To the merits of the work as actually performed some reference has already been made. The chief defect of the Digest is in point of scientific arrangement, a matter about which the Roman law yers cared very little. There are some repetitions and some incon sistencies, but not more than may fairly be allowed for in a com pilation of such magnitude executed so rapidly. Tribonian has been blamed for the insertions the compilers made in the sentences of the old jurists (the so-called Emblemata Triboniani) ; but it was a part of Justinian's plan that such insertions should be made, so as to adapt those sentences to the law as settled in the emperor's time. On Justinian's own laws. contained in the Codex and in his Novels, a less favourable judgment must be pronounced. They, and especially the latter, are diffuse and often lax in expression, needlessly prolix, and pompously rhetorical. The policy of many, particularly of those which deal with ecclesiastical matters, may also be condemned; yet some gratitude is due to the legislator who put the law of intestate succession on that plain and rational footing whereon it has ever since continued to stand. It is some what remarkable that, although Justinian is so much more familiar to us by his legislation than by anything else, this sphere of his imperial labour is hardly referred to by any of the contemporary historians, and then only with censure. Procopius complains that he and Tribonian were always repealing old laws and enacting new ones, and accuses them of venal motives for doing so.
The Corpus luris of Justinian continued to be, with naturally a few additions in the ordinances of succeeding emperors, the chief law-book of the Roman world till a new system was prepared by Leo the Isaurian, which we know as the Basilica. It is of course written in Greek, and consists of parts of the substance of the Codex and the Digest, thrown together and often altered in ex pression, together with some matter from the Novels and imperial ordinances posterior to Justinian. In the western provinces, the law as settled by Justinian held its ground ; but copies of the Corpus luris were extremely rare, nor did the study of it revive until the end of the II th century.
2. Financial Administration.—In his financial administra tion of the empire Justinian is represented to us as being at once rapacious and extravagant. His unwearied activity and inordinate vanity led him to undertake a great many costly public works, many of them unremunerative. The money needed for these, for his wars, and for buying off the barbarians who threatened the frontiers, had to be obtained by increasing the burdens of the people. They suffered, not only from the regular taxes, which were seldom remitted even after bad seasons, but also from monopolies and even confiscations. Fiscal severities were no doubt one cause of
the insurrections which now and then broke out, and in the gravest of which (532) thirty thousand persons are said to have perished in the capital. It is not always easy to discover, putting together the trustworthy evidence of Justinian's own laws and the angry complaints of Procopius, what was the nature and justification of the changes made in the civil administration. But the general conclusion seems to be that these changes were always in the direc tion of further centralization, of bringing all offices more directly under the control of the Crown, and in some cases limiting the powers and appropriating the funds of local municipalities. Fi nancial necessities compelled retrenchment, so that a certain number of offices including the useless and expensive Consulship, were suppressed altogether.
In a bureaucratic despotism the greatest merit of a sovereign is to choose capable and honest ministers. Justinian's selections were usually capable, but not so often honest. Even the great Tribonian labours under the reproach of corruption, while the fact that Justinian maintained John of Cappadocia in power long after his greed, his unscrupulousness, and the excesses of his private life had excited the anger of the whole empire, reflects little credit on his own principles of government and sense of duty to his subjects. The department of administration in which he seems to have felt most personal interest was that of public works. He spent immense sums on buildings of all sorts, especially churches. Of these works only two remain perfect, the celebrated St. Sophia in Constantinople, and the church of SS Sergius and Bacchus, now commonly called Little St. Sophia, which stands about half a mile from the great church, and is in its way a very delicate and beautiful piece of work.
3. Ecclesiastical Policy.—Justinian's ecclesiastical policy was complex and varying. For many years before the accession of his uncle Justin, the Eastern world had been vexed by the struggles of the Monophysite party, who recognized only one nature in Christ, against the view which then and ever since has maintained itself as orthodox, that the divine and human natures coexisted in Him. The latter doctrine had triumphed at the council of Chalcedon, but Egypt, a great part of Syria and Asia Minor, and a considerable minority even in Constantinople clung to Monophysitism. One of Justinian's first public acts was to put an end to this schism by inducing Justin to make the then patriarch declare his full ad hesion to the creed of Chalcedon. When he himself came to the throne he endeavoured to persuade the Monophysites to come in by summoning some of their leaders to a conference. This failing, he ejected suspected prelates, and occasionally persecuted them.