Novellae Constitutiones in the context of "Codex Justinianus"

Pentarchy (from Ancient Greek Πενταρχία (Pentarchía), from πέντε (pénte) 'five' and ἄρχειν (archein) 'to rule') was a model of Church organization formulated in the laws of Emperor Justinian I (r.  527–565) of the Roman Empire. In this model, the Christian Church is governed by the heads (patriarchs) of the five major episcopal sees of the Roman Empire: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

The idea came about because of the political and ecclesiastical prominence of these five sees, but the concept of their universal and exclusive authority was attached to earlier Hellenistic-Christian ideas of administration. The pentarchy was first legally expressed in the legislation of Emperor Justinian I, particularly in Novella 131. The Quinisext Council of 692 gave it formal recognition and ranked the sees in order of preeminence, but its organization remained dependent on the emperor, as when Leo the Isaurian altered the boundary of patriarchal jurisdiction between Rome and Constantinople. Especially following Quinisext, the pentarchy was at least philosophically accepted in Eastern Orthodoxy, but in the West, the Rome based patriarchy evolved into the Roman Catholic Church, which would reject the Council as well as the concept of the pentarchy, considering itself the supreme church with universal jurisdiction.

The Corpus Juris (or Iuris) Civilis ("Body of Civil Law") is the modern name for a collection of fundamental works in jurisprudence, enacted from 529 to 534 by order of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. It is also sometimes referred to metonymically after one of its parts, the Code of Justinian.

The work as planned had three parts: the Code (Codex) is a compilation, by selection and extraction, of imperial enactments to date; the Digest or Pandects (the Latin title contains both Digesta and Pandectae) is an encyclopedia composed of mostly brief extracts from the writings of Roman jurists; and the Institutes (Institutiones) is a student textbook, mainly introducing the Code, although it has important conceptual elements that are less developed in the Code or the Digest. All three parts, even the textbook, were given force of law. They were intended to be, together, the sole source of law; reference to any other source, including the original texts from which the Code and the Digest had been taken, was forbidden. Nonetheless, Justinian found himself having to enact further laws; today these are counted as a fourth part of the Corpus, the Novellae Constitutiones (Novels, literally New Laws).

The Institutes (Latin: Institutiones) is a component of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the 6th-century codification of Roman law ordered by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. It is largely based upon the Institutes of Gaius, a Roman jurist of the second century A.D. The other parts of the Corpus Juris Civilis are the Digest, the Codex Justinianus, and the Novellae Constitutiones ("New Constitutions" or "Novels").

The Code of Justinian (Latin: Codex Justinianus, Justinianeus or Justiniani) is one part of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the codification of Roman law ordered early in the 6th century AD by Justinian I, who was Eastern Roman emperor in Constantinople. Two other units, the Digest and the Institutes, were created during his reign. The fourth part, the Novellae Constitutiones (New Constitutions, or Novels), was compiled unofficially after his death but is now also thought of as part of the Corpus Juris Civilis.

The Digest (Latin: Digesta), also known as the Pandects (Pandectae; Ancient Greek: Πανδέκται, Pandéktai, "All-Containing"), was a compendium or digest of juristic writings on Roman law compiled by order of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I in 530–533 AD. It is divided into 50 books.

The Digest was part of a reduction and codification of all Roman laws up to that time, which later came to be known as the Corpus Juris Civilis (lit. 'Body of Civil Law'). The other two parts were a collection of statutes, the Codex (Code), which survives in a second edition, and an introductory textbook, the Institutes; all three parts were given force of law. The set was intended to be complete, but Justinian passed further legislation, which was later collected separately as the Novellae Constitutiones (New Laws or, conventionally, the "Novels").

Lex animata is a 12th century Latin translation of the Greco-Roman concept νόμος ἔμψυχος, nómos émpsychos, which equates to the "living law".

Originating in Hellenistic philosophy and repurposed by Themistius in the 4th century, the identification of the Roman sovereign as nomos empsychos was established in law by the emperor Justinian I in his Novellae Constitutiones, and introduced into European civil law through the discovery of The Authenticum by the medieval glossators in Bologna.