There are two great gifts which God, in his love for man, has granted from on high: the priesthood and the imperial dignity” —Justinian I What many previous emperors before had failed to do, “we have decided now to grant to the world, with the help of Almighty God,” announced the ambitious Justinian I with his wife, Theodora. Not content to plaster over an empire cracking and peeling with age, he intended to do nothing less than