529 to 534 · Early law
Corpus Juris Civilis (Justinian's Code)
Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire
The Emperor Justinian ordered Roman law to be gathered and organised into the Code, the Digest, the Institutes and later laws.
Why it matters
When European scholars rediscovered it in the Middle Ages, it became the root of the civil-law tradition. Almost every civil code since draws on it, directly or indirectly.
Built on
No earlier text on this timeline is a documented model for it.
Went on to shape
1804
French Civil Code (Napoleonic Code)
France
drew on Roman law for its structure and many rules
1811
Austrian General Civil Code (ABGB)
Austria
built on Roman law and natural-law ideas
1855 (in force 1857)
Chilean Civil Code (Andrés Bello)
Chile
built on Roman-law foundations
1896 (in force 1900)
German Civil Code (BGB)
Germany
built on the 19th-century scholarship of Roman law (the 'pandectists')
Counting texts that borrowed from the texts that borrowed from this one, 28 later texts on this timeline trace back to it.
TheLawToKnow Tools’s timeline lists links of influence only where the borrowing is widely documented. Historians sometimes disagree about how much one text shaped another. It is an educational overview, not legal advice.
