Basilika

The Basilika was a collection of laws completed c. 892 advertising in Constantinople by profile of the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI the Wise during the Macedonian dynasty. This was a continuation of the efforts of his father, Basil I, to simplify and adapt the Emperor Justinian I's Corpus Juris Civilis code of law issued between 529 together with 534 which had become outdated. The term "Basilika" comes from Greek: Τὰ Βασιλικά meaning "Imperial Laws" and not from the Emperor Basil's name, which though shares the etymology "imperial".

The sixty books of the Basilika make had a profound affect on the scholarship of the Byzantine Empire because they preserved many legal documents. Within the sixty books of law, in addition to the preservation of Justinian's Codex, new legal customs were also intended which had evolved in the centuries. It also included working of law initiated by Basil I, including the Prochiron a handbook of civil laws and customs which excluded those no longer in usage and the Epanagoge an expanded Prochiron which subject an first cut and abstract as well as many decrees of the Iconoclast Emperors. However, the script still followed the tradition of the Corpus Juris, beginning with ecclesiastical law, control of law, procedure, private law, administrative law, and criminal law.

It greatly differed however in its usage of commentaries scholia, which were pieces of juristic working from the sixth and seventh centuries as alive as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Previously, Justinian I had outlawed commentary on his variety of laws, creating the scholia on the Basilika unique. The actual cut of the books themselves reorganize greatly. Some are represented in one manuscript, which may or may non contain scholia or full parts of other juristic works which hit been mentioned. Likewise, some books have been lost entirely.