This project’s origins can be found back in 2011, when Brill first approached Eleftheria Papagianni about a Companion volume (xi). In fact, the preface details the reasons for the nearly fifteen-year gap between the initial conversations with Brill and the finished version of the volume, not least of which was the unexpected death of Konstantinos Pitsakis in 2012 and the replacement of several contributors for other reasons. Be that as it may, the amount of time, effort, and thought that went into the volume is clear in the finished product.
The volume consists of twenty-one chapters in total. Most of them are bound by individual developments in Byzantine law (e.g. Chapter 12, “The ‘Isaurian’ Ecloga” or Chapter 19, “The Peira”), covering the period between the reign of Constantine I and the end of the Macedonian dynasty in 1056. It uses the same end-date as Zachary Chitwood’s important Byzantine Legal Culture and the Roman Legal Tradition, 867-1056 (Cambridge, 2017), which the editors justify by arguing that within this period, “the transformation of the law inherited from Rome into a linguistically Hellenized law, which had adopted elements from the Hellenistic tradition and had been influenced by the Christian religion, can be defined” (xii).
The first three chapters together constitute the Introduction and present the reader with an overview of the modern study of Byzantine law, the history of the discipline, and a brief history of canon law. Spyros Troianos’s Chapter 2 (“The Creation of a Parallel Legal Order: Canon Law”) acts as a partial corrective to the general lack of canon law in the collection and demonstrates clearly how it cannot be completely ignored, even in a volume squarely dedicated to “secular” law. Troianos is particularly good about clarifying how and why a parallel legal tradition could exist, beginning with Constantine and, especially, Justinian. The remaining eighteen chapters are divided into three parts, which are organized chronologically. Each of the three parts is introduced with an overview chapter, presenting the reader with a summary of the period covered and major developments in Byzantine law, which are then covered in more detail by subsequent chapters.
Part 1, “From Constantine the Great up to Justinian’s Death,” contains six chapters, four of which concentrate on one or another aspect of Justinian’s great codification project, the Corpus iuris civilis. Chapter 9, written by Daphne Penna, the book's other editor, explores the teaching of the law in the time of Justinian. The Ecloga, issued in 741, is undoubtedly the centerpiece of Part 2, “From Justinian’s Death up to Basil I,” which is slightly shorter than Parts 1 and 3. Other chapters in this section deal with the canons of the Quinisext Council in Trullo (Chapter 11) and the rather complicated tradition known as the Appendix Eclogae and the Eclogadion (Chapter 13). Chapter 11, “The Canons of the Synod of Trullo: a Code of Canon Law and Its Relation to State Legislation,” by Wolfram Brandes, stands out not only because of its focus on canon law, but also because it rightfully elevates the importance of the Canons of the Council in Trullo in the history of Byzantine law, both “secular” and canon. While even the non-specialist may be aware of the importance of collections like the Corpus iuris civilis or the Basilica, that is much less likely to be the case for these canons. The Synod’s foundational status in subsequent canon law, as well as the “strong imperial influence” argued by Brandes (207), serve to justify the chapter’s inclusion in the collection.
Part 3 covers “Law at the Time of the Macedonian Dynasty” and includes not only the monumental collection of law known as the Basilica, but also the shorter collections produced under Basil I, the novels of Leo VI, and the eleventh-century Peira. This section also includes separate chapters treating the Court of the Hippodrome (Chapter 18), legal education in the eleventh century (Chapter 20), and the Patriarchal Synod (Chapter 21). Dieter Simon’s chapter on the Peira (Chapter 19) is of particular interest, as his work on the contribution presumably coincided, at least partially, with the preparation of his much-anticipated edition and German translation of the text (Dieter R. Simon and Diether R. Reinsch, Ἡ Πεῖρα-Die Peira: Ein juristisches Lehrbuch des 11. Jahrhunderts aus Konstantinopel - Text, Übersetzung, Kommentar, Glossar, Brill, 2023). The volume concludes with an “Index of Legal Sources,” which contains a list of fragments from legal sources cited throughout the volume.
Aside from those chapters dedicated to individual collections or moments in the advancement of Byzantine law (e.g., the Novels of Leo VI, or the Peira), a number of other contributions offer important insights into aspects of the Byzantine legal apparatus and the process of making and interpreting the law. Chapters 9 and 20, for example, written by Penna and Alexander Liarmacopulus respectively, are dedicated to the teaching of law at two key moments in Byzantine history: the reign of Justinian, on the one hand, and the mid-eleventh century, on the other, when Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos (re-)opened the law school in Constantinople.
Chapter 18, by Andreas Gkoutzioukostas, treats the Court of the Hippodrome and offers a clear analysis of existing attestations of the court(s) of the Covered Hippodrome and associated titles/positions. It concludes with a good, concise summary of reasonably secure knowledge we currently have (340). The final chapter, written by Troianos and covering the Endemousa Synod, serves an important function by both providing a chronological overview of the synod of bishops and acting as a kind of bridge into other studies of canon law and/or Byzantine law after 1056.
One great strength of the volume is in its ability to speak clearly to the novice while remaining relevant even to the specialist. Contributors are consistently successful in presenting their material in ways that do not assume any prior knowledge, making the entire volume suitable for the classroom or other beginners. At the same time, however, authors are not afraid to make unique contributions to the field, often taking clear positions on ongoing controversies. For example, in Chapter 10 (“From Justinian’s Death up to Basil I: an Overview”), Valerio Massimo Minale argues that the Nomos Georgikos, or Farmer’s Law, should be closely connected with the Ecloga (and not placed earlier), and that it has little that cannot be linked with traditional Roman law (against a so-called “Slavic thesis”) (166). Dieter Simon’s contention that “the widespread attitude in scholarship of treating the Peira as a collection of quotations from the writings of Eustathios is not justifiable and, moreover, misleading (349)” likewise serves as a vital corrective to many non-specialist readings of the text.
In his chapter covering the Procheiros Nomos and the Eisagoge (Chapter 15), Thomas E. van Bochove argues against A. Schminck’s 907 dating of the promulgation of the Prochiron, instead arguing in favor of the more common range of 870-879 (286-87). A significant portion of Troianos’s Chapter 2 is dedicated to discussions of the Eisagoge, specifically regarding the “two powers” (emperor and patriarch) question. Troianos disagrees with Schminck, who argued that Photius (presumably the author) was envisioning a patriarchate that held a slight advantage over the imperial throne (21-24).
The volume displays a great deal of consistency in both its high quality and in some important themes. Questions of continuity with classical Roman law, the influence of Christianity, the role of the emperor and his relationship with the Church (and, by extension, imperial and canon law), and, especially, the relationship between social, economic, and cultural change and the law run throughout the collection. The volume also brings much-needed clarity to the myriad lesser known or so-called “private” collections of Byzantine law (e.g., the Farmer’s Law), offering the reader concise descriptions of their contents, current scholarly opinions on things like their date of composition and relationship to the more monumental collections, and, crucially, the manuscript traditions.
Despite its overall strength, the volume is not without some shortcomings, however minor. Only Chapters 2, 11 and 21 deal explicitly with canon law and/or the patriarchal synod, despite numerous references in nearly every other chapter to the Church and/or canon law in some way. Given the volume’s purpose and parameters, especially its chronological limits, the relative absence of canon law is perfectly explicable. In this regard, Brandes’s chapter covering the canons of the Quinisext Council stands out as both a welcome addition and as something of an anomaly.
The volume might have benefitted from a glossary of important terminology or perhaps a separate chapter dedicated to the thorny issue of definitions. Zachary Chitwood does an excellent job of problematizing and contextualizing idea of “Byzantine” law as a distinct discipline, and many individual contributions address such issues of terminology as they come up, but the volume could have included a dedicated section devoted specifically to such issues. Similarly, the “Index of Legal Sources,” found at the end of the volume (383-92), only contains list of fragments cited in various entries in the volume. The list of abbreviations at the beginning of the volume acts as a more general list of primary and secondary materials foundational to the study of Byzantine law, but a more complete appendix or index of the sources of Byzantine law might have been helpful for many readers.
There are also a few instances in which contributors make potentially controversial claims. In Chapter 14, “Law at the Time of the Macedonian Dynasty: an Overview,” Kalliopi (Kelly) A. Bourdara, offers a somewhat problematic summary of the “Macedonian Renaissance,” which includes a description of a “return to the Justinianic way of thinking” and the assertion that legal developments in this period were apparently “eliminating many of the eastern elements that the iconoclastic movement had brought in, thus promoting a Byzantine self-consciousness” (267). The same author, in Chapter 16, contends that “the prooimia of his [Leo VI’s] Novels do not include any political messages,” and that these novels were “of diverse content, yet of minor importance” and were “not drawn up as part of a concrete legislative programme” (300). Such arguments are not indefensible, but their presentation as accepted facts may be somewhat misleading.
In the preface, the editors mention how they wrestled with the potential lack of need for a volume like this, but Chitwood has a valid point when he uses Goethe’s metaphor of the duck to argue that Byzantine law is still relatively unknown, even among specialists of Roman law, and remains considerably less accessible (3).Thanks in part to this volume, this should now be changing. If anything, the volume’s invaluable contribution to the study of Byzantine law in the early and middle periods now seems to call for similar works dedicated to the last centuries of the empire.
Paired with Daphne Penna and Roos Meijering’s A Sourcebook on Byzantine Law: Illustrating Byzantine Law through the Sources (Brill, 2022), students and scholars alike have a veritable introductory course to Byzantine law at their fingertips. The field is certainly more accessible than ever, both to specialists and non-specialists alike. Spyros Troianos, to whom the volume is dedicated, passed away in January 2024. The present volume is a fitting tribute to Troianos’s monumental, lifelong work of demystifying Byzantine law and making it more available to others.