Law school of Berytus

As the guarantor of justice, the Roman emperor was expected to devote substantial amounts of time to judicial matters. He was the chief magistrate whose major prerogative (jus) was the ordering of all public affairs, for which he could demand assistance from anyone at any time.[1]

With legal appeals, petitions from subjects and judicial queries of magistrates and governors, the emperors were careful to consult with the jurists (iuris consulti), who were usually secretaries drafted from the equestrian order. From the reign of Augustus (27 BC–AD 14), jurists began compiling organized repositories of imperial edicts (constitutiones), and legal scholarship became an imperially sponsored function of administration. Every new judicial decision was founded on archived legal precedents and earlier deliberations. The edict repositories and the imperially sponsored legal scholarship gave rise to the earliest law school system of the Western world, aimed specifically at training professional jurists.[1]

During the reign of Augustus, Beirut was established under the name Colonia Iulia Augusta Felix Berytus[lower-alpha 1][2](and granted the status of Ius Italicum) as a colony for Battle of Actium veterans from the fifth Macedonian and the third Gallic legions. It was chosen as a regional center instead of the more prominent Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon, which had a history of belligerence against Rome.[3][4]

St. George's Cathedral sits on the axis of Beirut's ancient Cardo Maximus. The law school used to be located next to the Byzantine Anastasis church, a precursor of the cathedral.

Beirut was first mentioned in writing as a major center for the study of law in the 239 works of Gregory Thaumaturgus, the bishop of Neo-Caesarea.[5][6][7] Other early written sources do not mention when the law school was established, and the date is much debated among modern historians and scholars. Edward Gibbon suggested its founding may have been directed by locally born Emperor Alexander Severus, who reigned during AD 222–235;[8] this hypothesis had been supported by Gilles Ménage, a late 17th-century French scholar. Italian jurist Scipione Gentili, however, attributed the school's foundation to Augustus, while 19th-century German theologian Karl Hase advocated its establishment shortly after the victory at Actium (31 BC).[9] Adolf Friedrich Rudorff dated it to the reign of Hadrian,[10] while Franz Peter Bremer suggested that it opened around 200, based on Thaumaturgus.[11]

Theodor Mommsen linked the establishment of the law school in Beirut with the need for jurists, since the city was chosen to serve as a repository for Roman imperial edicts concerning the eastern provinces. After arriving in Beirut, these were translated into Greek, published and archived. This function was first recorded in 196 AD, the date of the earliest constitutions contained in the Gregorian Codex, but the city is thought to have served as a repository since earlier times.[12][13] The proximity of the repository to the law school allowed the Beiruti jurists to consult archived documents and for students to learn of the most recent imperial decrees—an advantage that the law schools of Caesarea Maritima and Alexandria lacked.[14]

The 3rd-century emperors Diocletian and Maximian issued constitutions exempting the students of the law school of Beirut from compulsory service in their hometowns.[15][16] In the 4th century, the Greek rhetorician Libanius reported that the school attracted young students from affluent families and deplored the school's instructional use of Latin, which was gradually abandoned in favor of Greek in the course of the century.[17][18][19][20] By the 5th century, Beirut had established its leading position and repute among the Empire's law schools; its teachers were highly regarded and played a chief role in the development of legal learning in the East to the point that they were dubbed “ecumenical masters”.[21][21] From 425, the law school of Constantinople became a rival center of law study and was the only school, along with Beirut's, to be maintained after Justinian I closed those of Alexandria, Caesarea Maritima and {{Athens in 529[21] because their teachings contradicted with Christian faith.[22]

On July 9, 551, the Phoenician coastal cities were devastated by a high-magnitude earthquake. In Beirut the earthquake was followed by a tsunami and a fire that obliterated the city. In the aftermath, 30,000 people lost their lives, including many students from abroad. Justinian allocated funds to rebuild Beirut, and the law school was temporarily moved to the southern Phoenician city of Sidon, pending reconstruction; the best teachers, however, moved to Constantinople. Misfortune hit Beirut again in 560 AD when a massive fire ravaged the recovering city. The law school was not reopened, and all prospect for its return was abandoned with the Arab conquest in 635 AD.[23][24]

The study course at the law school of Beirut was restricted to Roman law; it did not cover the local laws of the province of Phoenicia.[25] Ancient texts provide an idea of the curriculum, the teaching method, the course languages and its duration.

Curriculum

Justinian I, the emperor who instigated the rewriting of Roman law

Little is known about the Beirut law school's curriculum before the 5th century. The Scholia Sinaitica and the Scholia to the Basilika provide glimpses of the school's teaching method, comparable to the method of rhetoric schools at the time. The lecturer would discuss and analyse legal texts by adding his own comments, which included references to analogous passages from imperial constitutions or from the works of prominent classical Roman jurists such as Ulpian. He would then formulate the general legal principles and use these to resolve legal problems inspired from actual, practical cases. This method differed from the scheme of classical times in which the student had to master the law basics before engaging in case studies.[27][28][29]

Jurisprudence was taught in Latin, even in the law schools of the East, but toward the end of the fourth and the beginning of the 5th century, Latin was supplanted by Greek at Beirut,[17][27] which was the long-established lingua franca of the eastern territories of the Roman Empire.[30] A similar shift probably occurred at the school of Constantinople at about the same time.[17][27]

The Omnem constitution at the beginning of the Digest is the only source of information about the existing study system in the 5th century until the Justinian reforms of 533. The old program was a four-year course to be completed before the age of 25. The courses were based on the works of Gaius, Ulpian, Papinian and Paulus. Students attended lectures for three years and spent the fourth year in private study of Paulus' Responsa; they had the option to stay for a fifth year to study imperial constitutions. The students of each year were distinguished by special nicknames: first year, Dupondii; second, Edictales; third, Papinianistae; fourth, Lytae.[31][32]

Justinian's Omnem constitution fixed the duration of the legal course in the schools of Beirut and Constantinople at five years.[33][34] The courses consisted of lectures and self-study using materials advanced in his Corpus Juris Civilis, namely the Institutiones (Institutes), Digesta (Digest) and Codex (Code).[33][34] First-year students were lectured on the Institutes and on the first part of the Digest;[lower-alpha 2] second-year students were taught the greater part of the Digest,[lower-alpha 3] and third-year students had to learn various texts from Papinian and the leges singulares.[lower-alpha 4] There were no lectures during the course's fourth year but the pupils studied the remainder of the Digest.[lower-alpha 5] Nicknames were still given according to the year of study, but Justinian changed the name of first-year students from the frivolous Dupondii (which means "two pennies") to Iustiniani novi and dubbed fifth-year students Prolytae.[35][36]At the end of the course, graduands were given certificates allowing them to work as court advocates or in the imperial civil service.[28]

Historically, Roman stationes or auditoria, where teaching was done, stood next to public libraries housed in temples. This arrangement was copied in the Roman colony at Beirut. The first mention of the school's premises dates to 350,[63] but the description does not specify its location. In the 5th century, Zacharias Rhetor reported that the school stood next to the "Temple of God", the description of which permitted its identification with the Byzantine Anastasis cathedral.[64]

At the turn of the 20th century, archaeological excavations in the souq between the Saint George Greek Orthodox Cathedral and Saint George Cathedral of the Maronites unearthed a funerary stele etched with an epitaph to a man named Patricius, "whose career was consecrated for the study of law".[65] The epitaph was identified as being dedicated to the famous 5th-century law school professor.[66] In 1994, archaeological diggings underneath the Saint George Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Beirut Central District's Nejmeh Square identified structural elements of the Anastasis cathedral, but they were restricted to an area of 316 square metres (3,400 sq ft) and failed to unearth the interred school.[61][67][68]

The flag of Beirut features an open book with the motto "Berytus Nutrix Legum" (Beirut, Mother of Laws) on one side and its Arabic translation "بيروت أم الشرائع " on the other.

The law school of Beirut supplied the Roman Empire, especially its eastern provinces, with lawyers and magistrates for three centuries until the school's destruction. The influx of students was abundant and persistent because of the affluence, honor and secured employment offered by the profession.[69] A degree in law became highly sought following an edict issued in 460 by Emperor Leo I. The edict ordered that candidates for the bar of the Eastern praetorian prefecture had to produce certificates of proficiency from the law teachers who instructed them at one of the recognized law schools of the Empire.[28][70]

The in-depth studies of the classical legal works in Beirut, and later in Constantinople, conferred an unprecedented scientific dimension to jurisprudence; this academic movement gave rise to the minds behind Justinian's legal reforms. As a result of the new understanding of the classical legal texts, the imperial laws of the late 5th and early 6th centuries were clearer and more coherent than those of the early Postclassical Era, according to legal historian George Mousourakis and other scholars.[71][72][73][74]

The school garnered accolades throughout its existence and was bestowed with the title Berytus Nutrix Legum (Beirut, Mother of Laws) by Eunapius, Libanius, Zacharias Rhetor and finally by Emperor Justinian.[62] His 533 Omnem constitution read:

These three works which we have composed we desire should be put in their hands in royal cities as well as in the most fair city of Berytus, which may well be styled the nursing mother of law, as indeed previous Emperors have commanded, but in no other places which did not enjoy the same privilege in old times, as we have heard that even in the brilliant city of Alexandria, and in Caesarea and others, there have been ignorant men who, instead of doing their duty, conveyed spurious lessons to their pupils, and such as these we desire to make desist from that attempt by laying down the above limits, so that, if they should hereafter be guilty of such conduct and carry on their duties outside the royal cities and the metropolis Berytus, they may be punished by a fine of ten pounds of gold and be expelled from the city in which instead of teaching the law they transgress the law.[50]

From the 3rd century, the school tolerated Christian teachings, producing a number of students who would become influential church leaders and bishops, such as Pamphilus of Caesarea, Severus of Antioch and Aphian. Under Cyrillus, the first of the Ecumenical Masters, the Christian faith was consolidated as an integral element of the legal training.[75][76]

Two professors from the law school of Beirut, Dorotheus and Anatolius, had such a repute for their wisdom and knowledge that they were especially praised by Justinian in the opening of his Tanta constitution. The emperor summoned both professors to assist his minister Tribonian in compiling the Codex of Justinian,[50] the Empire's body of civil laws issued between 529 and 534. The Tanta passage reads:

Dorotheus, an illustrious man, of great eloquence and quæstorian rank, whom, when he was engaged in delivering the law to students in the most brilliant city of Berytus, we, moved by his great reputation and renown, summoned to our presence and made to share in the work in question; again, Anatolius, an illustrious person, a magistrate, who, like the last, was invited to this work when acting as an exponent of law at Berytus, a man who came of an ancient stock, as both his father Leontius and his grandfather Eudoxius left behind them an excellent report in respect of legal learning...[77]

For centuries following its compilation, the work of Justinian's commission was studied and incorporated into the legal systems of different nations and has profoundly impacted the Byzantine law and the Western legal tradition.[78] Peter Stein asserts that the texts of ancient Roman law have constituted "a kind of legal supermarket, in which lawyers of different periods have found what they needed at the time."[79]

Title page of a late 16th-century edition of the Digesta, part of Emperor Justinian I's Corpus Juris Civilis

The Corpus Juris Civilis remained the basis of Byzantine law until the publication of the Ecloga legum in 741 by Emperor Leo III and his son and co-regent Constantine V. The Ecloga was a shortened and more philanthropic version of the Codex of Justinian, whose dispositions were more in tune with Christian values. It was written in Greek, since Latin had fallen into disuse, and its provisions continued to be applied in later centuries in the neighboring Balkan and Asia Minor regions, with surviving translations in Slavic, Armenian and Arabic.[80][81][82] Emperor Basil I, who ruled in the 9th century, issued the Prochiron and the Epanagoge, which were legal compilations invalidating parts of the Ecloga and restoring the Justinian laws.[83][84] The Prochiron served as the basis for the legal writings of the 12th-century first archbishop of Serbia, Saint Sava. His legal compilation was intended for the Serbian church but the influential work was adopted as the basic constitution for the Bulgarian and Russian orthodox churches.[85] Around 900, Emperor Leo VI commissioned the Basilica, a Greek rewriting of the Justinian laws that is considered the ancestor of modern Greece's law until the enactment of the Code of 1940.[86]

The Codex of Justinian also had a great influence on Western law, particularly on the legal history and tradition of western Europe and its American colonies. In Italy, a single complete copy of the Justinian Digest survived and lay forgotten until its rediscovery in 1070.[87] In 1088, Irnerius, a jurist and teacher of the liberal arts in Bologna, was the first to teach the newly recovered Digest and the rest of Justinian's books. He and his successors explained the Roman laws to their students by means of glosses or explanatory notes written on the edges or between the text lines. The Roman legal concepts resulting from the studies of these "glossators" spread to the universities and law courts of Europe.[88] The Roman law revival that started in Italy, during the Middle Ages, was taken up by France, the Netherlands and Germany in later centuries.[89] The enactment of the German Civil Code in 1900 put an end to the application of extant forms of law derived from the Justinian codes in most European states.[90]

The reputation of Beirut as "mother of laws" reemerged in modern times.[75] In 1913, Paul Huvelin, the first dean of the newly established Université Saint-Joseph's Faculty of Law, dedicated the inaugural speech to the classical law school of Beirut in an effort to confer legitimacy to the new academy.[91] The epithet Berytus Nutrix Legum is used as a motto and as part of the emblem of the Beirut Bar Association, founded in 1919.[75] It is also featured in the seal and flag of the Municipality of Beirut.[92]

• 5th century in Lebanon

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