The Code of Justinian

By the sixth century Roman law is a mountain of contradictory decrees and jurists' opinions, nearly impossible to navigate. Justinian charges a commission under Tribonian to bring it all together: the laws in force into the Codex, extracts from the jurists into the Digest, a textbook for the schools into the Institutes, new decrees into the Novels. The work takes several years; the obsolete is discarded, the disputed corrected, the older collections lose their force. Six centuries later this code will be read anew at Bologna, and it will become the foundation of law for nearly all of continental Europe.