Justinian I's administrative reforms were a series of measures carried out during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (527–565) with the aim of unifying and improving the efficiency of the public administration of the Byzantine Empire. As a result of the reforms, provincial governors were able to make major administrative decisions without seeking approval from the emperor and his court. The main changes were implemented in 535–538 under the guidance and with the direct participation of Justinian himself and the Prefect of the East, John the Cappadocian. At the municipal level, Justinian's primary objective was to prevent the exodus of the curials, who preferred government service or a church career to the burdens and obligations of administering cities.
The power structure in Byzantium at the time of Justinian's accession was virtually identical to that which had existed in the second half of the 4th century under Emperor Valentinian I. Its primary function was the acquisition and distribution of the resources required for the functioning of the empire. Participation in the activities of the state apparatus involved not only officials whose positions were part of the official hierarchy, but also private individuals who received no payment from the state and were entrusted with the administration of cities, the management of imperial estates or the collection of taxes from them, the organisation of supplies for the army, or the management of public works.
Scholars place the administrative reforms of Justinian in a broad conceptual context, encompassing his conception of the sacred character of imperial power and the idea of the necessity of restoring the Roman Empire to its former boundaries through wars of conquest. Financing wars and large-scale building activity required considerable resources. In this respect, the system constructed by Justinian proved highly effective. Many historians note a variety of systemic problems during Justinian's reign, the most significant of which were corruption and the deterioration of local self-government. Despite considerable efforts, Justinian's reforms were unable to reverse the established trends. The Justinianic system of administration and tax collection remained largely unchanged until the early 7th century, when dramatic territorial losses and the corresponding reduction in revenues necessitated further reforms.
Sources and historiography A large number of sources provide information on the structure of the powerful institutions in the late Roman Empire and Byzantium. Chief among these are the legislative compilations of emperors Theodosius II (408–450) and Justinian. The Codex Theodosianus, published in 438, incorporated all legislation from the reign of Emperor Constantine the Great. Of its 16 books, four contain laws relating to military and civil administration, the duties of officials, their offices, and their privileges. Four further books concern taxation, and one book of the code is devoted to the administration of the capitals, Rome and Constantinople. Three of the 12 books of the Corpus Juris Civilis, which replaced the Theodosian compilation in 529, contain laws on public administration. Administrative matters are also frequently addressed in Justinian's Novels of various years. The picture of conditions in the empire offered by legislative sources is more symbolic than practical; historians believe it reflects the idealised mutual expectations of the subjects of state administration. Thus, the 192 laws of the Theodosian Code urging curials to remain in their cities and fulfil their proper duties are frequently cited as an example of the divergence between expectations and reality.
Late Antiquity is an exceptionally difficult period for the construction of lists of provincial officials, owing to the substantial reduction in epigraphic material compared with the preceding period; those inscriptions that have survived are difficult to analyse because of their laconic character. Lists of provinces are reconstructed on the basis of a small number of documents such as the Laterculus Veronensis of the early 4th century, the Notitia Dignitatum, which A. H. M. Jones dates to the early years following the division of the Roman Empire in 395, certain of Justinian's novels, and the geographical treatise Synecdemus by Hierocles. Of these, the Notitia Dignitatum is considered the most important, as it describes the system of military and civil offices. The information provided by Hierocles relates primarily to cities founded no later than the mid-5th century. The treatise may have taken its final form in the early years of Justinian's reign, since it makes no mention of the province of Theodorias, created in 528.
Works by authors who held official positions or were close to the court are of considerable importance. These include the writings of Cassiodorus, who held the post of praetorian prefect of Italy before the conquest of the Ostrogothic kingdom, the official and unofficial works of Procopius of Caesarea, and the panegyrics of Paul the Silentiary. Exceptionally informative is the treatise On the Magistracies by John Lydus, who held high offices. Other works of early Byzantine historiography are also useful, as their authors were generally members of the upper strata of society. Finally, historians obtain information about the lower levels of administration from epistolary collections, collections of ecclesiastical documents (such as the Collectio Avellana), and, for Byzantine Egypt and Palestine, from papyrus archives. Of the latter, the bilingual, Greek and Coptic, archive of Dioscorus of Aphrodito, a 6th-century Egyptian landowner, official, and jurist, is of interest for the study of provincial officialdom. Dioscorus used his literary talents to obtain from the governor and the prefect decisions favourable to his family.
As the German Byzantinist Berthold Rubin notes, it matters little how one evaluates the degree of novelty of Justinian's reforms, since they continued pre-existing trends in any case. Several approaches exist in the historiography to describing the social and economic development of Byzantium under Justinian. One of them places particular emphasis on social conflicts: a lot of them occurred precisely during the period under consideration. Scholars find grounds for this approach both in Justinian's legislation, where his desire to set himself in opposition to corrupt officials is frequently apparent, and in narrative sources that are sharply critical of the emperor's reform initiatives. A problem with "materialist" interpretations is the questionable extrapolation of unevenly distributed economic or archaeological data to the empire as a whole. The theory advanced by the British Byzantinist Peter Sarris, based on an analysis of data from Egyptian great estates, concerning the "bankruptcy" and "semi-privatisation" of the state under Justinian has been criticised both for its general conclusions and for its debatable interpretations of Egyptian realities. Since the 1990s, greater attention has been paid to cultural and ideological aspects, with an emphasis on cooperation rather than conflict between the emperor and the aristocracy. The American Byzantinist Michael Maas, in his articles and in a monograph devoted to the views of John Lydus, treats the reforms as a manifestation of an ideology reflecting the tension between Christianity and classicism.
Numerous conceptual frameworks have been proposed for understanding the logic of institutional development in the late Roman Empire and Byzantium. In the view of the Australian historian Christopher Kelly, behind the outwardly strange and inconsistent administrative decisions of the emperors lay a desire to prevent the bureaucratic machine from developing into a force governed by its own laws rather than the will of the monarch. Emperors thus consciously sacrificed administrative efficiency in order to preserve their power, chaotically appointing people to positions and reorganising power structures. Many scholars draw attention to the state of the empire's institutional structures as a cause of its administrative difficulties. A. H. M. Jones and Ernst Stein paid particular attention to the complex legal problems arising from the position of governors within the power structure and the procedure for appeals. The Canadian historian James Evans regarded administrative errors as a systemic phenomenon, the result of the administrative system serving its own interests. In his view, under Justinian Parkinson's laws applied not only to the civil service but to the church as well. Corruption in provincial administrations and the decline of the institution of governors are also cited as sources of difficulty. Yet another approach identifies the origins of systemic problems in social or class dynamics. The British historian Wolf Liebeschuetz sees the origins of the Byzantine decline of the "Dark Ages" and the successes of the Arab conquests in the decline of the curial class and the transfer of power in the cities from a hereditary aristocracy with a vested interest in the development of their native city to relatively itinerant "notables" who had accumulated their wealth through government service.
The administrative system at the beginning of the 6th century
The emperor
During Justinian's reign, the process by which imperial power acquired sacred characteristics accelerated. In Novel 105, he asserts that "God has subjected the very laws to the emperor, sending him to mankind as a living law". Officials were now directly linked to the person of the emperor, being designated in their titles as "Justinianic" praetors, proconsuls, moderators, and so forth. Believing in the divine origin of his authority, Justinian insisted on the word ("lord") as the form of address directed towards him. Justinian ruled "by the grace of God" and was the first to introduce the title "Christ-loving." Victorious victory titles were also used more frequently during his reign.
In February 528, Justinian appointed a commission to create a new code of laws. All obsolete laws were repealed and the number of remaining ones substantially reduced. The Code was published on 7 April 529. In December of the following year, a new commission was appointed to work on the writings of the ancient jurists, from which all substantial passages were to be extracted. The resulting Digest was published on 16 December 533. Somewhat earlier, the Institutes had been issued, intended to serve as a textbook for future lawyers. Scholars consider that Justinian's legislative activity should be viewed in conjunction with his wars of conquest and religious initiatives, all broadly directed towards the reintegration of the Roman world. It is no coincidence that in September 533 came the decisive victory over the Vandals, and in November the Theopaschite edict was republished.For details see Scythian monks.