Body of Civil Law (Corpus Iuris Civilis) Vol. I (Digest)

HISTORICAL CHRONOLOGY OF LAW.

...his successors, a more accurate and enlarged edition of which Leonhardus Adamus of Bolsena has promised from the very ancient Ottobonian manuscript.

§. 27. An anonymous work is added to the Theodosian Code, which compared Roman laws with the laws of Moses. Some conjecture that it was Licinius Rufinus. Whoever he may be, he is believed to have lived in the times of Theodosius the Younger and after his 15th consulship, in which the code is finally read as having been published. From which this [author] quoted one constitution regarding the unchaste. But from the Theodosian he recites more fully than today exists in the body itself, in l. 6. C. Theod. de adult. From thence and other places it is to be conjectured that this code, which Theodosius ordered to be published, does not survive, but only certain fragments collected by Anianus. For to Anianus, Alaric, King of the Goths, who ruled Italy, commanded that he should compile a code of constitutions partly from the Theodosian code, the institutions of Gaius, the 5 books of the sentences of Paulus, and other codices, which the use of the forum or the reason of the time or the customs of the people demanded, as can be gathered from his subscription.

II. ROMAN JURISPRUDENCE UNDER JUSTINIAN.

§. 28. Finally, Justinian recalled Roman jurisprudence, excluded from Rome and almost all of Italy, to Greece, so that it might preserve the law of the western empire as if by a Palladium a sacred image/protection and a happy and fortunate likeness. But since there were innumerable laws, plebiscites, and constitutions of the Emperors, and especially the responses of the Jurisconsults scattered and dispersed through various authors—upon which the art of law chiefly consists—and were rising into an immense mass, he attempted to fashion a just body consisting of congruent members, having made a selection of the more useful ones and having removed the superfluous; and from this, as if from a rich and ample field of ancient law, he collected a golden harvest with a full hand. Many before him had undertaken the same plan. Julius Caesar, according to Suetonius c. 44, had thought to reduce the civil law to a certain standard and had decided to collect it into a very few books from the immense and diffused abundance of laws, just as Crassus, Tullius, and Pomponius had undertaken the same thought before him. M. Tullius had written a special book on reducing civil law to an art, according to Gellius lib. 1. c. 22. But Justinian did not attempt it; he finished it and happily placed the final touch and built a temple like the holiest justice, as he himself says in l. 2. §. ne autem. C. de jur. vet. enucl. But this is the chronological order of this labor.

§. 29. In the year of salvation 529, the second year of Justinian's reign, in the consulship of Decius, in the 7th Indiction, on the 16th day before the Kalends of May, a new code was issued by Justinian, composed from three other codes of the same subject: the Gregorian, the Hermogenian, and the Theodosian, which three later perished, except for the fragments from Theodosius which survive from that code which Anianus had selected and composed from the constitutions of Theodosius. Which, because it consisted only of them, was not called Theoderician after Theodoric king of the Goths, but Theodosian after Theodosius the younger. That task had been given in the previous year to the most distinguished men selected for this purpose, as the constitution of the same Emperor issued on the Ides of February to the Constantinopolitan Senate in the previous year under the second consulship of the same Emperor declares. But the work having been completed in this year, on the seventh day before the Ides of February, he issued a constitution regarding the confirmation of the same Code to Menna, Prefect of the Praetorium, under the consulship of Basilius. For the handling of this work, a board of ten was constituted, and selected by the same Emperor were: Joannes Patricius, a man of consular rank and ex-quaestor; Leontius, master of soldiers and ex-prefect of the praetorium; Phocus, master of soldiers and patrician; Basilides, ex-prefect of the praetorium of the east; Thomas, ex-quaestor of the sacred Palace; Tribonianus, master of offices; Constantinus, Count of the Sacred Largesses; Theophilus, count of the sacred Consistory; Dioscorus and Praesentinus, magistrates of the sacred Praetorian judges.

§. 30. In the following year of Christ 530, in the consulship of Lampadius and Orestes, in the 8th Indiction, on the 18th day before the Kalends of June, a mandate went out to Tribonianus regarding the composing of the Pandects, as is evident from the inscription l. 1. in f. C. de vet. jur. enucl. In the third year, and after the first of Lampadius and Orestes, in the 9th Indiction, Tribonianus devotes his effort to the work imposed upon him. But in this year both the east and the west were without Consuls. In the fourth year after the consulship of Lampadius and Orestes (this year also was without Consuls), in the 10th Indiction, the aforementioned antecessors Theophilus, Dorotheus, and Tribonianus proceeded to bring the composition of the pandects to a conclusion. They collected the civil law, dispersed through as many volumes as there were works of Jurisconsults extant, of which each had written about law with a peculiar method and their own inscription, and with a singular opinion. Two main sects, however, flourished—the Sabinians and the Proculians—which in certain chapters opposed each other and boasted of the praise of their own opinion; hence various disagreements between them and dissensions of opinions, as if by hereditary right and the right of society. But the pandects were composed from these, with the rest of the authors suppressed, who, being postponed and neglected in the selection, vanished like leipsana remnants/scraps.

§. 31. Then, in the fifth year, in the third consulship of Justinian, in the 12th Indiction, these four Books of Institutes first came into the light on the 2nd day before the Kalends of December, as is evident from the subscription of the following constitution.

§. 32. In the same year, in the following month, on the 15th day before the Kalends of January, the pandects were issued, as is learned from two constitutions written on the same day and from their subscription, the former of which exists in Greek at the threshold of the pandects.

§. 33. Laurentius indeed edited another body of laws, according to Athenaeus, lib. 1, Dipnosophists, "and furthermore a collection of laws," he adds, "which he still teaches." Which words are suspect to Casaubon because of the particle "still" (eti). For Athenaeus would not have spoken this way about a work not recently made. He therefore attributes it to an abbreviator, who thought that shortly after Justinian this body of laws, of which we are speaking here, was composed by Laurentius: but if what Laurentius edited lurked in some libraries and perished, it was not without great loss to the civil law.

§. 34. Most recently, in the 6th year of Justinian, in the 4th consulship of Theodorus Paulinus, in the 13th Indiction, on the 4th day before the Kalends of June, the later edition of the code emerged from a repeated reading of the old code: and this is the order of this triple work of Justinian, which, while alive, he wanted to be edited from the Civil Law of the Romans and to be preserved by all peoples.

§. 35. These three parts of law were followed by constitutions issued by the same Emperor, which were called Novels. The reason for this name is not sufficiently clear. Cedrenus thought they were called Novels because they constituted new laws, and ones differing from the old, as he seems to imply with these words: "He renewed all the old laws, having made a law-book which he also called the new decrees (nearas diataxeis)." Rather, they were so called because they were most recently promulgated after the Code of repeated reading. For they are also very often called by Greek interpreters nearai meta ton kodika Novels after the code. And by Justinian himself, Novels 67 and in the constitution on making the new code, and likewise the constitutions of Theodosius, Valentinian, Marcian, Leo, Majorian, and Severus were called Novels for no other reason than that they had been issued after the code of Theodosius; and certain others of Leo the Philosopher, Nicephorus, Michael Romanus, and Alexius [are so called] because they were promulgated after the books of the Basilika the royal laws, indeed even Justinian...