Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/256

244 perspicuity and modernity. Many manuscripts contain only the Interpretatio and omit the texts.

The Breviarium became the source of Roman law, indeed the Roman law par excellence, for the Merovingian and then the Carolingian realm, outside of Italy. It was soon subjected to the epitomizing process, and its epitomes exist, dating from the eighth to the tenth century: they reduced it in bulk, and did away with the practical inconvenience of lex and interpretatio. Further, the Breviarium, and even the epitomes, were glossed with numerous marginal or interlinear notes made by transcribers or students. These range from definitions of words, sometimes taken from Isidore's Etymologiae, to brief explanations of difficulties in the text. In like manner in Italy, the Codex and Novellae of Justinian were, as has been said, reduced to epitomes, and also equipped with glosses.

These barbaric codes of Roman law mark the passage of Roman law into incipiently mediaeval stages. On the other hand, certain Latin codes of barbarian law present the laws of the Teutons touched with Roman conceptions, and likewise becoming inchoately mediaeval.

Freedom, the efficient freedom of the individual, belongs to civilization rather than to barbarism. The actual as well as imaginary perils surrounding the lives of men who do not dwell in a safe society, entail a state of close mutual dependence rather than of liberty. Law in a civilized community has the twofold purpose of preserving the freedom of the individual and of maintaining peace. With each advance in human progress, the latter purpose, at least in the field of private civil law, recedes a little farther, while