Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

Justinian the Great and his successors (518-610)

The internal policy of Justinian 

Page 5

It appears that the Cappadocian magnates had full authority in their provinces and that they even maintained troops of their own, armed men and bodyguards, and seized private as well as state lands. It is interesting to note also that this Novel was issued four years after the Nika revolt. Similar information about Egypt in the time of Justinian is found in the papyri. A member of a famous Egyptian landowning family, the Apions, possessed in the sixth century vast landed property in various parts of Egypt. Entire villages were part of his possessions. His household was almost regal. He had his secretaries and stewards, his hosts of workmen, his own assessors and tax collectors, his treasurer, his police, even his own postal service. Such magnates had their own prisons and maintained their own troops. Large estates were concentrated also in the hands of the churches and monasteries.

Against these large landowners Justinian waged a merciless struggle. By intervention in problems of heredity, forced and sometimes false donations to the Emperor, confiscation on the basis of false evidence, or the instigation of religious trials tending to deprive the church of its landed property, Justinian consciously and persistently aimed at the destruction of large land-ownership. Particularly numerous confiscations were made after the revolutionary attempt of the year 532. Justinian did not succeed, however, in completely crushing large landownership, and it remained one of the unfailing features of the life of the Empire in later periods.

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