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Caroline Humfress Judging by the Book Christian Codices and Late Antique Legal Culture The Emperor Justinian and New Christian Books By 533, the Christian God, according to the emperor Justinian, had authored a new Christian book, a book of law, known today as the Digest or Pandects. The divine authorship of this new Christian book is stated explicitly in Justinian’s imperial constitution Tanta. This constitution effectively promulgated the authority of the Digest text, the second of Justinian’s new authoritative law books that made up his tripartite “body of the civil law” (what we today term the Corpus Iuris Civilis). The opening sentence of the constitution reads, “So great is the providence of the Divine Humanity toward us that it ever deigns to sustain us with acts of eternal generosity.”1 The particularly expansive acts of eternal generosity that Justinian goes on to specify include the end of the Parthian wars, the extinction of the Vandal nation, and the reconquest of the whole of Libya for the Roman Empire. Christ then apparently turned his providential attention toward reducing more than five hundred years’ worth of internally inconsistent imperial constitutions and nearly fourteen hundred years’ worth of confused Roman jurisprudence into a single 141 1. Justinian, Constitutio Tanta pr. (addressed to the senate and all peoples, dated 533), ed. Theodor Mommsen, in Paul Krueger et al., eds., Corpus Iuris Civilis, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1877–95), vol. 1: Digesta, xviii: “Tanta circa nos divinae humanitatis est providentia, ut semper aeternis liberalitatibus nos sustentare dignetur.” concordant “body” of civil law. With respect to the creation of a single harmonious text of juristic opinions (the Digest itself), the author of the constitution Tanta goes on to observe that: for the heavenly providence this was certainly appropriate, but for human weakness in no way possible. We, therefore, in our accustomed manner have resorted to the aid of the Immortal One and, invoking the Supreme Deity, have desired that God should become the author and patron of the whole work.2 In the rhetoric of the compilers of Justinian’s Corpus Iuris Civilis, the volume that now contained the supposedly harmonious sum of (“pagan”) classical juristic science between its covers was literally a Christian book. The triune Christian God, working through the agency of the emperor Justinian, was both its author and patron. There is the same insistence on divine providence, inspiration, and patronage in the Justinianic legislation that refers in detail to the mechanics of compiling the Digest. The constitution Deo auctore, in which Justinian ordered the volume’s composition, paints a vivid and highly rhetorical picture of an emperor imploring divine assistance from the Christian God: 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 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 2. Ibid.: “namque hoc caelestis quidem providentiae peculiare fuit, humanae vero inbecillitati nullo modo possibile. nos itaque more solito ad immortalitatis respeximus praesidium, et summo numine invocato deum auctorem et totius operis praesulem fieri optavimus.” For further discussion of the Justinianic compilation and Roman law under Justinian, see Caroline Humfress, “Law and Legal Practice in the Age of Justinian,” in Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, ed. Michael Maas (Cambridge, 2005), 161–184. 3. Justinian, Constitutio Deo auctore 2 (addressed to Tribonian, dated 530), ed. Mommsen, xiii: “Hocque opere consummato et in uno volumine nostro nomine praefulgente coadunato, cum ex paucis et tenuioribus relevati ad summam et plenissimam iuris emendationem pervenire properaremus et omnem Romanam sanctionem et colligere et emendare et tot auctorum dispersa volumina uno codice indita ostendere, quod nemo neque sperare neque optare ausus est, res quidem nobis difficillima, immo magis impossibilis videbatur. Sed manibus ad caelum erectis et aeterno auxilio invocato eam quoque curam nostris reposuimus animis, deo freti, qui et res penitus desperatas donare et consummare suae virtutis magnitudine potest.” 142   C a r o l i n e H u m f r e s s [3.145.131.238...

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