Breviary of Alaric

The Breviary of Alaric, also called the Breviarium Alaricianum or Lex Romana Visigothorum, is a compilation of Roman law prepared by Roman jurists and issued in the name of Alaric II, King of the Visigoths, by the referendary Anianus. It was promulgated on 2 February 506, with the approval of Alaric's bishops and nobles, in the twenty second year of his reign. It was not intended for the Visigothic nobility, who lived under their own separate legal code, but for the Hispano-Roman and Gallo-Roman populations living under Visigothic rule south of the Loire, and its sixteenth book extended coverage to the Catholic Church, keeping it distinct from the separate legal authority of the Arian Visigothic clergy. The compilation combines imperial decrees, leges, with juridical writings, jura, drawing on the Theodosian Code, the works of classical jurists such as Gaius and Julius Paulus, and the imperial novels of several late Roman emperors.