III. JUSTINIAN'S INSTITUTES are an abridg ment of the Code and Digest, composed by order of that emperor and under his guid ance, with an intention to give a summary knowledge of the law to. those persons not versed in it, and particularly to students. Inst. Proem. § 3.
The lawyers employed to compile it were Tribonian, Theophilus, and Dorotheus. The work was first published on the 21st of No vember, 533, and received the sanction of statute law by order of the emperor. They are divided into four books: each book is divided into titles, and each title into sepa rate paragraphs or sections, preceded by an introductory part. The first part is called principium, because it is the commencement of the title; those which follow are num bered, and called paragraphs. The work treats of the rights of persons, of things, and of actions. The first book treats of persons; the second, third, and the first five titles of the fourth book, of things ; and the remaind er of the fourth book, of actions. The meth od of citing the should be under stood, and is now commonly by giving the number of the book, title, and section, thus: Inst. I. 2. 5.—thereby indicating book I. title 2, section 5. Where it is intended to indi cate the first paragraph, or principium, thus: Inst. B. I. 2. pr. Frequently the citation is simply I. or J. I. 2. 5. A second mode of citation is thus: § 5, Inst. or I. I. 2.—mean ing book I, title 2, paragraph 5. A third method of citation, and one in universal use with the older jurists, was by giving the name of the title and the first words of the paragraph referred to, thus: § senatuscon sultum est I de jure nat. gen. et civil.— which means, as before, Inst. B. I. tit. 2, § 5. See 1 Colquhoun, s. 61.
The first printed edition of the Institutes is that of Schoyffer, fol. 1468. The last crit ical German edition is that of Schrader, 4to, Berlin, 1832. This work of Schrader is the most learned and most elaborate commenta ry on the text ofJustinian in any language, and was intended to form a part of the Ber lin Corpus' Juris. It is impossible in this
brief article to name all the commentaries on these Institutes, which in all ages have commanded the study and admiration of jurists. More than one hundred and fifty years ago one Homberg printed a tract De Multitudine nimia Commentatorum in Insti tutiones Juris. But we must refer the read er to the best recent French and English edi tions. Ortolan's Institutes de l'Empereur Justinien avec le texte, la traduction en rd gard, et les explications sous chaque para graphe, Paris, 3 vols., 8th Ed. 1870; Sohm's Institutes by Ledlie, 1892. This is, by com mon consent of scholars, regarded as the best historical edition of the Institutes ever published. Du Caurroy's Institutes de Jus tinien traduites et expliqu6es par A. M. Du Caurroy, Paris, 1851, 8th ed. 2 vols. 8vo. The Institutes of Justinian: with Eng lish Introduction, Translation, and Notes, by Thomas Collet Sandars, M. A. London, 1853, 8vo; 9th Ed. 1898, 1910. This work has been prepared expressly for beginners, and is founded mainly upon Ortolan. with a liberal use of LaGrange, Du Caurroy, Warnkoenig, and Puchta, as well as Harris and Cooper. The English edition of Harris, and the Amer ican one of Cooper, have ceased to attract at tention. See J. B. Moyle's Institutiones Jus tiniani.
The most authoritative German treatises on the Pandects are the following: Wind scheid, Dr. B., 3d ed., Dusseldorf, 1875; 2 vols.; Vangerow, Dr. K. A., 7th ed., Marburg, 1869 ; Brintz, Dr. A. B., 2d, ed., Erlangen, 1879 ; Ihering, Dr. R., Jena, 1881. Incom parably the most philosophical exposition of the Roman system of jurisprudence is Savig ny's Gesch. des rom. Rechts, coupled with his System des heut. rom. Rechts, the latter published in Berlin in 1840. Of both, French translations have been published by Gue noux. See also Sandars' Justinian, with an introduction by William G. Hammond (1876), and Abdy and Walker's translation of the Institutes (1876), and T. L. Mears.