The Early Middle Ages | Justinian and the Byzantine Empire (Lecture 11)

Lecture 11: The eastern half of the Roman Empire, known to historians as the Byzantine Empire, survived the barbarian migrations of the 4th and 5th centuries by roughly a millennium. Although it became officially Greek speaking, rather than Latin speaking, the Byzantine Empire preserved classical culture and classical urban life better than the West preserved them. The 6th-century Byzantine emperor Justinian had a number of notable accomplishments during his long reign, such as the recodification of Roman law and the construction of the church known as the Hagia Sophia. His reconquests of North Africa and Italy, however, badly strained the resources of the Byzantine Empire, which soon lost much of what he had conquered. During the reign of Emperor Heraclius in the first half of the 7th century, the Byzantine Empire came close to collapsing before the onslaughts of the Persian Empire and the Slavs.

Suggested Readings:
Alexander Kahzdan and Giles Constable. People and Power in Byzantium. Dumbarton Oaks, 1982.
Cyril Mango, ed. The Oxford History of Byzantium. Oxford University Press, 2002.
John Moorhead. Justinian. Macmillan, 1994.

Lecture 12: https://www.bitchute.com/video/bW7P3ZFIRTqy/