Justinian's Byzantine Empire
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Justinian I ruled the eastern Roman empire from 527 to 565 and left the deepest legal mark on Europe. Born a Latin-speaking peasant in the Balkans, he was adopted by his uncle Justin and succeeded him, taking as his consort Theodora, a former actress whose influence on policy was great. His generals Belisarius and Narses recovered North Africa from the Vandals in 533, Italy from the Ostrogoths after a long and destructive war, and part of Spain from the Visigoths, briefly restoring the Mediterranean to Roman control. The cost was ruinous, and plague in 541 killed perhaps a third of the population of the capital. His lasting achievement was the Corpus Juris Civilis, a commission that collected, translated and annotated Roman law from the emperor Hadrian onward, forming the basis of the civil law systems of most of continental Europe and Latin America. He also rebuilt Hagia Sophia after the Nika riots of 532 and closed the Academy of Athens in 529 to enforce religious uniformity. Wars with Persia continued until 562, and within twenty years of his death the empire lost Italy to the Lombards. The Code was later translated into Latin and studied in the universities of medieval Europe.