The Digest (Corpus Iuris Civilis)

This smaller and accessible edition of the Digest largely represents the Florentine manuscript. For although it is agreed that it is also corrupt in places, due to the errors of compilers, some traditional and some their own, as well as the carelessness of scribes, nevertheless in such a work, which is the primary source of Roman law and is most frequently read for the knowledge of its subject matter, one must beware of excessive confidence in emending. Such confidence does not warn the reader of the received reading, but seeks to obliterate it. One is deterred by the traces of those who today are active primarily in this literature, who sometimes accept into the very order of words what is probable yet uncertain, and sometimes what can only please them, fictitious and not rarely perverse, and thus they deceive beginners—and not infrequently not only beginners.

For this reason, I have very rarely departed from the traditional reading, nor certainly in more serious matters, unless cases where, beyond the probability of the reading, clear testimonies—especially of the Greeks—commended an emendation. Wherever this edition follows neither the first Florentine reading nor the second, the traditional reading is inscribed in the annotation for all emendations, even those of the smallest moment, with the exception of orthographical ones alone. The judgment concerning the emender of the Florentine book must be sought from my larger edition, where I have demonstrated that he is very often either deceived or deceiving; nevertheless, I have generally given a place to his corrections or interpolations in the notes of this edition, since these readings, even if partly the worst, must still be diligently taken into account by legal experts.

I have added in the annotation emendations, whether mine or those of others that I have approved, almost as they were proposed in the larger edition, with few later suppressed, added, or changed. For a great part of jurisprudence consists in detecting and removing the corruptions of the Digest, although in many places, since one must despair of recovering the original words, every emendation is contained in this: that we may attain the disturbed meaning by conjecture. I have announced the names of those learned men whose emendations I have approved, as was proper: corrections offered without a name are mine, with the exception of those widely known and already handed down through the centuries, whose author one would neither easily seek nor require.

But since it is often established, especially from the consensus of the Greeks and the Florentine book, that the traditional reading, although corrupt, was nonetheless written in that way in the very archetype of the Justinian Digest, the reasons for this edition did not seem to allow such ancient corruptions to be distinguished from the errors of later scribes. The Greek books that contribute to the emendation of the Digest, as well as those few things which could be chosen and approved from the second-order manuscripts, are read in this edition either in the order of the words or are proposed in the annotation among the other probable emendations with the authority inscribed. The comparison of the Basilica a Byzantine Greek compilation of Roman law itself and the allegation of the Bolognese readings seemed to exceed the scope of this edition, and these also are seen not so much to be of no benefit as to be even harmful. For it is agreed among all today that such a varied reading, such as the Gebauerian and the Kriegelian taken from it, is equally useless to philologists and students of law. For neither party has benefited at all from the disagreements with the Florentine reading inscribed there by scribes of the 13th century and especially by editors of the 15th and 16th centuries, which almost return to trifles as empty and tiresome as they are neither recommended nor excused by the authority of any witnesses. I believe that true scholars will approve that the margin has now been unburdened of these and that place has been given to things which, however they may be, are certainly considered with some benefit.

If any things received into the Digest likewise appear elsewhere (whether among the legal authors that survive, or in other compilations, or in the Digest itself in another place) or are at least cited with the name of the author added, it seemed useful to refer the reader to such places. I have also added to the individual titles an indication of the four parts—into which it is established the compilers of the Pandects distributed the books of the experts—the Sabinian, Edictal, Papinian, and Appendix, so that it might be evident from that in what manner the individual titles were composed. Likewise, for the individual titles, I have cited the titles of the Basilica Byzantine Greek law books that correspond, and the titles having a certainly similar inscription of the Institutes and the Code. Finally, I have added the Greek version, neither the barbaric one of the 12th century, of which I gave a specimen in the larger edition, nor the vulgar one contaminated from that barbaric one and the corrections of later men, but that which was approved by me.

Berlin, June 20, 1868: also March 24, 1872.