Page:1909historyofdec04gibbuoft.djvu/566

 498 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xliv accused of neglecting many were no longer to be found in the libraries of the East. 86 The copies of Papinian or Ulpian, which the reformer had proscribed, were deemed unworthy of .future notice ; the Twelve Tables and praetorian edict insensibly van- ished ; and the monuments of ancient Rome were neglected or destroyed by the envy and ignorance of the Greeks. Even the Pandects themselves have escaped with difficulty and danger from the common shipwreck, and criticism has pronounced that all the editions and manuscripts of the West are derived from one original. 87 It was transcribed at Constantinople in the beginning of the seventh century, 88 was successively transported by the accidents of war and commerce to Amalphi, 89 Pisa,' 10 and 8S Pomponius (Pandect. 1. i. tit. ii. leg. 2 [leg. 30]) observes that of the three foun- ders of the civil law, Mutius, Brutus, and Manilius, extant volumina, scripta [leg. in- ecripta] Manilii monumenta ; that of some old republican lawyers, hsec versantur eorum scripta inter manus hominum. Eight of the Augustan sages were reduced to a compen- dium of Cascellius, scripta non extant sed unus liber, <fec. ; of Trebatius, minus fre- quentantur ; of Tubero, libri parum grati sunt. Many quotations in the Pandect6 are derived from books which Tribonian never saw ; and, in the long period from the viith to the xiiith century of Rome, the apparent reading of the moderns successively depends on the knowledge and veracity of their predecessors. [The chief monuments of Roman law previous to Justinian are : (1) the Fragments of Ulpian, discovered in 1544 ; (2) the Commentaries of Gaius, discovered at Verona in 1816 ; (3) the Sententise of Paulus, which have been preserved as part of the Visigothic Breviarium of Alaric II. All three are edited in Gneist's Syntagma (see above, n. 12) ; and the Commentaries of Gaius and Institutes of Justinian are most conveniently printed here in parallel columns. Gaius has been edited by Kriiger and Studemund in vol. i., Ulpian and Paulus in vol. ii., of the Collectio librorum iuris anteiustiniani (edited by Kriiger, Moinmsen and Studemund) .] 87 All, in several instances, repeat the errors of the scribe and the transpositions of some leaves in the Florentine Pandects. This fact, if it be true, is decisive. Yet the Pandects are quoted by Ivo of Chartres (who died in 1117), by Theobald, arch- bishop of Canterbury and by Vacarius, our first professor, in the year 1140 (Selden ad Fletam, c. 7, torn. ii. p. 1080-1085). Have our British Mss. of the Pandects been oollated ? 88 See the description of this original in Brenckman (Hist. Pandect. Florent. 1. i. c. 2, 3, p. 4-17, and 1. ii.). Politian, an enthusiast, revered it as the authentic standard of Justinian himself (p. 407, 408) ; but this paradox is refuted by the ab- breviations of the Florentine Ms. (1. ii. c. 3, p. 117-130). It is composed of two quarto volumes with large margins, on a thin parchment, and the Latin characters betray the hand of a Greek scribe. 89 Brenckman, at the end of his history, has inserted two dissertations, on the republic of Amalphi, and the Pisan war in the year 1135, &c. 90 The discovery of the Pandects at Amalphi (a.d. 1137) is first noticed (in 1501) by Ludovicus Bologninus (Brenokman, 1. i. o. 11, p. 73, 74, 1. iv. c. 2, p. 417-425), on the faith of a Pisan chronicle (p. 409, 410), without a name or a date. The whole story, though unknown to the xiith century, embellished by ignorant ages and suspected by rigid criticism, is not, however, destitute of much internal proba- bility (1. i. c. 4-8, p. 17-50). [Cp. Savigny, Gesch. des rom. Rechts, 3, 83 ; where the story is rejected.] The Liber Pandectarum of Pisa was undoubtedly consulted in the xivth century by the great Bartolus (p. 406, 407. See 1. i. c. 9, p. 50-62).