THE ECUMENICAL COUNCILS Preface and Introduction

Edited from a variety of translations (mentioned in the preface) by H. R. Percival

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Page 24

The law of the Empire was not, however, to be left to private and unofficial action, but by the care of Theodosius the Younger its first official collection was made. This prince directed eight men learned in the law to gather into one body of laws all the Imperial Constitutions published since the last included in the collections of Gregory and Hermogenes. This is the "Theodosian Code," and contains the laws set forth by Constantine and his successors. It was promulgated in 438 in the East, and received by the then Emperor of the West, Valentinian III. To this were subsequently added such laws as each set forth, under the title of "New Constitutions."

The Emperor Justinian determined still further to simplify the attaining of judicial decisions. It is true that the making of the legal collections referred to had added greatly to the ease of determining the law in any given case, but there was a source of great confusion in the endless number of legal decisions which by custom had acquired the force of law, and which were by no means always consistent between themselves; these were the famous responsa jurisperitorum. To clear up this difficulty was no small task, but the Emperor went about it in the most determined fashion and appointed a commission, consisting of Tribonian and ten other experts, to make a new collection of all the imperial constitutions from Hadrian to his own day. This is the famous Justinian Code, which was promulgated in 529, and abrogated all previous collections. [25]

This, however, was not sufficient to remove the difficulty, and Tribonian next, together with sixteen lawyers, spent three years in making extracts from the great mass of decisions of the ancient jurists, filling as they did nearly two thousand volumes. These they digested and did their best to clear away the contradictions. When the work was finished it appeared to the world as the "Pandects," because it was intended to contain all there was to be said upon the subject. It is also known as the "Digest." This work was set forth in 533 and from that time such of the former decisions as were not incorporated ceased to have any force.

It must however be remembered that, while this was the case, all the decisions contained in the Pandects did not obtain the force of law. The Pandects are not a code of laws, but a system of public jurisprudence composed by public authority. To the Pandects were added by the Emperor two ordinances, the first to forbid any copyist to write them in an abbreviated form; and the second forbidding commentators to treat them in anything but their literal sense.

While this work was in progress some points were so complicated and obscure that the Emperor had to be appealed to, and his writings in these particulars are the origin of the "Fifty Decisions."

At the same time was prepared the "Institutes," containing the elements of the whole Roman law. [26]

Later, new laws having been made, the Code had to be revised; the former edition was abrogated in 534, and a new one set forth with the title "Codex repetitæ prælectionis."

[25] It was written in Latin but, says Bury (Appendix to Vol. V. of Gibbon's Rome, p. 525), "was also immediately after its publication in Latin, issued (perhaps incompletely) in a Greek form (cf. Zacharia Von Lingenthal, Gr. Röm. Recht, p. 6). Most of the later Novels are Greek, and Novel vij. [15, ed. Zach.] expressly recognizes the necessity of using the common Greek tongue.'"

[26] The Pandects or Digest was translated into Greek by Dorotheus, and Theophilus prepared a Greek paraphrase of the Institutes.

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