Cyrillus,

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece 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 ...

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Un ...

of the 5th century, was a professor in the ancient

Law School of Berytus The law school of Berytus (also known as the law school of Beirut) was a center for the study of Roman law in classical antiquity located in Berytus (modern-day Beirut, Lebanon). It flourished under the patronage of the Roman emperors and functi ...

(present-day

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

), and one of the founders of the oecumenical school of jurists (τῆς οἰκουμένης διδάσκαλοι). This school preceded the succession of Anastasius to the

Eastern empire The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

(AD 491), and paved the way for

Justinian Justinian I (; la, Iustinianus, ; grc-gre, Ἰουστινιανός ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was the Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565. His reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized '' renova ...

legislation Legislation is the process or result of enrolling, enacting, or promulgating laws by a legislature, parliament, or analogous governing body. Before an item of legislation becomes law it may be known as a bill, and may be broadly referred to ...

. His reputation as a teacher of

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vari ...

was great; and from the fragments of his works which have been preserved it may be inferred that his merit as a teacher consisted in his direct use of ancient sources of law, and in interpreting the best writers, such as the commentary of

Ulpian Ulpian (; la, Gnaeus Domitius Annius Ulpianus; c. 170223? 228?) was a Roman jurist born in Tyre. He was considered one of the great legal authorities of his time and was one of the five jurists upon whom decisions were to be based according t ...

on the edict and the ''Responsa Papiniani''. He wrote a treatise on definitions (υπομνημα των δεφινιτων), in which, according to a statement of his contemporary Patricius, the subject of contracts was treated with great precision, and which supplied the materials for many important ''scholia'' appended to the first and second titles of the eleventh book of the ''

Basilica In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica is a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building gave its name ...

''. He is generally styled "the great" to distinguish him from a more modern jurist of the same name, who lived after the reign of

, and who compiled an epitome of the ''Digest''.

References

* Ancient Roman jurists Roman-era Greeks 5th-century Byzantine people 5th-century Byzantine writers {{AncientRome-law-bio-stub id:Cyrillus