Christliche Explikationen in der Gesetzgebung Justinians I.

The paper examines the extent and role of Christian explications in Justinian's imperial legislation--beyond the programmatic formulations in the prologues of the novels which have often been studied. It shows that the significance of Christian arguments in order to justify legal measures is rather limited and unspecific, while traditional arguments which are based on Roman law discourse are still of great importance. These are often neither transformed in a Christian way nor synthesized with Christian ideas. This is true for the whole reign of Justinian and thereby not restricted to the period of Tribonian. Since 541/542 A. D. there is just a gradual but not fundamental change in this respect. Though Justinian focuses very much on a theological foundation of his reign he has to meet the expectations of the members of the senatorial elite which are legally trained and often deeply rooted in Roman memorial culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]