Legal Sources - An Overview of the Development between the Postclassical Roman Law and Irnerius

Codex Gregorianus

291

Almost precedes the postclassical Roman Law period and is closely tied to the early stages of the legal reforms that define the postclassical period.

Codex Hermogenianus

294

Collection of the Constitutions of the Roman emperor of the first tetrarchy. It became a standard reference and was later replaced by the Breviary of Alaric and the Code of Justinian.

Law of Citations

426

Judges were allowed to only use certain jurists as sources of authority in court. => 5 authorities: Papinianus, Paulus, Ulpianus, Modestinus and Gaius

Codex Theodosianus

438

Composed between 429 and 438 AD. Together with the Codex Hermogenianus and the Codex Gregorianus this collection had been an actual law book and a model for the education of jurists.

Epitome Gai

450

Summary of Gaius’s “Institutes” used in legal education during the postclassical period. Though not as influential as other works, it helped preserve Roman legal principles.

Codex Euricianus ("Code of Euric")

476

Completed in 476 or 483 or under Euric's son a generation later, was written in Latin and designed as the personal law of the Visigoths. It also addressed relations between Euric's Roman and Visigothic subjects.

Lex Burgundionum

501

Influenced by Roman law. It deals with domestic laws concerning marriage and inheritance as well as regulating weregild and other penalties, whereby the interaction between Burgundians is treated differently from the interaction between Burgundians and Gallo-Romans.

Lex Romana Visigothorum ("Breviary of Alaric")

506

Collection of Roman law, compiled by order of Alaric II., king of the Visigoths, with the advice of his bishops and nobles. Among other things it included sixteen books of the Theodosian Code and the Institutes of Gaius.

Lex Salica (507-511 AD)

511

Used by Salian Franks. Rules for inheritance according to which just men but not women were able to inherit. Influenced the way people thought about inheritance and women's rights.

Corpus Iuris Civilis

534

Collection of the complete set of Roman laws and legal principles enacted by the Roman Emperor Justinian.
It consisted of four parts:
1. Codex
2. Digests
3. Institutes
4. Novels

Codex Revisus ("Code of Leovigild")

582

A review of the Code of Euric. Attempt to unite the laws regulating the lives of Goths and Romans into a revised law code. Codex Revisus did not survive, but became the basis of the Liber Iudiciorum.

Liber Iudiciorum / Lex Visigothorum ("Visigothic Code")

654

Legal codification that combined Roman legal principles with Germanic customary law. Major aim was to unify the legal system for both Visigoths and Romans. This law code substituted earlier Visigothic law codes.

Capitularia

Period: 768 to 814

Orality was combined with an attempt to conceive of the "law" not as a text to certify popular custom but as the expression of a sovereign's will. The reflection of the Roman and Byzantine concept of imperium was getting lost during the creation of oral norms.

School of Bologna

1088

Movements in Northern Italy to revive the study of Roman law. Legal scholars had started to use fragments of Justinian’s Corpus Iuris Civilis to teach law. Irnerius thought that Corpus Iuris Civilis was the solution for all the ongoing problems. Reorganization of it and addition of the Libri Feudorum.