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• form of Roman imperial legislation  (in  constitutiones principum (Roman legislation))

  ...or legislation issued by the ancient Roman emperors. The chief forms of imperial legislation were (1) edicta, or proclamations, which the emperor, like other magistrates, might issue, (2) mandata, or instructions to subordinates, especially provincial governors, (3) rescripta, written answers to officials or others who consulted the emperor, in particular on a point of law,...

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The following is a selection of items (artistic styles or groups, constructions, events, fictional characters, organizations, publications) associated with "mandata"

• constitutiones principum (Roman legislation)

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MLA Style:

"mandata." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 09 Apr. 2011. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/361604/mandata>.

APA Style:

mandata. (2011). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/361604/mandata

http://www.third-millennium-library.com/MedievalHistory/Cambridge/II/3-RomanLaws.html

CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY-THE RISE OF THE SARACENS AND THE FOUNDATION OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE

CHAPTER III

ROMAN LAW

ROMAN LAW is not merely the law of an Italian Community which existed two thousand years ago, nor even the law of the Roman Empire. It was, with more or less modification from local customs and ecclesiastical authority, the only system of law throughout the Middle Ages, and was the foundation of the modern law of nearly all Europe. In our own island it became the foundation of the law of Scotland, and, besides general influence, supplied the framework of parts of the law of England, especially of marriage, wills, legacies, and intestate succession to personalty. Through their original connection with the Dutch, it forms a main portion of the law of South Africa, Ceylon and Guiana, and it has had considerable influence in the old French province of Louisiana. Its intrinsic merit is difficult to estimate, when there is no comparable system independent of its influence. But this may fairly be said: Roman Law was the product of many generations of a people trained to government and endowed with cultivated and practical intelligence. The area of its application became so wide and varied that local customs and peculiarities gradually dropped away, and it became law adapted not to one tribe or nation but to man generally. Moreover, singular good fortune befell it at a critical time. When civilization was in peril through the influx of savage nations, and an elaborate and complicated system of law might easily have sunk into oblivion, a reformer was found who by skilful and conservative measures stripped the law of much antiquated complexity, and made it capable of continued life and general use without any breach of its connection with the past.

Sir Henry Maine has drawn attention to its influence as a system of reasoned thought on other subjects: “To Politics, to Moral Philosophy, to Theology it contributed modes of thought, courses of reasoning, and a technical language. In the Western provinces of the Empire it supplied the only means of exactness of speech, and still more emphatically, the only means of exactness, subtlety, and depth in thought”.

Gibbon in his 44th Chapter has employed all his wit and wealth of allusion to give some interest to his brief history of Roman jurisprudence and to season for the lay palate the dry morsels of Roman Law. The present chapter makes no such pretension. It is confined to a notice of the antecedents and plan of Justinian’s legislation, and a summary of those parts of it which are most connected with the general society of the period or afford some interest to an English reader from their resemblance or contrast to our own law. Unfortunately a concise and eclectic treatment cannot preserve much, if anything, of the logic and subtlety of a system of practical thought.

The sources of law under the early Emperors were Statutes (leges), rare after Tiberius; Senate's decrees (senatus consulta), which proposed by the Emperor took the place of Statutes; Edicts under the Emperor’s own name; Decrees, i.e. his final decisions as judge on appeal; Mandata, instructions to provincial governors;Rescripta, answers on points of law submitted to him by judges or private persons; the praetor’s edict as revised and consolidated by the lawyer Salvius Julianus at Hadrian's command and confirmed by a Senate's decree (this is generally called The Edict); and finally treatises on the various branches of law, which were composed, at any rate chiefly, by jurists authoritatively recognized, and which embodied the Common Law and practice of the Courts. By the middle of the third century AD the succession of great jurists came to an end, and, though their books, or rather the books written by the later of them, still continued in high practical authority, the only living source of law was the Emperor, whose utterances on law, in whatever shape whether oral or written, were calledconstitutiones. If written, they were by Leo's enactment (470) to bear the imperial autograph in purple ink.

Diocletian, who reformed the administration of the law as well as the general government of the Empire, issued many rescripts, some at least of which are preserved to us in Justinian’s Codex, but few rescripts of later date are found. Thereafter new general law was made only by imperial edict, and the Emperor was the sole authoritative interpreter. Anyone attempting to obtain a rescript dispensing with Statute Law was (384) to be heavily fined and disgraced.

The imperial edicts were in epistolary form, and were published by being hung up in Rome and Constantinople and the larger provincial towns, and otherwise made known in their districts by the officers to whom they were addressed. There does not appear to have been any collection of Constitutions, issued to the public, until the Codex Gregorianus was made in the eastern part of the Empire. (Codex refers to the book-form as opposed to a roll). This collection was the work probably of a man named Gregorius, about the end of the third century. In the course of the next century a supplement was made also in the Eastern Empire and called Codex Hermogenianus, probably the work of a man of that name. Both contained chiefly rescripts. A comparatively small part of both has survived in the later codes and in some imperfectly preserved legal compilations. During the fourth century, perhaps as Mommsen thinks in Constantine’s time, but with later additions, a compilation was made in the West, of which we have fragments preserved in the Vatican Library. They contained both branches of law, extracts from the jurists Ulpian, Paul, and Papinian, as well as Constitutions of the Emperors.

Reform of Law by Theodosius II

At length the need of an authoritative statement of laws in force was so strongly felt that the matter was taken up by government. Theodosius II, son of the Emperor Arcadius, having previously taken steps to organize public teaching in Constantinople, determined to meet the uncertainties of the law courts by giving imperial authority to certain text writers and by a new collection of the Statute Law. The books of the great lawyers, Papinian, Paul, and Ulpian and of a pupil of Ulpian, Modestinus, were well known and in general use. Another lawyer rather earlier than these, of whom we really know nothing, except his name (and that is only a praenomem), Gaius, had written in the time of Marcus Antoninus in very clear style a manual, besides other works of a more advanced character. The excellence of this manual brought it into general use and secured for its author imperial recognition on a level with the lawyers first named. Another work in great general use was a brief summary of the law by Paul known under the name of Pauli Sententiae. All these lawyers were in the habit of citing the opinions of earlier lawyers and often inserting extracts from them in their own works. Theodosius (with Valentinian, then seven years old) in AD 426 addressed to the Senate of Rome an important and comprehensive Constitution, intended to put what may be called the Common Law of Rome on a surer footing. He confirmed all the writings of Papinian, Paul, Gaius, Ulpian, and Modestinus, and added to them all the writers whose discussions and opinions were quoted by these lawyers, mentioning particularly Scaevola, Sabinus, Julian, and Marcellus. The books of the five lawyers first named were no doubt in the hands of judges and advocates generally, but the books of the others would be comparatively rare, and a quotation from them would be open to considerable doubt. It might contain a wrong reading or an interpolation or even a forgery. Theodosius therefore directed that these older books should be admitted as authorities, only so far as they were confirmed by a comparison with manuscripts other than that produced by the advocate or other person alleging their authority.

But Theodosius went further. If the writers thus authoritatively recognized were found to differ in opinion, the judge was directed to follow the opinion of the majority, and if the numbers on each side were equal, to follow the side on which Papinian stood and disregard any notes of Paul or Ulpian contesting Papinian’s opinion, but Paul’s Sententiae were always to count. If Papinian’s opinion was not there to decide between equal numbers of authorities, the judge must use his own discretion.

The great portion of law which had been set forth in text-books as reasonable and conformable to precedent and statute having thus been sanctioned, and rules given for its application, Theodosius turned his attention to the Statute Law itself. The jurists had in their various treatises taken account of the pertinent rescripts, edicts, etc., already issued and it was therefore only from the time when the series of authoritative jurists ended that the imperial constitutions required collecting. The books of Gregorius and Hermogenianus (Codices Greg, et Herm.) contained those issued down to Constantine’s time, which was therefore taken as the starting-point for the additional collection. Theodosius in 429 appointed a Commission of eight, and in 435 another larger Commission of which Antiochus the praefect was named first with other officials and ex-officials of the Record and Chancellery departments and Apelles, a law professor, power being given to call other learned men to their aid. He instructed them, following the precedent of Gregory and Hermogenianus’ books, to collect all the imperial Constitutions issued by Constantine and his successors which were either in the form of edicts or at least of general application, to arrange them in the order of time under the known heads of law, breaking up for this purpose laws dealing with several subjects, and while preserving the enacting words to omit all unnecessary preambles and declarations. When this is done and approved they are to proceed to review Gregory, Hermogenianus, and this third book, and with the aid of the pertinent parts of the jurists’ writings on each head of law to omit what was obsolete, remove all errors and ambiguities, and thus make a book which should “bear the name of the Emperor Theodosius and teach what should be followed and what avoided in life”.

The Theodosian code, technically called, as Mommsen thinks, simply Theodosianus, was published in Constantinople 15 February 438 and transmitted to Rome at the end of the year. The consul at Rome holding the authentic copy in his hands, in the presence of the imperial commissioners, read to the Senate the order for its compilation, which was received with acclamation. We have an account of this proceeding with a record of the enthusiastic shouts of the senators and the number of times each was repeated, some 24 or 28 times. Exclusive authority was given to the code in all court-pleadings and court-documents from 1 January 439, the Emperor boasting that the code would banish a cloud of dusty volumes and disperse the legal darkness which drove people to consult lawyers; for the code would make clear the conditions of a valid gift, the way to sue out an inheritance, the frame of a stipulation, and the mode of recovering a debt whether certain or uncertain in amount.