ght be already certain and in accordance with established usage, he
gave his approval to that collection of laws called in Latin the _Digest_
and in Greek the _Pandects_, which he had commissioned Tribonian and other
great lawyers to draw up. Seventeen commissioners, having power given to
them to alter, omit, and correct, selected by his command, out of nearly
two thousand volumes, what they considered serviceable in the imperial laws
and the decisions of great lawyers. It is a vast repertory of judicial
cases in which Roman lawyers seek to apply the general rules of law and
natural equity. It was the first attempt since the Twelve Tables to
construct an independent centre of right as a whole,[117] and it was
confirmed by the authority of the emperor on the 16th December, 533.

As in the whole course of the fifth century, so no less in the sixth, it is
necessary to bear in mind the close interweaving of political with
ecclesiastical facts. The force and bearing of the one only become
intelligible when the others are weighed. In 519, under Pope Hormisdas, the
schism of Acacius had collapsed, and the most emphatic acknowledgment of
all which the Popes had claimed in the contest with him, and with the
emperors Zeno and Anastasius, who favoured him, had taken place. Pope
Hormisdas had been succeeded in 523 by Pope John I. Compelled by the king
Theodorick to undertake an embassy to the emperor Justin, received at
Byzantium with the highest honour as first Bishop of the Church, being also
the first Pope who had visited the eastern capital, and crowned with gifts
for the churches at Rome, he returned only to die in the dungeon of the
Arian prince at Ravenna, in 526. In three months Theodorick had followed to
the tomb his three victims--Symmachus, Boethius, and Pope John I. His death
had well-nigh broken up the league of Teutonic Arian rulers against the
Catholic faith, of which he had been the soul during the thirty-three years
of his reign. Justinian had been taken by his uncle Justin as partner of
his empire in April, 527, and crowned, together with his wife Theodora, on
Easter Day. Four months later he succeeded his uncle in the sole power. At
the death of Theodorick, the innate weakness of the Gothic kingdom in
Italy, which had been veiled by the personal ability of the sovereign, came
to full light. The utter incompatibility between the savage Goth and the
cultured Roman showed itself in the rejection of the queen Amalasunta