Theodosian Code was composed of constitutiones principum. Likewise the Breviarium, based upon it, and other barbarian codes of Roman law, were ordained by kings; and so were the codes of Teutonic law. For law, men looked directly to the visible ruler. The jus, reasoned out by the wisdom of trained jurists, had lost authority and interest. To be sure, a hundred years later Justinian's Commission put together in the Digest the body of jurisprudential law; but even in Italy where his codification was promulgated, the Digest fell still-born. Never was an official compilation of less effect upon its own time, or of such mighty import for times to come.
The Breviarium became par excellence the code of Roman law for the countries included in the present France. With its accompanying Interpretatio it was a work indicating intelligence on the part of its compilers, whose chief care was as to arrangement and explanation. But the time was not progressive, and a gathering mental decadence was shown by the manner in which the Breviarium was treated and used, to wit, epitomized in many epitomes, and practically superseded by them. Here was double evidence of decay; for the supersession of such a work by such epitomes indicates a diminishing legal knowledge in the epitomizers, and also a narrowing of social and commercial needs in the community, for which the original work contained much that was no longer useful.
There were, of course, epitomes and epitomes. Such a work as the Epitome Juliani, in which a good Byzantine lawyer of Justinian's time presented the substance of the Novellae, was an excellent compendium, and deserved the fame it won. Of a lower order were the later manipulations of Justinian's Codex, by which apparently the Codex was superseded in Italy. One of these was the Summa Perusina of the ninth or tenth century, a wretched work, and one of the blindest.[1]
Justinian's Codex and Julian's Epitome were equipped with glosses, some of which are as early as Justinian's time; but the greater part are later. The glosses to Justinian's legislation resemble those of the Breviarium before referred
- ↑ See Conrat, Ges. der Quellen, pp. 182-187.
