Theodosian Code

Impact

The immediate impact of the Theodosian Code was to simplify and make more secure the legal system of the Roman Empire, especially that of the Western Roman Empire. The West was badly affected by the dislocations of barbarian invasions in the first half of the fifth century and required institutional support from the East. The code was part of the support Theodosius tried to provide the West, especially after the marriage of his daughter, Eudocia, to the western emperor Valentinian III in 437 briefly reunified the empire. The importance of the ideology of unification is indicated in the code by such statements (in the fifth rescript of Book I, Title 1) as “This very closely united Empire.” Nevertheless, the situation was too chaotic, and little could be done to control the Germanic tribes already allowed into the empire as mercenaries or to prevent new barbarian incursions. Consequently, by 476 the Western Roman Empire had collapsed as a political entity.

What did not collapse was the concept of Roman law. The independent Germanic kingdoms in western Europe and North Africa still preserved the Roman system of administration, and the Theodosian Code flourished as a source of law. The Roman law system centered in cities competed with the common law tradition of the German rulers of Italy, Spain, France, and the other new kingdoms. By the Renaissance in the fifteenth century, Roman law had become reestablished as the sole legal system of western Europe apart from England, where common law prevailed. From there common law was spread to the countries of the Commonwealth and to the United States. In common law legal decisions are made on the basis of precedent, a ruling in a similar case made by an earlier judge. In Roman law, however, judges decided each case according to the will of the prince, that is, on the basis of government policy. For this reason each new regime—a new emperor or king or, later, a new prime minister—could have tremendous influence in regulating legal decisions.

The Theodosian Code served several purposes within the legal systems it governed. While a separate body of laws existed, the code regulated the state's interpretation of the law. In the first place, it privileged the imperial rescripts that had been issued since the reign of Constantine in 313. These rescripts had the advantage of being more easily found than documents from earlier emperors as well as being more generally applicable to the administrative and political realities of the mid-fifth century than, for example, rescripts from the reign of Augustus three hundred years earlier would have been. These documents, with the exception of the last three years of Julian's reign (360–363), were also all issued by Christian emperors, an important consideration because many of the legal issues faced by the empire in the time of Theodosius related to church-state relations, ecclesiastical administration, the suppression of heresy, and other specifically Christian matters. Once the corpus of rescripts was established as the basis of law, the jurisprudence of actual legal cases was much simplified.

Since the code was the main basis of law (at least in the fifth century), it was no longer possible for lawyers to manipulate or delay legal proceedings by introducing some obscure or even specious imperial pronouncement that seemed to work in their favor. Even a legitimate appeal to the emperor on a matter of law that was not clearly defined in the texts available to the presiding judge could take a year or more. In addition, the emperor and his bureaucrats could not afford to spend much time on ordinary court cases. With the code, almost any matter could be settled without making a direct appeal to the emperor to obtain a new rescript. The code also specifies that future rescripts will apply only to the cases for which they are issued and will not replace the text of the code itself as a legal authority. The Theodosian Code made clearer than ever before the administrative guidance for magistrates in deciding, and for lawyers in arguing, legal cases.