Concluding Note

The outstanding feature of Justinian’s reign was its focus on the idea of unity— unity in territory, religion and law. In this respect, the legal codes compiled under his authority should be viewed as interconnected parts of an organic whole.

evident in the Digest, the largest and definitely the most important part of his codification. The accomplished work fell short of this objective, and this is un­surprising owing to the magnitude of the task and the swift completion of the work. Perhaps a more important rationale for this shortcoming was the general intellectual climate of the age—an intellectual climate that was unfavourable to the kind of creative legal thinking that constitutes the hallmark of the classical age.

From the viewpoint of legal history, Justinian marks the end of the ancient world. Compared to the achievements of the classical period, his legislation may perhaps be regarded as the product of an era of decay. Yet Justinian did succeed in assembling and preserving most of the Roman legal heritage for posterity—an immense body of legal materials spanning hundreds of years of legal development. But his work was not a mere compendium of the Roman legal experience, nor a mere revision of existing law. The Code and the Novels contained a great deal of reformatory legislation that impressed almost every branch of the law. The imme­diate use of Justinian’s legislation was hindered by its continued employment of Latin and its complexity.

The influence of the Justinianic codification has been tremendous. In the Byz­antine East, it prevailed as a basic document for the further evolution of the law until the fall of the empire in the fifteenth century. In Western Europe, it remained forgotten for a long period but was rediscovered in the eleventh century. Initially treated as the object of academic study, it later experienced a far-reaching recep- tion—a reintegration as valid law that led to its becoming the common foundation upon which the civil law systems of the Continental Europe were built. As a historical source, Justinian’s Corpus comprehensively depicts the way that Roman law and legal thinking evolved from the first century BC until the sixth century AD. It also reveals a great deal on the state of the law and society at the dawn of the Middle Ages.