Corpus Juris Civilis
The Corpus Juris Civilis is the modern name for a collection of fundamental works in jurisprudence, enacted from 529 to 534 by order of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. It is also sometimes referred to metonymically after one of its parts, the Code of Justinian.
The work as planned had three parts: the Code is a compilation, by selection and extraction, of imperial enactments to date; the Digest or Pandects is an encyclopedia composed of mostly brief extracts from the writings of Roman jurists; and the Institutes is a student textbook, mainly introducing the Code, although it has important conceptual elements that are less developed in the Code or the Digest. All three parts, even the textbook, were given force of law. They were intended to be, together, the sole source of law; reference to any other source, including the original texts from which the Code and the Digest had been taken, was forbidden. Nonetheless, Justinian found himself having to enact further laws; today these are counted as a fourth part of the Corpus, the Novellae Constitutiones.
The work was directed by Tribonian, an official in Justinian's court in Constantinople. His team was authorized to edit what they included. How far they made amendments is not recorded and, in the main, cannot be known because most of the originals have not survived. The text was composed and distributed almost entirely in Latin, which was still the official language of the government of the Eastern Roman Empire in 529–534, whereas the prevalent language of merchants, farmers, seamen, and other citizens was Greek. By the early 7th century, Greek had largely replaced Latin as the dominant language of the empire.
The Corpus Juris Civilis was revised into Greek, when that became the predominant language of the Eastern Roman Empire, and continued to form the basis of the empire's laws, the Basilika, through the 15th century. The Basilika in turn served as the basis for local legal codes in the Balkans during the following Ottoman period and later formed the basis of the legal code of Modern Greece. In Western Europe, the Corpus Juris Civilis, or its successor texts like the Basilika, did not get well established originally and was only recovered in the Middle Ages, being "received" or imitated as private law. Its public law content was quarried for arguments by both secular and ecclesiastical authorities. This recovered Roman law, in turn, became the foundation of law in all civil law jurisdictions. The provisions of the Corpus Juris Civilis also influenced the canon law of the Catholic Church: it was said that ecclesia vivit lege romana – the church lives by Roman law. Its influence on common law legal systems has been much smaller, although some basic concepts from the Corpus have survived through Norman law – such as the contrast, especially in the Institutes, between "law" and custom. The Corpus continues to have a major influence on public international law. Its four parts thus constitute the foundation documents of the Western legal tradition.
Compilation process
Justinian acceded to the imperial throne in Constantinople in 527. Six months after his accession, in order to reduce the great number of imperial constitutions and thus also the number of court proceedings, Justinian arranged for the creation of a new collection of imperial constitutions. The commission in charge of the compilation process was explicitly authorized to leave out or change text and to delete what was obsolete or contradictory. Soon, in 529, the Codex was completed and was conferred the force of law in the whole empire, replacing all earlier constitutions and the Codex Theodosianus.A little more than a year after the enactment of the first edition of the Code, Justinian appointed a commission headed by Tribonian to compile the traditional jurists' law in a new, shortened and contemporary codification: the 'Digest or Pandects'. The traditional collection of jurists' law, Justinian believed, was so extensive that it had become unmanageable, necessitating a new compilation. The commission completed its work within three years, in 533.
Tribonian's commission surveyed the works of classical jurists who were assumed in Justinian's time to have the authority to clarify law and whose works were still available. In total, there are excerpts from 38 jurists in the Digest.
The four parts
Codex
The "Codex Justinianus", "Codex Justinianeus" or "Codex Justiniani" was the first part to be finished, on 7 April 529. It contained in Latin most of the existing imperial constitutiones, back to the time of Hadrian. It used both the Codex Theodosianus and the fourth-century collections embodied in the Codex Gregorianus and Codex Hermogenianus, which provided the model for division into books that were themselves divided into titles. These works had developed authoritative standing. This first edition is now lost; a second edition was issued in 534 and is the text that has survived. At least the second edition contained some of Justinian's own legislation, including some legislation in Greek. It is not known whether he intended there to be further editions, although he did envisage translation of Latin enactments into Greek.Legislation about religion
Numerous provisions served to secure the status of Christianity as the state religion of the empire, uniting Church and state, and making anyone who was not connected to the Christian church a non-citizen. The Christianity referred to is Chalcedonian Christianity as defined by the state church, which excluded a variety of other major Christian sects in existence at the time such as the Church of the East and Oriental Orthodoxy.Laws against heresy
The very first law in the Codex requires all persons under the jurisdiction of the Empire to hold the Christian faith: "We desire that all peoples who are governed by the moderation of Our Clemency shall practice that religion which was handed down by the divine Apostle Peter to the Romans..." This was primarily aimed at heresies such as Nestorianism. This text later became the springboard for discussions of international law, especially the question of just what persons are under the jurisdiction of a given state or legal system.Laws against paganism
Other laws, while not aimed at pagan belief as such, forbid particular pagan practices. For example, it is provided that all persons present at a pagan sacrifice may be indicted as if for murder.Digesta
The Digesta or Pandectae, completed in 533, is a collection of juristic writings, mostly dating back to the second and third centuries. Fragments were taken out of various legal treatises and opinions and inserted in the Digest. In their original context, the statements of the law contained in these fragments were just private opinions of legal scholars – although some juristic writings had been privileged by Theodosius II's Law of Citations in 426. The Digest, however, was given full force of law.Institutions
As the Digest neared completion, Tribonian and two professors, Theophilus and Dorotheus, made a student textbook, called the Institutions or Elements. As there were four elements, the manual consists of four books. The Institutiones are largely based on the Institutiones of Gaius. Two-thirds of the Institutiones of Justinian consists of literal quotes from Gaius. The new Institutiones were used as a manual for jurists in training from 21 November 533 and were given the authority of law on 30 December 533 along with the Digest.According to Charles Donahue the difference between procedural and substantive law entered medieval and modern legal thought from Justinian's Institutes.
Novellae
The Novellae consisted of new laws that were passed after 534. They were later re-worked into the Syntagma, a practical lawyer's edition, by Athanasios of Emesa during the years 572-577.Continuation in the Eastern Empire
The term "Byzantine Empire" is used today to refer to what remained of the Roman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean after the Western Empire collapsed. The Eastern Empire continued to use Roman law, and it was as the ruler of this Eastern Empire that Justinian formalized Roman law in his "Corpus Juris Civilis.", As the administrative language of the Eastern Roman Empire shifted away from Latin, legal codes based on the Corpus Juris Civilis were enacted in Greek. The best-known are:- the Ecloga – enacted by emperor Leo the Isaurian;
- the Prochiron and Epanagoge – enacted by emperor Basil the Macedonian; and
- the Basilika – started by Basil the Macedonian and finished by his son, emperor Leo the Wise.