Selection and Presentation of Texts in Early Medieval Canon Law Collections: Approaching the Codex Remensis (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Phill. 1743)*

Abstract

For anyone interested in the period of late antiquity it seems all too familiar that law, legal texts and legal knowledge are subject to highly complex processes of selecting materials, extracting individual passages, interpreting them and adding commentaries. Both the Theodosian Code and the Justinianic codification projects provide ample evidence of how collecting individual decrees, jurists’ commentaries and general regulations and assembling them within one codex allowed for the systematization of the material contained therein. At the same time, a codification of law would lead to a suppression of alternative norms.1 Much of this work was carried out by jurists commissioned by the state or indeed the ruler. This still holds true for the first official redaction of the Theodosian Code with its novels and additions, the so-called Breviarium Alaricianum or Lex Romana Visigothorum, compiled under the Visigothic King Alaric II in Southwestern Gaul shortly after 500.2 However, when tracing the numerous compilations and epitomes that were produced on the basis of the Theodosian Code and Alaric’s breviary in the post-Roman West between the 6 and 8 centuries (such as the Epitome Aegidii, the Epitome Parisina or the Epitome