The Eastern Roman Empire was for a long time the last stronghold of Roman classical legislation, preserving its traditions and basic provisions. The reign of Justinian showed the weakness and some moral obsolescence of the canonical legal norms used at that time. Therefore, codifications (amendments) were developed that returned the legal and factual position to the main postulates of Roman law.
At the same time, Justinian developed a set of laws that eliminated the differences between the classical law (jus vetus) of the times of the Great Roman Empire and the law of modern times (jus novus), developed on the constitutions and decrees of emperors. The result of this work was the codification of Emperor Justinian.
Purposes and content
The main purpose of creation was to develop a single collection of law, a set of norms and legal concepts, which would combine both ancient law, jus vetus, and modern imperial legislation. Such a code of laws was to become a weighty argument in making legal decisions and in the administration of justice. Moreover, if it was a matter of recentlaws and orders of the emperor, it was much easier to work - all recent constitutions were regularly published. But the various legal provisions referred to in them have often been either repealed or listed as obsolete. Therefore, the prerequisites for the codification of Justinian were evident, and the revision of the existing legal collections became extremely necessary. Moreover, this had to be done in such a way that all subsequent changes were adopted in all corners of the empire, which means that only the best legal minds of that time should have been involved in the interpretation of the law.
It was much more difficult to use the primary sources of classical Roman law, many of which were already hopelessly lost at that time, so it was a hopeless task to turn to them. On the other hand, even those writings on which the administration of justice was based were replete with contradictions and logical errors. Therefore, the opinions of various lawyers in each controversial case were strikingly different from each other. The overall decision was determined only by the total number of votes adhering to one or another verdict. In short, Justinian's empire was not fully equipped with clear and precise legal rules, and there was an urgent need to sort out this graveyard of obsolete and modern decrees, legal norms and laws, to bring the legal system into strict conformity with the spirit of Roman law.
Chronology
February 528 found Justinian developing new provisions that included the foundations of ancient Roman jurisprudence. Justinian's codificationwas drawn up by a commission of ten people, in which Tribonian himself took part. In April of the same year, the Code of Justinian was published, which included all the decrees and constitutions of previous emperors issued at that time. The complete collection of decrees and constitutions of the previous rulers of the Eastern Roman Empire, numbering more than three thousand, was completely revised and standardized. At the end of 530, another commission of leading lawyers, headed by Tribonian, worked. This time it included the professors of the Academy of Kronstantinople Teofil Kratin, Dorofey and Agatoly Beritsky and several other leading lawyers. The task of the commission was to develop a set of legal norms that became the basis of modern legal science.
Parts of Justinian's codification
Codifications are divided into several main parts, each of which highlights a separate vector of legal proposals and issues. At the end of 530, the so-called digests came out - collections of brief extracts from the works of classical Roman jurists. Simultaneously with the digests, textbooks on the study of jurisprudence for young lawyers were developed - institutions. After that, a code of imperial constitutions was created and edited. The emperor was directly involved in the preparation of these documents and made his proposals and amendments, later united under the name "Codification of Justinian".
The table of parts of the codification is shown below.
First and second editions of codifications
The first edition of the code of laws was already knowncalled "Codification of Justinian". Briefly, its content was reduced to three parts: digests, institutions and code. Unfortunately, the original version of this document has not been preserved to this day. A more extensive list of codifications was presented to the attention of posterity - the so-called second edition. This code of laws was drawn up after the death of Justinian, on the basis of the work of his commission and taking into account his amendments. The second edition became known as the Codex repetitae praelactionis. Along with the classic three parts, it included the so-called short stories, which were a collection of imperial constitutions that came out after the publication of the first collection of Justinian's Codification. Briefly, the significance of this work can be explained by the influence of this work on the subsequent development of European legal thought. Many legal norms formed the basis of medieval civil law. Therefore, it would be useful to consider the components of this document in more detail.
Imperial constitutions
First of all, Justinian I paid attention to various collections of imperial constitutions. His primary task was to put in order all the existing legal norms that had accumulated over the centuries after the publication of a well-known legal rarity. The commission of lawyers sat for about a year, the result of their work was the Summa reipublicae, which annulled the validity of all previous acts and constitutions and communicated new rules for adjudication and legal disputes. This was the first attempt to understand the legal legacy of the past, and it brought quitesatisfactory results. The emperor was pleased with the work, and the decree on the adoption of new legal norms was issued on April 7, 529.
Digests
Emperor Justinian was able to collect and systematize all the current legal norms applied at that time - leges. Now we had to do the same with respect to the classical norms of Roman law - the so-called jus vetus. The new task was larger than the previous one, and working with them turned out to be incomparably more difficult. But the professional work with the already issued Code and the active work of assistants strengthened Justinian's decision to continue the work begun. On December 15, 630, the decree Deo auctore is published, in which Tribonian was destined to carry out this difficult task by choosing his assistants. Triboniat invited all the most prominent jurists of that time to take part in the work of the commission, among whom were four professors of the Constantinople Academy and eleven lawyers. What the Justinian codification was can be judged by the tasks assigned to the commission:
- Collect and review the writings of all the leading lawyers available at the time.
- All of these essays had to be reviewed and extracted from them.
- Remove obsolete or currently inactive rules and regulations.
- Remove disagreements and logical inconsistencies.
- Organize the bottom line and present it in a clear and concise manner.
The meaning of this part of Justinian's codification was to create a systematic whole froma huge number of submitted documents. And this colossal work was done in just three years. Already in 533, the reign of Justinian issued a decree approving a new set of Laws, which was called the Digesta, and on December 30 it began to operate throughout the Eastern Roman Empire.
Internal content digest
Digests were intended for practicing lawyers and were collections of current norms and principles of jurisprudence. Their other name is pandects. The term comes from the Greek word pandektes, which means comprehensive, universal - this is how the universal principle of applying this code of laws was emphasized. In Justinian's codification, digests were considered both as collections of current law and as textbooks on applied jurisprudence. In total, 39 prominent lawyers of that time were quoted in the digests and, according to the emperor himself, more than two thousand works were studied. Pandects were the sum of all classical legal literature and were the central part of the entire set of Laws approved by Justinian I. All quotations are divided by their semantic content into fifty books, forty-seven of which are provided with their own titles with titles that reveal one or another side of the legal problem. Only three books are un titled. In the modern classification, they are in 30th, 31st, 32nd place. They all share a common problem, and they are all about testamentary renunciations.
Inside each title is a list of quotes on one or another side of the legal issue. Thesequotes also have their own structure. In most cases, the first are quotations from legal provisions commenting on the norms of civil law, then - extracts from ad edictum essays on the ethical side of the problem, and finally, there are excerpts from essays that reveal examples of the application of a legal norm in legal practice. The extracts of the third group were headed by responsa Papiniani, therefore these sections are called "Papilian's mass". Sometimes this or that title is completed by additional extracts - they are also called Appendix.
Any of the above extracts and quotations contains precise indications of the cited author and his writings. In the editions of modern jurisprudence, all citations are numbered, the longest of them are divided into small parts - paragraphs. Therefore, when referring to pandects, one should indicate not the book from which the phrase is taken, but the title, the citation number and its paragraph.
Interpolations
Creating the central part of the codifications, jurists had to not only collect the sayings of the ancient jurists, but also state them in an understandable order. At the same time, there were many places in the writings of the ancients, which by the time of the reign of Justinian were hopelessly outdated. But this should not have affected the quality and clarity of the texts. To correct shortcomings, compilers often resorted to small changes in quoted extracts. Such changes were later called interpolations. No external signs of interpolations are noted, they all go as normal references from Roman primary sources. But a comprehensive study of the digest with the help oflinguistic methods allows you to detect interpolations in large quantities. Compilers skillfully walked through the entire legal heritage and brought it into a form that is easy to understand. Sometimes such discrepancies are easily detected when comparing quotations taken from the same work of a Roman lawyer, but in their meaning placed in different books of Predicts. There are also known cases of comparing quotes from Justinian's codifications with surviving primary sources. But in the vast majority of cases, revisions and distortions of compilers can only be discovered through complex historical and linguistic investigations.
Institutions
Simultaneously with the titanic work of writing a digest, work was underway to create a short guide for beginner lawyers. Professors Theophilus and Dorothea took direct part in the compilation of the new manual. The textbook was compiled in the form of a civil law course. For its designation, a name quite natural for those times was adopted. In November 533, Emperor Justinian issued the cupidae legum Juventati decree, intended for scholars and students. It officially sanctioned the legal norms set forth in the institutions, and the allowance itself was equated with other Justinian codifications.
Internal Structure of Institutions
The most ancient institutions were manuals written by the Roman lawyer Gaius, who conducted his legal activities in the 2nd century AD. e. This manual was intended for beginning lawyers and was used as a textbook on elementary jurisprudence. institutionsJustinian took the principle of structuring from this manual. Just like Guy's, the entire textbook is divided into four large parts. Many chapters are directly copied from Guy's manual, even the very principle of division into paragraphs is taken from this ancient lawyer. Each of the four books has its own title, each of the titles is divided into paragraphs. After the title and before the first paragraph, there is always a short article called the principium. Perhaps the members of the Justinian commission did not want to reinvent the wheel and settled on the option that was most convenient for studying.
The need for change
While hard work was underway to draw up new legal norms and concepts, Byzantine legislation issued a lot of new rules and interpretations, which also needed to be revised. Some of these controversies were signed directly by Justinian and announced in the form of decrees - the number of disputed decrees reached fifty pieces. Many of the decisions put forward required a new assessment and revision, therefore, after the final release of the Digest and Institutions, some of the norms set forth in them already required revision. The code, published in 529, contained illegal or outdated provisions, which means that it did not meet the requirements put forward. The Commission was forced to consider the controversial provisions, rework them and harmonize them with already issued rules and regulations. This work was completed, and in 534 the second edition of the Code was published, which became known as the Codex repetitae praelectionis.
Novels
This Code of Laws of the Eastern Roman Empirewas finished. Decrees issued subsequently, correcting existing norms, concerned the details of the application of this or that decree in practice. In the existing legal tradition, they are united under the general name of Novellae leges novels. Some of the short stories have not only recommendations on the application of existing norms of the law, but also very broad interpretations of certain areas of jurisprudence. Emperor Justinian intended to collect the short stories and publish them as a supplement to the existing codifications. But, unfortunately, he failed to do this. Several private collections have survived to this day. Moreover, each of these short stories should be interpreted as an addition to one or another part of the codifications.
Structure and purpose of novellas
All novellas included constitutions issued by Justinian during his reign. They contained norms that repealed the earlier decrees of the emperor. In most cases, they are written in Greek, except for those provinces in which Latin was used as the state language. There are novels published in both languages at the same time.
Each of the short stories consists of three parts, which list the reasons leading to the issuance of a new constitution, the content of the changes and the procedure for their entry into force. In the Novels of Justinian, the first part is called Proaemium, and the subsequent ones are divided into chapters. The final part is called Epilogus. The list of issues raised in the short stories is very diverse: issues of the application of civil law alternate with administrative, ecclesiastical or judicial ones. Especiallynovels 127 and 118 are interesting for studying, which relate to the right of inheritance in the absence of a will. By the way, they formed the basis of the legislation of the German kingdoms. Of interest are also novels devoted to family and public law, and the peculiarities of the application of certain legal norms.
Novels of Justinian in our time
The short stories of Justinian came to modern scientists in collections of their private collections of second-hand booksellers. One of these collections was published in 556 and contains 124 short stories arranged in chronological order. The oldest short story dates from 535, and the latest from the entire collection dates back to 555. This collection is called Juliani epitome Novellarum. Previously, another collection containing 134 short stories was also known, but at present it is not available for wide study. Emperor Tiberius11, who succeeded Justinian, produced a complete collection of short stories collected during the period from 578 to 582. It contains 168 short stories, including both the already known short stories of Justinian and new ones. This collection has reached modern researchers in a Venetian manuscript dating from the end of the 12th century. Part of it is repeated in the manuscript of a Florentine chronicler who rewrote the stories two centuries later. In addition, a number of short stories by Justinian are known from private collections devoted to church law.
Corpus Rights
All parts of the new Code, according to the idea of Justinian, should have been one, although there was no common name for them. The significance of Justinian's codification was revealed only in the Middle Ages, when interestto the Roman legal heritage increased. Then the study of Roman law became a mandatory discipline for future lawyers, and a common name was coined for the entire Justinian code. It became known as the Corpus Juris Civilis. Under this name, the codifications of Justinian are known in our time.
