Whilst a veritable decline in proficiency in Greek can be observed in the western parts of Europe during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the exact opposite trend can be found in the Eastern Roman Empire of the Byzantines. Although Latin – the language of the iurisconsulti and Justinian’s own mother tongue – took precedence with the epoch-making codification of the Corpus Iuris Civilis under Emperor Justinian in the first half of the sixth century, he was nevertheless unable to counteract this trend. Consequently, the new imperial laws (Novellae) were initially drafted bilingually in Greek and Latin, but later exclusively in Greek. The secondary literature of the antecessores – that is, the jurists involved in the CIC – was also written primarily in Greek, as had been the custom in Constantinople and throughout the Eastern Roman Empire for centuries. It is therefore only logical that, when the emperors of the Macedonian Renaissance proclaimed the ἀνακάθαρσις των νόμων, this entailed a translatio into Greek of the very heart of Roman law: the Digests/Pandects.

In my doctoral thesis, I will examine the Byzantine adaptation of the CIC, the Basilica from the early 9th century, as well as the associated old and new scholia. Despite a new 20th-century edition produced by a research group in Groningen, the Netherlands, led by Herman Jan Scheltema, the study of Byzantine law continues to lead a shadowy existence. Through my research on the subject of oath law, I aim to investigate how classical Roman law evolved under the Eastern Roman Byzantines after Justinian’s great codification, whether and where changes occurred, and which aspects of autonomy can be identified. The interdisciplinary framework of the Research Training Group is ideally suited to this, as my chosen topic of oath also provides an opportunity to religious digressions.