Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/31

 1. MAITLAND: A PROLOGUE 17 tions to come from him, it was finished. Valuable as the code of imperial statutes might be, valuable as might be the mod- ernized and imperial edition of an excellent but ancient school- book, the main work that he did for the coming centuries lies in the Digest. We are told nowadays that in the Orient the classical jurisprudence had taken a new lease of life, especially in the schools at Berytus. ^ We are told that there is something of a renaissance, something even of an antiqua- rian revival visible in the pages of the Digest, a desire to go back from vulgar practice to classical text, also a desire to display an erudition that is not always very deep. Great conqueror, great builder, great theologian, great law-giver, Justinian would also be a great master of legal science and legal history. The narrow escape of his Digest from oblivion seems to tell us that, but for his exertions, very little of the ancient treasure of wisdom would have reached modern times ; and a world without the Digest would not have been the world that we know. Let us, however, remember the retrospective character of the book. The ius, the unenacted law, ceased to grow three hundred years ago. In time Justinian stands as far from the jurists whose opinions he collects as we stand from Coke or even from Fitzherbert. Laws have need of arms : Justinian knew it well. Much depended upon the fortunes of a war. We recall from the Institutes the boast that Africa has been reclaimed. Little was at stake there, for Africa was doomed to the Saracens ; nor could transient success in Spain secure a western home for the law-books of Byzantium.^ All was at stake in Italy. The struggle with the East Goths was raging ; Rome was captured and recaptured. At length the emperor was vic- torious (552), the Goths were exterminated or expelled; we hear of them no more. Justinian could now enforce his laws in Italy, and this he did by the pragmatic sanction pro petitione Vigilii (554).^ Fourteen years were to elapse and then the Lombard hordes under Alboin would be pouring , • Kriiger, op. cit. 354; Karlowa, op. cit. 1. 938; Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, vi. 519.
 * Kriiger, op. cit. 319.
 * Conrat, op. cit. i. 32.