SocietyEurope
Justinian and Hagia Sophia
Roman law codified, and a dome that seemed impossible
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The Corpus Juris Civilis was rediscovered in Italy in the eleventh century and became the backbone of continental law — hence the division between civil law and English common law. The dome rests on pendentives, a solution letting a round dome stand on a square room, copied for a thousand years afterwards, including by Ottoman mosques.
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The emperor Justinian gathered all Roman law into one book and built Hagia Sophia, a church with a dome so vast that contemporaries thought it hung from heaven. His code is the basis of legal systems across much of Europe today.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org