Zachary Chitwood's book is grounded in his examination of Byzantine legal culture rather than in the strict traditional categories of Byzantine legal history or the history of Byzantine legal institutions. The author's approach centers on the difference between the law in theory and the law in the practice in the Macedonian Age (867–1056), the golden age of the Byzantine Empire, following the unparalleled Justinianic apogee (sixth century) and the iconoclast crisis (eighth century). The starting point is the three distinguishing components (elements) of the Byzantine civilization: Roman political and juridical legacy, Greek language and culture, and orthodoxy.

The first chapter introduces the different Macedonian juridical compilations, in particular the Eisagoge, the Prochiron, and the Sixty Books of Leo VI, who was also the author of more than 100 novellae constitutiones. The Sixty Books, also known as the Basilika, are the most remarkable Byzantine juridical monument which, according to Chitwood, represented the “almost completely Hellenized…redaction” (34) of the Corpus Iuris Civilis. The “Cleansing of the Ancient Laws” (Ἀνακάθαρσις τῶν παλαιῶν νόμων) was part of the wider political project of the Macedonian dynasty, which emphasized its continuity with the Roman Empire. The author perfectly contextualizes the effort to support the political claims of the Byzantine basileus as the unique and legitimate successor of the Roman emperors, through the re-enactment of the Roman law, which was purged to re-establish the true law of the Corpus Iuris Civilis, cast as corrupted by the iconoclast emperors in the eighth century, when the Ekloge (Ἐκλογὴ τῶν νόμων) was promulgated.

The second chapter focuses on “gift-givings” and “patronage,” and on the gray areas related to those institutions straddling the line between licit and illicit. The chapter describes the Byzantine administrative system of justice and the regulation of legal fees and gifts, which were never considered as bribery. The third chapter deals with jurisprudence in relation to Roman, Orthodox, and Greek elements. The Middle Byzantine jurisprudential approach was based on a distinct set of values, primarily from Christian influences. Nonetheless Roman law had already been Christianized starting in the fourth century, and Chitwood outlines that Byzantine jurisprudence in the Macedonian Age was even more based on orthodox belief and closely related to the Hellenic culture.

The fourth chapter examines the Byzantine private juridical collections on the basis of the difference between Reichsrecht and Volksrecht. If on the one hand the Reichsrecht was based on the Corpus Iuris Civilis’s contents, through the Basilika, on the other hand, the author underlines the importance of the vulgarized private compilations (Nomos Georgikos, Nomos Stratiotikos, Nomos Nautikos, and the Nomos Mosaikos). The juridical texts were reduced, the Latin juridical terminology was almost totally replaced, and consequently the utilization of Byzantine law became more practical. The Nomos Georgikos (lex rustica) whose origin and official status are still debated, was disseminated in hundreds of manuscripts in Southern Italy, and in the Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Rumanian regions. It is agreeable that the Nomos Georgikos “became a quintessential Byzantine lawbook, and a far more familiar representative of Byzantine law than the Basilika” (114). Although an extremely vulgarized version of Roman law, because of its diffusion and translations in many different languages outside the imperial territory, the Nomos Georgikos was the most significant contribution to the spreading of Byzantine law in the adjacent regions of the empire, together with the Nomos (Rhodion) Nautikos. Although the latter did have a comparable influence because of its importance in the history of commerce and commercial law, also in Western Europe.

The last two chapters focus on law and heresy in the edicts of Patriarch Theodoros Studites and on the legal education, respectively. Legal education in Constantinople is a well-studied subject, in large part because of the immense importance of the antecessores in the transmission of the legal culture and texts in the sixth century. In Late Antiquity bilingualism was not incommon, but through the centuries, the Greek texts replaced the Latin texts of the Corpus Iuris Civilis. The author focuses on the antecessores and in particular on the Paraphrase of Theophilos, which was a remarkable example of this process and played a fundamental role in the purge of Latin texts and in the substitution with Greek language terms. But the law schools of Constantinople, Rome, and Beirut did not survive after the second half of the sixth century. Roman law was Hellenized in the Middle Byzantine period, but a cognizable law school was never established. However, if the tenth century Book of the Eparch mentions the existence of the college of ταβουλάριοι (notaries), the existence of a separate and autonomous legal education cannot be deduced. Finally, during the eleventh century, there was a revival of legal education, and a law school was (re)founded in Constantinople under the auspices of the Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos (1047).

The book perfectly describes how Byzantine legal culture in the Macedonian Age has been characterized both by continuity and transformation, and influenced by the interplay of the three elements of the Byzantine civilization. Taken more generally, Chitwood's innovative book marks a new, multidimensional approach to Byzantine legal history, which is often considered as something sui generis. I am in enthusiastic agreement that Byzantine legal history should be regarded as a part of the greater picture of Roman law and in the larger Medieval Eastern Mediterranean context. This book will continue to stimulate reflection on new avenues for future research issues and more diverse conceptual approaches to Byzantine law.