Note 292 — BOOK V

Considering the intellectual stagnation of the time, it seems quite possible that the Justinian code was unheard of wherever it was not actually the law of the land. Vinogradoff gives the conclusion of modern scholarship as to this when he says (Roman Law in Medieval Europe, London, 1909, p. 8): “The Corpus Juris of Justinian, which contains the main body of law for later ages, including our own, was accepted and even known only in the East and in those parts of Italy which had been reconquered by Justinian’s generals. The rest of the western provinces still clung to the tradition of the preceding period, culminating in the official code of Theodosius II (A.D. 437).” Compare also Conrat, Die Epitome Exactis Regibus, Introd., pp. 248–257; Flach, Droit Romain au Moyen Age (Paris, 1890), especially pp. 52–57. Conrat, in his Geschichte der Quellen und Literatur des Römischen Rechts in Früheren Mittelalter, pp. 150–153, maintains, first, that there is no trace of evidence elsewhere in Isidore’s works, of a knowledge of the existence of the Justinian code; and, second, that the internal evidence in the De Legibus points to the use of other sources. See also Ureña, Historia Crítica de la Literatura Jurídica Española (Madrid, 1897), vol 1, p. 294.