CIVIL LAW 625 pressly forbidden comments on his collections, the later jurists disregarded this prohibition, and a great number of Greek commentaries on Justinian's law collections were published, which had special reference to the alterations made in the East after his time. Hence the science of law became again so diffuse, that three centuries later (887) a new collection of the laws then applicable was made to supply this deficiency. In 876 the emperor Basil I. ordered an abridgment of the Koman and Greek law to be prepared for use as a text book. He afterward appointed a committee of jurists to make a compilation of the practical law in the Greek language, and for this purpose to reduce Justinian's law collections, and the constitu- tions issued by him and his successors, to a system embracing the whole. His son, Leo the Philosopher, completed and published it. This Romano-Greek code is called the Basilica. About 945 the emperor Constantine Porphyro- genitus undertook a new edition of the Basil- ics, which has been preserved to us. During the anarchy of the middle ages arts and sciences declined, and so did the scientific study of the law. In the 12th century the study of the Koman law revived, especially at the law school of Bologna. Irnerius delivered lectures there, and founded the reputation of this school. He illustrated the text of Justinian's collections by brief annotations on their sub- jects and language, which were called glosses, and were placed in the margin at the side and partly under the text. Irnerius was followed in this manner of illustration by his pupils and successors; thence they are called glossators. The glossators also tried to facilitate the study of the law by inserting extracts from the novels of Justinian into those constitutions which were altered or modified by them. These quotations of the novels were afterward called authenticce. Soon after the revival of the study of the Roman law in Italy by the glossators, an equal zeal for it arose in the law schools and courts of France, and since the 16th century in Spain and the Netherlands, and in Germany since the 14th century. With most of the European nations, and in the new states in Spanish America, and in Louisiana, the Roman law constitutes the principal rasis of their own law. In England the Roman law has never been adopted as a general subsidiary law. In Scotland the civil law has at all times been cultivated and taught. In Germany uni- versities were established after the 14th cen- tury on the model of those in Italy, and profes- sors of the Roman law were appointed. The authority of the Roman law in Germany is not based on a formal reception by the legislative power, but on its gradual introduction as a law of custom since the commencement of the 1 3th century. In 1495, in establishing the court of the imperial chamber, its members were order- ed to administer justice in accordance with the imperial and common laws ; by the latter the Roman and canon laws were understood.
The Roman law forms in Germany, in some branches, the principal law, in so far as the German law does not add to or modify it. In other branches it is only supplementary, that is, it only supplies the deficiencies of the Ger- man law. Only those parts and passages of Justinian's law collections are of force which are glossed, and only those of the glossed pas- sages are binding which contain the latest legal rule. Those precepts of the Roman law which relate to Roman manners and institutions un- known in Germany are inapplicable there, though glossed ; and the Roman law does not admit of application to such objects and trans- actions as were unknown to the Romans, and are purely of German origin. With the restric- tions above enumerated, the Roman law has been adopted as common law in a body, and not by single principles. Therefore, he who can refer to a precept of the Roman law in sup- port of his case has, as the practitioners call it, a fundata intentio ; that is, the presumption is in favor of the validity and applicability of the precept referred to, until his adversary proves that it is included in one of the above mentioned exceptions, or that it can no longer be applied, or that it had been abolished by later law. However, the special civil codes in several German states, as in Prussia, Aus- tria, Baden, and Saxony, and in France the civil code of Napoleon, have in a great measure supplanted the Roman law; but these codes, again, have in a great degree been based on the principles of the Roman law. The principal editions of the Corpus Juris are : I. Glossed : that published at Lyons by the brothers Sen- neton (5 vols. fol., 1549-'50) ; that of Ant. Cortius (5 vols. 4to, Paris, 1576) ; the Corpus Juris Civilis Glossatum, ex recensione Diony- sii Gothofredi (6 vols. fol., Lyons, 1589, with- out the title, Corpus Juris, &c. ; with the title, 1604; enlarged and improved, 1612). II. The non-glossed editions are subdivided into those which contain explanatory notes of later ju- rists, and those which contain only the text, with or without the various readings. The best editions with notes are : that of L. Rus- sard, Jus Civile (2 vols. fol., Lyons, 1560-'61 ; Antwerp, 1566-'67, and in 7 vols. 8vo., 1569- '70) ; that of Dionysius Gothofredus (4to, Lyons, 1583 ; Frankfort, 1587 ; 2d ed., im- proved, 2 vols. fol., 1590 ; 3d ed., 4 vols. fol., Geneva, 1602; 4th ed., Lyons, 2 vols. fol., 1607; 4to, Geneva, 1614, and fol., 1615); the fifth and most complete edition was edited by his son, Jacob Gothofredus (fol., Geneva, 1624) ; this has been frequently published since ; the edition of Antonius (4to, Lyons, 1652 and 1662) deserves particular mention. One of the best and most elegant editions with notes is that of Simon van Leeuwen from the last edition of Gothofredus, containing, besides Gothofredus's notes, the annotations of many others (fol., Frankfort, 1663; 2 vols. 4to, Leipsic, 1705, 1720, and 1740). Without ex- planatory notes are: the Amsterdam edition,
