256 HISTORY OF LAW 



Intelligent legislation will henceforth be even more potent as a factor 

 in the development of the common law than it has been in the past, 

 and indeed it now constitutes the most suitable channel through which 

 substantial change may be effected. But jurisprudence will never 

 be merged into political science, and the law as a whole will never 

 be reduced to conclusive written form either in the countries where 

 the civil law has been accepted, or much less in those which accept 

 the common law. 



The futility of any attempt at final codification is illustrated 

 by the subsequent history of the Justinian Corpus Juris. In the 

 Subsequent East it was unable to secure full recognition as an em- 

 History of bodiment of the Roman law, which had been in a some- 

 Juris of what unscientific but rather practical way compiled in 

 Justinian, ^he so-called Syrian code fifty years earlier, and which 

 furnished the foundation for the subsequent legal systems, such as 

 they were, recognized in the Levant. Soon after the death of Jus- 

 tinian his Corpus Juris, translated into Greek, became the subject of 

 further exposition, which with additional revision was embodied in 

 the Basilica, compiled in the ninth century and generally accepted 

 as the basis of the law throughout those regions in which the Greek 

 branch of the Christian Church became predominant. 



In the Western Roman Empire Justinian's Corpus Juris was form- 

 ally promulgated, but for practical purposes it did not supersede 

 Survival of ^ e cru( ^ e collection of the written law already referred 

 Theodosian to as the Theodosian Code, and it was not until the 

 revival of learning in the twelfth century that it exer- 

 cised any marked influence on the jurisprudence of Western Europe. 



The recovery of a comparatively complete manuscript at the 

 siege of Amalfi in the year 1335 is supposed to have inaugurated 

 Revival of a new era m the history of law; but though Blackstone's 

 Study of ^ assumption that the Corpus Juris was then rediscov- 

 Corpus ered (a popular error which he accepted from learned 

 Juris. writers on the civil law) has been generally discredited, 



it nevertheless remains true that about this time the study of the 

 Roman civil law as a distinct system was revived, and became an 

 important element in the advancement of the jurisprudence of the 

 Western world, and that the Corpus Juris furnished the basis of 

 this renewed study. 



The six centuries intervening between the completion of final 

 Roman codification and the revival of the study of the Roman 

 Effect of ^ aw a ^ *^e seats of learning in Europe and England 

 Teutonic were filled with the confusion and disorder incident to 

 [nvasions. ^ incursions of the Teutonic peoples into Roman 

 territory, and no further development of jurisprudence can be traced. 

 But many events happened during that period which are of great 



