conservation than the men who worked for Theodosius. Justinian and his coadjutors had also serious plans for improving the teaching of the law, in the furtherance of which the famous little book of Institutes was composed after the model, and to some extent in the words, of the Institutes of Gaius. It was published in 533.
The great labour, however, which Justinian and his lawyers were as by Providence inspired to achieve was the encyclopaedic codification of the jurisprudential law. Part of the emperor's high-sounding command runs thus:
"We therefore command you to read and sift out from the books pertaining to the jus Romanum composed by the ancient learned jurists (antiqui prudentes), to whom the most sacred emperors granted authority to indite and interpret the laws, so that the material may all be taken from these writers, and incongruity avoided—for others have written books which have been neither used nor recognized. When by the favour of the Deity this material shall have been collected, it should be reared with toil most beautiful, and consecrated as the own and most holy temple of justice, and the whole law (totum jus) should be arranged in fifty books under specific titles."[1]
The language of the ancient jurists was to be preserved even critically, that is to say, the compilers were directed to emend apparent errors and restore what seemed "verum et optimum et quasi ab initio scriptum." It was not the least of the providential mercies connected with the compilation of this great body of jurisprudential law, that Justinian and his commission did not abandon the phrasing of the old jurisconsults, and restate their opinions in such language as we have a sample of in the constitution from which the above extract is taken. This jurisprudential part of Justinian's Codification was named the Digest or Pandects.[2]
Inasmuch as Justinian's brief reconquest of western portions of the Roman Empire did not extend north of the Alps, his codification was not promulgated in Gaul or
- ↑ From the constitution directing the compilation of the Digest, usually cited as Deo auctore.
- ↑ The original plan of Theodosius embraced the project of a Codex of the jurisprudential law. See his constitution of the year 429 in Theod. C. i, 1, 5. Had this been carried out, as it was not, Justinian's Digest would have had a forerunner.
