The Code of Justinian in Akoma Ntoso

The whole Code of Justinian, issued in 534: three prefaces, 12 books, 763 titles and 4,545 numbered provisions, in S. P. Scott’s English translation of 1932. The document is marked up in Akoma Ntoso, the OASIS standard for legal and legislative documents.

How it looks

No original copy of the Code survives. This page shows the text the way a law book of Justinian’s time might have looked: rounded uncial letters, red rubrics, two columns, Roman numerals and almost no space between words. It is a rendition in period style, not a facsimile of any manuscript, and it is in English, which no such manuscript was. All of this comes from the stylesheet and the page. The XML underneath is ordinary Akoma Ntoso.

How it was made

The XML was generated by Claude for Grant Vergottini. Claude didn’t write a word of the text. It marked up the words of the source.

Files

• code-of-justinian.xml: the Akoma Ntoso document (4.5 MB)
• code-of-justinian.css: the stylesheet that renders it
• view.html: the page that shows it as a manuscript, one opening at a time