imiversal empire. But it received essential modi- fication through the orientalizing change in the character of the empire from the time of Constantino, through the infusion of various Germanic elements, through the influence of the law of Moses, and, in its best points, through the spirit of Christianity. The church it fully recognizes as a legitimate institution and of divine authority, and several of its laws were enacted at the direct instance of bishops. So the " Common Law," the unwritten traditional law of England and America, though descending from the Anglo-Saxon times, therefore from heathen Germandom, has ripened under the influence of Chris- tianity and the church, and betrays this influence even far more plainly than the Roman code, especially in all that re- gards the individual and personal rights and liberties of man. § 19. Elevation of Woman and the FarniUy. The benign effect of Christianity on legislation in the Grseco- Roman empire is especially noticeable in the following points : uanees iu 765 titles, in chronological order. To these is added (4) a later Appendix : , Novella co7istitutlo7ies {veapal Stard^eis), Or simply Novellce (a barbarism) ; that is, 168 decrees of Justinian, subsequently collected from the 1st January, 535, to his death in 565, mostly in Greeli, or in both Greek and Latin. Excepting some of the novels of Justinian, the codex was composed in the Latin language, which Justinian and Tribonianus understood ; but afterward, as this tongue died out in the East, it was translated into Greek, and sanctioned in this form by the emperor Phocas in 600. The emperor Basil the Macedonian in 876 caused a Greek abstract {-Kpox^ipov twv v6,uo>v) to be prepared, which, under the name of the Basilicce, gradually supplanted the book of Justinian in the Byzantine empire. The Pandects have narrowly es- caped destruction. Most of the editions and manuscripts of the west (not all, as Gibbon says) are taken from the Codex Florentinus, which was transcribed in the beginning of the seventh century at Constantinople, and afterward carried by the vissitudes of war and trade to Amalfi, to Pisa, and in 1411 to Florence. ' Called Corpus juris Romani or C. j>n-is civilis, in distinction from Corpus Juris canonici, the Roman Catholic church law, which is based chiefly on the canons of the ancient councils, as the civil law is upon the rescripts and edicts of the emperors. 112 THIKD PEKIOD, A.D. 311-590. 1. In the treatment of women. From the beginning, Chris- tianity labored, primarily in the silent way of fact, for the elevation of the female sex from the degraded, slavish position, which it occupied in the heathen world ; ' and even in this period it produced such illustrious models of female virtue as Konna, Anthusa, and Monica, who commanded the highest respect of the heathens themselves. The Christian emperors pursued this work, though the Roman legislation stops con- siderably short of the later Germanic in regard to the rights of woman, Constantino in 321