Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/373

 *posed under the auspices of that feeble-minded prince, whose simple piety assumed that all but the laws of Christian emperors should be expunged from the statute book. This ineffective performance, therefore, left unnoticed all legislation previous to Constantine, but there were two other extensive compilations, the Gregorian and Hermogenian Codes, of private origin, in which had been amassed a multitude of Imperial constitutions, beginning with those of Hadrian. The work was begun in February, 528, and finished by April of the following year. It was then announced to the Praefect of the East as the "Justinian Code," to which alone for the future reference was to be made in order to ascertain the law of the Empire; and he was directed to give it effect from the next month. If, the Emperor added, certain enactments were found to have been altered in tenor by additions, detractions, or verbal changes, such modifications had been necessitated by the exigences of the age; and it was forbidden that anyone should thereafter cite such passages as they appeared in previous books, with the view of inducing decisions not in conformity with the new Code.

The capacity and erudition of Tribonian, which had been revealed during the preparation of the Code, inspired Justinian to undertake in the next year a work of much greater magnitude, which it was anticipated would demand fully ten years for its achievement. It was proposed to extract all the essential pronouncements of jurisprudential law to be found in the two thousand volumes, which emanated from the recognized legal luminaries of the previous fourteen centuries, and dispose them categorically in fifty books, so that they should be readily available for forensic consultation. The