Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The Macedonian epoch (867-1081)

Social and political developments. Church affairs 

Page 11

Legislation of the Macedonian emperors and social relations within the Empire. Prochiron and Epanagoge. The time of the Macedonian dynasty was a period of stirring legislative activity. Basil I desired to create a general code of Graeco-Roman or Byzantine law containing a chronological arrangement of legislative acts, both old and new. In other words, he planned to revive the legislative work of Justinian by adapting it to changed conditions, and to add to it the laws which had appeared in later times. The four parts of the Justinian code, written mostly in Latin and very bulky, were usually studied only in their Greek abridged versions, or in expositions, abstracts, and commentaries based on the Latin original. Many of these, though widely used, were very inaccurate and frequently mutilated the original texts. Basil I intended to exclude the old laws annulled by later Novels, and to introduce a number of new laws. The Latin terms and expressions retained in the new code were to be explained in Greek, for Greek was to be the language of Basil's legislative work. The Emperor himself characterized his attempted reform in the field of law as a purging of ancient laws (ἀνακάθαρσις τῶν παλαιῶν νόμων).

Knowing that the completion of the projected code would take much time, Basil issued meanwhile a smaller work entitled the Prochiron (πρόχειρον), i.e., a manual of the science of law. This was to supply people interested in legal works with a brief account of the laws by which the Empire was to be ruled. The preface to the Prochiron refers to these laws as laws establishing in the Empire righteousness, by which alone, according to Solomon, a nation is exalted (Proverbs 14:34). The Prochiron was subdivided into forty titles (tituli) and contained the principal norms of civil law and a complete list of penalties for various offenses and crimes. Its main source, especially for the first twenty-one sections, were the Institutes of Justinian. Other parts of the Justinian code were used to a much lesser degree.

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