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(No) pictures for lawyers. Some considerations on image and word in Byzantine legal literature1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Bernard Stolte
Bernard Stolte*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
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Extract

It is the purpose of this note to point out a few aspects in which Byzantine legal literature differs from its Western medieval counterpart. It is tempting to make such a comparison, as both East and West started with the same body of material, namely the Justinian legislation comprising the Institutes, Digest, Code and Novels. I realize that in doing so, I am implicitly restricting myself to civil law to the exclusion of canon law; but in fact I wish to narrow the field even further, and consider only civil legal literature in the strict sense, that is, legislation and legal scholarship. Furthermore, I realize that the Western tradition, based on the Justinian legislation, only begins in the eleventh century — coinciding with a revival in Byzantium. Nevertheless, I think the comparison is relevant, if only because it is a useful starting point for reflections on the role of law in Byzantine society.

Type
Short Notes
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 12 , 1988 , pp. 297 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1988

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References

1 The substance of this note was presented as a short communication to the XXIst Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies on ‘The Byzantine Eye’.

2 See, e.g. almost any paper and book by Ullmann, W.; by way of introduction his ‘Law and the Medieval Historian’, Rapports du XF Congrès International des Sciences Historiques (Stockholm 1960)Google Scholar, repr. in his Jurisprudence in the Middle Ages (London 1980 [Variorum Reprints, Collected Studies 210|]).

3 Norden, E., Die antike Kunstprosa, II (Darmstadt 7 1974) 581–582 Google Scholar and cf. Schulz, F., History of Roman Legal Science (Oxford 1946), (repr. with Addenda 1967) 54–55, 98 Google Scholar.

4 = Byzantinisches Handbuch V, 2 (Munich 1978) 341-480, esp. ‘Rechtsliteratur als Kunstform?’, 351-365.

5 Legislazione e natura nelle Novelle giustinianee (Naples 1984) (= Storia del pensiero giuridico 7).

6 Zilliacus, F., Zum Kampfder Weltsprachen im oströmischen Reich (Helsingfors 1935, repr. Amsterdam 1965) 98ff.Google Scholar; Wal, N. van der, ‘Die Schreibweise der dem lateinischen entlehnten Fachworte in der früh-byzantinischen Juristensprache’, Scriptorium 38 (1983) 29–53 Google Scholar.

7 On the as suitable for texts of statutes, see Hunger, H., Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner, I (= Byzantinisches Handbuch V, 1, Munich 1978) ‘Rhetorik’, 68 Google Scholar.

8 This is not the moment to go into the question of priority of the Greek version over the Latin one or vice versa.

9 Tanta/ 20, cf. const. Deo auctore 5.

10 Tanta/ 5.

11 Tanta/ 18.

12 Tanta/ 11.

13 Tribonian (London 1978) 41-42.

14 Tribonian, 93.

15 Pieler, Byzantinische Rechtsliteratur, 359ff. esp. 360-361; Wal, N. van der, ‘Edic-tum und Lex edictalis. Form und Inhalt der Kaisergesetze im spätrömischen Reich’, Revue Internationale des Droits de l’Antiquité, 3e Série 28 (1981) 277–313, esp. 309–310 Google Scholar.

16 Simon, D., Rechtsfindung am byzantinischen Reichsgericht (Frankfurt am Main 1973 Google Scholar) (= Wissenschaft und Gegenwart, Juristische Reihe 4), also pays attention to the literary style of the Peira.

17 Prooemium (edd. Monnier, H. — Platon, G. [Paris 1915] 28–29)Google Scholar.

18 Byzantinische Rechtsliteratur, 351.