(Digestum), a collection of the Roman laws, ranged and digested under proper titles, by order of the emperor Justinian.

That prince gave his chancellor Tribonianus a commission for this purpose; who, in consequence thereof, chose sixteen juriconsulti, or lawyers, to work upon the same. These, accordingly, took out the best and finest decisions from the two thousand volumes of the ancient juriconsulti, and reduced them all into one body; which was published in the year 533, under the name of the Digest. To this the emperor gave the force of a law, by a letter at the head of the work, which serves it as a preface.

The Digest makes the first part of the Roman law, and the first volume of the corpus or body of the civil law, contained in fifty books. It was translated into Greek under the same emperor, and called Pandecta. See Pandects.

Cujas says, that Digest is a common name for all books disposed in a good order and economy; and hence it is that Tertullian calls the gospel of St Luke a Digest.

Hence also abridgements of the common law are denominated denominated digests of the numerous cases, arguments, readings, pleadings, &c. dispersed in the year books, and other reports and books of law, reduced under proper heads or common places. The first was that of Statham, which comes as low as Henry VI. That of Fitzherbert was published in 1516; Brook's in 1573, of which Hughes's, published in 1663, is a sequel. Rolls, Danvers, and Nelson, have also published Digests or abridgements of this kind, including the cases of later days; to which may be added the New Abridgement, Viner's Abridgement, &c.