337 



CORPULENCE. 



CORPUS JURIS CIVILIS. 



One measure, however, was taken at this period, the tendency of 

 which was to mitigate in some degree the spirit of absolute exclusion 

 preva ling in the Irish municipalities. The Act of Explanation em- 

 powered the Lord Lieutenant and Council, within seven years, to make 

 rules, orders, and directions, for the better regulation of all cities, 

 walled towns, and corporations. By virtue of this power, the Lord 

 Lieutenant and Council, in 1672, issued what are called the " New 

 Rules," which ordained that thenceforward the elections of persons to 

 serve the offices of mayor, sheriff, recorder, or town-clerk of Dublin, 

 Limerick, Galway, and the several other towns therein mentioned, 

 should be subject to the approbation of the Lord Lieutenant and 

 Council ; and that no person should be capable of acting as mayor, 

 recorder, sheriff, treasurer, alderman, town-clerk, common-councilman, 

 or master or warden, iintil he should have taken the oath of supremacy, 

 except such only with whose taking that oath the Lord Lieutenant 

 should think fit, by name and in writing, to dispense. But that part 

 of these New Rules which tended to restore the ancient basis of the 

 municipal franchise, was a provision that all " foreigners, strangers, 

 and aliens, being merchants, or skilled in any mystery, craft, or trade," 

 then or thereafter residing and inhabiting within those cities or towns, 

 should, on paying down a fine to the mayor and common council, or 

 other persons authorised to admit freemen, be admitted to the freedom 

 of such city or town respectively, and if they desired it, into any guild, 

 brotherhood, &c., therein ; that any person refusing to admit them so 

 applying for their freedom should, upon due proof before the Lord 

 Lieutenant and Council, be for ever deprived of the freedom of 

 such city or town ; and further, that on such refusal of admission 

 by the corporate authorities, such person so applying should, on 

 tendering twenty shillings, and taking the oath of allegiance before any 

 justice of peace in the adjoining county, be therefore deemed, to all 

 intents and purposes, a freeman of such corporation, guild, &c. Thus, 

 in spite of the exclusive system then in operation, every resident 

 trader in the corporate towns of Ireland was enabled, under these 

 rules and orders, to become a freeman ; though still, except by special 

 dispensation, he could not fill the higher municipal offices, unless 

 by taking the oath of supremacy and giving the other tests then 

 required. 



But after the Revolution of 1688, the spirit and intention of this 

 portion of these rules were wholly disregarded. Owing, indeed, in 

 some degree to James II. 's unsuccessful attempts against his oppo- 

 nents in the corporate towns of Ireland, the system of absolute ex- 

 clusion pursued in the early part of his brother's reign was revived 

 with aggravated rigour ; and under such circumstances little was to 

 be expected from seeking the benefit of the rules and orders, or 

 bringing in any other mode the rights of the excluded before such 

 tribunals as then existed. From these causes, and from a sort of 

 inviolability or sacredness of character which was thrown about cor- 

 porate establishments in Ireland from the reign of William III. to the 

 passing of the Irish Municipal Corporations Act in 1840, by which a 

 number of them were disincorporated, and the remainder, in their 

 constitution, were assimilated to the English boroughs as regulated 

 by the Municipal Corporations Act, England (1 Viet. c. 78, 1837), by 

 which all religious distinctions as affecting the rights of the inhabitants 

 were wholly abolished, the inhabitants at large of municipal towns 

 remained wholly unconnected in interests or feelings with the few 

 individuals monopolising all corporate authority. 



< oliPITLEXCE. [OBESITY.] 



CORPUS JURIS CIVILIS. The term corpus juris (literally a 

 body of law) which so far back as the year 1262, was specially applied 

 to the several compilations made by Justinian (Sarti 'de Claris 

 Archigymn,' t. i. pt. ii. p. 214), was not then used for the first time, for 

 Livy (iii. 34), in narrating the history of the introduction of the 

 decemviral code, and the reception it met with at Rome, states that the 

 common impression was that two more laws were wanted to complete 

 the work, for if they were added " absolvi posse velut corpus- oinnis 

 Romani juris," whilst Justinian himself uses the term in the sense of 

 the collection of Roman law then in being (C. 5. 13 pr.) But there 

 are now two principal collections to which that appellation is given, 

 the Corpus Juris Civilis and the Corpus Juris Canonici. [CANON LAW.] 

 The tern Corpus Juris Civilis designates the book in which the 

 different parts of the legislation of the Emperor Justinian are collected, 

 and which, considered as one whole, contains the main body of the 

 Civil or Roman law. According to this definition, the Corpus Juris 

 C'ivilis consists of the compilations of the codex, pandects or digests, 

 institutes, and novels, which were made under the direction of the 

 emperor Justinian. 



Justinian himself, regarding each part of his legislation as a separate 

 collection only made for the purpose of completing former compila- 

 tion*, never thought of giving a common title to them all. Each part 

 had its separate and appropriate name ; for instance, the codex was so 

 called because it was the hook in which the Roman emperors' constitu- 

 tions were collected ; the institutes were so called because they con- 

 tained the first principles and rules of the law ; the digest or pandects 

 because they were the collection of the digested decisions and 

 opinions, of the old lawyers, forming a common receptacle of legal 

 learning (C. I. 17, 3, 1) ; and the novels because they were new con- 

 stitutions (novellie constitutiones), published by imperial authority 

 after the appearance of the former works, namely, betwen the years 



A.D. 535 and 559. In the middle ages, when the study of the Roman 

 law began to flourish in the universities of Italy, the jurists were led 

 to consider Justinian's separate collections as one entire legislation, to 

 which a general title would be appropriate. Savigny, in his history 

 of the Roman law in the middle ages, asserts that the term Corpus 

 Juris Civilis was used in the 12th century. However, Russardus, 

 professor in Bourges (which, in the 16th century, was one of the most 

 celebrated French universities for jurisprudence), who first edited the 

 collections of Justinian under a common title, at Lyon, in the year 

 1561, chose only the term Jus Civile for that purpose ; and Diouysius 

 Gothofredus, likewise a French jurist of Paris, is commonly con- 

 sidered as the first who, in his edition in the year 1583, at Lyon, 

 adopted the term Corpus Juris Civilis as a general title for the collec- 

 tions of Justinian, for before this time each of the three volumes into 

 which the glossers divided the collection, was known by a particular 

 title ; the first volume being called ' Digestum Vetua,' comprising the 

 first twenty-three books and the first two titles of the twenty-fourth 

 book ; the second volume, ' Infortiatum,' running from the third 

 title of the twenty-fourth book to the eighty-second paragraph of 

 the second title of the thirty-fifth book; and the third volume 

 'Digestum Novum,' containing the remainder of the work. (See 

 in ' Heynii Opuscula Academica,' vol. ii. p. 315, some remarks on 

 this division.) From the time of Gothofredus his title has always 

 been in use. 



The Corpus Juris Civilis, as it is now composed, contains : 1. The 

 Collections of the Emperor Justinian, namely, the Institutes, in 4 

 books ; the Pandects or Digests, in 50 books ; the Codex, in 12 books, 

 together with the Authenticse, a name given, not by Justinian, but by 

 the Glossers (professors of law, who in the 12th and 13th centuries 

 taught the Roman law and explained the text of the Corpus Juris 

 in the universities of Italy, especially Bologna) in order to distin- 

 guish the collection made by them and appended to the Corpus Juris 

 from the Epitome Novellaruin made by Julianus, A.D. 570 ; the 

 number of these Novellas Constitutions is 168. 2. An arbitrary 

 appendix, joined to the Corpus Juris by different editors since the 

 time of Russardus, namely, a. several Constitutions of the Emperor 

 Justinian and his two successors Justinian II. and Tiberius II., called 

 Justinian's 13 edicts, which were first received into the Corpus Juris 

 by Russardus; b. several other Constitutions of the same three 

 emperors, which were first added by Contius, in his edition of 1571 ; 

 c. 113 Constitutions of the Emperor Leo, the philosopher, given by 

 him for the purpose of amending and correcting Justinian's legislation, 

 together with a Constitution of the Emperor Zeno, likewise first added 

 by Contius in his edition ; d. a series of Constitutions of the successors 

 of the Emperor Justinian from the 7th to the 14th century, first added 

 to the Corpus Juris in the edition of Charondas of 1575 ; e. a series of 

 84 (or 85 according to the older division) ecclesiastical Canons, called 

 Canones Sanctorum et Veneraudorum Apostolorum, first added to the 

 Corpus Juris by Gregorius Haloander about A.D. 530. According to the 

 descriptive title by which they are headed they are to be ascribed to 

 Clement, the first bishop of Rome, but their origin and history are 

 involved in so much doubt that many writers have not hesitated to 

 pronounce them to be apocryphal and devoid of authority (Dupin, 

 ' Bibliothc'que Ecclesiastique,' 1. 1, p. 135) ; probably they are a private 

 collection of decrees of councils and synods existing prior to the synod 

 of Nic&a, A.D. 325 ; /. the Libri Feudorum, that is, the books which 

 contain the usages and customs of the feudal system, and which were 

 joined to the Corpus Juris by the Glossers ; g. several Constitutions of 

 the Emperor Frederic II. ; A. a short book in ten titles, called ' Extrava- 

 gantes, or Undecima Cullatio,' containing some Constitutions of the 

 Emperor Henry VII., A.D. 1312 ; i, and last of all, the Liber de pace 

 Constantiae, or the Treaty drawn up, A.D. 1190, between Frederick I. 

 and the Lombard States, by which the freedom of twenty-four Lombard 

 cities was granted. In several editions we find other appendages 

 besides those here noticed. 



The manuscripts of the Corpus Juris Civilis are numerous, " but 

 nearly all of them contain only a part of Justinian's legislation : manu- 

 scripts containing the whole body of law are very rare. The best 

 MS. of the latter is at Copenhagen. Of MSS. before the time of the 

 Glossers we have only one of the Pandects, the celebrated Florentine 

 manuscript, which was first at Pisa, but was brought to Florence in 

 1411, after the capture of Pisa, A.D. 1406; it probably belongs to the 

 6th or 7th century, and some even suppose that it may be the original 

 copy of the Pandects which was sent by Justinian to the Western 

 Empire. Whatever its early history may be, whether, as Odofredus 

 says, it was brought to Pisa from" Constantinople, or as the old story, 

 constantly repeated and supported by Brencman among others, has it, 

 that it was given to the Pisans by Lothario II., after the capture of 

 Ainalfi, A.D. 1133, its importance consists in the claim set up for it as 

 being the sole authentic source from which the text of all other MSS. 

 has been taken ; a claim as earnestly opposed as it has been hotly 

 contended for, and only to be settled, if it be possible, tantas componere 

 litei, by the conjecture that there was another manuscript coeval with 

 or prior to the Florentine text and accessible to the Glossators, and 

 that each of these was copied from one and the same original. The 

 other manuscripts are of the 12th 13th, and 14th centuries, and con- 

 tain the nniu ntlijata, or text as settled by the Glossators according to 

 older manuscripts. In Munich and Paris there are valuable manu- 



