Introductory Note
Ian Wood
The Theodosian Code was promulgated in AD 438. Within a century much had happened to undermine its significance.
In the eastern Empire, the birthplace of the Code, the emperor Justinian’s legal reforms had rendered it obsolete. In the West the collapse of imperial rule and the establishment of the successor states might equally well have invalidated its status as a repository of law. Perhaps surprisingly, this was not to be the case. In 506 the Visigothic king Alarie II authorised the promulgation of the Lex Romana Visigotho- rum, which was largely based on the Code, and forbad the use of any other Roman law.The Lex Romana Visigothorum, or Breviary of Alaric as it was often known, was to prove significant in the transmission of the contents of the Theodosian Code to the medieval world and beyond. Yet it was not the Visigoths who ensured the ultimate survival of either the Code or the Lex Romana Visigothorum. Later Visigothic codes, although heavily influenced by Roman law, banned the use of previous legal compilations, among them the Breviary of Alaric and the Code of Euric. It is, in fact, largely in the Frankish kingdom, whose own legislation is usually seen as being among the least Romanised of the laws of the successor states, that both the Code and the Lex Romana Visiogothorum survived. Merovingian legislation was directly influenced by Roman law. Moreover, narrative sources reveal that members of the administrative classes learned the Code, or perhaps the Breviary, as part of their schooling. To the narrative sources may be added the evidence of the manuscripts, which show that the fheodosian Code was at least as important as the Breviary in the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries.
In addition to the manuscript evidence for the Code itself, there is
160 Part III. Nachleben: the Code in the Middle Ages that for the Sirmondian Constitutions, which have often been seen as a satellite collection.
Here the evidence suggests ecclesiastical involvement. Mark Vessey’s analysis of the manuscript tradition of the Sirmondian Constitutions shows that the earliest context in which they are known to have been preserved is ecclesiastical, and that the collection may well be associated with the growing power of the bishops of Lyons in the sixth century. Again, the narrative sources are compatible showing that Merovingian ecclesiastics, like their secular counterparts, were educated in Roman law.Indeed the church, and especially the Frankish church, played a role alongside, and greater than, that of the Merovingian kings in transmitting Roman law, and especially the Code, to posterity. As Dafydd Walters shows, western churchmen cited the Code frequently from the sixth to the eleventh century, and it is likely that the Theodosian Code, or the breviary of Alaric, provided some, if not the majority of the lex Romana envisaged in the phrase ecclesia vivit lege Romana. It was not until the Investiture dispute that the legal compilations of Justinian came to take precedence in the West over their Theodosian counterpart.
Between the sixth and eleventh centuries the Code, or the Breviary, was transcribed and cited. As a result, while the Codex Theodosianus was ignored in the Byzantine Empire, it was preserved in the early medieval West, and it is to the lawyers and churchmen of the western Dark Ages that we owe much of our knowledge of Theodosius’ legal achievement.
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More on the topic Introductory Note:
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- Brodd Jeffrey, Little L., Nystrom B., Platzner R., Shek R., Stiles E.. Invitation to World Religions. 4th edition. — Oxford University Press,2022. — 1196 p., 2022