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by Benet Salway
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One of the elements of the Breviary of Alaric, or Lex Romana Visigothorum, was an abbreviated version of the pseudonymous Sententiae attributed to the Severan jurist Iulius Paulus. Although excerpts of this work also survive in other places, notably the Digest, the Collatio and the Consultatio, nowhere does it survive in its original form. The Breviary version is the most important witness to the overall structure of the original. Just as the abbreviated Theodosian Code and Novels, this version of the Pauli Sententiae was equipped with interpretationes (explanatory notes). The last time that the text of the Breviary Sententiae was edited along with its accompanying interpretationes was in Gustav Hänel's edition of the Lex Romana Visigothorum of 1849. Since then, not only has one significant manuscript come to light (the León palimpsest) but much scholarly work has been done on the text of the Pauli Sententiae.
Of all the elements of the Breviary, production of a searchable electronic text of the Pauli Sententiae (so far only of the first book) has been prioritised because it is the only part that is not yet available in some form elsewhere. The reader will notice that the text is disfigured by a complicated set of systems of reference. This reflects the complex nature of the reconstruction if the text. To facilitate usability, for the titles and for each sententia the numeration of Hänel's edition is provided as the primary key [LRV.PS]. Since this numeration provided the skeleton upon which later editors reconstructed the flesh of the fuller text of the Sententiae, this can usually be taken also to indicate numeration according to the standard editions of the work from Krüger to Baviera. Where the numbering of the vulgar tradition varies from that of the LRV it is indicated simply as PS. The standard 'stand alone' edition of the Interpretationes by Max Kaser and Fritz Schwarz refers to both of these systems of numeration. Since then, however, a completely new reconstruction of the text of the Pauli Sententiae has been offered by Detlef Liebs, reordering some, and renumbering all, the material in a coherent single sequence independent of the numeration of the LRV. To facilitate cross-reference, the numeration of this new edition has also been indicated [Liebs PS]. Those few passages that were included by Hänel in his edition of the LRV on the basis of their appearance in some manuscripts, but which are actually later re-insertions of material into the Breviary version from the full text of the Sententiae, are indicated in italics.
Bibliography:
J. Baviera, 'Sententiarum receptarum libri quinque qui vulgo Iulio Paulo adhuc tribuuntur' in S. Riccobono, J. Baviera, C. Ferrini, J. Furlani, V. Arangio-Ruiz, Fontes iuris Romani anteiustiniani, vol. II. Auctores (2nd edn, Firenze, 1940), 317-417
A. Fernández-Guerra y Orbe, F. de Cárdenas y Espejo, F. Fita y Colomer et al., Legis Romanae Wisigothorum fragmenta ex codice palimpsesto sanctae Legionensis Ecclesiae (Madrid, 1896)
G.F. Hänel, Lex Romana Visigothorum (Leipzig, 1849)
M. Kaser & F. Schwartz, Die Interpretatio zu den Paulussentenzen (Köln-Graz, 1956)
P. Krüger, 'Pauli libri quinque sententiarum' in P. Krüger, Th. Mommsen, G. Studemund, Collectio librorum iuris anteiustiniani, vol. II (Berlin, 1878), 39-137
D. Liebs, 'Die pseudopaulinischen Sentenzen. Versuch einer neuen Palingenesie', Zeitschrift der Savigny Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: romanistische Abteilung 112 (1995), 151-170
D. Liebs, 'Die pseudopaulinischen Sentenzen II. Versuch einer neuen Palingenesie, Ausführung', Zeitschrift der Savigny Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: romanistische Abteilung 113 (1996), 132-242
E. Seckel & B. Kübler, 'Pauli sententiarum libri quinque' in Ph.E. Huschke, E. Seckel, B. Kübler, Iurisprudentiae anteiustinianae reliquiae, vol. II.1 (6th edn, Leipzig, 1911), 1-161
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