Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/30

 16 /. BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST cipal, if not the only, representative of Roman law in the expansive realm of the Franks. But even it was too bulky for men's needs. They made epitomes of it and epitomes of epitomes. ^ Then, again, we must remember that while Tribonian was busy upon the Digest, the East Goths were still masters of Italy. We recall the event of 476 ; one emperor, Zeno at Byzantium, was to be enough. Odovacer had ruled as patri- cian and king. He had been conquered by the East Goths. The great Theodoric had reigned for more than thirty years (493-526) ; he had tried to fuse Italians and Goths into one nation ; he had issued a considerable body of law, the Edictum Theodorici, for the more part of a criminal kind.* Lastly, it must not escape us that about the year 500 there was in Rome a monk of Scythian birth who was labour- ing upon the foundations of the Corpus luris Canonici. He called himself Dionysius Exiguus. He was an expert chro- nologist and constructed the Dionysian cycle. He was col- lecting and translating the canons of eastern councils ; he was collecting also some of the letters (decretal letters they will be called) that had been issued by the popes from Siri- cius onwards (384-498). ^ This Collectio Dionysiana made its way in the West. Some version of it may have been the book of canons which our Archbishop Theodore produced at the Council of Hertford in 673.^ A version of it (Dionysio- Hadriana) was sent by Pope Hadrian to Charles the Great in 774.^ It helped to spread abroad the notion that the popes can declare, even if they can not make, law for the universal church, and thus to contract the sphere of secular jurisprudence. y In 528 Justinian began the work which gives him his fame in legal history ; in 534, though there were novel constitu- Visigothorum, 1849. Bluhme in M. G. Patrologia, vol. 67. 'Mr. C. H. Turner, Eng. Hist. Rev. ix. 727. •*Maassen, op. cit. i. 441.
 * The epitomes will be found in Hanel's edition, Lex Romana
 * Brunner, op. cit. i. 365; Karlowa, op. cit. i. 947 ff. Edited by
 * Maassen, op. cit. i. 422 flF. ; Tardif, op. cit. 110. Printed in Migne,
 * Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, iii. 119. See, however, the remarks of