Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/77

 iv] TRANSMISSION OF THE ROMAN LAW 69 other legislation before Justinian formed the chief sources of the codes of Roman law enacted by barba- rian kings.* The old Germanic principle, that a people carries its own law with it, was a principle natural to peoples potentially or actually migratory, for whom blood, rather than territory, constituted the test of racehood and tribal unity. The ready recognition by the Ger- an aathoriUitive compilation of jarispradential law in fifty books, drawn from the writings of jurists whose authority had been recog- nized by Justinian's imperial predecessors ; the Institutes (533 a.d.), based on the Institutes of Gains, a well-known school text-book ; the Novels, the novellae constitutiones post codicem, published from time to time during Justinian's reign. 1 These comprised the following : Edictum Theodorici, promul- gated by the great king of the Ostrogoths. It constituted a code of law for both Goths and Romans — Barbari Romanique. Its sources were not Gothic law, but Roman law, statutory (leges) and juris- prudential (iujj) ; to wit, the Code and Novels of Theodosius, the Codes of Gregorianus and Hermogenianus, the writings of Paulua and Ulpian. The incapacity of its authors to enunciate clearly prin- ciples of law appears in the unskilful use they made of their sources. Lex Romana Vislgothorum, or Breviarium Alaricianum, com- monly called the Breviarium, compiled at the command of Alaric II, king of the Visigoths, shortly before the year 607, when the Visi- goths were driven from the northern parts of their dominion by the Franks. The compilers selected their material, leges and jws^ without altering the text save by omissions, and in some instances by qualifying or limiting it by their accompanying interpretatio. The sources were practically the same as those of Theodoric's Edict. This Code, which regulated the rights of Roman subjects of the Visigothic king, became the most widely used source of Roman law in the west of Europe. Lex Romana Burgundionum (cir.510 aj).), called " Papianus," an edict for the Roman subjects in the kingdom of the Burgundians. Its sources of Roman law were substantially the same as those of the Breviarium. It was not free from the in- fluence of the popular provincial Roman law, and contains traces of the influence of the Burgundian code for Burgundians.