La Legislazione di Zenone (474-491)

This investigation is aimed at offering a better knowledge of the imperial legislation of the fifteen years 474-491. The research examinated the approximately seventy Zenonian constitutions contained in the 6th century Codex. The reading of the leges issued by Zeno shows his attention to multiple issues (public, private, criminal and procedural law) and a continuous tension towards solutions that can mediate between the different needs at stake. It is worth mentioning a few examples. With regard to the legislation on religious matters, if in CI. 1.2.16 of 476 it is easy to notice the agreement with the bishop of Constantinople Acacius, also in recognizing the leading role that (on the basis of canon 28 of council of Chalcedon) his Church claimed over all the others of the pars Orientis (and this obviously had clear reflections on the conception of the political primacy of the eastern capital, the New Rome) with the more specific reference to the theme of the quaestio fidei, through the subsequent enactment of the Enoticus (482), the emperor who has changed his attitude towards the Creed Orthodox (still in full agreement with Bishop Acacius) works to find a compromise between the supporters of the different doctrines in conflict; with this act is provided an interpretation of the previous conciliar resolutions, with the intention that this reading can be accepted both by the faithful to the Chalcedonian Creed and by the anti-Chalcedonian, leading to a reconciliation useful for the well-being of the empire. Also with regard to the discipline of priestly ordination and in the case of slaves and colonists joining a monastery, the objective pursued by the legislator was that of giving an answer to clearly opposing needs and therefore offering a solution that could be satisfactory both for the members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and for those who oversaw the monasteries as well as for the owners of those servants or of the lands cultivated by those settlers. And again the Isaurian ruler seems to find a balance between opposing positions, both worthy of being protected, with CI. 1.3.36.2: while denying the existence of a special tribunal for bishops, clerics, monks or ‘religious’ of any other condition, on the one hand it establishes that the governors of the provinces cannot in any way be imposed the need to go to the places where these subjects live, on the other hand the latter are not obliged to go before the provincial governor to face the trial brought against them: the iudices provinciales will have to settle for imposing an ‘inferior’ judge on them, datus by the governor (a iudex pedaneus, therefore) who will 332 be able to carry out the process in the place where the clerics live. In the same way, the legislator tries to find a balance between different needs with CI. 12.29.2: if a benefice is granted to the primicerii of the scholae, those soldiers who have obtained all the ranks fighting in the imperial guard, establishing that as long as they live and therefore even when they are no longer in service, they will be subject only to the jurisdiction of the magister officiorum (and therefore they cannot be forced to face a civil trial before a judge other than that one), vice versa, the ordinary competence of the provincial governors for criminal cases and for those concerning their fiscal obligations remains unchanged; in short, on the one hand the aim is to reward the primicerii of the various scholae for the valuable service performed, thus demonstrating the empire’s appreciation for those who honorably work in them, but on the other hand the ordinary jurisdiction in the matters of greater public interest, the penal and fiscal ones, which must have been particularly close to the heart of the government of Constantinople, is confirmed. Similar observations can be made about CI. 10.34.3: while the prohibition for decurions to sell immovable property and rustic slaves in the absence of a decree authorizing them for sale is reaffirmed, it is also explicitly permitted that they may, conversely, donate their goods, making them the subject of an exchange or of other contracts. The legislator, therefore, shows himself to be fully respectful of the rule of imperial law which has been in force for a long time, aimed primarily at avoiding an uncontrolled subtraction of the goods of the decurions from the public function, to which those were bonded, through unauthorized sales; however, he intends it non restrictively, allowing other contracts; it must not have seemed useful to him to completely curb the vitality of commercial exchanges. And again, the limited possibility of authorizing the alienation of those assets proves that the emperor is willing to allow the distraction of part of the decurion’s patrimony from the responsibility to which that patrimony was subjected; and this also with the aim, one can imagine, of trying to counteract in some way the ‘flight’ of those taxpayers (and in particular of the richest among the decurions), whose frequency is attested by several voices throughout the late age. In short, the requests of the city curiae were listened to, but at the same time what the decurions asked for was met. Zeno’s reign preceded Justinian’s by only fifty years. The work of the anonymous jurists who work in Zeno’s chancellery (and in those of Anastasius and then Justin) bears witness to their good preparation and sure competence; their work too must have contributed to preparing that fertile ground which a few decades later made it possible to arrive at the compilations of the Justinian legislator. Zeno was, therefore, a sovereign who knew how to make use of some capable collaborators, trained in the knowledge of the great juridical tradition of the past; if on the working table of the members of the chancellery didn’t lack a copy of Theodosianus and together with it the texts of the most recent constitutions of Marcian and Leo I (the starting point for being able to integrate, improve, correct or overcome the imperial norms in force at the time), they must not have been unaware of even the rich jurisprudential normative production, in particular that of the Severian era (but do not forget their knowledge of the Insititutes of Gaius): they must have been trained in the study of that illustrious legal tradition. From the analysis of some constitutions it also seems to emerge that the way of thinking about the ius of the drafters of these laws is the same as that of the great jurists of the past (in particular, as is obvious, with regard to the issues of private law). The tools used to build new solutions to the complex and most varied issues submitted to the legislator’s examination belong to a wealth of technical knowledge that the members of the chancellery derive from a careful analysis of the jurisprudential works that have been handed down to them. To give an example in this subject too. The way to proceed of the writer of CI. 4.66.1 (at least according to the portion of the lex that comes to us through the 6th century Codex) resembles one of the characteristic ways of producing law proper to the genuine Roman jurisprudential tradition: the first objective of the legislator seems to be that of solving the difficult concrete question of the distribution of the contractual risk for the hypothesis of loss or damage to the land (subject of the long-term lease) or the loss of the fruits of the cultivation: nothing else seems to guide the construction of the normative text formulated by the oriental chancellery. On this question, interpretative interventions must have been frequently requested to the imperial chancellery: the opposing theses, supported in the event the disputes in question resulted in a lawsuit, were as a rule based, as it is easy to believe, on the argument of close similarity, if not even of the inclusion, or not, of the emphyteusis agreement in the different sales or, conversely, lease agreements, depending on whether the creditor claimed or the debtor denied the persistence of the obligation to pay the rent, in case the leaseholder, subsequently to events of fortuitous case, had the fund destroyed or damaged or lost the entirety (or part of) the harvest. Granted that by means of the agreements added to the contract the parties, in any case, could freely agree on any solution of attribution or distribution of the periculum of the loss or damage of the res emphyteuticaria, the imperial rule identifies, for the case in which such agreements did not intervene, the person whom it seems fair that the risk should burden, distinguishing between the two different eventualities, mentioned above, which could have occurred in reality. Thus, as a preliminary step, to clear the field of any misunderstanding, the law recognizes that the ius emphyteuticarium is not to be ascribed either to the conductio or to the alienatio; it is created by the association of those two contracts as a ius third or, rather, separated from the similarity with them, it has its own definition and concept. And among the productive acts of the ius, a not secondary role must have continued to be played by the rescript, an instrument of manifestation of the imperial normative will of ancient tradition: the type of constitutio most similar to the responsa of the iuris periti of the past. It frequently happens, in fact, that the legislator in issuing norms through a lex generalis accompanies those prescriptions with the threat of a penalty for anyone who tries to transgress them by obtaining an imperial rescript. But Zeno does not limit himself to reiterating the ineffectiveness of the rescripts contra ius (from which the full validity of those conforming to the norms given with the leges generales evidently derives a contrario). In CI. 1.23.7 he clearly takes care to avoid that an imperial response, direct or indirect, to private preces, based on facts and motivations that do not correspond to the truth, could determine a certain conclusion of the process during which those preces have been presented. And this concern proves, it seems to me unequivocally, that the recourse by the imperial chancellery to the use of the rescript must not have been a rarity and at the same time that this recourse was entirely legitimate. The reading of the leges analyzed then allows other reflections. With regard to some institutes (of procedural law, above all) the Zenonian legislation innovates and anticipates in some points the discipline which, in some cases, will be brought to completion by the Justinian jurists. Consider, for example, in the context of procedural law, the lex Zenoniana with which the ancient regime of pluris petitio is abolished. From the comparison of CI. 3.10.1 pr. with Justinian’s subsequent provisions it emerges that these simply supplemented those of Zeno, without changing them: while Zeno’s law disciplined the case in which the fulfillment of a debt was demanded at a time prior to that in which it could have been request, Justinian considered the further hypothesis of a claim wider than that allowed with regard to the quantity (of the object of the obligation) or for any other aspect. Or, to give a last example to CI. 2.7.19, with which the Isaurian legislator makes an innovative choice that somehow anticipates modern sensitivities: it is forbidden that, before the court of any governor or before arbitrators, two lawyers aligned on the same side can delay the definition of the cause using the excuse (of the absence) of a third lawyer; for Zeno the times of justice must be contained within limits acceptable and tolerable by the parties. Such a concern to avoid unjustified ‘extensions’ of the processes means, in other words, that the promptness of the cases is elevated by the emperor to an indispensable value of his good governance. Also in this case Justinian followed in Zeno’s footsteps: the ancient problem of the times of justice partly stemmed from Zenonian dispositions still had to show itself in all its seriousness, so as to induce Justinian in 530 to intervene to set, at last, a maximum limit to the duration of trials (three years for civil cases and two years for criminal cases).

Questa indagine è volta a offrire una migliore conoscenza della legislazione imperiale del quindicennio 474-491. La ricerca si è sviluppata sull’esame delle circa settanta costituzioni zenoniane accolte nel Codex del VI secolo. La lettura delle leges emanate da Zenone mostra la sua attenzione per molteplici temi (di diritto pubblico, privato, criminale e processuale) e una tensione continua verso soluzioni che possano mediare fra le diverse esigenze in gioco. Il regno di Zenone precede di un solo cinquantennio quello di Giustiniano. Il lavoro degli anonimi giuristi che lavorano nella cancelleria di Zenone testimonia la loro buona preparazione e una sicura competenza; anche la loro opera dovette contribuire a preparare quel terreno fertile che alcuni decenni dopo permise di giungere alle compilazioni del legislatore giustinianeo. Zenone fu, dunque, un sovrano che seppe avvalersi di alcuni collaboratori capaci, formati nella conoscenza della grande tradizione giuridica del passato; se sul tavolo di lavoro dei membri della cancelleria non dovette senz’altro mancare una copia del Teodosiano e insieme a essa i testi delle più recenti costituzioni di Marciano e di Leone I, quelli non dovettero affatto ignorare neppure la ricca produzione normativa di marca giurisprudenziale, in particolare quella di epoca severiana: allo studio di quella illustre tradizione giuridica dovevano essersi formati. Dall’analisi di alcune costituzioni pare emergere, altresì, che il modo di pensare lo ius dei redattori di queste leggi è quello stesso dei grandi giuristi del passato (in particolare, come è ovvio, con riguardo ai temi del diritto privato). Gli strumenti utilizzati per costruire le nuove soluzioni delle complesse e più varie questioni sottoposte all’esame del legislatore appartengono a un bagaglio di conoscenze tecniche che i membri della cancelleria derivano da una attenta analisi delle opere giurisprudenziali che sono state loro tramandate. E tra gli atti produttivi di ius un ruolo non del tutto secondario dovette continuare a giocare il rescritto, uno strumento di manifestazione della volontà normativa imperiale di antica tradizione: il tipo di constitutio più simile ai responsa degli iuris periti del passato. Capita di frequente, in effetti, che Il legislatore nel dare delle norme attraverso una lex generalis accompagni quelle prescrizioni con la minaccia di una pena per chi tenterà di trasgredirle mediante l’ottenimento di un rescritto imperiale. Ma Zenone non si limita a ribadire l’inefficacia dei rescritti contra ius. In CI. 1.23.7 egli si preoccupa chiaramente di evitare che una risposta imperiale, basata su fatti e motivazioni non corrispondenti al vero, diretta o indiretta, a preces private, possa determinare una certa conclusione del processo, nel quale o in vista del quale quelle preces sono state presentate. E tale preoccupazione prova, mi pare, in maniera inequivocabile che non doveva affatto essere una rarità il ricorso da parte della cancelleria imperiale all’uso del rescritto e allo stesso tempo che tale ricorso era del tutto legittimo. La lettura delle leges analizzate consente poi altre riflessioni. Riguardo ad alcuni istituti la normativa zenoniana innova e anticipa la disciplina che, in qualche caso, sarà portata a compimento dai giustinianei. Si pensi, a esempio, nell’ambito del diritto processuale, alla lex con cui viene abolito l’antico regime della pluris petitio. Mentre la legge di Zenone disciplinò il caso in cui si pretendesse l’adempimento di un debito in un momento antecedente a quello in cui lo si sarebbe potuto richiedere, Giustiniano considerò l’ulteriore ipotesi di una pretesa più ampia rispetto a quella consentita con riguardo alla quantità (dell’oggetto della prestazione) o per qualunque altro aspetto. Oppure si pensi a CI. 2.7.19, con cui il legislatore isaurico compie una scelta innovativa che in qualche modo anticipa sensibilità moderne: si vieta che, dinanzi al tribunale di un qualsiasi governatore o di fronte a giudici arbitri, due avvocati schierati dalla medesima parte possano ritardare la definizione della causa ricorrendo alla scusa (della assenza) di un terzo avvocato. Una tale sollecitudine a evitare ingiustificati ‘allungamenti’ dei processi significa, detto altrimenti, che la speditezza delle cause viene elevata dall’imperatore a valore irrinunciabile del suo buon governo. Giustiniano si mosse nel solco percorso da Zenone: l’antico problema dei tempi della giustizia in parte arginato dalle disposizioni zenoniane ancora doveva mostrarsi in tutta la sua gravità, tanto da indurre Giustiniano nel 530 a intervenire per porre infine un limite massimo alla durata dei processi.