Codex Hermogenianus - Reception

Reception

In the fourth and fifth centuries, for those wishing to cite imperial constitutions, the Codex Hermogenianus became a standard work of reference, often cited alongside the Codex Gregorianus, to which its seems to have functioned almost as a supplementary volume. The first explicit quotations of the CH are by the anonymous author of the Mosaicarum et Romanarum Legum Collatio, or Lex Dei as it is sometimes known, probably in the 390s. Most famously, the Gregorian and Hermogenian Codes are cited as a model for the organisation of imperial constitutions since Constantine I in the directive ordering their collection in what was to become the Codex Theodosianus, addressed to the senate of Constantinople on 26 March 429, and drafted by Theodosius II's quaestor Antiochus Chuzon. In the post-Theodosian era both Codes are quoted as sources of imperial constitutions by the mid-fifth-century anonymous author of the Consultatio veteris cuiusdam iurisconsulti (probably based in Gaul); are cited in marginal cross-references by a user of the Fragmenta Vaticana; and in notes from an eastern law school lecture course on Ulpian's Ad Sabinum. In the Justinianic era, the antecessor (law professor) Thalelaeus cited the Hermogenian Code in his commentary on Justinian's Code. In the west, some time before AD 506, both codices were supplemented by a set of clarificatory notes (interpretationes), which accompany their abridged versions in the Breviary of Alaric, and were cited as sources in the Lex Romana Burgundionum attributed to Gundobad, king of the Burgundians (473–516).