Theodosius I, also known as Theodosius the Great, was a Roman emperor from 379 to 395. He won two civil wars and was instrumental in establishing the Nicene Creed as the orthodox doctrine for Nicene Christianity. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule the entire Roman Empire before its administration was permanently split between the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. He successfully ended the Gothic War (376–382) with terms advantageous to the empire, with the Goths remaining in Roman territory but as subject allies.
The Corpus JurisCivilis is the modern name for a collection of fundamental works in jurisprudence, enacted from 529 to 534 by order of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. It is also sometimes referred to metonymically after one of its parts, the Code of Justinian.
Marcian was Roman emperor of the East from 450 to 457. Very little of his life before becoming emperor is known, other than that he was a domesticus who served under the commanders Ardabur and his son Aspar for fifteen years. After the death of Emperor Theodosius II on 28 July 450, Marcian was made a candidate for the throne by Aspar, who held much influence because of his military power. After a month of negotiations Pulcheria, Theodosius' sister, agreed to marry Marcian. Zeno, a military leader whose influence was similar to Aspar's, may have been involved in these negotiations, as he was given the high-ranking court title of patrician upon Marcian's accession. Marcian was elected and inaugurated on 25 August 450.
The Roman emperor was the ruler and monarchical head of state of the Roman Empire, starting with the granting of the title Augustus to Octavian in 27 BC. The term "emperor" is a modern convention, and did not exist as such during the Empire. Often when a given Roman is described as becoming emperor in English, it reflects his taking of the title Augustus and later Basileus. Another title used was Imperator, originally a military honorific, and Caesar, originally a cognomen. Early emperors also used the title Princeps alongside other Republican titles, notably consul and Pontifex maximus.
In modern historiography, the Western Roman Empire was the western provinces of the Roman Empire, collectively, during any period in which they were administered separately from the eastern provinces by a separate, independent imperial court. Particularly during the period from AD 395 to 476, there were separate, coequal courts dividing the governance of the empire into the Western provinces and the Eastern provinces with a distinct imperial succession in the separate courts. The terms Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire were coined in modern times to describe political entities that were de facto independent; contemporary Romans did not consider the Empire to have been split into two empires but viewed it as a single polity governed by two imperial courts for administrative expediency. The Western Empire collapsed in 476, and the Western imperial court in Ravenna disappeared by AD 554, at the end of Justinian's Gothic War.
The Peshitta is the standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition, including the Maronite Church, the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, the Malabar Independent Syrian Church, the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, the Assyrian Church of the East and the Syro-Malabar Church.
The Codex Theodosianus is a compilation of the laws of the Roman Empire under the Christian emperors since 312. A commission was established by Emperor Theodosius II and his co-emperor Valentinian III on 26 March 429 and the compilation was published by a constitution of 15 February 438. It went into force in the eastern and western parts of the empire on 1 January 439. The original text of the codex is also found in the Breviary of Alaric, promulgated on 2 February 506.
The term Melkite, also written Melchite, refers to various Eastern Christian churches of the Byzantine Rite and their members originating in West Asia. The term comes from the common Central Semitic root m-l-k, meaning "royal", referring to the loyalty to the Byzantine emperor. The term acquired religious connotations as denominational designation for those Christians who accepted imperial religious policies, based on Christological resolutions of the Council of Chalcedon (451).
The Theodosian dynasty was a Roman imperial family that produced five Roman emperors during Late Antiquity, reigning over the Roman Empire from 379 to 457. The dynasty's patriarch was Theodosius the Elder, whose son Theodosius the Great was made Roman emperor in 379. Theodosius's two sons both became emperors, while his daughter married Constantius III, producing a daughter that became an empress and a son also became emperor. The dynasty of Theodosius married into, and reigned concurrently with, the ruling Valentinianic dynasty, and was succeeded by the Leonid dynasty with the accession of Leo the Great.
The Valentinian dynasty was a ruling house of five generations of dynasts, including five Roman emperors during late antiquity, lasting nearly a hundred years from the mid fourth to the mid fifth century. They succeeded the Constantinian dynasty and reigned over the Roman Empire from 364 to 392 and from 425 to 455, with an interregnum (392–423), during which the Theodosian dynasty ruled and eventually succeeded them. The Theodosians, who intermarried into the Valentinian house, ruled concurrently in the east after 379.
Byzantine law was essentially a continuation of Roman law with increased Orthodox Christian and Hellenistic influence. Most sources define Byzantine law as the Roman legal traditions starting after the reign of Justinian I in the 6th century and ending with the Fall of Constantinople in the 15th century. Although future Byzantine codes and constitutions derived largely from Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis, their main objectives were idealistic and ceremonial rather than practical. Following Hellenistic and Near-Eastern political systems, legislations were tools to idealize and display the sacred role and responsibility of the emperor as the holy monarch chosen by God and the incarnation of law "nómos émpsychos", thus having philosophical and religious purposes that idealized perfect Byzantine kingship.
Thomas the Presbyter was a Syriac Orthodox priest from the vicinity of Reshaina in Upper Mesopotamia who wrote the Syriac Chronicle of 640, which is also known by many other names.
Macedonian Renaissance is a historiographical term used for the blossoming of Byzantine culture in the 9th–11th centuries, under the eponymous Macedonian dynasty (867–1056), following the upheavals and transformations of the 7th–8th centuries, also known as the "Byzantine Dark Ages". The period is also known as the era of Byzantine encyclopedism, because of the attempts to systematically organize and codify knowledge, exemplified by the works of the scholar-emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos.
In historiography, the Late or Later Roman Empire, traditionally covering the period from 284 CE to 641 CE, was a time of significant transformation in Roman governance, society, and religion. Diocletian's reforms, including the establishment of the tetrarchy, aimed to address the vastness of the empire and internal instability. The rise of Christianity, legalized by Constantine in 313 CE, profoundly changed the religious landscape, becoming a central force in Roman life. Simultaneously, barbarian invasions, particularly by the Goths and Huns, weakened the Western Roman Empire, which collapsed in 476 CE. In contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire endured, evolving into the Byzantine Empire and laying the foundations for medieval Europe.
Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic. Portions of the Old Testament were written in Aramaic and there are Aramaic phrases in the New Testament. Syriac translations of the New Testament were among the first and date from the 2nd century. The whole Bible was translated by the 5th century. Besides Syriac, there are Bible translations into other Aramaic dialects.
Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire began during the reign of Constantine the Great in the military colony of Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem), when he destroyed a pagan temple for the purpose of constructing a Christian church. Rome had periodically confiscated church properties, and Constantine was vigorous in reclaiming them whenever these issues were brought to his attention. Christian historians alleged that Hadrian had constructed a temple to Venus on the site of the crucifixion of Jesus on Golgotha hill in order to suppress Christian veneration there. Constantine used that to justify the temple's destruction, saying he was simply reclaiming the property. Using the vocabulary of reclamation, Constantine acquired several more sites of Christian significance in the Holy Land.
The Code of Justinian is one part of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the codification of Roman law ordered early in the 6th century AD by Justinian I, who was Eastern Roman emperor in Constantinople. Two other units, the Digest and the Institutes, were created during his reign. The fourth part, the Novellae Constitutiones, was compiled unofficially after his death but is now also thought of as part of the Corpus Juris Civilis.
Elijah, Eliya, or Elias of Nisibis was an Assyrian cleric of the Church of the East, who served as bishop of Beth Nuhadra (1002–1008) and archbishop of Nisibis (1008–1046). He has been called the most important Christian writer in Arabic—or even throughout non-Christian Asia—during the 11th century. He is best known for his Chronography, which is an important source for the history of Sassanid Persia.
On Weights and Measures is a historical, lexical, metrological, and geographical treatise compiled in 392 AD in Constantia by Epiphanius of Salamis. The greater part of the work is devoted to a discussion on Greek and Roman weights and measures.
The Sententiae Syriacae, also known as the Laws of the Christian and Just Kings, is a late antique collection of 102 propositions of Roman law. The propositions, on diverse subjects and organized indiscriminately, are drawn mainly from the statutes (constitutiones) of the Emperor Diocletian, but also from the Pauli Sententiae and the statutes of Constantine the Great and Leo I. Originally composed in Greek in the eastern Roman Empire, the compilation today survives only in Syriac translations.
