THIS consists of, 1. The institutes, which contain the elements or first principles of the Roman law, in four books. 2. The digests, or pandects, in fifty books, containing the opinions and writings of eminent lawyers, digested in a systematical method. 3. A new code, or collection of imperial constitutions, the lapse of a whole century having rendered the former code, of Theodosius, imperfect. 4. The novels, or new constitutions, posterior in time to the other books, and amounting to a supplement to the code; containing new decrees of successive emperors, as new questions happened to arise. These form the body of Roman law, or _corpus juris civilis_, as published about the time of Justinian: which however fell soon into neglect and oblivion, till about the year 1130, when a copy of the digests was found at Amalfi in Italy; which accident, concurring with the policy of the Romish ecclesiastics[w], suddenly gave new vogue and authority to the civil law, introduced it into several nations, and occasioned that mighty inundation of voluminous comments, with which this system of law, more than any other, is now loaded. [Footnote w: See Sec. 1. pag. 18.] THE canon law is a body of Roman ecclesiastical law, relative to such matters as that church either has, or pretends to have, the proper jurisdiction over. This is compiled from the opinions of the antient Latin fathers, the decrees of general councils, the decretal epistles and bulles of the holy see. All which lay in the same disorder and confusion as the Roman civil law, till about the year 1151, one Gratian an Italian monk, animated by the discovery of Justinian's pandects at Amalfi, reduced them into some method in three books, which he entitled _concordia discordantium canonum_, but which are generally known by the name of _decretum Gratiani_. These reached as low as the time of pope Alexander III. The subsequent papal decrees, to the pontificate of Gregory IX, were published in much the same method under the auspices of that pope, about the year 1230, in five books entitled _decretalia Gregorii noni_. A sixth book was added by Boniface VIII, about the year 1298, which is called _sextus decretalium_. The Clementine constitutions, or decrees of Clement V, were in like manner authenticated in 1317 by his successor John XXII; who also published twenty constitutions of his own, called the _extravagantes Joannis_: all which in some measure answer to the novels of the civil law. To these have been since added some decrees of later popes in five books, called _extravagantes communes_. And all these together, Gratian's decree, Gregory's decretals, the sixth decretal, the Clementine constitutions, and the extravagants of John and his successors, form the _corpus juris canonici_, or body of the Roman canon law.