Novellae

Novellae is a Latin term meaning “new things” and can refer to several related uses in law and literature. In legal history, the most prominent use is for the Novellae Constitutiones, the body of imperial constitutions issued by Emperor Justinian I after 534 CE to supplement the corpus of Roman law. Often called the Novels, these new laws primarily addressed private law, including contracts, property, family matters, and succession. They were compiled separately from the earlier Codex Justinianus and Digest and were later integrated into the broader Corpus Juris Civilis in medieval Europe. The Novellae played a role in shaping Byzantine legal practice and, through later civil-law traditions, influenced continental European law.

In scholarly and Latin-language contexts, novellae may also simply be the plural form of novella, a short novel or long short story. In modern English usage, the plural is typically novellas, while novellae appears mainly in academic discussions of Latin or historical legal texts.

Summary

The term novellae therefore denotes either a set of post-534 imperial constitutions within Justinian’s civil-law compilation or, in literary usage, the plural of novella. As a legal collection, the Novellae Constitutiones contributed to the development of private-law norms in late antique and medieval legal systems; as a literary term, novellae refers to multiple short novels within a broader narrative tradition.