Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 2 1913.djvu/82

54 the antecedents and plan of Justinian's legislation, and a summary of those parts of it which are most connected with the general society of the period or afford some interest to an English reader from their resemblance or contrast to our own law. Unfortunately a concise and eclectic treatment cannot preserve much, if anything, of the logic and subtlety of a system of practical thought.

The sources of law under the early Emperors were Statutes (leges), rare after Tiberius; Senate's decrees (senatus consulta), which proposed by the Emperor took the place of Statutes; Edicts under the Emperor's own name; Decrees, i.e. his final decisions as judge on appeal; Mandata, instructions to provincial governors; Rescripta, answers on points of law submitted to him by judges or private persons; the praetor's edict as revised and consolidated by the lawyer Salvius Julianus at Hadrian's command and confirmed by a Senate's decree (this is generally called The Edict); and finally treatises on the various branches of law, which were composed, at any rate chiefly, by jurists authoritatively recognised, and which embodied the Common Law and practice of the Courts. By the middle of the third century A.D. the succession of great jurists came to an end, and, though their books, or rather the books written by the later of them, still continued in high practical authority, the only living source of law was the Emperor, whose utterances on law, in whatever shape whether oral or written, were called constitutiones. If written, they were by Leo's enactment (470) to bear the imperial autograph in purple ink.

Diocletian, who reformed the administration of the law as well as the general government of the Empire, issued many rescripts, some at least of which are preserved to us in Justinian's Codex, but few rescripts of later date are found. Thereafter new general law was made only by imperial edict, and the Emperor was the sole authoritative interpreter. Anyone attempting to obtain a rescript dispensing with Statute Law was (384) to be heavily fined and disgraced.

The imperial edicts were in epistolary form, and were published by being hung up in Rome and Constantinople and the larger provincial towns, and otherwise made known in their districts by the officers to whom they were addressed. There does not appear to have been any collection of Constitutions, issued to the public, until the Codex Gregorianus was made in the eastern part of the Empire. (Codex refers to the book-form as opposed to a roll.) This collection was the work probably of a man named Gregorius, about the end of the third century. In the course of the next century a supplement was made also in the Eastern Empire and called Codex Hermogenianus, probably the work of a man of that name. Both contained chiefly rescripts. A comparatively small part of both has survived in the later codes and in some imperfectly preserved legal compilations. During the fourth century, perhaps — as Mommsen thinks — in Constantine's time, but with later additions, a compilation was made in the West, of which we