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Early medieval Europe (500–1000)Society and economy

The Ecloga: law code of Leo III and Constantine V

The Isaurian emperors issued the Ecloga (“Selection of the laws”), a concise handbook in Greek, in eighteen titles, that adapted Justinian’s law on marriage, inheritance, contracts and crime to the needs of the time — a “correction towards greater humanity”, as its preface put it. It remained in force until 886 and influenced the law of the Slavs.

Date
between 726 and 741exact date unknown: an interval is given
Place
Constantinopletoday: Istanbul, Turkey · Balkans and Anatolia
Participants
Leo III the Isaurian, Constantine V, Byzantine Empire
Threads
Early medieval Europe (500–1000)
Also known as
Ekloge ton nomon; Ecloga; Ἐκλογὴ τῶν νόμων; Selection of the Laws; Выборка законов; Эклога Льва III

The Ecloga was issued in the names of Leo III and his son and co-emperor Constantine V. Its date is disputed: scholars are divided between 726 and 741; L. Burgmann, editor of the critical text (1983), preferred March 741, the last months of Leo’s reign, and V. Minale (2012) agreed. Written in Greek so that judges and ordinary people could use it, it promised in its preface a simpler administration of justice; judicial officials were to receive salaries and were forbidden to accept gifts.

Most of its titles concern family and property: betrothal, marriage (at 15 for men and 13 for women), dowry, wills and inheritance, loans, deposits, sales and leases. Church canons reduced the lawful grounds for divorce, a wife’s dowry was protected, and children were guaranteed a share of the inheritance. Title XVII, on crimes, reduced the number of capital offences but made mutilations — cutting off the nose or a hand, blinding — common punishments, now applied to free people as well; scholars differ on whether this softened or hardened the older law. The last title regulated the division of war booty. In the manuscripts the Ecloga is often accompanied by the Farmer’s Law, the Rhodian Sea Law and the Soldiers’ Law.

Its many copies show how widely the Ecloga was used. The Macedonian emperors formally replaced it in 886 with a new code, the Eisagoge, yet it lived on in revised versions, was adapted into Arabic and translated into Armenian, and served as a basis for the 9th-century Slavonic Zakon sudnyj ljudem (“Court Law for the People”), which is linked either to the Moravian mission of Cyril and Methodius or to newly Christian Bulgaria. Its articles also entered the law books of Rus’ and Serbia.

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Connections

Related events

  • Corpus Juris Civilis7 April 529 – 16 November 534 · Balkans and AnatoliaThe Ecloga selected and revised the Institutes, Digest, Code and Novels of Justinian
  • Mission of Cyril and Methodius to Great Moravia863 – 6 April 885 · Western and Central EuropeThe Slavonic Zakon sudnyj ljudem, linked to the Moravian mission or to Bulgaria, drew on the Ecloga

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The same period

8th century

Sources

  1. Wikipedia (English): Ekloge ton nomon
  2. Wikipedia (Russian): Эклога (законодательство)
  3. Эклога. Византийский законодательный свод VIII века / вступ. ст., пер. и коммент. Е. Э. Липшиц. — М.: Наука, 1965.
  4. Burgmann L. (Hrsg.) Ecloga: Das Gesetzbuch Leons III. und Konstantinos’ V. — Frankfurt am Main: Löwenklau, 1983.
  5. Wikidata: Q987537