Brachylogus (from

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

''brachys'', short, and Greek ''logos'', word), is a title applied in the middle of the 16th century to a work containing a systematic exposition of the

Roman law Roman law is the law, legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (), to the (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I. Roman law also den ...

. Some writers have assigned to the reign of the

emperor The word ''emperor'' (from , via ) can mean the male ruler of an empire. ''Empress'', the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), mother/grandmother (empress dowager/grand empress dowager), or a woman who rules ...

Justinian I Justinian I (, ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 527 to 565. His reign was marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovatio imperii'', or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was ...

, and others have treated as an apocryphal work of the 16th century. Endnotes: *Edition by E. Bocking, published at

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

in 1829, under the title of ''Corpus Legum sive Brachylogus Juris Civilis'' * Heinrich Hermann Fitting, ''Über die Heimath und das Alter des sogenannten Brachylogus'' (Berlin, 1880) The earliest extant edition of this work was published at

Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

in 1549, under the title of ''Corpus Legum per modum Institutionum''; and the title ''Brachylogus totius Juris Civilis'' appears for the first time in an edition published at Lyon in 1553. The origin of the work may be referred with great probability to the 12th century. There is internal evidence that it was composed subsequently to the reign of

Louis le Débonnaire Louis the Pious (; ; ; 16 April 778 – 20 June 840), also called the Fair and the Debonaire, was King of the Franks and co-emperor with his father, Charlemagne, from 813. He was also King of Aquitaine from 781. As the only surviving son of C ...

(778–840), as it contains a Lombard

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...

of that king's, which forbids the testimony of a clerk to be received against a layman. On the other hand, its style and reasoning is far superior to that of the law writers of the 10th and 11th centuries; while the circumstance that the method of its author has not been in the slightest degree influenced by the school of the Gloss-writers (

Glossator The scholars of the 11th- and 12th-century legal schools in Italy, France and Germany are identified as glossators in a specific sense. They studied Roman law based on the '' Digesta'', the ''Codex'' of Justinian, the ''Authenticum'' (an abridged ...

es) leads fairly to the conclusion that he wrote before that school became dominant at

Bologna Bologna ( , , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy. It is the List of cities in Italy, seventh most populous city in Italy, with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nationalities. Its M ...

. Savigny, who traced the history of the ''Brachylogus'' with great care, is disposed to think that it is the work of

Irnerius Irnerius ( – after 1125), sometimes referred to as ''lucerna juris'' ("lantern of the law"), was an Italian jurist, and founder of the School of Glossators and thus of the tradition of medieval Roman Law. He taught the newly recovered Roman ...

himself (''Geschichte des röm. Rechts im Mittelalter''). Its value is chiefly historical, as it furnishes evidence that a knowledge of Justinian's legislation was always maintained in northern

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

. The author of the work has adopted the ''Institutes'' of Justinian as the basis of it, and draws largely on the ''Digest'', the ''Code'' and the ''Novels''; while certain passages, evidently taken from the ''Sententiae Receptae'' of

Julius Paulus Julius Paulus (; fl. 2nd century and 3rd century AD), often simply referred to as Paul in English, was one of the most influential and distinguished Roman jurists. He was also a praetorian prefect under the Roman Emperor Alexander Severus. Life ...

, imply that the author was also acquainted with the

Visigoth The Visigoths (; ) were a Germanic people united under the rule of a king and living within the Roman Empire during late antiquity. The Visigoths first appeared in the Balkans, as a Roman-allied barbarian military group united under the comman ...

ic code of Roman law compiled by order of

Alaric II Alaric II (, , 'ruler of all'; ; – August 507) was the King of the Visigoths from 484 until 507. He succeeded his father Euric as King of the Visigoths in Toulouse on 28 December 484; he was the great-grandson of the more famous Alaric I, who ...

References

{{EB1911 article with no significant updates Roman law