In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

THE COMPOSITION O F THE DIGEST THE EMPEROR CAESAR FLAVIUSJUSTINIANUS, PIOUS, FORTUNATE, RENOWNED, CONQUEROR AND TRIUMPHER, EVER AUGUSTUS, GREETS TRIBONIAN HIS QUAESTOR. Governing under the authority of God our empire which was delivered to us by the Heavenly Majesty, we both conduct wars successfully and render peace honorable, and we uphold the condition of the state. We so lift up our minds toward the help of the omnipotent God that we do not place our trust in weapons or our soldiers or our military leaders or our own talents, but we rest all our hopes in the providence of the Supreme Trinity alone, from whence the elements of the whole world proceeded and their disposition throughout the universe was derived. 1. Whereas, then, nothing in any sphere is found so worthy of study as the authority of law, which sets in good order affairs both divine and human and casts out all injustice, yet we have found the whole extent of our laws which has come down from the foundation of the city of Rome and the days of Romulus to be so confused that it extends to an inordinate length and is beyond the comprehension of any human nature. It has been our primary endeavor to make a beginning with the most revered emperors of earlier times, to free their constitutiones (enactments) from faults and set them out in a clear fashion, so that they might be collected together in one Codex, and that they might afford to all mankind the ready protection of their own integrity, purged of all unnecessary repetition and most harmful disagreement. 2. This work has been accomplished and collected in a single volume under our own glorious name. In our haste to extricate ourselves from minor and more trivial affairs and attain to a completely full revision of the law, and to collect and amend the whole set of Roman ordinances and present the diverse books of so many authors in a single volume (a thing which no one has dared to expect or to desire), the task appeared to us most difficult, indeed impossible. Nevertheless, with our hands stretched up to heaven, and imploring eternal aid, we stored up this task too in our mind, relying upon God, who in the magnitude of his goodness is able to sanction and to consummate achievements that are utterly beyond hope. 3. Mindful as we are of the supreme service of your sincerity, we committed this work also to you in the first place, as you have given proofs of your ability in the composition of our THE COMPOSITION O F THE DIGEST Codex; and we commanded you to select as colleagues in your task those whom you thought fit, both from the most eloquent professors and from the most able of the robed men of the highest lawcourt. These men have now been brought together, introduced into the palace, and accepted by us on your recommendation; and we have entrusted to them the execution of the entire task, on the understanding that the whole enterprise will be carried out under your own most vigilant supervision. 4. We therefore command you to read and work upon the books dealing with Roman law, written by those learned men of old to whom the most revered emperors gave authority to compose and interpret the laws, so that the whole substance may be extracted from them, all repetition and discrepancy being as far as possible removed, and out of them one single work may be compiled, which will suffice in place of them all. Others too have written books dealing with the law whose writings have not been received or used by any later authors; but we do not regard these works as being worthy of intruding upon our ordinance. 5. Since this material will have been composed by the supreme indulgence of the Deity, it is necessary to set it out in a most handsome work, consecrating as it were a fitting and most holy temple of justice, and to distribute the whole law into fifty books and distinct titles, in imitation both of our Codex of constitutiones (enactments)and of the Perpetual Edict, in such a way as may seem convenient to you, so that nothing may be capable of being left outside the finished work already mentioned, but that in these fifty books the entire ancient lawin a state of confusion for almost fourteen hundred years, and rectified by us-may be as if defended by...

Share