4297 AM · 537 CE · world history
Justinian and Hagia Sophia
Byzantium reconquers part of the West, codifies Roman law, and builds the age's greatest church.
Justinian tries to rebuild the empire: his generals briefly recover Italy, North Africa and southern Spain. Far more durable is the Corpus Juris Civilis, the compilation of Roman law from which continental legal tradition grows. In Constantinople he raises Hagia Sophia, whose dome seemed to contemporaries suspended from heaven on a chain.