Tribonianus

Flavius ​​Tribonianus (* in Pamphylia ; † 542 ) was an Eastern Roman civil servant and lawyer. His date of birth is unknown. He came from Pamphylia in Asia Minor and was perhaps pagan .

Tribonian was the most important lawyer of the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian and probably the last great legal scholar of antiquity . He was considered to be highly educated, fluent in Latin and Greek, and from 529 to 532 and from 535 to 542 he was responsible for the judiciary of the empire as an imperial quaestor . It is largely thanks to his skills that the monumental work of the later so-called Corpus Iuris Civilis (summary of Roman law ) could be completed in a very short time. It is Tribonian's merit that the Corpus Iuris was able to play such a prominent role well into modern times.

Tribonian held the high office of quaestor sacri palatii . As a result of the Nika uprising , he had to be recalled in January 532, which apparently had numerous enemies; However, he took up his post again a little later and was in charge of the drafting of the digests and institutions , and the contemporary novellas . In the meantime, Tribonian also held the important office of magister officiorum . Prokop described him as greedy for money, which may well be true without, however, questioning his professional qualifications and education. According to Prokop, Tribonian was also suspected of secretly adhering to paganism. It is difficult to decide whether this was an assumption that envious people put into circulation. Tribonian died in 542, probably from the consequences of the plague epidemic at the time . His successor as quaestor sacri palatii was Junillus Africanus .

literature

• Tony Honoré : Tribonian. London 1978.
• John Martindale: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire IIIb . Cambridge 1992, pp. 1335-1339.