Digest (Roman law)

The Digest, also known as the Pandects, is a compendium of juristic writings on Roman law compiled by order of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I between 530 and 533 AD, comprising fifty books. It formed one part of Justinian's reduction and codification of Roman law, alongside a collection of statutes, the Codex, which survives in a second edition of 534, and an introductory textbook, the Institutes; Justinian gave all three the force of law, and in the sixteenth century the whole work came to be known as the Corpus Juris Civilis. The codification was intended to be complete, but Justinian went on to pass further legislation, later collected separately as the Novellae Constitutiones.