Roman Law after Justinian
(1) The East
As we saw in Chapter 1,2 the decline of the Western Empire culminated in the deposition of the final western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, in AD 476. In the east, though, the situation was different, and it was in the east that the Corpus luris Civilis was created.
As may be expected, there is greater continuity in the east between Justinian’s compilation and the present day. Eastern developments had, however, very little direct impact on the Reception of Roman law in Western Europe,[292] so only a brief summary is given here.Justinian forbade commentaries on the Corpus luris Civilis, although he allowed brief summaries and translations into Greek. This prohibition was not strictly applied even in Justinian’s own time, however. Even though new law schools were founded duringJustinian’s reign, lawyers of the time found the Corpus luris Civilis difficult to use without further help. After Justinian’s time, in fact, the Corpus luris Civilis itself largely went out of use in the Eastern Empire.
Instead of the Corpus luris Civilis being used, what tended to happen is that lawÂyers would rely on unofficial (and, sometimes, official)[293] summaries, commentaries and epitomes of the Corpus luris. The most influential of these was the Hexabiblos, a compilation by a judge named Harmenopoulos made in 1345. The Hexabiblos formed the basis for Greek law until the twentieth century.
(2) The West
There is a certain amount of artificiality and hindsight in talking about the end of the Roman Empire in Western Europe. There was no single, catastrophic event that could have been identified at the time as the end. For example, when in AD 410 the Romans' British subjects were told to look to their own defence rather than expecting Roman assistance, this was expected to be a temporary state of affairs.
It is only with hindsight that this can be identified as the end of Roman rule in Britain. Indeed, as late as the end of the sixth century AD, ‘it was not clearly apparent to contemporaries that the ancient world, the Roman world, had ended in the West'.[294] Although the Western Empire was as a matter of fact carved up into a number of independent kingdoms, these remained for a time at least nominally subject to Roman authority. Even those Germanic tribes whose migrations into Roman territory (and Rome's inability to resist or control them) brought about the end of the Western Empire did not intend to destroy Roman rule. Rather, they sought to share in its benefits. Widespread use was made by the new rulers of existing governance structures. It must be remembered that the Romanised inhabitants of Western Europe were generally not displaced in this process,[295] and this included legally educated individuals. This fact allowed the new rulers of the West to draw on Roman texts and Roman legal expertise in their own law-making activities. There are numerous examples of this, of which the best known is the Lex Romana Visigothorum of AD 506, intended mainly for the use of Roman subjects of the Visigoths.[296] This consisted largely of abridged versions of the Codex Theodosianus and Gaius' Institutes, as well as some later enactÂments and other juristic texts. There was thus considerable survival of Roman law, albeit in debased form.B.
More on the topic Roman Law after Justinian:
- Johnson David (ed). The Cambridge companion to Roman Law. Cambridge University Press,2015. — 554 p., 2015
- The Roman law background
- 3 On a Legacy to the Jews of Antioch A Rescript of Caracalla
- THE CORPUS IURIS CIVILIS
- B Women’s modesty and the need for protection
- 61 Interdiction on Possession of Christian Slaves by Jews, Pagans, and Heretics
- A sourcebook on women and the law in the Roman Empire: marriage, divorce, and widowhood
- The Legacy of Roman Law
- CHAPTER 6 Litigation
- THE BREVIARIUM