ABSTRACT

This chapter explains the physical appearance of Byzantine courts. The depictions of the Trial of Christ in the sixth-century Rossano Gospels are, however, of more assistance in imagining what a Late Antique or Byzantine court might have looked like. The Roman practice of dispatching an imperial official, rather than a professional jurist, to preside over legal proceedings, with a group of local archontes serving as assessors, seems to have endured. In the thoroughly Christianised society of the Byzantine empire, such notables naturally included members of the clergy. A substantial amount of Late Roman court procedure seems to have survived intact through the 'Black Hole' of the 'Dark Ages' into the Middle Byzantine period. Many of the preoccupations of Byzantine courts - the oral or written deposition of evidence, the careful documentation of legal procedures and their outcomes, and the preservation of the documents that resulted - were identical to their Late Roman antecedents.