After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Institutes was preserved in Byzantine libraries. Its revival in Europe came at the end of the 11th century, when a manuscript of Justinian’s entire Corpus Juris Civilis (of which the Institutes is the introductory part) was rediscovered in Northern Italy. This sparked the birth of the University of Bologna—the first university in the Western world.
: Unlike the Digest (a massive compilation of jurist writings), the Institutes provided a simplified, systematic overview of legal principles for beginners. institutas de justinianopdf