the reformer had proscribed, were deemed unworthy of future notice; the Twelve Tables and prætorian edict insensibly vanished; and the monuments of ancient Rome were neglected or destroyed by the envy and ignorance of the Greeks. Even the Pandects themselves have escaped with difficulty and danger from the common shipwreck, and criticism has pronounced that all the editions and manuscripts of the West are derived from one original.[1] It was transcribed at Constantinople in the beginning of the seventh century,[2] was successively transported by the accidents of war and commerce to Amalphi,[3] Pisa,[4] and Florence,[5] and is now deposited as a sacred relic[6] in the ancient palace of the republic.[7]
Legal inconstancy of Justinian It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future refor-
- ↑ All, in several instances, repeat the errors of the scribe and the transpositions of some leaves in the Florentine Pandects. This fact, if it be true, is decisive. Yet the Pandects are quoted by Ivo of Chartres (who died in 1117), by Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, and by Vacarius, our first professor, in the year 1140 (Selden ad Fletam, c. 7, tom. ii. p. 1080-1085). Have our British Mss. of the Pandects been collated?
- ↑ See the description of this original in Brenckman (Hist. Pandect. Florent. l. i. c. 2, 3, p. 4-17, and l. ii.). Politian, an enthusiast, revered it as the authentic standard of Justinian himself (p. 407, 408); but this paradox is refuted by the abbreviations of the Florentine Ms. (l. ii. c. 3, p. 117-130). It is composed of two quarto volumes with large margins, on a thin parchment, and the Latin characters betray the hand of a Greek scribe.
- ↑ Brenckman, at the end of his history, has inserted two dissertations, on the republic of Amalphi, and the Pisan war in the year 1135, &c.
- ↑ The discovery of the Pandects at Amalphi (A.D. 1137) is first noticed (in 1501) by Ludovicus Bologninus (Brenckman, l. i. c. 11, p. 73, 74, l. iv. c. 2, p. 417-425), on the faith of a Pisan chronicle (p. 409, 410), without a name or a date. The whole story, though unknown to the xiith century, embellished by ignorant ages and suspected by rigid criticism, is not, however, destitute of much internal probability (l. i. c. 4-8, p. 17-50). [Cp. Savigny, Gesch. des röm. Rechts, 3, 83; where the story is rejected.] The Liber Pandectarum of Pisa was undoubtedly consulted in the xivth century by the great Bartolus (p. 406, 407. See l. i. c. 9, p. 50-62).
- ↑ Pisa was taken by the Florentines in the year 1406; and in 1411 the Pandects were transported to the capital. These events are authentic and famous.
- ↑ They were new bound in purple, deposited in a rich casket, and shewn to curious travellers by the monks and magistrates bareheaded, and with lighted tapers (Brenckman, l. i. c. 10, 11, 12, p. 62-93).
- ↑ After the collations of Politian, Bologninus, and Antoninus [leg. Antonius] Augustinus, and the splendid edition of the Pandects by Taurellus (in 1551) [legendum, Taurellius (1553)], Henry Brenckman, a Dutchman, undertook a pilgrimage to Florence, where he employed several years in the study of a single manuscript. His Historia Pandectarum Florentinorum (Utrecht, 1722, in 4to), though a monument of industry, is a small portion of his original design.
(3) the Sententiæ of Paulus, which have been preserved as part of the Visigothic Breviarium of Alaric II. All three are edited in Gneist's Syntagma (already cited); and the Commentaries of Gaius and Institutes of Justinian are most conveniently printed here in parallel columns.]
