The codification of Justinian began with the promulgation of the _Codex_ in 529. That was intended to be a compilation of the constitutions contained in the previous codes and still in force, as well as those which had been decreed since the time of Theodosius. The compilers received authority to omit, abbreviate, and supplement. The _Codex_ was revised and promulgated anew in 534. The constitutions which were decreed during the remainder of Justinian’s long reign were collected after his death and published as _Novellae_. So far there was nothing radically novel. But, under Justinian, life and art seemed to have revived in the East; and Tribonian, with the others who assisted in these labours, had larger views of legal reform and jurisprudential conservation than the men who worked for Theodosius. Justinian and his coadjutors had also serious plans for improving the teaching of the law, in the furtherance of which the famous little book of _Institutes_ was composed after the model, and to some extent in the words, of the _Institutes_ of Gaius. It was published in 533. The great labour, however, which Justinian and his lawyers were as by Providence inspired to achieve was the encyclopaedic codification of the jurisprudential law. Part of the emperor’s high-sounding command runs thus: “We therefore command you to read and sift out from the books pertaining to the _jus Romanum_ composed by the ancient learned jurists (_antiqui prudentes_) to whom the most sacred emperors granted authority to indite and interpret the laws, so that the material may all be taken from these writers, and incongruity avoided--for others have written books which have been neither used nor recognized. When by the favour of the Deity this material shall have been collected, it should be reared with toil most beautiful, and consecrated as the own and most holy temple of justice, and the whole law (_totum jus_) should be arranged in fifty books under specific titles.”[358] The language of the ancient jurists was to be preserved even critically, that is to say, the compilers were directed to emend apparent errors and restore what seemed “verum et optimum et quasi ab initio scriptum.” It was not the least of the providential mercies connected with the compilation of this great body of jurisprudential law, that Justinian and his commission did not abandon the phrasing of the old jurisconsults, and restate their opinions in such language as we have a sample of in the constitution from which the above extract is taken. This jurisprudential part of Justinian’s Codification was named the _Digest_ or _Pandects_.[359]