What Was the Code of Justinian?

The Code of Justinian, more properly called the Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law), was a massive compilation of Roman law commissioned by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I between 528 and 534 CE. The work is one of the most influential legal compilations in the history of the world, and it is the foundation of the civil law tradition of continental Europe. In its own time, the Corpus clarified and unified a body of Roman law that had become contradictory, archaic, and unwieldy. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it was rediscovered in the Latin west, and the school of the glossators at Bologna used it as the basis of a comprehensive European legal system. The political theory of imperial authority, the principle of written legislation, and the technical vocabulary of European civil law all descend from Justinian’s compilation.

The argument below links to the related treatment of the Emperor Justinian and his reign and the broader history of the Byzantine Empire.

The Project

When Justinian came to the throne in 527, Roman law was in a chaotic state. It consisted of (a) the surviving statutes of the Senate and the Roman emperors from the time of Augustus, in force or theoretically in force, but not all consistent with each other; (b) the vast body of juristic opinion — the writings of the great Roman jurists of the second and third centuries, including Papinian, Ulpian, Paulus, and Gaius; (c) the vulgate (popular) law of the late Roman period, including rescripts, edicts, and the opinions of lesser jurists; and (d) a great body of imperial legislation in the Theodosian Code of 438 and other compilations. The result was a system in which a serious legal case might require the lawyer to consult contradictory sources spanning several centuries, and in which the basic questions of property, contract, marriage, and inheritance were often unclear.

Justinian’s response was to commission a comprehensive restatement. The project was directed by the quaestor of the sacred palace, the jurist Tribonian, who had been a legal advisor to the emperor and would play a central role in Justinian’s reign. The work was carried out by a commission that varied in size and composition over the years, with Tribonian as its guiding spirit. The compilation was published in four parts over the next several years: the Codex in 529 (revised 534), the Digesta in 533, the Institutiones in 533, and the Novellae in the years following.

The Four Parts

The Codex Justinianus, the first part, was a collection of imperial constitutions (laws, rescripts, and edicts) from the time of Hadrian to Justinian’s own day. The first edition, published in 529, was a relatively short collection of about 4,500 laws organized by topic. The second edition, published in 534, was a much larger work, comprising about 4,000 laws in 12 books. The Codex became the main statutory law of the empire and remained in force until the Macedonian dynasty, when it was eventually superseded by the Greek Basilika.

The Digesta (or Pandectae), the second and by far the largest part, was a collection of the writings of the great Roman jurists. The commissioners selected the relevant opinions from the works of jurists such as Papinian, Ulpian, Paulus, Gaius, and many others, condensing, editing, and re-arranging the material into 50 books. The final compilation ran to about 150,000 lines, a massive and complex work. The Digesta was published in 533, the same year as the Institutiones, and the two works were intended to be used together.

The Institutiones, the third part, was a textbook for first-year law students, modeled on the earlier Institutes of Gaius. The four books of the Institutiones covered the basic principles of Roman law: persons, things, actions, and criminal law. The work was dedicated to the youth of the empire, in Justinian’s words, as a substitute for the older juristic textbooks that had become outdated. The Institutiones were published in 533 and were used for centuries as the basic introduction to Roman law.

The Novellae, the fourth part, was a collection of Justinian’s own new laws, issued after 534. The Novellae were written in Greek as well as Latin, and they reflect the increasing use of Greek in imperial administration. They cover a wide range of topics, from marriage and inheritance to ecclesiastical law and the regulation of the church. The Novellae were the only part of the Corpus to be written during Justinian’s lifetime, and they remained in force after the rest of the compilation had been superseded.

The Significance

The immediate impact of the Corpus Juris Civilis was, by Justinian’s own account, profound. By unifying and clarifying the law, the compilation made the administration of justice simpler, more efficient, and more predictable. The legal profession, which had been a diverse and often disorderly body of advocates, jurists, and teachers, was reorganized into a regulated profession with clear qualifications. The compilation also served as a tool of imperial policy: by selecting and editing the older juristic opinions, the commissioners could subtly adjust the law in directions the emperor favored.

The longer-term impact was even more striking. The Corpus was not particularly influential in the Greek-speaking east after Justinian’s death; the Macedonian Basilika superseded it in the tenth century. But in the eleventh century, the Corpus was rediscovered in the Latin west, and a school of legal scholars at Bologna, known as the glossators, used it as the basis of a comprehensive European legal system. The glossators, and the later commentators or post-glossators, transformed the Corpus into the foundation of a legal system that would spread across continental Europe and, in modified form, to much of the rest of the world.

The rediscovery of the Corpus at Bologna was one of the most consequential events of the medieval intellectual revival. The legal scholars of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries used the Corpus to construct a new theory of law, of state, and of imperial authority that influenced the development of the medieval Latin west. The political theology of the Holy Roman Empire, the legal basis of the medieval papacy, the development of the university curriculum, and the formation of the modern civil law tradition all owe a substantial debt to the Corpus and to the work of the medieval Bologna school.

The Code and the Empire

For the Byzantines, the Corpus was a statement of the Roman imperial legal order, and the emperor’s role as the author and guarantor of the law was a central part of the imperial ideology. The compilation made clear that the emperor was the supreme lawgiver, the legibus solutus (released from the law in his legislative function) but also bound by the laws he promulgated. The political theology of the Corpus — the idea that the emperor’s authority was derived from God, that the laws expressed the divine reason that the emperor was bound to follow, and that the empire was a divinely sanctioned order — shaped the self-understanding of the Byzantine state. The legal tradition that descends from the Corpus is examined in the Byzantine government and administration.

The compilation also had an impact on the empire’s sense of Roman identity, treated in why the Byzantines called themselves Romans. The Corpus was a Latin work, in the language of the Roman law tradition, and the use of Latin (in addition to Greek, the actual language of administration) made clear that the eastern empire was the legal heir of the western Roman state. The work of Tribonian and his commission was, in a sense, a declaration that the eastern Roman state, ruled from Constantinople, was the Roman state in its full legal and institutional sense.

Legacy

The Corpus Juris Civilis is, in scope and influence, comparable to the Bible in the Christian west and the Quran in the Islamic world. It is the foundation of the civil law tradition of continental Europe, the legal basis of the modern nation-state, and the technical vocabulary in which modern lawyers discuss property, contract, persons, and obligations. The work of the Bologna school, the medieval commentators, and the modern civil law jurists is, in essence, the long working-out of the principles laid down by Tribonian and his commission. The work of Justinian, more than that of any other single legislator, shaped the law of the modern world.