Corpus Juris Civilis

The compilation of Roman law ordered by Emperor Justinian, 529 to 534 CE

Overview

Justinian directed his jurists to gather and purify a millennium of Roman law into the Code, the Digest, the Institutes, and later novels. The Digest alone condensed the writings of classical jurists into fifty books. Lost to the West for centuries, the compilation was rediscovered around 1100 at Bologna, where its study founded European universities and law as a profession. Every civil law system on earth descends from this work, making it the most influential legal text ever produced. Byzantine Greek paraphrases carried its rules east, preserving Roman law through the medieval period.