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 p446  Edictum Theodorici​a

Article by George Long, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College
on p446 of

William Smith, D.C.L., LL.D.:
A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, John Murray, London, 1875.

EDICTUM THEODORICI. This is the first collection of law that was made after the downfall of the Roman power in Italy. It was promulgated by Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, at Rome, in the year A.D. 500. It consists of 154 chapters, in which we recognise parts taken from the Code and Novellae of Theodosius, from the Codices Gregorianus and Hermogenianus, and the Sententiae of Paulus. The Edict was, doubtless, drawn up by Roman writers, but the original sources are more disfigured and altered than in any other compilation. This collection of law was intended to apply both to the Goths (Barbari) and the Romans, so far as its provisions went; but when it made no alteration in the Gothic law, that law was still to be in force for the Barbari; and the Roman law was still to prevail for the Romans in those cases to which the Edictum was not applicable. Athalarich, the grandson of Theodoric, or rather Amalasuntha, the mother of Athalarich, who was a minor, completed this Edictum by a new one; but after Narses had again united Italy to the dominion of Justinian, the legislation of Justinian was established in Italy (A.D. 554), and the Edictum of Theodoric had no longer authority. The opinion of modern writers as to the design and object of the Edictum of Theodoric is by no means uniform. There is an edition of this Edictum by G. F. Rhon, Halle, 1816, 4to. (Savigny, Geschichte des R. R. &c.; Böcking, Instit. I.89.)

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Thayer's Note:

a The actual text of the Edict of Theodoric is online at Lassard and Koptev's Roman Law Library; and a much more detailed scholar­ly discussion is provided by Thomas Hodgkin, "The Edictum Theodorici Regis", in Italy and Her Invaders, III.309‑314.

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