Codex Theodosianus

Codex Theodosianus 437. John F. Matthews illustrates the importance of Theodosius’ Code when he said, “the Theodosian Code was the first occasion since the Twelve Tables on which a Roman government had attempted by public authority to collect and publish its leges.”[5] The code covers political, socioeconomic, cultural and religious subjects of the 4th and 5th century in the Roman Empire.[6] A collection of imperial enactments called the Codex Gre- gorianus had been written in c. 291-4[1] and the Codex Hermogenianus, a limited collection of rescripts from c. 295,[1] was published. Theodosius desired to create a code that would provide much greater insight into law during the later Empire (321-429). According to Peter Stein, “Theodosius was perturbed at the low state of legal skill in his empire of the East.” He apparently started a school of law at Constantinople. In 429 he assigned a commission to collect all imperial constitutions since the time of Constantine.[7] The laws in the code span from 312-438, so by 438 the “volume of imperial law had become unmanageable”.[8] During the process of gathering the vast amount of material, often editors would have multiple copies of the same law. In addition to this, the source material the editors were drawing upon changed over time. Clifford Ando A bust of Theodosius II in the Louvre. notes that according to Matthews, the editors “displayed a reliance on western provincial sources through the late The Codex Theodosianus (Eng. Theodosian Code) was a 4th century and on central, eastern archives thereafter.”[9] compilation of the laws of the Roman Empire under the Christian emperors since 312. A commission was estab- After six years an initial version was finished in 435, but lished by Theodosius II and his co-emperor Valentinian it was not published, instead it was improved upon and III on 26 March 429[1][2] and the compilation was pub- expanded and finally finished in 438 and taken to the Sen- lished by a constitution of 15 February 438. It went into ate in Rome and Constantinople. Matthews believes that force in the eastern and western parts of the empire on 1 the two attempts are not a result of a failed first attempt, January 439.[1] but instead the second attempt shows “reiteration and re- finement of the original goals at a new stage in the editorial process.”[10] Others have put forth alternate theories to explain the lengthy editorial process and two different 1 Development commissions. Boudewijn Sirks believes that “the code was compiled from imperial copy books found at Con- On March 26, 429, Emperor Theodosius II announced to stantinople, Rome, or Ravenna, supplemented by mate- the senate of Constantinople his intentions to form a com- rial at a few private collections, and that the delays were mittee to codify all of the laws (leges, singular lex) from caused by such problems as verifying the accuracy of the the reign of Constantine up to Theodosius II and Valen- text and improving the legal coherence of the work.”[11] tinian III. Twenty-two scholars, working in two teams, The tone of the work reflected the rhetorical training that worked for nine years starting in 429 to assemble what the drafters had received and Averil Cameron has de- was to become the Theodosian Code.[3] The chief over- scribed it as “verbose, moralizing and pretentious”.[12] seer of the work was Antiochus Chuzon, a lawyer and a Prefect and Consul from Antioch.[4] Their product was a collection of 16 books containing more than 2,500 constitutions issued between 313 and 1 2 6 NOTES 2 Context Week, and the doors of all courts of law be closed during those 15 days (1. ii. tit. viii.). The Code was written in Latin and referred explicitly to the two capitals of Constantinople (Constantinopolitana) and Rome (Roma).[13] It was also concerned with the im- 4 Sources position of orthodoxy - the Arian controversy was ongo- ing - within the Christian religion and contains 65 decrees Books 1-5 lack the level of manuscript support avail- directed at heretics.[14] able for books 6-16. The first five books of the sur- Originally, Theodosius had attempted to commission viving Codex draw largely from two other manuscripts. leges generales beginning with Constantine to be used as a The Turin manuscript, also known as “T,” consists of 43, [19] supplement for the Codex Gregorianus and the Codex Her- largely discontinuous folios. The second manuscript is mogenianus. He intended to supplement the legal codes the Breviary of Alaric, and a good part of the Breviarium with the opinions and writings of ancient Roman Jurists, that is included in book 1 actually contains the original [19] much like the Digest found later in Justinian’s Code. But text of the respective part of the original codex. the task proved to be too great, and in 435 it was decided The latter part of the Codex, books 6-16, drew largely to concentrate solely on the laws from Constantine to the from two texts as well. Books 6-8 of the Codex were time of writing. This decision defined the greatest differ- preserved in the text of a document known as Parsinus ence between the Theodosian Code and Justinian’s later 9643.[20] The document circulated early medieval French Corpus Juris Civilis. libraries, as well as the other formative document for the John F. Matthews observes, “The Theodosian Code does, latter part of the code, a document held in the Vatican [20] however, differ from the work of Justinian (except the (Vat. Reg. 886), also known as “V”. Scholars consider [20] Novellae), in that it was largely based not on existing ju- this section to have been transmitted completely. ristic writings and collections of texts, but on primary sources that had never before been brought together.”[15] Justinian’s Code, published about 100 years later, com- 5 English translation prised both ius, “law as an interpretive discipline”, and leges, “the primary legislation upon which the interpre- The Theodosian Code was translated into English, with [16] tation was based.” While the first part, or Codex, of annotations, in 1952 by Clyde Pharr and others.[21] Justinian’s Corpus Civilis Juris contained 12 books of constitutions, or imperial laws, the second and third parts, the Digest and the Institutiones, contained the ius of Classical 6 Notes Roman jurists and the Institutes of Gaius. While the Theodosian Code may seem to lack a personal [1] “Codex Theodosianus” in The Oxford Dictionary of facet due to the absence of judicial reviews, upon fur- Byzantium, Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, ther review the legal code can give us insight into Theo- 1991, p. 475. ISBN 0195046528 dosius’ motives behind the codification. Lenski quotes [2] LacusCurtius • Roman Law — Theodosian Code (Smith’s Matthews as noting that the “imperial constitutions rep- Dictionary, 1875) resented not only prescriptive legal formulas but also de- scriptive pronouncements of an emperor’s moral and ide- [3] Lenski, pg. 337-340 [17] ological principles.” [4] “Antiochus Chuzon” in The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Online edition. Oxford University Press, 2012. Retrieved 15 November 2013. 3 Christianity [5] Matthews, p. 17 Apart from clearing up confusion and creating a single, [6] Matthews, pg. 10-18 simplified and supercedent code, Theodosius II was also [7] Peter Stein, pp. 37-38 attempting to solidify Christianity as the official religion of the Empire, after it had been decriminalised under [8] Susan Martin, p. 510 Galerius’ rule and promoted under Constantine’s. In his [9] Clifford Ando, p. 200 City of God, St. Augustine praised Theodosius the Great, Theodosius II’s grandfather, who shared his faith and de- [10] Michael Alexander, p. 191 votion to its establishment, as “a Christian ruler whose [11] Michael Alexander, p. 191-193 piety was expressed by the laws he had issued in favor of the Catholic Church.”[18] [12] Cameron, A. (1998) “Education and literary culture” in Cameron, A. and Garnsey, P. (eds.) The Cambridge an- The Codex Theodosianus, is, for example, explicit in or- cient history: Vol. XIII The late empire, A.D. 337-425. dering that all actions at law should cease during Holy Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 683. 3 [13] Tituli Ex Corpore Codici Theodosiani • Codex Theodosianus. Liber V - Le Code Théodosien, Livre V. Texte latin d'après l'édition de Th. Momm- [14] Mango, Cyril, (2002) Oxford History of Byzantium. Ox- sen. Traduction française, introduction et notes. ford: Oxford University Press, p. 105 Éd. par Sylvie Crogiez, Pierre Jaillette, Jean-Michel [15] Matthews, p. 12 Poinsotte. Turnout, Brepols, 2009 (Codex Theo- dosianus - Le Code Théodosien (CTH), vol. 5). [16] Matthews, pp. 10-12 [17] Lenski, pg. 331 [18] Matthew, p. 8 8 External links [19] Matthews, pp. 87 Primary sources: [20] Matthews, pp. 86 • Codex Theodosianus (Latin), ancientrome.ru. [21] Clyde Pharr (in collaboration with Theresa S. Davidson and Mary B. Pharr), The Theodosian Code and Novels and • Codex Theodosianus (Latin) (only books 1-9), Ed. the Sirmondian Constitutions, a Translation with a Com- Mommsen, Meyer, & Krueger (Latin). Website mentary, Glossary and Bibliography (1952). For a de- upmf-grenoble.fr. scription of how this project was carried out, see Linda Jones Hall, “Clyde Pharr, the Women of Vanderbilt, and • (English) A list of imperial laws of 311 until 431 the Wyoming Judge: the Story behind the Translation of contains summaries of many laws involving reli- the Theodosian Code in Mid-Century America, 8 Roman gion from the Theodosian code and other sources, Legal Tradition 1, 3 (2012), available at .

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