Codex Gregorianus and Codex Hermogenianus | Simon Corcoran

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Codex Gregorianus and Codex Hermogenianus | Simon Corcoran 1 Codex Gregorianus and used the rescripts he himself wrote as magister libellorum (master of petitions) to Diocletian. Codex Hermogenianus This makes the code appear at least semi- SIMON CORCORAN official. Although Gregorius, about whom nothing is known, has sometimes also been The Codex Gregorianus and Codex Her- identified as magister libellorum, he may rather mogenianus were collections of imperial have been working outside the court. The rescripts compiled in the reign of DIOCLETIAN. scatter of material of the 290s attributable to As the earliest Roman legal works created in the one or the other code makes their publication new “codex” format (as opposed to rolls), they sequence uncertain. The Gregorianus was also served as models for later imperial codes perhaps published ca. 292 CE, followed by the (CT 1.1.5; CJ Const. Haec), from which comes Hermogenianus ca. 295, with several later the practice of referring to definitive legal com- “editions.” However, a single edition each in pilations as “codes.” Aside from some recently the mid- to late 290s is also possible. The codes identified fragments (Corcoran and Salway mark the end of authoritative juristic writing 2010), neither code exists today. Their nature and the establishment of an imperial monopoly and content have to be deduced from edited of legal interpretation. excerpts reused in later legal works, principally the CODEX JUSTINIANUS. Each code consisted REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS solely of imperial constitutions arranged chro- nologically under thematic titles, whose struc- Corcoran, S. (2000) The empire of the tetrarchs: ture reflected the Praetor’s Edict and earlier imperial pronouncements and government AD juristic writings. The subject matter was 284–324: 25–42 and 85–94, rev. ed. mainly private law, with limited coverage of Oxford. public or criminal law. Corcoran, S. and Salway, B. (2010) “A lost law-code The Gregorianus consisted of at least rediscovered? The Fragmenta Londiniensia thirteen books and contained principally Anteiustiniana.” In Zeitschrift der Savigny Stiftung fu¨r Rechtsgeschichte: romanistische private rescripts, but also some letters and Abteilung 127: 677–8. edicts, from Hadrian down to the reign of Honore´, T. (1994) Emperors and lawyers: 139–85, Diocletian. The Hermogenianus consisted of a 2nd ed. Oxford. single book, comprising almost solely private Kru¨ger, P. et al. (1890) Collectio librorum iuris rescripts of the years 293 and 294. Its compiler anteiustiniani III: 236–45. Berlin (reconstruction was the jurist Aurelius Hermogenianus, who of the two codes). The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, First Edition. Edited by Roger S. Bagnall, Kai Brodersen, Craige B. Champion, Andrew Erskine, and Sabine R. Huebner, print pages 1595–1596. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah13041.
Recommended publications
  • Ordering Divine Knowledge in Late Roman Legal Discourse
    Caroline Humfress ordering.3 More particularly, I will argue that the designation and arrangement of the title-rubrics within Book XVI of the Codex Theodosianus was intended to showcase a new, imperial and Theodosian, ordering of knowledge concerning matters human and divine. König and Whitmarsh’s 2007 edited volume, Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire is concerned primarily with the first three centuries of the Roman empire Ordering Divine Knowledge in and does not include any extended discussion of how knowledge was ordered and structured in Roman juristic or Imperial legal texts.4 Yet if we classify the Late Roman Legal Discourse Codex Theodosianus as a specialist form of Imperial prose literature, rather than Caroline Humfress classifying it initially as a ‘lawcode’, the text fits neatly within König and Whitmarsh’s description of their project: University of St Andrews Our principal interest is in texts that follow a broadly ‘compilatory’ aesthetic, accumulating information in often enormous bulk, in ways that may look unwieldy or purely functional In the celebrated words of the Severan jurist Ulpian – echoed three hundred years to modern eyes, but which in the ancient world clearly had a much higher prestige later in the opening passages of Justinian’s Institutes – knowledge of the law entails that modern criticism has allowed them. The prevalence of this mode of composition knowledge of matters both human and divine. This essay explores how relations in the Roman world is astonishing… It is sometimes hard to avoid the impression that between the human and divine were structured and ordered in the Imperial codex accumulation of knowledge is the driving force for all of Imperial prose literature.5 of Theodosius II (438 CE).
    [Show full text]
  • Justinian's Redaction
    JUSTINIAN'S REDACTION. "Forhim there are no dry husks of doctrine; each is the vital develop- ment of a living germ. There is no single bud or fruit of it but has an ancestry of thousands of years; no topmost twig that does not greet with the sap drawn from -he dark burrows underground; no fibre torn away from it but has been twisted and strained by historic wheels. For him, the Roman law, that masterpiece of national growth, is no sealed book ..... ... but is a reservoir of doctrine, drawn from the watershed of a world's civilization!'* For to-day's student of law, what worth has the half- dozen years' activity of a few Greek-speakers by the Bos- phorus nearly fourteen centuries ago? Chancellor Kent says: "With most of the European nations, and in the new states of Spanish America, and in one of the United States, it (Roman law) constitutes the principal basis of their unwritten or common law. It exerts a very considerable influence on our own municipal law, and particularly on those branches of it which are of equity and admiralty jurisdiction, or fall within the cognizance of the surrogate or consistorial courts . It is now taught and obeyed not only in France, Spain, Germany, Holland, and Scotland, but in the islands of the Indian Ocean, and on the banks of the Mississippi and St. Lawrence. So true, it seems, are the words of d'Agnesseau, that 'the grand destinies of Rome are not yet accomplished; she reigns throughout the world by her reason, after having ceased to reign by her authority?'" And of the honored jurists whose names are carved on the stones of the Law Building of the University of Pennsyl- vania another may be cited as viewing the matter from a different standpoint.
    [Show full text]
  • The Corpus Juris Civilis
    College of William & Mary Law School William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository Library Staff ubP lications The oW lf Law Library 2015 The orC pus Juris Civilis Frederick W. Dingledy William & Mary Law School, [email protected] Repository Citation Dingledy, Frederick W., "The orC pus Juris Civilis" (2015). Library Staff Publications. 118. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/libpubs/118 Copyright c 2015 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/libpubs The Corpus Juris Civilis by Fred Dingledy Senior Reference Librarian College of William & Mary Law School for Law Library of Louisiana and Supreme Court of Louisiana Historical Society New Orleans, LA – November 12, 2015 What we’ll cover ’History and Components of the Corpus Juris Civilis ’Relevance of the Corpus Juris Civilis ’Researching the Corpus Juris Civilis Diocletian (r. 284-305) Theodosius II Codex Gregorianus (r. 408-450) (ca. 291) {{ Codex Theodosianus (438) Codex Hermogenianus (295) Previously… Byzantine Empire in 500 Emperor Justinian I (r. 527-565) “Arms and laws have always flourished by the reciprocal help of each other.” Tribonian 528: Justinian appoints Codex commission Imperial constitutiones I: Ecclesiastical, legal system, admin II-VIII: Private IX: Criminal X-XII: Public 529: Codex first ed. {{Codex Liber Theodora (500-548) 530: Digest commission 532: Nika (Victory) Riots Digest : Writings by jurists I: Public “Appalling II-XLVII: Private arrangement” XLVIII: Criminal --Alan XLIX: Appeals + Treasury Watson L: Municipal, specialties, definitions 533: Digest/Pandects First-year legal textbook I: Persons II: Things III: Obligations IV: Actions 533: Justinian’s Institutes 533: Reform of Byzantine legal education First year: Institutes Digest & Novels Fifth year: Codex The Novels (novellae constitutiones): { Justinian’s constitutiones 534: Codex 2nd ed.
    [Show full text]
  • Law and Empire in Late Antiquity
    job:LAY00 17-10-1998 page:3 colour:0 Law and Empire in Late Antiquity Jill Harries job:LAY00 17-10-1998 page:4 colour:0 published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge cb2 1rp, United Kingdom cambridge university press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, USA http://www.cup.org © Jill D. Harries 1999 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1999 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeset in Plantin 10/12pt [vn] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data Harries, Jill. Law and empire in late antiquity / Jill Harries. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 521 41087 8 (hardback) 1. Justice, Administration of – Rome. 2. Public law (Roman law) i. Title. KJA2700.H37 1998 347.45'632 –dc21 97-47492 CIP ISBN 0 521 41087 8 hardback job:LAY00 17-10-1998 page:5 colour:0 Contents Preface page vii Introduction 1 1 The law of Late Antiquity 6 Confusion and ambiguities? The legal heritage 8 Hadrian and the jurists 14 Constitutions: the emperor and the law 19 Rescripts as law 26 Custom and desuetude 31 2 Making the law 36 In consistory
    [Show full text]
  • After Krüger: Observations on Some Additional Or Revised Justinian Code Headings and Subscripts*)
    After Krüger: observations on some additional or revised Justinian Code headings and subscripts*) Der Beitrag stellt Ausschnitte aus Handschriften zusammen, die seit der Ausgabe des Co- dex Justinians 1877 durch Krüger entdeckt wurden, und die Ergänzungen oder Korrekturen an Inskriptionen und Subskriptionen ermöglichen. Die Handschriften sind P. Oxy. XV 1814 (C. 1,11,1-1,16,11 [first edition]), MS Cologne GB Kasten Β no. 130 (C. 3,32,4-12), PSI XIII 1347 (C. 7,16,41-7,17,1), P. Rein. Inv. 2219 (fragments of C. 12,59,10-12,62,4), MS Würzburg Universitätsbibliothek M.p.j.f.m.2 (C. 1,27,1,37-1,27,2,16 and 2,43,3-2,51,2), MS Stuttgart, Württemb. Staatsbibl. Cod. fragm 62 (C. 4,20,12-21,11). This article summarises details of manuscripts identified since the standard 1877 edition of the Justinian Code and containing additions to or revisions of headings and subscripts. The manuscripts are: P. Oxy. XV 1814 (CJ 1,11,1-1,16,11 [first edition]), MS Cologne GB Kasten Β no. 130 (CJ 3,32,4-12), PSI ΧΠΙ 1347 (CJ 7,16,41-7,17,1), P. Rein. Inv. 2219 (fragments of CJ 12,59,10-12,62,4), MS Würzburg Universitätsbibliothek M.p.j.f.m.2 (CJ 1,27,1,37-1,27,2,16 and 2,43,3-2,51,2), MS Stuttgart, Württemb. Staatsbibl. Cod. fragm. 62 (CJ 4,20,12-21,11). I. Introduction - Π. Sixth-century manuscripts a) P. Oxy. XV 1814, b) Cologne GB Kasten Β no.
    [Show full text]
  • Imperial Letters in Latin: Pliny and Trajan, Egnatius Taurinus and Hadrian1
    Imperial Letters in Latin: Pliny and Trajan, Egnatius Taurinus and Hadrian1 Fergus Millar 1. Introduction No-one will deny the fundamental importance of the correspondence of Pliny, as legatus of Pontus and Bithynia, and Trajan for our understanding of the Empire as a system. The fact that at each stage the correspondence was initiated by Pliny; the distances travelled by messengers in either direction (as the crow flies, some 2000 km to Rome from the furthest point in Pontus, and 1,500 km from Bithynia);2 the consequent delays, of something like two months in either direction; the seemingly minor and localised character of many of the questions raised by Pliny, and the Emperor’s care and patience in answering them – all these can be seen as striking and revealing, and indeed surprising, as routine aspects of the government of an Empire of perhaps some 50 million people. On the other hand this absorbing exchange of letters can be puzzling, because it seems isolated, not easy to fit into any wider context, since examples of Imperial letters in Latin are relatively rare. By contrast, the prestige of the Greek City in the Roman Empire and the flourishing of the epigraphic habit in at least some parts of the Greek world (primarily, however, the Greek peninsula and the western and southern areas of Asia Minor) have produced a large and ever-growing crop of letters addressed by Emperors to Greek cities and koina, and written in Greek. The collection of Greek constitutions published by J.H. Oliver in 1989 could now be greatly increased.
    [Show full text]
  • Tradition and Technique of Codification in the Modern World: the Louisiana Experience John H
    Louisiana Law Review Volume 25 | Number 3 April 1965 Tradition and Technique of Codification in the Modern World: The Louisiana Experience John H. Tucker jr. Repository Citation John H. Tucker jr., Tradition and Technique of Codification in the Modern World: The Louisiana Experience, 25 La. L. Rev. (1965) Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/lalrev/vol25/iss3/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Reviews and Journals at LSU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Louisiana Law Review by an authorized editor of LSU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TRADITION AND TECHNIQUE OF CODIFICATION IN THE MODERN WORLD: THE LOUISIANA EXPE- RIENCE* John H. Tucker, jr.** It has now been 160 years since France adopted its Civil Code, and thereby started a movement for the codification of civil law throughout the world. But in that lapse of time there have been cataclysmic changes in the social, political, economic, and physical circumstances of life which necessitate an exami- nation of the laws by which we live in order to find out whether they are adequate and proper in this fantastic space age which characterizes the modern world. Within the past decade, new nations have been swept into existence on a wave of anti-colonialism. Many of them need to have a complete redaction of their private as well as their pub- lic laws after it has been determined objectively to what extent, if any, the laws of the colonizing sovereignties have affected or supplanted local laws.
    [Show full text]
  • Anglo-Saxon Constitutional History
    ROMAN LAW IMPERIAL CONSTITUTIONS AS A SOURCE OF LAW CODIFICATION WHAT DOES IT ALL ADD UP TO? I. SOURCES OF LAW (IMPERIAL CONSTITUTIONS) 1. Gaius tells us that “An imperial constitution is what the emperor by decree, edict, or letter ordains.” ‘Constitution’ (constitutio) is the generic term; the word means simply something established or decided. ‘Decree’ (decretum, plural decreta), ‘edict’ (edictum, plural edicta), and ‘letter’ (episutla, plural epistulae) are more specific. The terminology reflects, to some extent, the development of the bureaucracy of the imperial chancery, but also the different contexts in which the emperor might write. a. Edicta. The emperor was a Republican magistrate with imperium. As such, he had the power to issue edicts. Hadrian issued some. The Constitutio Antoniniana of Caracalla is one. Perhaps the most famous is one that probably never was issued: Luke 2:1. b. Decreta are technically judicial decisions of the emperor either at first instance or on appeal. As we have noted previously, appeal was something new. It became possible with the extraordinaria cognitio when the judge himself became a public official. c. Epistulae are letters to a magistrate, very occasionally to a private citizen. If the letter answered a question it was called a rescriptum (‘rescript’, literally a ‘writing back’). d. Subscriptiones were written under a letter coming from a private citizen or on a libellus, a petition from a private citizen. They remained in the imperial archives but the author received a copy. These were also called ‘rescripts’. e. Mandata are instructions from the emperor on imperial administrative matters. 2.
    [Show full text]
  • Roman Law and Reception by Lorena Atzeri
    Roman Law and Reception by Lorena Atzeri This contribution offers an overview of the origin, development and persistence of Roman law from its origins in the 8th century BC to the 19th century AD. Roman law and its sources, above all the Justinianic Codification – the so called Corpus Iuris Civilis – have left an indelible imprint on the development of law in Europe and laid the foundation of many European legal systems. The role of Roman law within the legal science in the Middle Ages and the modern period will therefore also be treated here. Moreover, this article will discuss the fundamental relationship between Roman and Canon law and the reception of Roman law in many countries in Europe. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction and Periodisation 2. Public Law and Private Law 3. Legal Sources in the Republican Period 1. Lex and mos 2. The Law of the Twelve Tables 3. Jurisprudence and its Origins 4. The Stratification of the Legal System: Magisterial Law 4. Roman Legal Science 1. The End of a Legal Monopoly 2. The Formation of a Secular Jurisprudence 3. Jurists during the Imperial Period 5. Imperial Laws and their Collections 1. Codex Gregorianus and Codex Hermogenianus 2. Codex Theodosianus 3. Post-Theodosian Novels 4. The Leges barbarorum 5. Lex Romana Visigothorum or Breviarium Alarici 6. Lex Romana Burgundionum 7. Edictum Theoderici 6. The Corpus Iuris Civilis of Emperor Justinian I 1. First Codex 2. Digest 3. Institutes 4. Second Codex (or Codex Repetitae Praelectionis) 5. Novels 7. The Validity and Range of Influence of the Justinian Compilation 8.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Free at ISBN 978‑1‑909646‑72‑8 (PDF Edition) DOI: 10.14296/917.9781909646728
    Ravenna its role in earlier medieval change and exchange Ravenna its role in earlier medieval change and exchange Edited by Judith Herrin and Jinty Nelson LONDON INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH Published by UNIVERSITY OF LONDON SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU First published in print in 2016 (ISBN 978‑1‑909646‑14‑8) This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution‑ NonCommercial‑NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY‑ NCND 4.0) license. More information regarding CC licenses is available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Available to download free at http://www.humanities‑digital‑library.org ISBN 978‑1‑909646‑72‑8 (PDF edition) DOI: 10.14296/917.9781909646728 iv Contents Acknowledgements vii List of contributors ix List of illustrations xiii Abbreviations xvii Introduction 1 Judith Herrin and Jinty Nelson 1. A tale of two cities: Rome and Ravenna under Gothic rule 15 Peter Heather 2. Episcopal commemoration in late fifth‑century Ravenna 39 Deborah M. Deliyannis 3. Production, promotion and reception: the visual culture of Ravenna between late antiquity and the middle ages 53 Maria Cristina Carile 4. Ravenna in the sixth century: the archaeology of change 87 Carola Jäggi 5. The circulation of marble in the Adriatic Sea at the time of Justinian 111 Yuri A. Marano 6. Social instability and economic decline of the Ostrogothic community in the aftermath of the imperial victory: the papyri evidence 133 Salvatore Cosentino 7. A striking evolution: the mint of Ravenna during the early middle ages 151 Vivien Prigent 8. Roman law in Ravenna 163 Simon Corcoran 9.
    [Show full text]
  • Ordering Divine Knowledge in Late Roman Legal Discourse
    Caroline Humfress ordering.3 More particularly, I will argue that the designation and arrangement of the title-rubrics within Book XVI of the Codex Theodosianus was intended to showcase a new, imperial and Theodosian, ordering of knowledge concerning matters human and divine. König and Whitmarsh’s 2007 edited volume, Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire is concerned primarily with the first three centuries of the Roman empire Ordering Divine Knowledge in and does not include any extended discussion of how knowledge was ordered and structured in Roman juristic or Imperial legal texts.4 Yet if we classify the Late Roman Legal Discourse Codex Theodosianus as a specialist form of Imperial prose literature, rather than Caroline Humfress classifying it initially as a ‘lawcode’, the text fits neatly within König and Whitmarsh’s description of their project: University of St Andrews Our principal interest is in texts that follow a broadly ‘compilatory’ aesthetic, accumulating information in often enormous bulk, in ways that may look unwieldy or purely functional In the celebrated words of the Severan jurist Ulpian – echoed three hundred years to modern eyes, but which in the ancient world clearly had a much higher prestige later in the opening passages of Justinian’s Institutes – knowledge of the law entails that modern criticism has allowed them. The prevalence of this mode of composition knowledge of matters both human and divine. This essay explores how relations in the Roman world is astonishing… It is sometimes hard to avoid the impression that between the human and divine were structured and ordered in the Imperial codex accumulation of knowledge is the driving force for all of Imperial prose literature.5 of Theodosius II (438 CE).
    [Show full text]
  • Roman Law, Medieval Jurisprudence and the Rise of the European Ius Commune: Perspectives on the Origins of the Civil Law Tradition
    Roman Law, Medieval Jurisprudence and the Rise of the European 22 Ius Commune: Perspectives on the Origins of the Civil Law Tradition (MOUSOURAKIS George) Roman Law, Medieval Jurisprudence and the Rise of the European Ius Commune: Perspectives on the Origins of the Civil Law Tradition MOUSOURAKIS George* Abstract The civil law tradition is the oldest and most prevalent legal tradition in the world today, embracing the legal systems of Continental Europe, Latin America and those of many African and Asian countries. Despite the considerable diff erences in the substantive laws of civil law countries, a fundamental unity exists between them. The most obvious element of unity is the fact that the civil law systems are all derived from the same sources and their legal institutions are classified in accordance with a commonly accepted scheme existing prior to their own development, which they adopted and adapted at some stage in * Visiting Professor, Kagoshima University; Associate Professor, University of Auckland, New Zealand; Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute, Germany. This paper was completed at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg in August 2014. I am greatly indebted to Professor R. Zimmermann for his generosity in allowing me access to the library resources and other research facilities of the Institute. 022-084_George_id6.indd 22 2015/03/31 10:09 プロセスシアンプロセスシアンプロセスマゼンタプロセスマゼンタプロセスイエロープロセスイエロープロセスブラックプロセスブラック Housei Riron Vol.47 No.2(2014年) 23 their history. The civil law tradition was the product of the interaction among three principal forces: Roman law, as transmitted through the sixth century codifi cation of Emperor Justinian; Germanic customary law; and the canon law of the Church, which in many respects derived from Roman law but nevertheless constituted a distinct system.
    [Show full text]