HUMANITAS IMPACTING IUS – THE CURIOUS CASE OF JUSTINIAN’S DIGEST. A LECTURE BETWEEN THE LINES OF HISTORY
HUMANITAS IMPACTING IUS – THE CURIOUS CASE OF JUSTINIAN’S DIGEST. A LECTURE BETWEEN THE LINES OF HISTORY

Summary/Abstract: A society in decline, an emperor who has the ambition to maintain the Empire on the top of the civilized world and a legal system that seems to lose its unity soon. These are, in an over – synthetized presentation, the conditions where the masterpiece arises. The information we have regarding this work are impressive, although not enough to scatter all the fog that surrounds it: 2 000 books (with a total of 3 billion lines) studied by the compilers – that is twice the volume of the Digest after it has been edited, 15 famous Law professors (under the guidance of Tribonian, “quaestor sacri palati” ) that excerpted the original works, a large amount of practical cases, mirroring the avatars of the Roman world – and all these in only three years. The complexity of the work, as well as the obscurity that surrounds some aspects of the process of its creation have given birth to various controversies between scholars. Consequently, should we be interested in the study of the Digest, we cannot ignore controversial issues as the theories regarding the existence of the so – called Predigests, and the different reasons that lay at their foundation. Moreover, the practical cases that the jurists give as examples to justify their sentences (and the sentences in themselves) are a source for the principles used nowadays in the legal system. Furthermore, the two ways in which the original excerpts of the classical authors were modified by the compilers – the interpolations and the glosses – also present a particular interest in the global analysis of the text. All things considered, it can be stated that the Digest represent one of Justinian’s key achievements, one of the works that crucially influenced the evolution of the humanity. But beyond their practical utility, they remain the symbol of the collective soul of a people that concurred not only land, but principles, not only by sword, but by the depth of spirit and by the greatness of culture.

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