Even the Pandects themselves have escaped with difficulty and danger from the common shipwreck, and criticism has pronounced that all the editions and manuscripts of the West are derived from one original.  It was transcribed at Constantinople in the beginning of the seventh century, was successfully transported by the accidents of war and commerce to Amalphi, Pisa, and Florence,[27] and is now deposited as a sacred relic in the ancient palace of the republic.[28]

It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation.  To maintain the text of the Pandects, the Institutes, and the Code, the use of ciphers and abbreviations was rigorously proscribed; and as Justinian recollected, that the perpetual edict had been buried under the weight of commentators, he denounced the punishment of forgery against the rash civilians who should presume to interpret or pervert the will of their sovereign.  The scholars of Accursius, of Bartolus, of Cujacius, should blush for their accumulated guilt, unless they dare to dispute his right of binding the authority of his successors and the native freedom of the mind.  But the Emperor was unable to fix his own inconstancy; and while he boasted of renewing the exchange of Diomede, of transmuting brass into gold, discovered the necessity of purifying his gold from the mixture of baser alloy.  Six years had not elapsed from the publication of the Code before he condemned the imperfect attempt by a new and more accurate edition of the same work, which he enriched with two hundred of his own laws and fifty decisions of the darkest and most intricate points of jurisprudence.  Every year or, according to Procopius, each day of his long reign was marked by some legal innovation.  Many of his acts were rescinded by himself; many were rejected by his successors; many have been obliterated by time; but the number of sixteen Edicts and one hundred and sixty-eight Novels has been admitted into the authentic body of the civil jurisprudence.  In the opinion of a philosopher superior to the prejudices of his profession, these incessant and, for the most part, trifling alterations, can be only explained by the venal spirit of a prince who sold without shame his judgments and his laws.

Monarchs seldom condescend to become the preceptors of their subjects; and some praise is due to Justinian, by whose command an ample system was reduced to a short and elementary treatise.  Among the various institutes of the Roman law those of Caius were the most popular in the East and West; and their use may be considered as an evidence of their merit.  They were selected by the imperial delegates, Tribonian, Theophilus, and Dorotheus, and the freedom and purity of the Antonines were incrusted with the coarser materials of a degenerate age.  The same volume which introduced the youth of Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus to the gradual study of the Code and Pandects is still precious to the historian, the philosopher, and the magistrate.  The Institutes of Justinian are divided into four books:  they proceed, with no contemptible method, from (1), Persons, to (2) Things, and from things to (3) Actions; and the Article IV of Private Wrongs is terminated by the principles of Criminal Law.[29]