Constantinople and the eastern empire Justinian’s legal reforms marked the start of a new era in lawmaking and a particularly “Greek” era in legal history. And in the west, Roman law as laid down in the age of Justinian would come to have foundational status. In the twelfth century it was esteemed to the point of fetishism in the medieval universities that sprang up in Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and elsewhere (see chapter 11). As late as the nineteenth century the Napoleonic Code (Code Napoléon)—the great French civil law reform of 1804—was modeled explicitly on Justinian’s example.16
