Pandects

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Digestorum, seu Pandectarum libri quinquaginta. Lugduni apud Gulielmu[m] Rouillium, 1581. Biblioteca Comunale "Renato Fucini" di Empoli

Pandects (Lat. pandectae, adapted from Gr. pandektes, all-containing) is a name given to a compendium or digest of Roman law compiled by order of the emperor Justinian I in the 6th century (A.D. 530-533).

The pandects were one part of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the body of civil law issued under Justinian I. The other two parts were Institutiones, and the Codex Constitutionum. A fourth part, the Novels (or "Novellae Constitutiones"), was added later.

The pandects were divided into fifty books, each book containing several titles, divided into laws, and the laws into several parts or paragraphs. The number of jurists from whose works extracts were made is thirty-nine, but the writings of Ulpian and Paulus make up quite half the work. The work was declared to be the sole source of non-statute law: commentaries on the compilation were forbidden, or even the citing of the original works of the jurists for the explaining of ambiguities in the text. ^[1]

[edit] See also

• Corpus Juris Civilis
• Civil code
• Roman law

[edit] External links

• A very good collection of resources maintained by professor Ernest Metzger.
• The Roman Law Library by Professor Yves Lassard and Alexandr Koptev
•   "Pandects". Catholic Encyclopedia. (1913). New York: Robert Appleton Company. 

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Ferdinand Mackeldey Handbook of the Roman Law pp. 57-58, citing Const. Tanta, § 21; Const. Dedit § 21.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.