Dorotheos (lawyer)

Dorotheos ( Greek  Δωρόθεος , Latinized Dorotheus ) was a Roman-Greek jurist who lived in the time of Justinian I and died before 542. He was one of the professors (so-called antecessores ) for Roman law at the University of Beirut and one of the compilers of the digests . In fact, except for the first version of the Codex, he was involved in every work of Justinian's Corpus iuris civilis . He bore the title of Quaestor sacri palatii , that of the illustres antecessore , among others . While the former was part of a public office in Constantinople, the latter related to his work as a professor at the University of Beirut, which was completely destroyed by an earthquake on July 16, 551.

The public office was a prerequisite for the higher civil service career. The Tribonian , Theophilos and Dorotheos entrusted with the establishment of the institutions of Justinian had all passed through this office or, in the case of Tribonian, still held it at the time. Justinian wanted a beginner's textbook on his digests, similar to the institutions of Gaius, which arranged the complex material of the digests, even as a compilation, and summarized the basic principles of law for students. The aim of the textbook commissioned at the beginning of 533, completed on November 21 and, like the Digest, entered into force on December 30 under the name Elementa (Constitutio Imperatoriam maiestatem) was to create a modern textbook that was unnecessary or obsolete Omitted laws and opinions, but contained corresponding sources and cross-references where necessary.

In his activity as a professor, Dorotheos, like the other antecessores, made commentaries on Justinian's legal works. There was Justinian's prohibition on commenting and discussing the law (the so-called comment prohibition ) as was customary among the ancient Roman jurists, but this could hardly be strictly adhered to for several reasons. Most fundamentally, the problems were located in the fact that Justinian's Corpus Iuris was published in Latin, but the majority of Eastern Roman lawyers (both students and practitioners) spoke no Latin, only Greek. So there was initially an urgent need for a translation. The literal translation (so-called kata poda ( κατὰ πόδας )) was also allowed by Justinian for this purpose. His aim was to prevent any misinterpretation of the various laws and excessive, confusing discussions in the classical Roman manner. The consequence of this would be the exclusion of legal training by courts, judges and academia. In addition to the two other exceptions (the reference to parallel passages ( παϱατιτλα ) and the creation of short tables of contents, the so-called index ( ϊνδιξ )), only oral interpretation was permitted in the context of the lectures. These lectures followed a strict structure prescribed by Justinian in his Constitutio Omnem . According to this, the index was read out first, then the original Latin text was read and then linguistic and / or content-related difficulties were discussed. These discussions resulted in the scholia , the study and attribution of which to individual authors constitute a large part of scientific research in the field. In any case, for teaching purposes, the Antecessores made their own comments, sometimes more, sometimes less close to the exact wording, which were then dictated in the lectures. Due to the fact that each of the antecessores taught all three Justinian works (Institutiones, Digest, Codex) it is likely that, in addition to their own translations of the original Latin texts, they also made their own commentaries on each area. But this point is controversial.

literature

• Frits Brandsma: Dorotheus and his Digest translation. Groningen 1996, ISBN 90-6980-043-8 , p. 38 f.
• Stephan Meder: Legal history. 2nd edition, Cologne 2005, ISBN 978-3825222994 , p. 99 f.
• HJ Scheltema: Byzantine Law. In: Cambridge Medieval History. 4-2-21 (1967), pp. 55-77.
• The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. 2005.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Frits Brandsma: Dorotheus and his Digest translation. Groningen 1996, ISBN 90-6980-043-8 , p. 6 f.
2. ^ Brandsma: Dorotheus and his Digest translation. P. 5.
3. ↑ George Mousourakis: The historical and Institutional Context of Roman Law. 2003, ISBN 978-0754621089 , pp. 381-410 (here: pp. 390 f.).
4. ^ Stephan Meder: Legal history. 2nd edition, Cologne 2005, ISBN 978-3825222994 , p. 99 f.
5. ↑ Dieter Simon: From the code lessons of Thaleleios. In: Journal of the Savigny Foundation for Legal History. Romance Department. Volume 86, 1969, p. 334.
6. ^ Frits Brandsma: Dorotheus and his Digest translation. Groningen 1996, ISBN 90-6980-043-8 , p. 38 f.