But the presence of two diverse legislations, the one imposed by force, the other preserved by custom, the radical change of conditions occasioned by the destruction of the old Roman State and the formation of a new society, could not fail to originate a new life, a new history for the Italian law. In the statute books of our communes we find Roman and Longobard law confronted and almost contending, each modified in turn by the action of the other. But under which of the many forms through which it has passed is the Roman law found among us at the moment when it seemed on the point of being overcome by the Germanic law? Was it in the literary and philosophic form given to it by Justinian, or was it in the _pre_-Justinian form, which, while less systematic, was also less altered by Byzantine ideas, and more in accordance with usage? Savigny roundly asserts that the Pandects on their completion were at once sent into Italy, and that immediately after the power of the Goths had been shattered by the Greeks Justinian hastened to issue the Constitution (534), whereby legal effect was given to them in the land. In consequence of this, he continues, the Pandects were then to be met with in every corner of Italy, where they were at once received with favour, inasmuch as the Justinian law was specially adapted to the requirements of the land. This, he goes on to say, likewise explains why it was that all the earliest Italian commentators or glossators devoted themselves exclusively to the study of the _Corpus iuris_. The reader, however, may easily discover that, on this head, Savigny has pushed his inferences too far. More than once, indeed, he is compelled to put a false interpretation on documents that they may not contradict his theories; and more than once the documents themselves seem to warn him that, even in the Middle Ages, vestiges of a _pre_-Justinian law are to be traced; but he persists still more resolutely in considering all this to be only a survival of antiquated forms. Many new documents have recently been published, and the question again presents itself, always with the same urgency. As a German writer, well versed in the subject, has recently observed, everything tends to show that the history of Roman law in the Middle Ages should be divided into two entirely distinct periods.[372] During the first it endured by force of custom, and accordingly many pre-Justinian formulas survived with it; in the second and much later period the Justinian law prevailed, promoted still further by the literary study of the Pandects undertaken by the Bolognese professors; it was only then that the most ancient formulas wholly disappeared. This view is supported by documentary evidence and harmonises with the character of the times and with the requirements of society, and is confirmed by our old writers and our literary traditions. [Illustration: SUPPOSED PALACE OF THEODORIC, IN RAVENNA. [_To face page 383._]