The Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian, Augusti, to Florentius, Prætorian Prefect of the East.
Our clemency has often been at a loss to understand the cause of the fact that, although so many rewards are held out for the maintenance of arts and studies, so few and rare are they who are fully endowed with a knowledge of the civil law, and that although so many have grown pale from late studies, scarcely one or two have gained a sound and complete learning. When we consider the enormous multitude of books, the diversity in the forms of process, and the difficulty of legal cases, and, further, the huge mass of imperial constitutions which, hidden as it were under a veil of gross mist and darkness, precludes man's intellect from gaining a knowledge of them, we have performed a task needful for our age, and, the darkness having been dispelled, we have given light to the laws by a brief compendium. Noble men of approved faithfulness were selected, men of well-known learning, to whom the matter was intrusted. We have published the constitutions of former princes, cleared by interpretation of difficulties so that men may no longer have to wait formidable responses from expert lawyers as from a shrine, since it is quite plain what is the value of a donation, by what action an inheritance is to be sued for, with what words a contract is to be made.… Thus having wiped out the cloud of volumes, on which many wasted their lives and explained nothing in the end, we establish a compendious knowledge of the imperial constitutions since the time of the divine Constantine, and permit no one after the first day of next January to use in courts and daily practice of law the imperial law, or to draw up pleadings [pg 425] except from these books which bear our name and are kept in the sacred archives.…
To this we add that henceforward no constitution can be passed in the West or in any other place by the unconquerable Emperor, the son of our clemency, the everlasting Augustus Valentinian, or possess any legal validity, except the same by a divine pragmatica be communicated to us. The same rule is to be observed in the acts which are promulgated by us in the East; and those are to be condemned as spurious which are not recorded in the Theodosian Code [certain documents excepted which were kept in the registers of bureaux].
§ 80. The Extension of the Church about the Beginning of the Fifth Century
The most important missionary work in the early part of the fifth century was the extension of the work of Ulfilas among the German tribes and the work of the missionaries of the West in Gaul and western Germany. Of the latter the most important was Martin of Tours.
(a) Socrates, Hist. Ec., II, 41. (MSG, 67:349.)
Ulfilas.
Additional material for the life of Ulfilas may be found in the Ecclesiastical History of Philostorgius, fragments of which, as preserved, may be found appended to the Bohn translation of Sozomen's Ecclesiastical History.
After giving a list of creeds put forth by various councils, from Nicæa down to the Arian creed of Constantinople, 360 (text may be found in Hahn, § 167), Socrates continues: