St. Justinian the Great

Justinian was born around the year 482 in Illyria, of peasant stock, and was raised to greatness by his uncle the Emperor Justin, who adopted him and gave him the finest education the capital could offer. He came to the throne in 527 and reigned for thirty-eight years, the longest and most consequential reign of the early Byzantine age.

His works were vast. He had the whole inheritance of Roman law gathered and set in order in the Code and the Digest that bear his name and that became the foundation of the law of Christendom. He rebuilt the church of Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia, on a scale never before attempted, and on entering it at its dedication is said to have cried, Solomon, I have surpassed you. With his consort Theodora he ruled an empire that for a time recovered Italy, Africa, and part of Spain.

He held the Christ-loving faith of Chalcedon and laboured all his life to reconcile to it those who had rejected the council. To that end he summoned the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 553, which condemned the Three Chapters, the writings that had given comfort to Nestorianism, and confirmed the council of Chalcedon rightly understood.

He was himself a writer on the faith, issuing edicts and confessions of doctrine, and the Church ascribes to him the hymn Only-begotten Son and Word of God, which from his day has been sung at the Divine Liturgy of every Orthodox church. He governed in piety and reposed on the fourteenth of November, 565.

The Church keeps his memory, with the empress Theodora, on the fourteenth of November, honouring the Emperor who gave the Church the Fifth Ecumenical Council and Christendom its greatest temple.