Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

Justinian the Great and his successors (518-610)

The legislative work of Justinian and Tribonian 

Page 5

The decrees issued after the year 534 were called Novels (Novellas leges). While the Code, the Digest, and the Institutions were written in Latin, a great majority of the Novels were drawn up in Greek. This fact was an important concession to the demands of living reality from an emperor steeped in Roman tradition. In one Novel, Justinian wrote, We have written this decree not in the native language, but in the spoken Greek, in order that it may become known to all through the ease of comprehension. In spite of Justinian's intention to collect all the Novels in one body, he did not succeed, though some private compilations of Novels were made during his reign. The Novels are considered the last part of Justinian's legislative work and serve as one of the main sources on the internal history of his epoch.

Justinian felt that the four indicated parts, namely, the Code, the Digest, the Institutions, and the Novels, should form one Corpus of law, but during his reign they were not combined into such a collection. Only much later, in the Middle Ages, beginning with the twelfth century, during the revival of the study of Roman law in Europe, all of Justinian's legislative works became known as the Corpus juris civilis, i.e., the Corpus of Civil Law. Today they are still known by this name.

The bulkiness of Justinian's legislative work and the fact that it was written in Latin, little understood by the majority of the population, were responsible for the immediate appearance of a number of Greek commentaries and summaries of certain parts of the Code as well as some more or less literal translations (paraphrases) of the Institutions and the Digest with explanatory notes. These small legal collections in Greek, called forth by the needs of the time and by practical considerations, contained numerous mistakes and oversights with regard to their original Latin text; even so they thrust the original into the background and almost completely supplanted it.

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