Word Finder - pandects

definition

Usually in the plural form Pandects: a compendium or digest of writings on Roman law divided in 50 books, compiled in the 6th century C.E. by order of the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I (c. 482–565).

definition

(by extension) Also in the plural form pandects: a comprehensive collection of laws; specifically, the whole body of law of a country; a legal code.

synonyms

• digest

definition

(by extension) A treatise or similar work that is comprehensive as to a particular topic; specifically a manuscript of the entire Bible.

Discussions of the Roman Institute and Pandects were common in the deliberations of the courts.

He left for Rome, where, after a short imprisonment on suspicion of being a spy, he gained the favour of Pope Paul V., through whose influence with Cosimo II., grand duke of Tuscany, he was appointed to the professorship of the Pandects at Pisa.

It has been said that the copy of the Pandects then taken by the Pisans from Amalfi was the first known to them, but in fact they were already acquainted with those laws.

He had also been engaged for some years in the preparation of an edition of the Pandects and of a work on Christian evidences.

Among the scholars of Italian birth, probably the only one in this age who rivalled the Greeks as a public expositor of their own literature was Politian (1454-1494), who lectured on Homer and Aristotle in Florence, translated Herodian, and was specially interested in the Latin authors of the Silver Age and in the text of the Pandects of Justinian.

It is the Latin volume which we now call the Digest (Digesta) or Pandects (IICAEKrat) and which is by far the most precious monument of the legal genius of the Romans, and indeed, whether one regards the intrinsic merits of its substance or the prodigious influence it has exerted and still exerts, the most remarkable law-book that the world has seen.

The pandects were divided into fifty books, each book containing several titles, divided into laws, and the laws into several parts or paragraphs.

A little earlier than the publication of the Digest, or Pandects, there had been published another but much smaller law-book, the Institutes, prepared under Justinian's orders by Tribonian, with Theophilus and Dorotheus, professors of law (see Preface to Institutes).