Basilika

The Basilika is a comprehensive Byzantine legal code completed around 892 CE in Constantinople under Emperor Leo VI the Wise, continuing a project his father Basil I had begun during the Macedonian dynasty. Its name, from the Greek for the imperial laws, derives from the word basileus rather than from Basil's own name. The work was compiled to simplify and adapt the Corpus Juris Civilis, the sixth century law code issued under Justinian I, which had become outdated and, because it was written in Latin, increasingly impractical for Greek speaking judges and lawyers in an empire where Latin had largely fallen out of use by the ninth century. By rendering Justinian's Roman legal principles into Greek and incorporating centuries of subsequent Byzantine legal custom and imperial decree, the Basilika preserved continuity with Roman law, what Byzantines called their Romanitas, while making that law usable in daily Byzantine practice.