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Lorena Atzeri, GESTA SENATUS ROMANI DE THEODOSIANO PUBLICANDO: IL CODICE TEODOSIANO E LA SUA DIFFUSIONE UFFICIALE IN OCCIDENTE Berlin: Duncker und Humblot (www.duncker-humblot.de), Freiburger rechtsgeschichtliche Abhandlungen, neue Folge, Band 58, 2008. 359 pp. ISBN 9783428120697. €79.80.

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Pages172-173
Published date01 January 2010
Date01 January 2010
DOI10.3366/E1364980909001176

The genesis of Dr Atzeri's important study lies in her doctoral thesis, a product of La Sapienza in Rome that also benefited particularly from a year's research at the Institut für Rechtsgeschichte at Freiburg, in whose series it has appeared. It is the third major monograph on the Theodosian Code to appear this decade, though, in place of the more global treatments of John Matthews’ Laying Down the Law (2000) and Boudewijn Sirks’ The Theodosian Code: A Study (2007), Atzeri focuses in depth on one feature: the proceedings of the senate (gesta senatus), in which the presentation of the Code to the senate at Rome is famously greeted by a long series of acclamations, and an associated imperial constitution (the so-called C. de constitutionariis) that is found uniquely in a manuscript of the Ambrosian Library in Milan. These texts, along with Theodosius II's Novel 1, which is transmitted elsewhere but is also present in this manuscript, together provide complementary information on the process of publication and dissemination of the Code in the eastern and western halves of the Empire. Ever since their discovery in 1820 the gesta have been included by editors of the Code as prefatory material and as such provide an engaging introduction to the circumstances of the Code's publication. As Atzeri emphasises, however, the resemblance of these editions in this respect to the original official version of the Code is not to be taken for granted. For the Ambrosian version is a curious hybrid, the scribe (or his exemplar) having grafted the gesta senatus and a copy of NTh 1 on to a copy not of the full Theodosian Code but of its Visigothic Breviary, albeit one augmented with material reintroduced from a full Code.

Atzeri's study comprises two distinct parts. The first chapter examines the testimony of the Ambrosian manuscript (C 29 P[ars] Inf[erior]). This represents a major contribution in itself, since Atzeri provides by far the most detailed codicological and palaeographical description of the artefact so far published, correcting and improving on her predecessors in numerous respects. The codex is a composite, the Theodosian material being found in the latter part, along with a copy of Justinian's Institutes. This legal miscellany was joined at some point to a copy of various Ciceronian speeches, written in Italy in the ninth or tenth century. In contrast the legal section is somewhat later in date, written in a Caroline minuscule of the second half of the twelfth...

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