completed in a few months; and in November 534 the revised Codex (Codex repetitae praelectionis) was promulgated with the force of law, prefaced by a constitution (Cordi nobis) which sets forth its history, and declares it to be alone authoritative. It is this revised Codex which has come down to the modern world.
The constitutions contained in it number 4,652, the earliest dating from Hadrian, the latest being of course Justinian's own.
A few thus belong to the period to which the greater part of the Digest belongs, i.e., the so-called classical period of Roman law down to the time of Alexander Severus (244) ; but the great majority are later, and belong to one or other of the four great eras of imperial legislation, the eras of Diocletian, of Constantine, of Theodosius II. and of Justinian himself. Although this Codex is said to have the same general order as that of the Digest, viz., the order of the Perpetual Edict, there are considerable differences of arrangement between the two. It is divided into twelve books.
Its contents, although of course of the utmost practical impor tance to the lawyers of that time, and of much value still, his torical as well as legal, are far less interesting and scientifically admirable than the extracts preserved in the Digest.
Between 534 and 565 Justinian issued a great number of or dinances, dealing with all sorts of subjects and seriously altering the law on many points—the majority appearing before the death of Tribonian, which happened in 545. These ordinances are called, by way of distinction, new constitutions, Novellae constitutions post codicem (veapai ot.arbets), Novels. Although the emperor had stated in publishing the Codex that all further statutes (if any) would be officially collected, this promise does not seem to have been redeemed. The three collections of the Novels which we possess are apparently private collections, nor do we even know how many such constitutions were promulgated. One of the three contains 168 (together with 13 Edicts), but some of these are by the emperors Justin II. and Tiberius II. Another, the so-called Epitome of Julian, contains 125 Novels in Latin; and the third, the Liber authenticarum or vulgata versio, has 134, also in Latin.
This last was the collection first known and chiefly used in the West during the middle ages; and of its 134 only 97 have been written on by the glossatores or mediaeval commentators; these therefore alone have been received as binding in those countries which recognize and obey the Roman law,—according to the maxim Quicquid non agnoscit glossa, nec agnoscit curia. And,
whereas Justinian's constitutions contained in the Codex were all issued in Latin, the rest of the book being in that tongue, these Novels were nearly all published in Greek, Latin translations being of course made for the use of the western provinces. They may be found printed in any edition of the Corpus iuris civilis.
This Corpus iuris consists of the four books described above : (I) Codex con,stitutionum; (2) Digesta or Pandectae; (3) Insti tutiones; (4) Novellae.
From what has been already stated, the reader will perceive that Justinian did not, according to a strict use of terms, codify the Roman law. By a codification we understand the reduction of the whole pre-existing body of law to a new form, the re-stating it in a series of propositions, scientifically ordered, which may or may not contain some new substance, but are at any rate new in form. What he did do was something quite different. It was not codifica tion but consolidation. He gave to posterity not one code but two digests or collections of extracts, which are new only to this ex tent that they are arranged in a new order, and that here and there their words have been modified in order to bring one extract into harmony with some other. Except for this, the matter is old in expression as well as in substance.
Thus regarded, Justinian's work may appear to entitle him and Tribonian to much less credit than they have usually received for it. But let it be observed, first, that to reduce the huge and con fused mass of pre-existing law into the compass of these two col lections was an immense practical benefit to the empire; secondly, that, whereas the work which he undertook was accomplished in seven years, the infinitely more difficult task of codification might probably have been left unfinished at Tribonian's death, or even at Justinian's own, and been abandoned by his successor; thirdly, that in the extracts preserved in the Digest we have the opinions of the greatest legal luminaries given in their own admirably con cise language, while in the extracts of which the Codex is com posed we find valuable historical evidence bearing on the adminis tration and social condition of the later empire ; fourthly, that Jus tinian's age was quite unequal in intellect to so vast an undertaking as the fusing upon scientific principles into one new organic whole of the entire law of the empire.