88 STATESMEN AND SAGES compilation of Roman law which has immortalized his name. He died on Nov. ember 14, 565, at the age of eighty-three, and in the thirty-eighth year of his reign. A few words must be said about the legislative reforms carried through by Justinian. He was not only a collector and a codifier of the laws ; he also in- troduced in many directions the most fundamental changes into the substantive law itself. The following were the most important changes, (i) He amelior- ated the condition of slaves depriving their masters of the power of putting them to death. He declared that any one who put a slave to death by his own hand should be guilty of homicide. (2) He greatly revolutionized the law of in- testate succession by giving to cognati (relatives on the mother's side) an equal share with agnati (relatives on the father's side) of the same degree. These two changes in the law were probably in a large measure induced by the circumstances of his birth. (3) He made considerable changes in the law of divorce, and as to the property of spouses. (4) He reformed civil procedure in the way of making it uniform, and introducing a system of small-debt courts. ST. AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY* BY RT. REV. HENRY CODMAN POTTER, BISHOP OF NEW YORK (DIED, 604) A COMPLETE biography of St. Augustine of Canterbury /x it is impossible to write : almost all that is known of him is his work as a missionary to the English, and almost the only source of our knowledge of that missionary work is the "Ecclesiastical History" of Bseda. But the mission of St. Augustine was one of the great crises, not only of the history of the Christian Church, but of the history of hu- man civilization. The difference between a number of Celtic churches, with bishops largely subordinate to the abbots of monasteries, included (as it seems) in none of the great Catholic patriarchates, cut off from all communication with the great centres of human thought and life and a Church of England taking her place, at once independent and subor- dinate, in the swift development of human progress, both conservative and creative this difference is quite incalcul- able. And the mission of St. Augustine made the dif- ference. The triumph of Christianity depended apart from its divine authority upon the thorough organization of the Christian communities ; and that organization had for its centre the Episcopacy. But as separate congregations without a bishop could never have escaped disinte-
- Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.
