TRIBONIAN

born , Pamphylia? died 545 Latin Tribonianus legal authority and public official in the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, who was the chief compiler and perhaps the initiator of the comprehensive Roman law codification sponsored by and named for the emperor Justinian I. From 530 to 532, and from 534 until his death, Tribonian served as Justinian's quaestor sacri palatii, a minister comparable to the late medieval English chancellor. Perhaps untruthfully, he was accused of venality in office and of religious unorthodoxy (a charge possibly based on his interest in secular philosophy and in astronomy). A member of the imperial commission that produced the first Codex Constitutionum of imperial legislation (529), Tribonian then was president of commissions that prepared the Digest (Digesta, also called Pandects, or Pandectae; 533) and a second Codex (534). In addition, he supervised the writing of the Institutes (Institutiones; 533) by the law teachers Dorotheus and Theophilus. As Justinian's legal adviser, he was doubtless responsible for the earlier Novels (Novellae Constitutiones post Codicum; 534565), containing enactments from 534 until Justinian's death in 565.