Breviarium Alariciānum
or simply
Breviārium. Alaric the second, king of the
Visigoths (A.D. 484-507), who reigned over part of Gaul and Spain, commissioned a body of
jurists, no doubt Romans, to make a selection from Roman statute law and from the writings of
Roman jurists, which should form a legal code for his Roman subjects. The code was completed
in A.D. 506, and submitted to a council of bishops and nobles held at Aduris (Aire) in
Gascony, and by them approved. The work was then promulgated by Gojaric, the count of the
palace (
comes palatii), a certified copy forwarded to each
comes, and the use of any other law prohibited. In some of the MSS. it is called
Lex Theodosii, and the name
Breviarium Alaricianum does not
appear until the sixteenth century. The Breviarium contains several sources of Roman law
otherwise almost entirely unknown, especially Paulus and the first five books of the Codex
Theodosianus. There exist besides the MSS. of the Breviarium the MSS. of epitomes made in the
Middle Ages. The standard edition is that by Haenel
(1849). See also Biedenweg,
Commentarii ad Formulas Visigoth. novissime repertas (Berlin,
1856).
