maurikios , who at the time of Justin II was still the delegation leader in armistice negotiations and later succeeded Justinian as general, was able to temporarily master the crises caused by Justin II .

swell

Important narrative sources are Euagrios (book 5 of his church history , Historia Ecclesiastica ), who has a rather negative attitude towards Justin II, the third part of the church history of John of Ephesus (also hostile to Justin), Menander Protector (only preserved in fragments), Theophylactus Simokates and Theophanes . The work of John of Epiphaneia and that of Theophanes of Byzantium have been lost except for a fragment ; the histories of John were also the main source of Theophylact for this period. Brief comments on Justin II can also be found in Western authors, for example in Gregory of Tours , Johannes von Biclaro and Paulus Diaconus (regarding the invasion of Italy by the Lombards).

Furthermore, the panegyric Latin poem In laudem Iustini Augusti Minoris is to be mentioned in four books by Gorippus , which probably originated in 565 or 566 and celebrated the accession of the new ruler. Among other things, information about the imperial court can be found in the work. Justin's laws are collected in the novellas of the Codex Iustinianus .

The coins that Justin II had struck still bore Latin inscriptions (legends). While errors and prescriptions have started to pile up since the time of his successor, the texts on Justin's coins are still correctly worded: Just like the poetry of Gorippus, this may be an indication that Latin was still mastered at his court and in his administration . In any case, Gorippus reported in 566 that it was expected to be able to give speeches to the emperor in Greek and Latin. In the Syrian tradition Justin II was tellingly counted as the last "Latin" (or "Frankish") emperor, while with Tiberius Constantinus the time of the "Greek" emperors began.

literature

• Averil Cameron : The Empress Sophia. In: Byzantion 45 (1975), pp. 5-21.
• Hugh Elton: The Roman Empire in Late Antiquity. A Political and Military History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2018, ISBN 978-1108456319 , pp. 283ff.
• John Martindale: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire IIIa . Cambridge 1992, pp. 754-756.
• Walter Pohl : The Avars . 2nd edition, CH Beck, Munich 2002.
• Klaus Rosen : Iustinus II . In: Real Lexicon for Antiquity and Christianity . Vol. 19 (1999), col. 778-801. [informative overview]
• Peter Sarris : Empires of Faith. The Fall of Rome to the Rise of Islam, 500-700. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2011, pp. 226ff.
• Ernst Stein: Studies on the history of the Byzantine empire mainly under the emperors Justinus II. And Tiberius Constantinus . Metzler, Stuttgart 1919. [outdated state of research, but partly still fundamental]
• Michael Whitby : The successors of Justinian. Justin II . In: Averil Cameron et al. a. (Ed.): The Cambridge Ancient History . Vol. 14. 2nd revised edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000, pp. 86ff.
• Michael Whitby: The Emperor Maurice and his Historian - Theophylact Simocatta on Persian and Balkan Warfare . Oxford 1988.

Web links

Commons : Justin II  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• James Allan Evans: Short biography (English) at De Imperatoribus Romanis (with references).

Remarks

1. ↑ With full title of imperator Caesar Flavius ​​Iustinus fidelis in Christo mansuetus maximus benefactor Alamannicus Gothicus Francicus Germanicus Anticus Alanicus Vandalicus Africanus pius felix inclitus victor ac triumphator semper Augustus ; see. Gerhard Rösch: Onoma Basileias. Studies on the official use of imperial titles in late antique and early Byzantine times. Vienna 1978, p. 168.
2. ↑ Stefan Esders: “Avenger of all Perjury” in Constantinople, Ravenna and Metz. St Polyeuctus, Sigibert I, and the Division of Charibert's Kingdom in 568. In: A. Fischer, IN Wood (Ed.): Western Perspectives on the Mediterranean. Cultural Transfer in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (400–800). London 2014, pp. 17–40, here pp. 34 ff.
3. ↑ On the Persian War see for example Geoffrey B. Greatrex , Samuel NC Lieu: The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars. Part II AD 363-630. A narrative sourcebook. London / New York 2002, pp. 142ff .; Peter Sarris: Empires of Faith. Oxford 2011, pp. 229ff .; Michael Whitby: The Emperor Maurice and his Historian. Theophylact Simocatta on Persian and Balkan Warfare. Oxford 1988, p. 250ff.
4. ↑ See John Martindale: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire IIIb . Cambridge 1992, pp. 821-823.
5. ↑ Peter Sarris: Empires of Faith. Oxford 2011, pp. 230-232.
6. ↑ Euagrios, Church History , 5:11; Theophylact, Histories , 3.11.
7. ↑ See Henning Börm : Justinian's Triumph and Belisarius Humiliation. Reflections on the relationship between the emperor and the military in the late Roman Empire . In: Chiron 43 (2013), pp. 81f. See also Averil Cameron : An Emperor's Abdication . In: Byzantinoslavica 37 (1976), p. 161ff.
8. ^ For example, Gregory of Tours, Historiae , 4,40
9. ↑ Gorippus, In laudem Iustini Augusti Minoris , 4,154f.
10. ↑ See e.g. B. Michael the Syrian 10:11.

predecessor	Office	successor
Justinian I.	Eastern Roman Emperor 565-578	Tiberios I.