CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



provision is certainly very severe. It enacts 

 that the insolvent debtor shall be cut in pieces, 

 and that his body shall be distributed among 

 his creditors. When law became a science openly 

 studied, the Twelve Tables became the sub- 

 ject of many commentaries. It was not, how- 

 ever, till the Romans had been for some time 

 degenerating, that those great collections of legis- 

 lative wisdom which have come down to modern 

 times were commenced. The first attempt to 

 construct a code seems to have been the Perpetual 

 Edict of Hadrian already alluded to. Two private 

 individuals, Gregorius and Hermogenes, appear 

 to have collected the imperial constitutions into a 

 system, or code, of which some fragments are still 

 preserved. Nothing whatever is known of the 

 biography of these compilers : it has not even 

 been discovered in what reigns they respectively 

 lived, though their labours received high commen- 

 dation at the hands of Theodosius the Younger. 

 Under this emperor, the celebrated Theodosian 

 Code was promulgated, in the year 438. The 

 compilation of this body of laws was committed 

 to eight individuals, who were allowed con- 

 siderable latitude in explaining and abridging, 

 and even in supplying deficiencies. It contains 

 the legislative acts of sixteen emperors, from the 

 year 312 to 438. Fragments of this code have 

 been rescued from oblivion inch by inch, by 

 modern scholars, whose labours, it may safely be 

 calculated, have amounted to some twenty or 

 thirty times more than those of the original com- 

 pilers. The celebrated Godefroy of Geneva spent 

 thirty years in the task ; and more recently, the 

 discovery of some further fragments induced the 

 celebrated Angelo Mai to study the Roman law 

 for the purpose of editing them. 



We may now notice those great collections to 

 which the above may be considered only prepara- 

 tory. In 529, ten commissioners, appointed by Jus- 

 tinian, prepared the Code or Codex, as it is termed, 

 from the collections previously made and the in- 

 termediate enactments. Soon after its promulga- 

 tion, the emperor issued several new constitutions, 

 and the whole were consolidated and reissued in 

 534. This great task was superintended by the 

 celebrated Tribonian, whose eminent learning and 

 discrimination, allied with untiring industry, but 

 stained by the vices of corruption and partiality, 

 have afforded a fruitful theme of praise and 

 obloquy. This was by no means Tribonian's only 

 labour. In the year 530, he was appointed the 

 chief of a commission of sixteen, whose duty it 

 was to cull the choice and useful passages from 

 the authors of comments and opinions. The 

 various authorities which, we are told, would have 

 made several camel-loads, were thus reduced 

 within a compass which, if it do look somewhat 

 formidable to the consulter, is still manageable. 

 Such are the fifty books which constitute the 

 celebrated Pandects, or Digest of the Roman law 

 a work without which modern Europe would 

 have known but little of the subject. Along with 

 Theophilus and Dorotheus, the indefatigable com- 

 missioner was able to prepare, in conjunction with 

 this great digest of the law, an abridgment or 

 manual of its leading principles, which bears the 

 well-known name of The Institute. This con- 

 densed and elegant little work was sanctioned by 

 the emperor in 533. It has become the subject 

 of innumerable comments, and has afforded the 



52 



' model on which the legal writers of most modern 

 nations have desired to prepare their treatises. 

 Justinian continued, during the remainder of his 

 life, to promulgate new laws ; and these, collected 

 together under the title of Novella, or ' Novels,' 

 form the remaining department of the 'corpus 

 juris,' or body of the civil law. 



With Justinian we reach the climax of the 

 Roman law ; and to trace its further progress in 

 the Empire has been more a subject of curiosity 

 to the antiquary than of importance to the lawyer. 

 Some fragments by later commentators, chiefly in 

 the Greek language, have been disentombed by- 

 zealous searchers. The Roman law was nomin- 

 ally respected by the northern conquerors of 

 Rome. Alaric, king of the Visigoths, indeed, 

 caused a compendium to be prepared for the use 

 of his dominions, consisting chiefly of an abridg- 

 ment of the codes of Gregorius, Hermogenes, and 

 Theodosius. Towards the end of the ninth cen- 

 tury, Basilius, emperor of the East, issued a new 

 code, intended to supersede the labours of 

 Tribonian, termed the Basilica. 



In the dark ages, however much of the Roman 

 law may have remained in practice, it had died 

 away in literature, and was neither studied nor 

 commented on. At the taking of Constantinople 

 in the fifteenth century, only one copy of one of 

 the Justinian labours, the Novels, seems to have 

 been discovered. It was long believed, indeed, 

 in the learned world, that from the period of the 

 Basilica to the twelfth century, the very existence 

 of the Roman law was among the things forgotten. 

 The circumstances of its resuscitation were found 

 in a traditional anecdote, that at the siege of 

 Amalfi, in 1137, some Pisan peasants discovered a 

 complete copy of the Pandects among the plunder, 

 the comprehensive philosophy and clear defini- 

 tions of which so charmed the readers of that 

 barbarous age, that its contents were immediately 

 devoured with avidity and propagated with zeal. 

 In Florence, a manuscript is still preserved, said 

 to be the identical book with which this anecdote 

 is connected, taken at the siege of Pisa in 1406. 

 The essence of the tradition has been disproved 

 by late discoveries, which shew that the civil law 

 was known previously to the siege of Amalfi. 



The real revival of the civil law is to be traced 

 in the history of the universities. Of these, Bologna, 

 Paris, and Leyden took the lead in the depart- 

 ment of jurisprudence. Contemporary with, or 

 immediately after the siege of Amalfi, lectures 

 were given on the Pandects in the university of 

 Oxford, by a teacher of the name of Vacarius. 

 For reasons which we shall have to state when we 

 come to treat of the laws of England, the civil law, 

 thus early commenced, never made much progress 

 in England. In the seventeenth and eighteenth 

 centuries, the study was pursued with zeal. A 

 prodigious number of civil-law books issued from 

 the press during that period ; Holland espe- 

 cially produced many eminent civilians Grotius, 

 Matthasus, Schulting, Noodt, Voet, and Huber 

 belonged to that country. To Germany belonged 

 the philosophic jurist Puffendorf, and Hein- 

 eccius, whose elementary works as the clearest 

 and most methodical of the commentaries 

 have been popular as class-books of civil law. 

 Grotius, Puffendorf, and Heineccius, however, are 

 still more celebrated for their labours in the law 

 of nature and nations. In modern times, the 



