An emperor tidies up Roman law
By the sixth century the law of the Roman Empire had grown into a heap. Centuries of imperial decrees, opinions of famed jurists and local practice overlapped and sometimes contradicted each other. Justinian I, who ruled the eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire from Constantinople from 527 to 565, ordered an official cleanup. His aim was partly practical, because lawyers and judges needed a reliable text, and partly political, since a unified law was a mark of a well-ordered empire and fitted his ambition to restore Roman greatness.
The project was led by a high legal official named Tribonian, working with other jurists and teachers of law. It produced several works, which were later grouped under the name Corpus Juris Civilis, meaning “Body of Civil Law.” That label was applied in the Middle Ages and afterward and was not Justinian’s own. Many people loosely call the whole thing the Justinian code, though strictly the Code is only one of its parts.
The four parts
- The Code (Codex). A collection of imperial constitutions, meaning decrees and rulings from emperors, with outdated or conflicting material removed. A first version appeared around 529, and a revised one followed in 534.
- The Digest (Pandects). A huge anthology of excerpts from classical Roman jurists, arranged by topic and published around 533. It preserved the opinions of many writers whose complete works are lost.
- The Institutes. A short textbook for students, published in the same period, giving a basic outline of the law.
- The Novels. Later laws issued by Justinian after the Code, which were gathered into collections after his death.
The language of the work was Latin, even though Greek was increasingly the everyday language of the eastern empire, and many of the later Novels appear in Greek. Over time Byzantine jurists produced Greek summaries and adaptations, and the Roman legal tradition continued to evolve in the east long after Justinian. The wider story of that state is told in the history of the Byzantine Empire.
The law covered
The compilation addressed what we would call private law: persons and families, property, inheritance, contracts and wrongs done to others, plus procedure and some public and criminal law. It also set out general principles, such as the idea that the emperor’s will had the force of law. That idea fitted an imperial system and was later used and debated by medieval kings and emperors.
It also reflected a Christian empire. Some sections deal with church matters and with the legal position of heretics, Jews and others, showing the religious assumptions of the time.
Fading in the West
Justinian’s armies reconquered Italy from the Ostrogoths in a long war, and the emperor decreed that his law applied there. But the conquest was incomplete and costly, and within a few years much of Italy came under the Lombards. In the western kingdoms that grew from the old Roman provinces, rulers used their own law codes, often mixing Roman material with Germanic custom, and the full Justinianic texts were hard to find and use. The complete Digest in particular seems to have been little known for a long time. Parts of the Code and Institutes lived on in summaries and in local legal practice, and the old Roman law never disappeared altogether, especially in parts of Italy and southern France.
Rediscovery in the central Middle Ages
Interest revived in northern Italy toward the end of the eleventh century. Historians often point to Bologna, where teachers began lecturing on the texts, including the Digest, using manuscripts that were circulating again. A teacher traditionally named Irnerius is often credited as an early figure, though how much we can say about his role is debated because sources are thin.
What the teachers did was close reading. They wrote short notes, called glosses, between the lines and in the margins to explain difficult passages, and the scholars who did this are known as glossators. Later generations, sometimes called commentators, applied the texts to the legal problems of their own day, producing advice and treatises. By the thirteenth century a huge body of commentary had grown up around the work.
This study was linked to the rise of the first medieval universities, with Bologna as the most famous center for law, and students traveled from across Europe to attend. The wider growth of such schools is outlined in the article on medieval universities. Alongside Roman law, scholars also studied church law, which was gathered in an influential collection around the middle of the twelfth century attributed to Gratian. Together the two systems were studied side by side, and lawyers trained in both are sometimes called doctors of both laws.
What difference did it make?
Historians generally agree on several effects, while disagreeing on how large they were.
- A shared legal language. Trained jurists across Europe used similar texts and concepts, which gave rise to a common body of learned law, often called the ius commune. It was applied alongside local custom, not instead of it.
- Support for strong rulers. Roman ideas about imperial authority were useful to kings, and to emperors such as those of the Holy Roman Empire, who wanted to claim wide powers. Lawyers educated in Roman law became important advisers and officials.
- Methods of reasoning. The habit of analyzing texts, resolving contradictions and building general rules influenced legal thinking more broadly.
- Influence on procedure. Learned court procedures on the continent, with their reliance on written pleadings and evidence, owed a lot to Roman and church law.
England is a notable exception to some of this. Roman law was studied there, and a scholar named Vacarius is traditionally said to have taught it in the twelfth century, but the English royal courts developed their own common law, based on writs and custom. Even so, Roman concepts and terms appear in some English legal writing.
Sources and surviving manuscripts
We know the contents of Justinian’s work largely from medieval manuscripts, many of them copied in Italy. Scholars have long studied how the Digest in particular was transmitted, and there are debates about the manuscripts’ relationships. Because the original sixth-century copies are lost, details of how the texts looked at the time rest on later evidence.
In short
Justinian’s compilation was an imperial effort to put Roman law in order. It had limited direct effect in the early medieval West, but when scholars rediscovered it, it became the foundation for centuries of legal study and shaped how medieval and later Europeans thought about law, authority and procedure.