STATE AND LEGISLATION

The study of Byzantine jurisprudence in the seventh and eighth centuries, of judicial procedures, the operation of the courts, the appointment and background of the judiciary and notarial staff, these are all areas which, on account of the sparsity of adequate sources, are particularly difficult to elucidate. Of the imperial legislation of the period, the novels of Justinian's immediate successors and of Heraclius, the Ecloga promulgated in 741, together with the anonymous treatises or ‘law books’ known as the Farmers' Law and the Rhodian Sea Law, with the so-called ‘mutiny act’, or treatise on military discipline and punishment, are all that we have. And the date of the last three texts – all very derivative and drawn from Justinianic or pre-Justinianic material – is still very much debated. Only with the help of casual references in other sources is it possible to say anything about judicial practice, the application of the law and the availability of justice. In this section, I shall make some attempt to see how these aspects of the traditional and sophisticated system of jurisprudence and judicial practice fared during the period in question.

The sixth century, and in particular the reign of Justinian, had been a Golden Age of late Roman legislative productivity and codification. This is, with hindsight, largely a reflection of the fact that the fifth and sixth centuries were the only period in Byzantine history when a professionalised legal apparatus existed, and in which a formal legal training and career-structure determined the nature of jurisprudence and the administration and activities of the court system.