By the beginning of the sixth century, the Roman West was no more. Of Latin imperial civilization there now remained only a few moribund institutions, a few noble houses, an indigenous peasantry and an occasionally beleaguered Church. Over the course of the sixth century, however, much of the ancient Christian Roman world was briefly reunited – and even to a certain extent revitalized – through the efforts of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (483–565) and his formidable wife Theodora (c.497–548).
