Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The 'cleansing of the ancient laws' under Basil I and Leo VI; 2. Gift-giving and patronage in Middle Byzantine courts; 3. Paradigms of justice and jurisprudence; 4. The function of 'private' law collections in the Byzantine Empire and neighboring cultures; 5. Law and heresy in the edicts of the Patriarch Alexios Stoudites; 6. Legal education and the law school of Constantinople; Conclusions; Appendix: translation of the Novella constitutio.

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An accessible and innovative introductory study of Byzantine law in its wider societal context under the Macedonian dynasty.

About the Author

Zachary Chitwood is a Research and Teaching Associate in Byzantine Studies at Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Germany. He has published on Byzantine law, including the legal status of Byzantine Jews, and foundations/endowments. His scholarship has appeared in the journals Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies and Viator, as well as in The Late Antique World of Early Islam (edited by Robert G. Hoyland, 2015) and the first two of the planned three volumes of the Enzyklopädie des Stiftungswesens in mittelalterlichen Gesellschaften (2014, 2016).

Reviews

'This is a most welcome book … which I consider to be a successful integration of social and legal history.' Bernard H. Stolte, Speculum