plan of the perpetual edict, and contain all that is worth having in the Roman law for the preceding 1400 years, so that it *540 might hereafter be regarded as the temple and sanctuary

of justice. He directed that the selection be made from the civilians, and the laws then in force, with such discretion and sagacity as to produce in the result a perfect and immortal work. And, in the anticipation of the result, he declared that no commentaries were to be made upon the digest, as it had been found that the contradictions of expositors had disturbed the whole body of the ancient law.

In about three years after the publication of this first ordinance, Justinian issued another upon the completion of the work. In the latter ordinance, addressed to the senate and people, he declared that he had reduced the jurisprudence of the empire within reasonable limits, and within the power of all persons to possess at a moderate price, and without the necessity of expending a fortune in acquiring useless volumes of law. He stated that, in the compilation of the Pandects, Tribonian and his associates had drawn from authors of such antiquity that their names were unknown to the learned of that age. If defects should be discovered, recourse must be had to the emperor; and he pointedly prohibited all persons to have any further recourse to the ancient laws, or to institute any comparisons between them and the new compilation. And to prevent the system from being disfigured and disordered by the glosses of interpreters, he declared that no citations were to be made from any other books than the Institutes, the Pandects, and the Code; and that no commentaries were to be made upon them, upon pain of being subjected to the charge of the crimen falsi, and to have the commentaries destroyed.

The Pandects are supposed to have been compiled with too much haste, and they were very defective in precision and methodical arrangement. The emperor allowed ten years, and Tribonian and his sixteen colleagues finished the work in three years. It is said that the Pandects were composed of the writings of forty civilians, the principal part of whom lived under the

latter Cæsars, and the doctrines only, and not the names 541 of the more ancient sages, were preserved. (a) If the (a) Professor Hugo concludes that the compilers of the Pandects had never seen the original writings of Mucius Scævola, though they are referred to as if they had

work had been executed with the care and leisure that Justinian intended, it would have been an incomparable monument of human wisdom. There are, as it is, in the compilation, a great many contradictory doctrines and opinions on the same subject, and too much of that very uncertainty which Justinian was so solicitous to avoid. But with all its errors and imperfections, the Pandects are the greatest repository of sound legal principles, applied to the private rights and business of mankind, that has ever appeared in any age or nation. Justinian has given it the venerable appellation of the temple of human justice. The excellent doctrines and the enlightened equity which pervade the work were derived from the ancient sages, who were generally men of distinguished patriotism, and sustained the most unblemished character, and had frequently been advanced to the highest offices in the administration of the government. The names of Gaius, Scævola, Papinian, Ulpian, Paulus, and Modestinus may be selected from a multitude of civilians, as models of exalted virtue, and of the most cultivated reason and philosophy, drawn from the precepts and examples of freer and better ages. It is owing to their writings that the civil law, for the purity and vigor of its style, almost rivals the productions of the Augustan age. (b)

*His Novels. The Novels of Justinian are a collec- *542 tion of new imperial statutes, which constitute a part of

the body of the civil law. These ordinances were passed subsequent to the date of the Code, and had been required in the course of a long reign and by the exigencies of succeeding times. They were made to supply the omissions and correct the errors of the preceding publications; and they are said, by competent judges, to show the declining taste of the age, and to want much of that brevity, dignity, perspicuity, and elegance which distinreally been read and consulted. Hist. du Droit Rom. sec. 320. He is further of opinion that the merit of the order which is so visible in the civil law is to be attributed to Servius Sulpicius, the friend of Cicero. Ib. sec. 322. In the preface to Pothier's Pandects, the number of jurisconsults whose writings were employed in the compilation of the Pandects, or whose opinions are therein referred to, amounts to ninety-two, and sketches of their lives are given.

(b) According to Hommel, a writer cited by Professor Hugo, of the 1800 pages of which the Pandects are composed, 600 were taken from the writings of Ulpian, 300 from Paulus, 100 from Papinian, 90 from Julian, 78 from Scævola, 72 from Pomponius, 70 from Gaius, 41 from Modestinus, and so on to other civilians of less note in diminished proportions.

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guished the juridical compositions of the ancients. Some of these novels are of great utility, and particularly the 118th novel, which is the groundwork of the English and American statutes of distribution of intestates' effects. (a) The Institutes, Code, and Pandects were afterwards translated into Greek, and the Novels were generally composed in that language, which had become the vernacular tongue of the eastern empire; and, as evidence of the universality of that tongue, Justinian declared that one of his constitutions was composed in the Greek language, for the benefit of all nations. (b)

7. Loss of the Civil Law. When the body of the civil law, as contained in the Institutes, the Pandects, and the Code, was ratified and confirmed by Justinian, it became exclusively the law of the land; and the various texts from which the compilation was made fell speedily into oblivion; and all of them except the Theodosian Code, and fragments of the other parts, disap* 543 peared * in the wreck of the empire. (a) The great work itself was in danger of being involved in the general destruction which attended the irruption of the northern barbarians into the southern provinces of Europe. The civil law maintained its ground a long time at Ravenna, and in the Illyrian borders; but all Italy passed at length under the laws, as well as under the yoke of the barbarians; belluinas atque ferinas im

(a) Sir William Blackstone, Comm. ii. 516, does not seem willing to admit that the statute of distributions was taken from the civil law; but when Lord Holt and Sir Joseph Jekyll declare (1 P. Wms. 27; Prec. in Chan. 593) that the statute was penned by a civilian, and is to be governed and construed by the rules of the civil law, and when we compare the provisions in the English statute with the Roman novel, the conclusion seems to be very fair and very strong that the one was borrowed essentially from the other.

(b) Inst. 3. 8. 3. The Latin language, in the time of Justinian, was the official language, but it was spoken only by a small portion of the inhabitants, and the language of the Church and of literature was Greek.

(a) Pothier, in his preface to his Pandecta Justinianeæ, has given a rapid view of the Progress of the Roman jurisprudence, from the Jus Civile Papyrianum, under Tarquinius Priscus, to the time of Justinian, and an interesting sketch of the series of Roman lawyers, from the earliest notice of them far beyond the age of Cicero, down to the compilation of the Pandects. And notwithstanding the efforts of Justinian to supersede and destroy the admirable materials of the civil law, from which he was enabled to erect the splendid and ever-enduring monument of his reign, yet from the remains of the works of the civilians there has been compiled the Jus Civile Antejustinianeum, which is a collection of great interest and currency on the continent of Europe. It has now received an addition of the utmost value in the newly discovered Institutions of Gaius.

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manesque Longobardorum leges accepit. (b) There was but one circumstance that could give anything like compensation to the inhabitants of Europe for the absence or silence of the civil law, during the violence and confusion of the feudal ages; but that circumstance was the redeeming spirit of civil and political liberty which pervaded the Gothic institutions, and tempered the fierceness of military governments, by the bold outlines and rough sketches of popular representation. (c) It was an indelible and foul blot on the character of the civil 544 law as digested under Justinian, that it expressly avowed and inculcated the doctrine of the absolute power of the emperor, and that all the right and power of the Roman people were transferred to him. (a) This had not till then been the language of the Roman laws; and Gravina, with much indignation, charges the introduction of the lex regia to the fraud and servility of Tribonian. (6) Be that as it may, the claim of despotism became afterwards a constitutional principle of imperial legislation.

8. Its Revival. It has been made a question, whether the

(b) Gravina, de Ortu et Prog. Jur. Civ. sec. 139. The law school at Rome was transferred to Ravenna, where it existed even in the 11th century, and was then removed to Bologna.

(c) The German nations were associations of freemen prior to their invasion of the Roman empire, and their governments were mixed, or limited and elective monarchies, which continued to exist for a time, even after they had established themselves by conquest in the Roman provinces. All the Gothic governments in Europe, whether in Germany, Denmark, France, Spain, or England, were originally under the control of popular assemblies, or national councils of the aristocratic class, which gave their assent to laws, and were the basis of all lawful authority. [Freeman's Growth of the English Constitution.]

(a) Inst. 1. 2. 6; Prima Præf. Dig. sec. 7; Secund. Præf. Dig. sec. 18, 21; Dig. 1. 4. 1; Code, 1. 14. 12; Dig. 32. 1. 23.

(b) De Romano Imperio, sec. 23, 24. Mr. Gibbon, in his History, viii. 17, 18, seems to think that the lex regia was created by the fancy of Ulpian, or, more probably, of Tribonian himself. The lex regia, as mentioned in the Pandects, 1, tit. 4, de constitutionibus principum, lib. 1, and in the Institutes, 1. 2. 6, declares: Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem; utpote cum lege regia quæ de imperio ejus lata est, populus ei, et in eum omne suum imperium et potestatem conferat. Selden, in his dissertation annexed to Fleta, c. 3, sec. 2, 3, 4, discusses the character of the lex regia; and he says it is evident that it stripped the people of all legislative power; and he places the origin of it back to the time of Augustus Cæsar, when the Roman people transferred all their power and authority to him. In the Institutes of Gaius, recently discovered, it is affirmed that the lex regia was not an interpolation by Tribonian, but was a law actually passed nec unquam dubitatum est quin id (constitutio principis) legis vicem obtineat, cum ipse imperator per legem imperium accipiat. Gai. Instit. Com. lib. 1, sec. 5. But Hugo, in his Hist. du Droit Rom. sec. 277, considers the question on the origin of this law as still wrapped in impenetrable darkness.

Pandects were for many ages so entirely lost to the western parts of Europe as has been generally supposed. (c) It is certain,

however, that about the time of the assumed discovery or 545 exhibition of a *complete copy of them at Amalphi, in

Italy, near the middle of the twelfth century the study of the civil law revived throughout Italy and western Europe with surprising ardor and rapidity. The impression which the science of law, in so perfect a state of cultivation, made upon the progress of society, and the usages of the feudal jurisprudence, was sudden and immense. (a) In defiance of the command of Justinian to abstain from all notes or comments upon his laws, the civil law, on its revival, was not only publicly taught in most of the universities of Europe, but it was overloaded with the commentaries of civilians. From among the number of distinguished names, I would respectfully select Vinnius on the Institutes, Voet on the Pandects, and Perezius on the Code, together with the treatises on the civil law which abound in the works of Bynkershoek, Heineccius, and Pothier, as affording a mass of instruction and criticism most worthy of the attention and diligent examination of the student. (b)

(c) The university of Bologna had its professors of the civil law, and the Pandects were the subjects of legal studies there and elsewhere, prior to the era of the discovery of the Florentine copy of them at Amalphi, about the year 1135.

(a) Esprit des Lois, liv. 28, c. 42. The original copy of the Pandects, supposed to have been found at Amalphi, has always been held in profound veneration. It was carried to Pisa, and from thence removed to Florence, and vigilantly guarded. This celebrated manuscript reposes at this day in the Lorenzo-Medicean Library.

(b) Since the beginning of the present century, a new historical school of the civil law has been instituted in Germany, which, in the opinion of some writers, has quite cast into the shade the illustrious jurisconsults of the 18th century. Among the most eminent of this new school may be placed the names of Hugo, Savigny, Niebuhr, Eichhorn, Haubold, &c., who have made profound researches into the antiquities of the Roman law, as well prior to the time of the decemvirs as during the feudal ages. They have undoubtedly enriched the science with acute and searching criticism, and enlarged and philosophical views, which shed light upon the character, wisdom, and spirit of the more ancient institutions. But I cannot but be of opinion (though with much deference) that the importance of the new Germanic school, as contradistinguished from that of the old professors, is greatly exaggerated; and that the Institutes and Pandects of Justinian, with the commentaries and writings of Voet, Vinnius, Heineccius, Pothier, and other illustrious civilians of the old school, furnish quite as much matter for reflection and useful application as the American student of our own common law can well attend to, and at the same time become a thorough master of his profession. It is said that Savigny has in course of publication a large work on the Pandects, in which he goes over the wide field of the Roman law. Such a work, and from so distinguished a scholar and jurist, will undoubtedly