The 12 Tables: Justinian's Code And Christian Religion

Justinian's code was a revolutionary law code that even today, has remnants in the law. The 12 Tables were used to create Justinian's Code as previous laws were unorganized and outdated. Justinian's Code was also heavily influence by the Christian religion. Using both of these ideas, the Byzantine empire created a special group of jurists for final authority on punishments. Old Roman law was a jumble of unorganized and outdated laws that Justinian took upon himself to modernize with the idea that he could unify the empire through these laws, but if used today, would create an unnecessary sense of fear that could easily be avoided by revising the law to fit today's standards. The 12 Tables were created in response to the plebeians protests …show more content…
This change from the Roman Empire happened when Emperor Constantine ended the Christian persecution and moved the capital from Rome to Constantinople and Emperor Theodosius also changed the official religion of Rome to Christianity. The previous Roman Empire were polytheists who believe in similar gods to the Greeks. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the eastern half used newer Roman ideas to influence reconstruction, though the new empire was vastly different “Although the people of the Byzantine Empire considered themselves Roman, the East was influenced by Greek culture, rather than the Latin of the West. People spoke Greek and wore Greek-styled clothing. The emperors and empresses wore beautiful silk and purple-dyed clothing, with expensive slippers. The Byzantine Empire was influenced by the Hellenistic culture created by the conquests of Alexander the Great. Learning and trade thrived in the Byzantine Empire.” (Giotto). Both religion and the origin of Justinian's Code influenced who had the final …show more content…
The jury was not used to administer the law, rather to interpret the law for individual cases. The emperor, on the other hand, was used to specifically administer the law and enforce. The law also gave the greatest power to the Byzantine emperor and the head Eastern Orthodox religion was also the emperor. The group of jurors was created specially for the concern that there was no final authority, “By the second half of the third century BCE, a new professional group of specialists trained in law, the jurists, emerged to meet this demand. The jurists did not participate in administering the law, but rather focused on interpreting and generating formal opinions on the law, as the pontiffs had done in earlier days.”