In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire

by Tom Holland

into a better condition, but we have also promulgated new laws.”32 The emperor saw no need to conceal the fact. He was himself, so he declared, nomos empsychos—the “living law.” Here, in this self-promotion, was the ultimate refinement of what whole generations of emperors had been working to achieve.33 Henceforward, the rules by which the Roman people lived and were bound were to have just the single fountainhead: the emperor himself, enthroned in his palatial citadel. No wonder, then, that Justinian should have sought, not merely to impose his stamp upon the long centuries of Roman legal achievement, but also to prescribe where and how that achievement should be taught. Private law schools were definitively banned. No teachers were to be licensed, save for those directly sanctioned by the state. Now, more than ever, the whole world was to be administered from the centre: from the palace of Constantinople.