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History Extra podcast

Justinian: life of the week

History Extra podcast

Immediate Media

History

4.34.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Justinian stands tall among the Byzantine rulers, as the 'sleepless emperor' whose religious fervour and legislative zeal saw him rebuild the eastern Roman empire from the ground up... until the 'four horsemen of the apocalypse' arrived and threatened it all. Peter Sarris talks to Kev Lochun about how the conniving and ruthless Justinian claimed power, how an angry sports fans nearly brought him down, and why he's best-known for having a plague named after him. The HistoryExtra podcast is produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to Life of the Week where leading historians delve into the lives of some of history's most intriguing and significant figures.

0:11.0

From ancient Egyptian pharaohs and medieval warriors, to daring 20th century spies.

0:17.6

He was a ruler of insolubrious beginnings, maligned as a peasant, who was nearly lynched by a mob of angry sports fans and even had a play named after him.

0:31.0

Yet, as Peter Saris tells Kev Lachin, Justinian was in fact one of the greatest

0:37.3

Byzantine emperors. A man who remade the Eastern Roman Empire and whose influence stretched well into the medieval era.

0:45.6

Welcome to this Life of the Week episode on Byzantine Emperor Justinian I.

0:50.9

I'm delighted to be joined today by Peter Saris. Peter is professor of late

0:55.3

antique medieval and Byzantine studies and a fellow of Trinity College Cambridge.

1:00.4

He's also the author of Justinian Emperor Soldier Saint. So all around an excellent guest to talk about Justinian.

1:06.5

And Peter, thank you so much for joining us today.

1:09.3

It's a great pleasure to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

1:11.4

You're most welcome. I wonder as a place that starts

1:14.0

could you introduce this to who this man is and why he's such a big figure in this period of

1:20.7

history? Yeah Justinian is a figure who really in many ways bestrides the transition from the ancient world

1:29.1

to the medieval and at a crucial moment in time tries to reunite the worlds of the eastern and western Mediterranean,

1:37.0

which in the century before his reign in the fifth century had been fragmenting and drifting apart. So he comes to power in the

1:46.0

Eastern Roman Empire from Constantinople in the early sixth century and will his reign

1:51.4

will herald a major attempt to revive the East Roman state, to conquer territories in the West which had been lost to the Roman Empire over the course of the 5th century.

2:01.0

His reign will witness a concerted attempt to fully Christianize

2:05.6

Roman society and through his efforts at Imperial Reform, at Imperial Revival, and at Christianization he will help to lay the foundations for both the world of medieval Byzantium,

2:18.1

but also in many ways will lay the foundations for the world of medieval Christendom as it would take shape to the west

2:25.2

in the centuries ahead. So he was a key figure as a key moment of transition in European and in many ways

...

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