Justinian I, who reigned in Constantinople as emperor of the Romans from 527 to 565, hailed from the vicinity of Niš, in present-day Serbia. On April 14, 535, he decreed that he was honoring the place of his birth by elevating the prelate of Justiniana Prima—the “first” among several cities he named or renamed for himself—to the rank of archbishop and by carving out an archbishopric at the expense of the see of Thessalonica. At the same time, Justinian declared his intention to relocate the seat of the civil administration, headed by the praetorian prefect of Illyricum, from Thessalonica to Justiniana Prima, but it is doubtful whether the move was ever carried out.

Stanisław Turlej proposes to reconstruct the historical moment at which this measure was enacted and to assess its significance. His methodology is rigorous. Because the site of Justiniana Prima has not been conclusively identified, Turlej does not attempt to correlate written evidence with the material record from a well-preserved, sixth-century urban foundation, known as Caričin Grad, which is often cited in current scholarship as the most plausible candidate (42–47; cf. 14, 32–37, 205). Focusing upon the imperial constitution of 535 that established the archbishopric, which was issued after the publication of the revised edition of Justinian's Codex and preserved in its entirety as one of that emperor's novellae constitutiones or “Novels” (Just. Nov. 11; see Turlej, 47–81), Turlej's investigation proceeds through close reading and analysis within progressively broader frames of contextualization to build up a kind of thick description of the opportunities and challenges converging upon the imperial chancellery, where laws were composed. Expeditionary forces under Belisarius had destroyed the Vandal kingdom in North Africa; secret negotiations about regime change in Ostrogothic Italy were underway; and efforts aimed at reconciling adherents and opponents of Chalcedonian Christology intensified (174–192).

Set against this backdrop, the creation of an independent archbishopric in the Balkans through imperial initiative represented a striking intervention in unsettled and contestable relationships among the major sees and altered their influence over subsidiary structures of church governance. The move implicitly curtailed the prerogatives of the papacy, which at that time remained subject to the Ostrogoths. Prospectively, it could have signaled Justinian's intentions toward the churches in recently reorganized western provinces. Above all, it expressed and reinforced the emperor's presentation of himself as a providential figure and of his office as encompassing and subsuming other sources of authority and legitimacy.

A reader is well-advised to begin with Turlej's concluding summary (204–209), for it is here that one will find a clear statement of the work's positive contributions, which is worth quoting at length (206–207; cf. 185–186, 190–191):

This linkage between the emperor's privileges for Justiniana Prima and his hypothetical plans for Carthage is the “underestimated aspect of Justinian's church policy” advertised in Turlej's title.

The subsequent outbreak of hostilities against the Ostrogoths and Belisarius's initially rapid success in capturing Rome altered Justinian's calculus. Meanwhile, aspirations for his namesake city, which are mirrored in Procopius of Caesarea's Buildings (4.1.15–27; see Turlej 87–124), seem to have failed to materialize. Effective lobbying by the tree-dwelling holy man David of Thessalonica apparently swayed Justinian against transferring the prefecture (Vita Davidi 13–20; 196–202). A poor water supply might have inhibited growth (Ps. Zachariah Rhetor 7.14, 9.1; see Turlej 107, 122–124, 202). In the 540s, Justinian's fortunes turned: the Persians attacked, plague descended, and the Italian War dragged on. In 545, he regularized Justiniana Prima's place in the ecclesiastical order by subordinating it to the papacy (Just. Nov. 131.3; pp. 81–86, 202–203). Its archbishops are attested into the seventh century, when the city was evidently overrun by the Avars and the Slavs (203–4).

Turlej's work is an interesting contribution to what Phillipe Blaudeau has called geo-ecclesiology (“What is geo-ecclesiology: Defining elements applied to late antiquity [fourth-sixth centuries],” in Rita Lizzi Testa [ed.], Late Antiquity in Contemporary Debate [Cambridge Scholars Press, 2017], 156–172). There is great merit in concentrating on discrete historical moments, contextualizing primary sources (especially legislation), and emphasizing contingency and possibility. Turlej demonstrates command of an impressive secondary literature. It must be said, however, that on the whole the work is frustrating. Given the exiguous evidence for Justiniana Prima and the unavoidably speculative character of the conclusions reached, one may ask whether the topic merits a monograph-length treatment. Even the specialist readership to whom the work is addressed requires better signposting in order to anticipate where the discussion is headed. With all due allowance for the difficulties of translation and the ponderousness of formal academic prose, the writing is formulaic and opaque. While the exclusion of material evidence from Caričin Grad displays an excess of caution, the discovery there of lead seals of Justinian and of Archbishop John of Justiniana Prima makes the identification of one with the other increasingly secure (Vujadin Ivanišević, “New finds of lead seals from Caric˘in Grad [Justiniana Prima],” paper presented at the 11th International Symposium of Byzantine Sigillography [Pera Museum, Istanbul, 9-10 May 2014]).