Institutes (Gaius)

The Institutes (Institutiones; from instituere, 'to establish') is a beginners' textbook on Roman private law written around 161 CE by the classical Roman jurist Gaius. The Institutes are considered to be "by far the most influential elementary-systematic presentation of Roman private law in late antiquity, the Middle Ages and modern times". The content of the textbook was considered to be lost until 1816, when a manuscript of it − probably of the 5th century − was discovered.

The Institutes are divided into four books. The first book considers the legal status of persons (personae), the second and third deal with property rights (res corporales and res incorporales), and the fourth discusses procedural actions (actiones).

Codex Veronensis
An almost complete version of the Institutes was discovered by Barthold Georg Niebuhr in 1816 in the form of a palimpsest in Verona (Austrian Empire [Italy]). Niebuhr had just accepted a post as Prussian ambassador to the Papal States, when he was dispatched to negotiate a Concordat with the Catholic Church. On his way to Rome, he systematically searched for palimpsests in various libraries, and discovered the respective manuscript in the Chapter Library of Verona. Under the visible text of the manuscript, which contained letters of Jerome, Niebuhr found an erased copy of the textbook, copied around 500 AD. The content of the Institutes had until then only been indirectly documented, for example in the Digestes. The manuscript discovered by Niebuhr is known today as the Codex Veronensis.

In a letter to Savigny, Niebuhr at first identified the manuscript as a work of Ulpian, but Savigny immediately suggested that it was, in fact, the famous work of Gaius. Savigny publicised the discovery of the manuscript and his conjecture, that the Institutes had been found, in the 1817 volume of his Zeitschrift für geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft.

"Niebuhr vermuthet auf Ulpian; ich bin [...] geneigt, vielmehr die Institutionen des Gajus zu erwarten, so daß unser erstes Fragment ein einzelnes nicht rescribiertes Blatt derselben Handschrift wäre. Niebuhr assumes Ulpian; [...] I am inclined to rather expect the Institutions of Gajus, so that our first fragment would be a single unrescribed page of the same manuscript."

The reason for Niebuhr's visit to Verona is still a somewhat contentious academic issue: Some scholars argue that Niebuhr was on a confidential mission to obtain the already discovered manuscript, while many others see a fortunate coincidence ("Glücksstern").

Egyptian fragments
The authenticity of the text of the Codex Veronensis was later confirmed by the discovery of further fragments of the Institutes: In 1927, a fragment of the Institutes was found in Oxyrhynchus on papyrus scrolls, which are believed to have been written between about 170 and 230 CE (P.Oxy.XVII 2103). A further fragment was located in 1933 and sold in Cairo (PSI XI, 1182) The seller claimed that the fragment stemmed from Antinoöpolis. A comparison of the fragment with the Codex Veronensis again established the firm consistency of the Institutes.

Indirect transmission
The work of Gaius has also been indirectly handed down to modern times, as it was frequently used as a model for various legal writings during the 5th and 6th centuries. The so-called Augustodunensian manuscript provides relatively little insight into the text. The late antique manuscripts of the Mosaicarum et Romanarum legum collatio and the so-called Epitome Gai (contained as part 3 [liber Gaii] of the Lex Romana Visigothorum of Alaric II) attained greater importance for research. Later known as components of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the influences of Gaius also found their way into the Digesta and the Institutiones Iustiniani.

Significance
The Institutes were produced around 161 CE under Roman emperor Antoninus Pius, and are considered to be "by far the most influential elementary-systematic presentation of Roman private law in late antiquity, the Middle Ages and modern times". The Institutes were a didactic work. Some consider Gaius and his Institutes to be the "true architect of Justinian's collection" and to Justinian himself he was "Gaius noster" ("our Gaius").

The Institutes are also distinguished by the fact that they are the only almost completely preserved work of classical Roman jurisprudence. Before the discovery of the Codex Veronensis by Niebuhr, knowledge about classical Roman jurisprudence was only indirect through Justinian's compilation and classical Roman civil procedure had been entirely unknown.

Its didactic intent has been treated positively because of its greater apparent comprehensibility or 'simplicity'. as a kind of clarification or systematization. In addition, Gaius' legal thinking is said to be "much closer to the dogmatic tradition of continental [European] jurisprudence (i.e. the striving for systems, the effort to form concepts and to classify, and the tendency towards abstraction) than the method of any other ancient jurist".

Authorship
The extent to which the Institutes have been written by Gaius alone, and what part of them, if any, are, e.g. glosses or interpolations, is still only subject to scholarly speculation. However, scholars agree on the enormous significance of the (re-)discovery of the Institutes since "numerous legal institutions that the Justinianic commission left unmentioned as obsolete are known only through the new find".

Structure of the Institutes
The Institutes are divided into a scheme of personal rights and family law (personae), law concerning things (res) and procedural law (actiones). In personal and family law, a distinction is made between freemen and slaves. Property law is divided into corporeal things (res corporales) and incorporeal things (res incorporales) as well as inheritance law (hereditas), income law (usus fructus) and the law of obligations (obligationes). Finally, procedural law distinguishes between actiones in rem and obligatory actiones in personam. Furthermore, obligations are divided into contractual (ex contractu) and tortious obligations (ex delicto).

Influence on later civil codes
The Institutional scheme of Gaius divides private law into personae, res and actiones. This classification, probably borrowed from the Hellenistic textbook pattern, replaced and levelled previous structures and became a basic model followed by many modern civil law systems. For example, the Austrian Allgemeines bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (ABGB) is still structured according to the institutional system, in contrast to the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB), which follows the pandectistic system. Furthermore, the structure of the Institutes – personae, res and actiones – were a model for the Castilian Siete Partidas, the French Code Napoléon and even the Corpus Juris Canonici.

Citing the Institutes
In academic literature the Institutes are sometimes cited as "Gai. 1,1" (referring to book 1, section 1 of the Institutes), while other authors prefer "Gai. inst. 4,44" (referring to book 4, section 44 of the Institutes). The Bluebook recommends the following citation style: "G. Inst. 1.144" (referring to book 1, section 144 of the Institutes).

Editions
Multiple editions of the Institutes have been published since the discovery of the Codex Veronensis, beginning with the editio princeps of Johann Friedrich Ludwig Göschen (Berlin, 1820). The author of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica recommends the 1885 edition by Edward Poste, which includes an English translation. The editio maior of the Institutes is, however, still in the process of being published, It is edited by Martin David and Hein L. W. Nelson (Gai Institutionum commentarii quattuor: 1954, 1960, 1968 [books 1 and 2]) and Hein L. W. Nelson and Ulrich Manthe (Gai Institutiones: 1992, 1999, 2007 [book 3]).

Other editions include one by Emil Seckel and Bernhard Kübler (8th edition, Leipzig, 1939) and Francis de Zulueta, which contains Zulueta's own Latin text with an English translation and commentary (Oxford, 1946).
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