Companion to Byzantine Law

Eleftheria Papagianni is Professor Emerita of Legal History at the National and Kapodistrian University. She participated in an international research project at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History to republish the Byzantine legal sources of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and served as the project's director from 2008 to 2011. She is the author of numerous books and articles, mainly on Byzantine civil law. Daphne Penna is Assistant Professor of Legal History at the University of Groningen and Associate Professor of Roman Law at KU Leuven. She is the author of The Byzantine Imperial Acts to Venice, Pisa and Genoa, 10th-12th Centuries: A Comparative Legal Study (The Hague, 2012) and co-author of A Sourcebook on Byzantine Law: Illustrating Byzantine Law through the Sources (Leiden, 2022). She has published extensively on Roman and Byzantine law, and especially on their influence on the European legal tradition.

"...This book is, therefore, a very welcome and timely contribution that will be useful to anyone who wishes to catch up with the state of research in the field. The structure and writing style make it accessible to established scholars, postgraduate students, and advanced undergraduates [...]...if one approaches this volume mainly as a companion to research in Byzantine civil law sources, it is an outstanding accomplishment. The editors and authors are to be commended on the successful completion of what must have been an arduous task. The product is a highly informative volume that finally makes research in Byzantine legal history accessible in English to a non-specialist audience for the first time. It will doubtless become the standard reference work on the subject for many years to come." - James Morton, Department of History, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, in: Journal of Medieval History 52/1 (2026), pp. 147-148 [DOI: 10.14296/RiH/2014/1631]"...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. [...] 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." - Nathan Leidholm, Bilkent University, in: The Medieval Review (2026), 26.03.15, published online: Full review

• ContentsPrefaceEleftheria Papagianni and Daphne PennaAbbreviationsVNotes on ContributorsXPart 1: Introduction1 The Birth of Byzantine LawZachary Chitwood2 The Creation of a Parallel Legal Order: Canon LawSpyros Troianos3 The History of Research on Byzantine LawMarios Th. TantalosPart 2: From Constantine the Great up to Justinian’s Death4 Byzantine Law from Constantine the Great to the Death of Justinian: an OverviewVasileios-Alexandros Kollias5 Codification of the leges: Codex Theodosianus and Codex JustinianusKalliopi Papakonstantinou6 Codification of the ius: the DigestGiuseppe Falcone7 The Institutes of JustinianKalliopi Papakonstantinou8 The Novels of JustinianPeter Sarris9 Law Teaching at the Time of JustinianDaphne PennaPart 3: From Justinian’s Death up to Basil I10 From Justinian’s Death up to Basil I: an OverviewValerio Massimo Minale11 The Canons of the Synod of Trullo: a Code of Canon Law and Its Relation to State LegislationWolfram Brandes12 The “Isaurian” EclogaFausto Goria13 From the Appendix Eclogae to the Eclogadion: Inclining Back to Justinianic LawFausto GoriaLaw at the Time of the Macedonian Dynasty14 Law at the Time of the Macedonian Dynasty: an OverviewKalliopi (Kelly) Bourdara15 The Procheiros Nomos and the EisagogeThomas E. van Bochove16 The Novels of Leo VI the WiseKalliopi (Kelly) Bourdara17 The Great Codification. The Basilica cum scholiis and Their Immediate Precursor(s)Thomas E. van Bochove18 The Court of the HippodromeAndreas Gkoutzioukostas19 The PeiraDieter Simon20 Legal Education in Constantinople in the 11th Century: “School of Laws” and the “Guardian of the Laws”Alexander Liarmacopulus21 The “Endemousa” SynodSpyros TroianosIndices