Early Codifications

During the Principate age, imperial edicts (edicta) were posted in the principal towns of the empire and remained in view for a short period (probably a month).

In all likelihood, the decrees (decreta) were not officially published but could be ascertained from the record of the case issued to the successful litigant. The rescripts (rescripta) were also recited in court and preserved in the court record,

G. Mousourakis, Roman Law and the Origins of the Civil Law Tradition,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-12268-7_5 while the mandates (mandata) were communicated to and retained by the officials to whom they were issued. The enactments of the emperors were thus accessible to lawyers and the general public when they were issued, but no permanent central record of imperial legislation was retained. On the other hand, private lawyers from as early as the second century ad started to compile collections of imperial constitutions. For example, we know of a collection of 13 rescripts of Septimius Severus published in ad 200, and a collection of decrees produced by the jurist Paulus in the closing years of the Principate.^{^[579]}

New Roman">During the reign of Diocletian, the lack of any official collection of imperial constitutions was partly remedied by the publication of two private or ‘semiofficial’ collections of law: the Codex Gregorianus and the Codex Hermogenianus. The former collection, published towards the end of the third century ad (probably in ad 291), contained imperial constitutions (mostly rescripts) from Hadrian (ad 117-130) up to and including Diocletian.^{^[580]} These materials were arranged by subject matter in books and titles according to the traditional scheme observed by the classical jurists in their Digesta, and chronologically within each title. Around the same time (probably in ad 295), Hermogenianus^{^[581]} published a supplementary collection of constitutions that were issued during the reign of Diocletian.

His book was subdivided into only titles, while the constitutions it contained were arranged in chronological order. The Hermogenian Code was re-edited several times and new constitutions were added; but both this code and the preceding Gregorian Code remained as unofficial collections. On the other hand, some evidence divulges that the production of these codes was approved or authorized by Diocletian’s government. This is corroborated by the fact that their authors enjoyed regular access to the archives of the imperial chancery, which suggests that they held senior positions in the imperial administration and performed their work under official supervision. The extraordinary authority that the Gregorian and Hermogenian Codes acquired after their publication is a more significant fact that distinguishes them from all private collections of legislation. The courts recognized these codes as authoritative and exhaustive records of all imperial legislation existing up to the date of their publication. Moreover, the codes were included among the principal texts of legal education and served as models for the first official law code produced in the fifth century ad on the orders of Emperor Theodosius II. As neither of the above-mentioned codes survived, information on their content is based on extracts incorporated in subsequent compilations of law such as the Fragmenta Vaticana, the Collatio and, especially, the Code of Justinian.^{^[582]}

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Source: Mousourakis G.. Roman Law and the Origins of the Civil Law Tradition. Springer,2015. — 339 p.. 2015

Early Codifications

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