Source: https://fr.b-ok.org/book/3362717/3ad468
Timestamp: 2020-02-27 21:22:40
Document Index: 391399184

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 19', '§ 21', '§ 11', '§ 4', '§ 2', '§ 1', '§ 6']

﻿ A History of Law in Europe: From the Early Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century | Antonio Padoa-Schioppa, Caterina Fitzgerald | download
Principal A History of Law in Europe: From the Early Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century
Pages: 820 / 831
ISBN 10: 1107180694
ISBN 13: 9781107180697
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criminal364
centuries302
roman law262
kingdom181
canon law158
custom153
droit148
eighteenth137
della134
assembly133
feudal122
del diritto122
sovereign119
justinian117
sixteenth113
statutes110
With its roots in ancient Greece, Roman law and Christianity, European
legal history is the history of a common civilisation. The exchange of
legislative models, doctrines and customs within Europe included English
common law and was extensive from the early Middle Ages to the present
time. In this seminal work, which spans from the ﬁfth to the twentieth
century, Antonio Padoa-Schioppa explores how law was brought to life in
the six main phases of European legal history. By analysing a selection of
the institutions of private and public law most representative of each
phase and each country, he also sheds light on the common features in
the history of European legal culture. Translated into English for the ﬁrst
time, this new edition has been revised to include the recent developments
of the European Union and the legal-historical works of the past decade.
antonio padoa-schioppa is Professor Emeritus and former Dean of
the Law School at the University of Milan.
University Printing House, Cambridge CB28BS, United Kingdom
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107180697
DOI: 10.1017/9781316848227
© 2007 Societàeditrice Il Mulino, Bologna, Storia del diritto in Europa
First published in Italian by Il Mulino 2007 and in a second edition 2016
First published in a revised and updated English version
by Cambridge University Press 2017
ISBN 978-1-107-18069-7 Hardback
(Fifth–Eleventh Centuries)
1 Law in Late Antiquity
2 Christianity, Church and Law
3 Law of the Germanic Kingdoms
4 The Carolingian and Feudal Age
5 Customs and Legal Culture
6 Church Reform
The Age of the Classical Ius Commune
(Twelfth–Fifteenth Centuries)
7 The Glossators and the New Legal Science
9 Law and Institutions
10 University: Students and Teachers
13 Particular Laws
12 The Commentators
14 Local Laws
15 The Medieval Ius Commune
16 English Common Law: The Formative Age
(Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries)
17 Churches and States in the Age of Absolutism
18 Legal Humanism
19 Practitioners and Professors
20 Legal Doctrine and the Legal Professions
21 Court Decisions
22 Local Laws and Royal Legislation
23 Natural Law
24 Jurists of the Eighteenth Century
25 The Sources of Law
26 English Law (Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries)
The Age of Reforms (1750–1814)
27 The Enlightenment and the Law
28 The Reforms
29 The French Revolution and the Law
30 The Napoleonic Era
31 The Codiﬁcations
The Age of Nations (1815–1914)
32 Law during the Restoration
33 The Historical School and German Legal Science
34 Late Nineteenth-Century Codes and Laws
35 Legal Professions
36 Legal Science between the Nineteenth and Twentieth
37 Law and Legislation between the Two World Wars
38 Law in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century
39 Some Outlines of the New Legal Culture
40 European Union Law
41 Heading towards Global Law?
Legal regimes reveal their identities in their sources of law. According to
a traditional division, these sources are legislation, legal doctrine and
legal practice. Legislation is the authoritative source of rules of behaviour
imposed on subjects living under its provisions. Legal doctrine is the
intellectual activity engaged in by professionals and legal scholars trained
not only to identify, interpret and systematise legal norms for the purpose
of making them explicit, coherent and applicable to real-life cases, but
also to envisage new and diﬀerent ones that might better address the
values or interests deemed worthy of safeguarding. Legal practice is the
expression of the legally relevant behaviours rooted in the customs of
a community and is established over time by its members or rulers, or in
judicial decisions made in settling disputes in private or criminal law.
These sources are essential to our understanding of legal regimes from
antiquity to the present day. Each of them in the ﬁrst instance sheds light
on one aspect of the historical context to which it belongs, but invariably
also bears the traces of other aspects which provide further information,
essential for a clearer understanding of a legal system.
Indeed, not only is legislation the product of a ruler’s will, but it also
reﬂects the intellectual framework and the customs current at the time it
was enacted. Legal doctrine is embedded in the ideas and in the methods
of the intellectual framework of the time, but it can also be an indicator of
parallel normative rules and customs. Legal practice shows the tendencies
and concrete choices made by individuals or communities and by the law
courts in real-life cases, but it also directly or indirectly records – through
transactions, contracts and court decisions – the normative framework
and the culture of the legal profession.
The relevance of each of these sources was to vary over time. The early
Middle Ages shows a profusion of customary laws; the following period,
from the twelfth century onwards, was to see the emergence of a new legal
science as an autonomous source of law. Beginning from the late eighteenth century, legislation was to achieve the role of the dominant source
of law throughout the reforms, the subsequent codiﬁcations and the
feverish increase in statutory laws produced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To show the transformations and the connections
between these sources is a major task of the legal historian. Such osmotic
relationships have persisted throughout even lengthy phases in which
one or other legal source was to dominate. The dissonances between
them must also be taken into account: between law and practice, between
the lawgiver’s will and learned opinion, between law in books and law in
action; these are essential to the understanding of a legal regime, and as
such they need to be seen in their historical context. To this end, nonlegal sources are also relevant, beginning with literary sources, novels,
poetry, plays and ﬁlms, which often eﬀectively portray the actual reality
of the legal order (or disorder) of their time.
It is important to clarify the methods by which legal doctrine and legal
practice shaped normative bodies, their way of tackling legally relevant
facts and how these methods evolved over time, and also to try to detect
the ways in which in the diﬀerent epochs attempts were made to meet two
basic demands on which the entire legal world hinges: the need for justice
and the need for certainty. These two poles should be seen through their
relationship to each other and the political power.
Law has always interacted with the organisation of civil society as well
as with economics, political powers, philosophy, culture and religion.
The study of legal history is fascinating also because of these multiple
In law, the history of facts and the history of ideas are continually
intersecting, as proven by the constant interrelation between legislation,
legal doctrine and custom. In legal life, not only are the interests (often
conﬂicting) but also the values (often dissonant and in conﬂict with the
interests) both extant and intertwined: any court decision or statutory
law, any opinion uttered by a legal scholar, incorporates a mixture of
interests and values, and this is true in every branch of law, from constitutional to criminal law, from private law to procedure. The legal
historian must attempt to untangle the strands of this mixture, though
unexpressed by – and often implicit and concealed to – the lawyers and
jurists themselves.
Because the conceptual structure, the normative bodies and the judicial
decisions are essentially the work of individuals, this account includes brief
references to the protagonists of this long history. In its evolution over
time, from the early Middle Ages to the present, the correlation between
the laws and the role played by professional jurists – both as individuals
and as a class, roles which did not always coincide – underwent very
signiﬁcant transformations.
The reciprocal inﬂuence of customs, norms and jurists as well as of law
books, and their broad circulation throughout Europe, including
England, have been a constant feature in the evolution of European
law. Therefore, the legal history of each European country cannot be
thought or understood in isolation: this justiﬁes the European perspective of this book. This assumption in no way underestimates the astonishing variety of local and regional features – as attested by customs, city
statutes and the laws of principalities and kingdoms – which are among
the greatest riches of European civilisation; nor does it overlook the very
diﬀerent legal rules applied to individuals of each social order, the
progressive removal of which took place in the modern age. Over and
above local and particular laws were the two imposing general normative
bodies – the Roman ius commune and canon law – which, though
showing diﬀerent features at diﬀerent times, made a unifying mark on
the entire evolution of European law.
Indeed, the history of law in Europe traces the evolution of a common
civilisation, one which might be deﬁned as a common ‘republic of legal
culture’. We owe the awareness of this common legacy, at least in part, to
the process of European uniﬁcation of the past seventy years, which has
contributed to reshaping our understanding of the past: ‘vita magistra
historiae’.
The emphasis in this outline will be on the ways in which new law was
brought to life in diﬀerent phases of medieval and modern times, underlining the discontinuity of certain moments and topics within
a continuous process of evolution. In order to shed light on the historical
picture as a whole, a selection has been made of the institutions of private
and public law which the author considers among the most representative of each historical phase – though space will not allow each of them to
be dealt with in depth. The choice might be greatly expanded upon, due
to the extraordinary wealth of models oﬀered by legal evolution in
Europe over hundreds of years.
In order to follow the development of law both in single countries and
other regions of the continent, the focus is on countries and developments which have had the greatest signiﬁcance as innovative in each
historical period. In diﬀerent ways and in diﬀerent centuries, Italy,
France, Spain, the Low Countries and Germany have played a central
role – in political, economic and cultural terms as well as in law. Though
diﬀerent in its genesis, developments and features, English law has
nevertheless had such signiﬁcant interchanges with continental law that
it would be misleading to exclude it from any account of the legal history
of Europe. One need only underline some fundamental features of
European continental law which are of English origin. Among these,
the constitutional model that established three distinct public bodies, the
legislative, the executive and the judicial powers; the industrial revolution
and its institutional and normative eﬀect on commercial law, labour law,
social services and the market rules; and a criminal justice system based
on the popular jury. No less noteworthy is the reverse continental
inﬂuence on Great Britain – in legal doctrine, canon law, law merchant,
equity law and in several other ﬁelds, as historical research has shown.
Besides these, other countries too have signiﬁcantly contributed to the
polyphony of European legal history: from Ireland to Scandinavia, from
Portugal to Switzerland, from Scotland to Hapsburg Austria and Eastern
Europe (consider e.g. the ramiﬁcations of the Norman institutions and
customs, from northern France to Sicily, from England to Russia), not to
mention the fundamental role played by the Church and canon law.
Rome, Constantinople, Bologna, London, Orléans, Perugia, Bourges,
Salamanca, Leyden, Paris, Vienna and Brussels: at one time or another,
a large portion of European law of the past two millennia was to emerge
from within these cities.
This historical process implies a constant reference to the three major
components of our intellectual heritage from the age of antiquity – Greek
philosophy, Roman law and Christianity – all of which were ever present
and constantly reinterpreted over the centuries. It would be unthinkable
not to take these into account in any history of European law.
The weight given to the medieval era in this book is due to the
fundamental role played by medieval customary law and the new legal
science of the twelfth century in shaping some aspects of law which are
still alive and discernible in modern and contemporary law. Some areas –
particularly in private law and in the methods at the basis of the work of
jurists, judges, advocates and notaries – are the fruit of a genesis and
a tradition that reaches far back in time, from antiquity to the Middle
Ages. To ignore this is to risk misunderstanding not only the past, but
also the foundations of the laws in force today.
It is undeniable that there have been some phases of deep discontinuity
in medieval and modern legal history – particularly in the sixth, twelfth,
eighteenth and twentieth centuries – concerning which, albeit with very
diﬀerent approaches, the term ‘revolution’ (Berman, 1983/2003;
Halpérin, 2014) might be ﬁttingly used. This does not contradict the
statement by Maitland that ‘the only direct utility of legal history (to say
nothing of its thrilling interest) lies in the lesson that each generation has
an enormous power of shaping its own law’ (Maitland to Dicey, 1896, in
Fifoot 1971, p. 143).
Due to space requirements, reference to primary and secondary
sources has been limited. Their purpose is for veriﬁcation and more indepth study of the texts themselves for those inclined to go further.
Corrections of any errors or inconsistencies in the text will be gratefully
This book is dedicated to my wife, Pini.
The English translation of this work has given me the opportunity of
introducing updates which at least in part take into account the wealth of
recent publications; several further short paragraphs and remarks have
also been added, particularly on the early and late Middle Ages, as well as
on the recent economic and institutional developments within the
The Italian poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi observed that ‘the
surest way of concealing the limits of one’s knowledge is never to surpass
them’ (Zibaldone, 4482). In this book, such limits have undoubtedly been
crossed: understandably, only a few of the sections of this history are the
fruit of the author’s ﬁrst-hand research on primary sources, and the
amount of secondary literature that should be considered is enormous.
However, the risk seemed worthwhile taking, the author’s intent being to
present an outline which in several respects is diﬀerent from those drawn
in other recent and valuable works on European legal history.
The transition from the ancient to the medieval world, between the
fourth and sixth centuries, and the concurrent inﬂux of Germanic
settlers who in previous centuries had dwelled on the outskirts of the
Empire engrafted Europe with a corpus of new institutions and customs
which were far from Roman law but equally far from the traditional
customs of the Germanic races. The law of the late Roman Empire
nevertheless had a considerable inﬂuence on the public precepts and
private law itself of the Germanic people, who had by then relinquished
their original nomadic state and were permanently settled throughout
Thus began an era which was to last around 600 years, until the end of
the eleventh century, during which time what had survived of Roman law
within the Germanic kingdoms of Western Europe variously intermingled and coexisted with Germanic customs, part of which were set
down in writing, mostly in Latin, from the sixth century onwards.
The Church was to exercise its authority and with it a fundamental
cultural, religious and pastoral role, but also a social and political one.
It contributed by transmitting to civilised society many rules of law
derived from Roman law which the Church had made its own, but also
and more importantly the inestimable heritage of ancient Greek and
Roman culture, of which all that has survived are the texts chosen and
transcribed by medieval clerics and monks.
Although the written laws of the Franks, the Lombards, the Visigoths,
the Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic peoples include many rules willed
by the kings who issued them, their primary root is undoubtedly that of
custom. Following the ninth-century resurgence of the Western Empire
under Charlemagne, for the ﬁrst time in history the premises were
created for a political and juridical union of Western Europe.
These were the centuries during which custom dominated the sources
of law, ultimately giving life to new and complex institutions which
cannot be considered either Roman or Germanic. The feudal
p ar t i: late antiquity to the early middle ages
relationships which were to take root on the continent through custom
were to develop by the same route. Custom is not static, but transformed
in time and space, at diﬀerent times in diﬀerent areas. Neither was
custom always nor solely spontaneous: feudal law and the servile condition, at once ﬂexible and stable, resulted from the forces which had been
present in the arena for centuries and in the course of which public power
underwent profound changes, which were then reﬂected in the laws of
the time. Personal status, family structure, contracts, the criminal system
and trials were wrought by a harsh and often violent reality, in which the
exercise of force coexisted with the very diﬀerent values of the Christian
Despite the extraordinary variety of local customs, many fundamental
common elements exist in early medieval European law, deriving both
from common religious beliefs and the similar conditions in which the
predominantly rural and military societies lived.
This historical condition of Europe was to undergo a profound change
with the great ‘renaissance’ of the legal system in the eleventh and twelfth
1.1 Political Structures
In the last centuries of the ancient world – the centuries between the age of
Constantine (313–334) and the age of Justinian (527–565) – Roman law
experienced a series of profound changes, which were to have an inﬂuence
on the entire successive cycle of legal history in Europe. The vast territory
of the late Empire included the area of the whole Mediterranean basin
extending as far as the Rhine, the Danube and southern England. It was
divided into 114 administrative provinces, equally split between the
Eastern and Western Empires, the ﬁrst with a capital to begin with in
Rome then in Milan and Trier; the second with a capital in Constantinople.
The bipartite political, juridical and administrative division between the
empires of East and West was emphasised at the end of the fourth century
[Demougeot 1951], becoming irreversible with the fall of the Western
Empire in 476. This did not prevent the leadership being centred on
a single man during some phases of late antiquity, under the governance
of some great emperors, among them Constantine, Theodosius I and
Justinian. The apogee of power was at once powerful and fragile.
Succession to the throne entailed two emperors (the Augusti) and two
designated successors (the Caesars), in a partnership which was in practice
often disregarded and in any case characterised by mutual diﬃdence, so
well expressed in the fourth-century sculpture in Venice representing four
personages forming a single group: one hand leans on the shoulder of
a colleague, but the other grasps the hilt of a sword.1
Civil and military administration had been separated from the time of
Constantine [E. Stein 1968], by a radical reform in antithesis with the
classical Roman principle of the indivisibility of the imperium. Three
distinct hierarchies stood side by side in the territory, in a legal order
whose articulated complexity induced a great historian to state that in
comparison ‘all hierarchical settings of successive eras seem the mediocre
The ‘Four Tetrarchs’, relief in porphyry from St. Mark’s Basilica, Venice.
work of beginners’ [Mommsen 1893]. The military hierarchy revolved
around duces and magistri militium posted in various parts of the Empire,
as well as mobile military units that followed the Emperor as needed.
After the decline of the classical formular procedure and the advent of the
cognitio extra ordinem, the functions of the civil hierarchy were both an
administrative and public order, but also included the function of civil
and criminal judiciary. This was separated into as many as ﬁve levels,
which included, in ascending order, the city defensores, the governors of
the provinces, the vicars at the head of the dioceses (there were six in the
Western and six in the Eastern Empire) and the four prefects of the
praetorium in Italy, Gaul, Constantinople and Illyricum. A third hierarchy of functionaries, itself divided into two branches, exercised the vast
tax and ﬁnancial competencies of the Empire. Above the three hierarchies operated the Imperial Court.
By this time, the Emperor had a legitimate hold on all powers. It was he
who was in charge of nominating the provincial governors, he who also
nominated all other posts for civil, judicial, military and ﬁnancial administrators. Legal cases, on which he made a ﬁnal decision, reached him
from every part of the Empire. And ﬁnally, it was to him that the
exclusive right of legislative power was reserved.
Imperial bureaucracy, centrally recruited from the vast Eastern and
Western territories, was certainly not devoid of vice and abuses such as
corruption, greed and arrogance [Jones 1964]. Nevertheless, the high
professional level of the oﬃces is undeniable, particularly that of the
central oﬃces whose task was to set in motion the course of the legislative
and jurisprudential evolution of law. The hundreds of edicts and rescripts
that have come down to us are a clear evidence of this. It has been said
that with the post-classical age ‘the spirit of Roman law did not die out
but migrated to another body’ [Schulz 1946].
1.2 Post-classical Legislation
As to the sources of law, the distance from the preceding age could not
have been greater – the age in which a number of great jurists had
elaborated the admirable set of principles, categories, rules and methods
which constitute the backbone of classical Roman law having ended;
every task in the production of norms during the late Empire rested
solely in the hands of the Emperor. He oﬃciated through the agency of
his central oﬃces which were under the direction of a handful of high
commissioners whom he selected and could dispose of at any time.
1 .2 po s t- c l a s s i c a l l e g i s l a t i o n
The Quaestor of the Holy Palace (responsible for questions of law) and
the Master of Oﬃces (head of the Imperial Chancellery) – with the aid of
designated oﬃcers equipped with advanced technical skills – drafted the
constitutions (edicta)2 which, upon the Emperor’s approval, became
binding law in either the Eastern or Western part, if not throughout the
To this was added the judicial function at the highest level, also
exercised by the Emperor through his central judges. Cases were assigned
to him in the phase of ﬁnal appeal, after at least two inferior levels of
judgement. There were direct appeals to imperial justice on the part of
imperial subjects. Not infrequently there were requests from local oﬃcerjudges, mostly provincial governors, regarding questions which were not
resolvable with existing laws. The imperial court, through its central
oﬃce (scrinium a libellis), solved such cases by issuing a rescript or
a consult in the name of the Emperor, a brief text in which the controversial question was set in legal terms based on the facts provided by
whoever had submitted it for superior judgement.3 As the parties were
not present, the rescript often contained a clause in which the solution of
the case was conditional on the facts included corresponding to the truth,
to be duly veriﬁed in loco.4
The rescript was then used not only for the speciﬁc case that had
originated it, but also for similar cases occurring in other parts of the
empire, by other judges who had come to have knowledge of the imperial
judgement. Emperors intervened forbidding the rescripts issued by the
central oﬃce to go against general rules (contra ius elicita)5 and to
prevent the surreptitious spread of the contents.6 Rescripts were in fact
to acquire a normative role, a role which became oﬃcial and was formalised when a select number became part of Justinian’s compilation.
As a result the classical system of sources was profoundly transformed.
Customs and uses (mores), opinions (responsa) of accredited jurists, the
senatumconsulta and other sources still referred to by Gaius in the second
century were already relegated to the background, whereas the only
All the constitutions in the Theodosian Code, as we shall see, belong to this category. For
example: Cod. Theod. 11. 30. 17, incorporated with modiﬁcations in Cod. Iust. 1. 21. 3: the
Justinian compilators replaced the penalty of deportation inﬂicted on those who had
addressed a plea to the Emperor rather than appealing a decision, with the less severe
penalty of infamy.
Only one example among the hundreds of rescripts included in Justinian’s Code, Cod.
1.18.2 of the year 211–217, denies an adult who had appealed to the Emperor in a case
involving inheritance the possibility of pleading ignorance of the law.
Cod. 1. 22. 5: ‘Si preces veritate nitantur’. 5 Cod. 1. 19. 7. 6 Cod. 1. 14. 2.
source regarded as central in the evolution of law consisted of imperial
decisions in the dual form of rescripts on speciﬁc cases and edicts of
a general nature. Post-classical theorisation in this way reduced the
sources of law to two categories: on one hand, the iura, which included
the traditional sources of civil and honorary law, still valid unless
expressly or tacitly abrogated, and, on the other hand, the leges, that is,
imperial statutes.
Post-classical and Justinian legislation intervened in almost every ﬁeld
of law, introducing profound changes with respect to the classical era.
The inﬂuence of Christianity may be perceived in many of the dispositions concerning the law of persons and family law from Constantine
onwards: for example in the sanctions introduced against the abuse of
children on the part of fathers and the lessening of the characteristically
rigid patria potestas7 (which some sources now qualify with the very
diﬀerent expression paterna pietas); in making redemption possible for
parents forced by poverty to the all too frequent practice of selling their
children;8 in the equality between male and female in legitimate
succession;9 in the introduction of obstacles to divorce.10 The ban on
splitting slave families in the division of inheritance,11 the simpliﬁcation
of manumission12 and the possibility of acquiring freedom through
prescription13 may also indicate a Christian inﬂuence. Greek law was
also in various ways to inﬂuence imperial law, for example imposing the
restitution of the wife’s dowry in case the marriage was dissolved,14 the
introduction of the practice of registering mortgages in public registers
(apud acta) and allowing the withdrawal from a purchase agreement by
forfeiting the deposit in contrast to classical Roman law.15 In some cases,
the Old Testament also inﬂuenced the law through the Christian religion,
Cod. 9. 15. 1 of 365; Cod. 8. 51 (52). 2 of 374: sanctions for the killing of a son and the
exposure of infants.
Cod. Theod. 5. 10. 1 of 329; Justinian accepted the provision, but interpolated the text
limiting the lawfulness of the selling to cases of extreme poverty (Cod. 4. 43. 2). In a Novel
of 451, Valentinian testiﬁes to the practice of selling one’s children because of the terrible
hunger (‘ob obscaenissimam famem’) caused by famine (Nov. Valentiniani 33, in Nov.
Post-Theodosianae).
Nov. 118. 10 Nov. 22 of 536; Nov. 117 of 542.
Cod. Theod. 2. 25. 1 of Constantine = Cod. 3. 38. 11.
Cod. Theod. 4. 7. 1 of 321 = Cod. 1. 13. 2.
Constantine required a period of sixteen years and good faith (Cod. Theod. 4. 8. 7 of 331),
Anastasius was to subsequently extend the period necessary for prescription to forty years
(Cod. 7. 39. 4. 2 of 491).
Cod. 5. 13. 1 of 530: actio de dote, granted also to the heirs. 15 Cod. 4. 21. 17 of 528.
1.3 t heodosius ii to justinian
for example when the rule on evidence was imposed requiring the
declaration of at least two witnesses.16
1.3 Theodosius II to Justinian
Legislative enactments in the fourth and sixth centuries were innumerable. It is therefore understandable how the necessity arose for collecting
the corpus of the constitutions of the Emperors into homogeneously
conceived texts. Rescripts up to the age of Diocletian had already been
collected in the Gregorian and Hermogenian Code,17 but far greater
importance was given to the Theodosian Code, issued by Theodosius
II, in which all the general constitutions from the age of Constantine until
438 were collected in sixteen books. Every book was subdivided under
titles, under which the successive constitutions were listed in chronological order. The Code, which included the constitutions generated in
Constantinople as well as those written in the West, was extended to both
parts of the Empire [Archi 1976]. In the West, it exercised a lasting
inﬂuence in the course of the early Middle Ages, until after the eleventh
The sixth century saw the origin of Justinian’s great compilation
(527–567). This Emperor, who was to mark the end of a span of more
than 1,000 years of the law of Roman antiquity, played an unsurpassed
role as legislator as well as being among the great rulers in history.
Hundreds of constitutions ratiﬁed by him and compiled by a small
group of jurists and high-ranking functionaries introduced new
norms – adding to or derogating from post-classical law – in every
ﬁeld of law, from private to criminal, from procedural to public. But
most of all Justinian was the promoter of the great collection of texts to
which his fame is tied: an enterprise, however (as has often happened
historically with innovative events), which his contemporaries entirely
In the short space of ﬁve years, from 529 to 534, three works appeared
which together with the later Novellae formed what would be called the
The Codex was (in the second issue of 534 which has come down to us)
systematically collated in twelve books, each of which was subdivided
Cod. 4. 20. 1 of 334. See Deuteronomy 19.15 and Daniel 13.
The two collections have not survived, but are worth remembering, as use was made for
the ﬁrst time of the term ‘Code’ later to become current, although with diﬀerent meanings, in subsequent eras.
l aw in late antiquity
into titles by subject, containing thousands of rescripts and imperial
constitutions from the ﬁrst century to the age of Justinian himself.18
The Digest, which dates from 533, comprises a vast selection of classical legal science texts collected in ﬁfty books, each of which was subdivided into titles. It was the result of work undertaken by a commission
headed by the jurist Tribonian, magister oﬃciorum, who also made use of
many works from his own extensive library. Though in fragmentary
form, the Digest saved for posterity the writings of the greatest Roman
jurists of antiquity, from Salvius Iulianus to Labeon, from Paul to Ulpian,
from Pomponius to Callistratus, from Modestinus to Papinianus and
many others. What we know of classical jurisprudence and the form of
reasoning and argumentation of Roman jurists is essentially owed to this
work of incommensurable value to the legal historian. Without it the
most perfected brainchild of Roman civilisation would have been lost.
And it is truly surprising that the Digest, this imposing monument to
Roman legal wisdom, was conceived and produced far from Rome;
equally surprising is the fact that this work began having an eﬀect in
the West only six centuries later, as if it had been conceived for a Europe
which did not yet exist.
Justinian’s compilation includes a brief summary, the Institutiones,
modelled on the Institutes of Gaius, and the Novellae, a collection of
constitutions19 promulgated by the same Emperor in the thirty years of
reign after the Code was issued.
Justinian intended to create a work which would substitute all other
sources of law20 and which would be applied in full by the judges of the
Empire, to the future exclusion of all other sources: even commenting on
it was strictly forbidden21 (one of the most disregarded commands in
history). Justinian’s undertaking was all the more ambitious if we consider that the collection included texts generated in ages very distant from
each other both in time and in the nature of the legal institutions.
Conﬁrming that the separation of the two parts of the Empire was already under way, it is
signiﬁcant that no constitution after the year 432 of the pars occidentis of the Empire is
included, despite the abundance of legislation of Italic origin in the ﬁfth century.
The number varies in the three versions that have come down to us: 124 Novels in the
Latin Epitome Juliani of Julian, a law professor in Constantinople, circulated in the West
during the early Middle Ages; 134 Novels in the Latin Authenticum commentated on by
the Bologna School; 168 Novels in the Greek collection, with 10 Novels promulgated by
the Emperor Tiberius II (578–582).
Digesta, de conﬁrmatione Digestorum, const. Tanta, § 19: ‘omne quod hic positum est hoc
unicum et solum observari censemus’.
‘Nemo [. . .] audeat commentarios isdem legibus adnectere’ (const. Tanta, § 21).
The collection, translated into Greek and including the constitutions
of the subsequent Emperors, remained the basis for Byzantine law for
almost ten centuries, until the fall of Constantinople to Turkey in 1453.
Justinian wanted to introduce the compilation to the West in his
re-conquest of Italy,22 but was unsuccessful in his attempt, as Spain and
Gaul were already the territory of Germanic reigns, whereas almost
immediately after his death southern and central Italy were occupied by
the Lombards who had descended into the peninsula in 568. Only with
the rediscovery in the twelfth century would Justinian’s work begin its
life-cycle as the principal source of the new ius commune. As such, it
would dominate continental law in Italy and in Europe until the end of
The fact that the work of Justinian and his jurists would play a key role
from the twelfth century onwards is due primarily to the contents and
conceptual structures that the work was able to transmit. Their richness is
indeed extraordinary, if only because it portrayed so momentous
a historical evolution, from the law of the republican age, to the era of
transformations of the Empire, to the events and upheavals of the postclassical age to Justinian. It is, however, undeniable that the principles of
classical origin are its most deﬁning trait. As selected and systematically
arranged in the great Justinian compilation, they were to re-emerge in the
work of the jurists and the imperial rescripts of the ﬁrst centuries.
These traits, characteristic of the Roman concept of law, may be
summarised in some basic principles23 which constitute what Jhering
called ‘the spirit of Roman law’.24 Among them are the separation of law
from norms of a diﬀerent nature, in particular deliberately focusing on
private law, according to the principle of ‘isolation’; the concentration on
the resolution of concrete cases, thus avoiding deﬁnitions, generalisations, classiﬁcations and the systematic arrangement of the subject
matter; the combinatory and almost mathematical approach, in which
legal concepts are often handled as if possessing a life and an objective
reality;25 the weight attributed to tradition, to authority, to the certainty
Pragmatica sanctio, § 11 (of 554), in Novellae, ed. Schoell-Kroll, p. 800.
On this, we follow the lucid account by Schulz in Principles of Roman Law (Oxford 1936).
R. v. Jhering, Geist der römischen Rechts auf den verschiedenen Stufen seiner Entwicklung
(1852–1865).
As F. v. Savigny had already noted in his Vom Beruf unserer Zeit für die Gesetzgebung und
Rechtswissenschaft (1814), § 4. As Schulz wrote, ‘private Roman law as portrayed by
classical writers attains an extraordinary, almost logical, deﬁniteness. The number of
juristic conceptions which play a part in it is comparatively small, as all which pertain to
special or non-Roman variations are set aside. The legal rules take on the character of
l a w in l a t e an t i q u i t y
of acquired legal relations,26 to good faith, to the freedom and autonomy
of individuals, notwithstanding the entrenched strict social hierarchy.27
It is surprising that these characteristics – which perceptive historians
have brought to light and which our modern sensibilities interpret as
embodying the quintessence of Roman law – were almost never
expressed by the ancients themselves, evidently being so natural as not
to necessitate expression.
In their sober account of cases and their solution – not least of the
reasons for which they wield such fascination – the authoritative opinions of the jurists and the decisions of the imperial rescripts would
inspire medieval and modern scholars to engage in the analysis of the
texts and in the techniques of analogy. But most of all it was the art of
argumentation, the wisdom of proposed solutions and the austere sense
of justice unleashed with every proposition, that would bring these texts
back to life in medieval and early modern Europe. Nor should the
contribution of Greek culture to the more decisive phases of Roman
legal science be overlooked.28
These principles belong primarily to classical law and were only in part
to be retained in the last centuries of antiquity. They were to be transmitted in the successive ages by the classical texts collected in the Digest
and Codex by the Justinian compilers.
It was mostly in the ﬁeld of institutions that the law of late antiquity was
to make its most creative contribution to the history of civilisation.
As Peter Brown ﬁttingly put it, ‘Seldom has any period of European history
littered the future with so many irremovable institutions. The codes of
Roman Law, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the idea of the Christian
Empire, the monastery-building – up to the eighteenth century, men as far
apart as Scotland and Ethiopia, Madrid and Moscow, still turned to these
apodictic truths, as any limitations imposed by public law or extra-legal duties are
ignored. Often the jurists’ statements almost give the impression of a mathematical
treatise or rather of a treatise on a law of Nature’ (1936, pp. 34–35).
This diﬀers from the modern sense of legal certainty: Roman jurists deliberately intended
to keep law in a ﬂuid state, rather ensuring ‘ius quaesitum’; the disinclination towards
legislation in the classical and republican age also reﬂects this idea.
‘The fact that it [Roman law] developed in the context of a historically localized aristocracy did not prevent it from acquiring universal value; in the intensive intellectual
elaborations of the classical jurists . . . the aristocratic nature of the social structure is
translated . . . into an equality of native and notable individuals. . . . The more substantial
the equality in a historical society, the more valid the Roman law principles’ (Lombardi
1967, p. 58).
On this, see the papers collected in the two volumes, La ﬁlosoﬁa greca e il diritto romano,
1.3 t heod osius ii to j ustinian
imposing legacies of institution-building of the Late Antique period for
guidance as to organize their life in this world.’29
The crisis of the Roman Empire was therefore not a crisis of its laws,
nor did it prevent its survival. On the contrary, the law of late antiquity,
including those elements of the earlier traditions which had not been
superseded, would constitute the basis of institutions, procedures, norms
and customs which in various forms and measure would be transmitted
through the succeeding ages after the end of Roman dominance in
The fact that, together with classical law, a large number of imperial
texts of the fourth, ﬁfth and sixth centuries were inserted in the Justinian
compilation endowed it with a polyvalence that was among the factors in
its posthumous success. Further, what might have hindered the success of
the work would act instead as a stimulus: as we shall see (see Chapter 7),
the contradictions within the compilation would in fact, beginning in the
twelfth century, engender a body of creative intellectual work.
The tendency to legislate and codify law, combined with the classical
outlook fostered by some of the foremost jurists of the sixth century,
led to a work destined to become the principal medium by which the
law of antiquity was to survive.
In the West, the continuity of Roman law occurred at ﬁrst through
other channels: the Theodosian tradition, as reproduced in the Romanobarbaric laws, was to remain in eﬀect as custom and also inﬂuence the law
of the Germanic peoples of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Had
this not been so, the legal renaissance of the twelfth century, founded on
the rediscovery of Justinian’s compilation, would probably not have been
Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine, London 1972, p. 13.
Christianity, Church and Law
2.1 The Organisation and Hierarchy of the Early Church
The establishment of Christianity in the last centuries of antiquity constituted a religious event of extraordinary importance for the Roman
Empire and for the subsequent history of Europe and the world, but its
inﬂuence was profound also on laws and institutions. The reason for this
might be ascribed to the new faith’s contents, to the form in which its
values and rules were expressed, to the institutions created to preserve
and disseminate those values and to the inﬂuence of all this on law and
The evangelical message included a series of statements of a religious
nature, many of which, however, involved direct or indirect consequences on the regulation of the relationship between people and in the
individual’s relationship with secular institutions. One need only recall
precepts such the insolubility of the marriage tie,1 the requirement for
loans to be repaid without interest,2 the obligation of respecting secular
authority and the distinction between secular and religious authority3
and the rejection of the law of retaliation.4 More generally, the commandment to love one’s neighbour, the respect for human dignity – every
person, man or woman, slave or free man, citizen or foreigner – implied a
revolution in customs, institutions and precepts rooted over a millennium. This might explain how the normative enactment of these principles has in turn taken centuries and millennia – remembering the
abolition of servitude and the modern human rights bills – a historical
evolution which cannot be regarded as having yet been concluded.
From the very beginning the small group of Christ’s disciples presented the characteristics of an institution equipped with rules. By the
Mark 10.9; Matthew 19.6; Luke 16.18.
An important reference in the history of the prohibition of usury is in Luke 6.35; but for
the condoning of deposits with interest, see Matthew 25.27; Luke 19.23.
Matthew 22.21; Mark 12.17; Luke 20.25. 4 Matthew 5.38, in relation to Exodus 21.24.
2.1 organisation and hierarchy of t he early church 13
time the twelfth apostle decided to substitute Judas, a composite procedure was enacted, in which the choice between the two candidates
indicated by the assembly of the faithful – constituting the small primitive church in Jerusalem – was left to lots (Acts 1.15–26). Soon the church
would make a distinction between apostles and priests (Acts 15.2) and
these from deacons, also elected by the assembly and deployed for the
material assistance of the faithful (Acts 6.3–5), as well as the management
of property and the resources of the church. The ardent and charitable
spirit of the original church is well expressed in the Acts of the Apostles,
which attests to property being held in common, thus personal possessions
being renounced in the ﬁrst Christian communities;5 also assistance was
extended to other communities in diﬃculty, in case for example of famine
(Acts 11.49).
Early on the Church assumed the form of a hierarchical institution, in
answer to the necessity of creating a solid and compact entity, able to
withstand the deﬂecting forces of other well-rooted cultures, such as the
Gnostic: ‘Christianity survived because it possessed an ecclesiastical
organizational system and a principle of authority’ [C. Dawson 1932].
The Apostles’ successors were given the name originating from the Greek
term for bishop, episcope, with pastoral responsibility for a city and its
outlying territory, designated as diocese (also a Greek term, derived from
Byzantine administrative language). Answering to the bishops were the
priests and deacons. From the ﬁrst centuries a hierarchy was in turn
created among the bishops based on the greater or lesser importance of
the city where the diocese had its seat. The bishops with the more
important seats (metropolitan) were responsible for coordinating the
bishops of the region (suﬀragan) and had the power to re-examine
appeals to their decisions. For the nomination of bishops in late antiquity
the contrivance of an election by the local clergy became customary,
followed by the acclamation by the faithful and the consecration by other
bishops of the ecclesiastical province and by the metropolitan bishop.6
The bishop of Rome was soon recognised as having the highest role
among all the rest: Christ himself had placed Peter at the head of the
‘Anyone who owned property or goods sold and shared them with everyone, according to
their need’ (Acts 2.44); ‘the multitude of those who had come to believe had a single heart
and soul and no one called what belonged to him his, but everything was in common
between them’ (Acts 4.32).
See Statuta Ecclesiae Antiqua, 1 (of circa 475), which lists as requisites for election the
‘consensus clericorum et laicorum’, the ‘conventus totius provinciae episcoporum’ and the
‘metropolitani auctoritas vel praesentia’.
chris tia ni ty, church a nd law
Church (Matthew 16.17–18); and as Peter was the ﬁrst apostle to carry
the Christian message to Rome, after his martyrdom the concept prevailed that it should be his successors who would inherit the primacy, in
this way maintaining the pre-eminence for the Church preconised by its
Founder. Some evidence of supremacy was apparent between the end of
the fourth century and the beginning of the ﬁfth, through the predominantly ecclesiastical and pastoral directives given to other bishops by
popes such as Siricius7 and Innocent I;8 thus it was that the ﬁrst pontiﬁcal
decrees came into existence. It was to be forcefully reiterated in the ﬁfth
century with the vindication of the role of bishop of Rome enacted by
Leon I, a pastor whose great moral authority had imposed itself even
upon fearsome warriors such as Attila and Genseric.9 It is from this time
on that the Eastern Church was obstinately resistant to recognising the
supremacy of the bishop of Rome in the same way that it was accepted in
2.2 The Sacred Text
An essential aspect of the new religion – undoubtedly derived from the
Israelite tradition – is the presence of a canonised sacred text in written
form, known therefore to everyone and not just to the priesthood, within
which the precepts of the revelation are expressed in deﬁnitive and unalterable form. Christianity, like the Jewish and the Islamic religions later on,
is a ‘religion of the book’. In fact many of the precepts in Scripture – drawn
both from the Old and the New Testaments – determined in a permanent
way the laws and institutions both religious and civil of the people and
countries that embraced the Christian religion, sometimes indeed until the
present: it suﬃces to remember (to add some further examples to the ones
already touched upon) precepts such as the festive sanctiﬁcation of the
seventh day (Exodus 20.9), harvest tithes (Deuteronomy 14.22), the irrevocability of the priestly order (Psalms 110.4) and the supremacy of the
bishop of Rome.10
In the Christian world the study of the Scriptures was present from its
inception. The Gospels clearly conﬁrm how often Christ himself referred
Siricius, Epistle 1 (of 385), in PL 13. 1131–1143.
Innocent I (402–417), Epistolae 2; 5; 13; 25; 29–31, in PL 20, col. 472–582.
Leo I (440–461), Sermo 4, in PL 54, col. 149–151: 2 ‘de toto mundo unus Petrus eligitur, qui
[. . .] omnibus apostolis cunctisque ecclesiae patribus praeponatur [. . .]; transivit quidem in
alios apostolos ius potestatis istius.’
2 .3 ea rl y ca n on l aw
to texts of laws and of the prophets. The Scriptures were used not only to
understand the precepts revealed, but also as a guide to the behaviour of
the faithful in case of doubt and to resolve controversies between
Christians: questions of a practical nature tied to the life of the Church
and of the faithful. It is signiﬁcant that beginning with the choice of the
twelfth apostle, Peter was inspired by a precept in the Psalms to ﬁnd the
appropriate procedure to adopt.11
The ﬂowering of the great Greek and Latin Church Fathers attests to
the profound study on the part of Origen and the Eastern fathers,
and Augustine and the Western fathers, of the sacred books of the two
Testaments [Simonetti 1994]. For the Church Fathers the Scriptures
constituted a single entity, which was coherent because it came as the
revelation of the one and only God [De Lubac 1959–1964]. It was eloquently expressed in the ﬁfth century by the two Spanish fathers Eterius
and Beatus: ‘the entire series of books of the sacred Scriptures forms
a single work.’12
Naturally problems of the coherence among the various passages of
Scripture emerged at every step, not only between the Old and the New
Testaments, but also within each of the two parts of the Bible. Augustine
makes use of a very signiﬁcant expression to clarify how to overcome the
problem: ‘if we were not aided by our intellect the divine words would
seem to contradict one other.’13 It would therefore seem that we must call
on reason, in order to demonstrate that the dissonances in the text are
only apparent. And the basic criterion is clearly outlined in the expression of patristic origin ‘diversi, sed non adversi’ [De Lubac 1951–1952]:
diﬀerences can be explained in such a way as to avoid contradiction.
We shall be seeing what great relevance this would have later on in the
ﬁeld of law.
2.3 Early Canon Law
The crucial religious and theological questions – in the ﬁrst centuries
these were the questions relative to the human and divine natures of
Christ and on the relation between the three persons of the Trinity, but
Acts 1.15–25.
‘Tota Bibliotheca unus liber est, in capite velato in ﬁne manifesto’: showing the relation
between the Old and the New Testaments (Eterius e Beatus, ad Elip. 1. 99, in Migne
Patrologia latina (PL), 126. 956).
‘Litigare videntur divina eloquia: contraria putantur sonare nisi adsit intellectus’
(Augustine, Sermones de Scriptura, 24. 4, in PL 38. 164).
chris tia ni ty, c hurch a nd law
also seemingly minor questions, such as that of the licit or illicit nature
of images of God and Christ – were entrusted to the deliberations of
bishops gathered in a council. This meant either all the bishops (the
ecumenical council) or, for pastoral and minor liturgical questions, the
bishops of single Christian regions (the local synod). The ecumenical
councils of Nicaea in 325, of Constantinople in 381, of Ephesus in 431
and of Chalcedon in 451 each constituted a milestone for the Church.14
In the same way as in its ﬁrst council – held in Jerusalem in AD 70 (Acts
15.6–29) – it was thought that the Holy Spirit expressed itself through the
deliberations of the congregate bishops. Soon local synods were also to
proliferate: in Asia Minor, in Africa, in Gaul, in Italy, in Spain [Gaudemet
1979]. In this way a fundamental source of canon law took form, made up
of the canons of the Councils and the synods, subordinate only to the
supreme source, the Sacred Scripture, fruit of the divine revelation.
We are right in thinking [Calasso 1954] that with these early council
deliberations, a law of the Church was to come into existence which
constitutes the basis of canon law: deﬁnitely not a secular or state law, but
nevertheless equipped with norms and sanctions. Among sanctions,
the earliest to be introduced were the exclusion of the sinner from the
Eucharist and the more severe exclusion from the community of the
faithful (excommunicatio, anathema). Many features of canon law are
traceable to Roman laws which persisted in the centuries during which
the Church was acquiring a conﬁguration [Gaudemet 1985; Landau
1993]. The ties between the two laws would remain strong in the succeeding centuries.
The impressive political and institutional achievements of the Roman
Empire did not go unnoticed by those who had already converted to the
new religion. For this reason the statement by Rutilius Namantianus from
Marseille in praise of Rome for having transformed the world into a single
city is renowned,15 while others considered the Empire a condition predisposed by Providence not only to create peace under a single law, but also
and above all to promote the universal mission of the Apostles.16
Conciliorum Oecomenicorum Decreta, ed. J. Alberigo et al., Basileae Friburgi Romae,
1962, pp. 1–79.
‘orbem fecisti quod prius urbis erat’: De reditu, lib. I, vv. 65–66.
Ambrose Bishop of Milan justiﬁed the creation of the Empire on the part of Augustus in
the following words: ‘ut recte per totum orbem apostoli mitterentur’ (Explanatio
Psalmorum, XII. 45. 21, PL 14. col. 1198); and the Spaniard Prudentius believed the
Empire to be the creation of God himself, who wanted religion to keep men’s hearts
united, and that a common law would make everyone Roman (Contra Symmachum, lib.
II, vv. 586–604).
2 . 4 st a t e a n d c hur c h
2.4 State and Church
By the beginning of the fourth century the relation between Christians
and secular institutions had undergone a radical transformation.
The Christian religion, after two centuries in which its followers were
ferociously persecuted and the Church was considered an illicit organisation, within the span of less than a century went from being tolerated, to
being recognised by Constantine in the year 313 with the Edict of Milan,
and then granted privileges, particularly that of exemption from taxes.17
In the year 380 Theodosius declared the Catholic religion to be the only
religion recognised and admitted within the Empire.18 Even prior to this,
from Constantine onwards, Christian emperors felt it their legitimate
right to intervene even in strictly religious and theological questions, to
the point of taking the initiative of convening some of the councils,
closely following the proceedings and actively trying to inﬂuence
The connection created between the Church and the Empire in the
fourth century explains how particular and intricate connections were
established in the administration of justice. Constantine allowed the
litigants to choose (in a joint agreement) to be judged by the bishop
rather than the lay judge and governor of the province;19 episcopal
sentences could not be appealed and were endowed with executive
power20 [Vismara 1995]; with regard to ecclesiastical matters the bishop
was granted exclusive jurisdiction.21 Furthermore, Justinian authorised
appeals from provincial governors to the bishop, whose pronouncement
could at that point only be re-examined by the Emperor.22 Bishops were
thus given an important civil function.
The writings and letters of the great Church Fathers who were also
bishops – such as Augustine, Ambrose and later Gregory the Great –
conﬁrm the multiplicity of roles carried out in society to mitigate contrasts and guide the law in the direction of Christian values, while also
observing the secular laws of which the bishops had thorough knowledge.
It should also be noted that among the greatest Fathers of the Latin
Church were those who had had legal training and (like Ambrose and
Gregory) carried out high civil oﬃces as functionaries of the Empire
before being elected bishop.
See, e.g., Cod. Theod. 16. 2. 2 (of 319); Cod. Theod. 16. 2. 40 = Cod. Iust. 1. 2. 5 (of 412).
Cod. Iust. 1. 1. 1. 19 Cod. Theod. 1. 27. 1.
Cod. Theod. 1. 27. 2 = Cod. Iust. 1. 4. 8 (of 408). 21 Cod. Theod. 16. 11. 1 (of 399).
Nov. 86 of 539.
chris tia nity, church and law
2.5 The Beginning of Separation
The problem was to arise of establishing clear boundaries between the
authorities of the state and the Church in the religious, political and legal
ﬁelds: a problem which during the age of persecution Christians had
confronted by respecting the laws of Rome but following the evangelical
precept denying the Emperor the tribute of a cult status which they
reserved only for God, even at the cost of their lives: ‘Christianity
separated, so to speak, the citizen from the believer’ [G. Falco 1963].
This distinction is of fundamental importance and has persisted throughout the history of Christianity to the present age. When the Emperors
declared themselves to be followers of Christ, the relationship between
the Church and secular power became much more complex and problematic even inside religious life itself.23 In the middle of the fourth
century, for example, the Emperor Constance could resolutely declare,
‘what I dispose shall have the value of a canon of the Church.’24 In the
Byzantine East some direct interventions and controls of the Church by
the Empire (Caesaropapism) was to persist for centuries.
It was the Western Church that was to trace the boundary line. One
well-known event took place in the year 390: Ambrose, the bishop of
Milan, dared refuse the Emperor readmission to the church, unless
Theodosius professed himself a sinner for having ordered a gruesome
reprisal in Thessalonica.25 Ambrose had been a high oﬃcial of the
Empire before having been unexpectedly and by popular demand nominated to the bishopric. For him there was a clear distinction between the
temporal sphere, in which the Emperor held no equal on earth, and the
religious sphere, with respect to which the Emperor must consider
himself no diﬀerent from any other man, and therefore bound, like the
rest of the faithful, to respect the precepts of the Gospel and the authority
conferred to the Church by Christ.
A century later it was the bishop of Rome himself, Pope Gelasius I
(492–496), who formulated a basic theory concerning secular and religious powers. He wrote that the kingdom and the priesthood, the
Emperor and the Pope, constituted two ‘distinct dignities’, independent
The real dangers of this support of secular power were very clear to some of the Church
fathers: among these Hieronymus in the fourth century wrote that ‘postquam [ecclesia] ad
Christianos principes venerit, potentia quidem et divitiis maior, sed virtutibus minor facta
est’ (Vita Malchi, 1, in PL 23, col. 55).
Atanasius, Historia Arianorum 33 (of 358 ca.), in PG, 25. 731.
Ambrose, Epistolae, 51 (PL 16. 1209–14); Paulinus, Vita Ambrosii 24 (PL 14. 38).
2 . 6 t he b en e d i c ti n e r u l e
of each other, as both were instituted by God himself: one was to oversee
the things of this world, the other to guide the community of the faithful
to salvation through the Church; neither would interfere with the other.26
In the West Gelasius’ text would remain fundamental until well beyond
the Middle Ages [Ullmann 1981].27
The principle of distinction, derived from a single seminal passage in
the Gospel (Matthew 22.21: ‘Therefore render to Caesar the things that
are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’)28, never disappeared
from the traditional conﬁnes of Western tradition. During the entire
span of the successive historical phases of relations between the Church
and the state, from the Middle Ages to the modern and contemporary
era, the question of the boundary between the two spheres in several
common themes: from marriage to crime, from jurisdictional powers to
ﬁnancial constraints and privileges, from clerical statutes to political
rights and duties, has continually resurfaced and been discussed in new
terms, in concert with the evolution of political ideologies and civil and
For quite diﬀerent historical reasons a similar distinction between the
religious and the secular is not to be found in the Jewish, Islamic or
Eastern civilisations of China and Japan, not even, as mentioned previously, in Byzantium. The principle of distinction between the religious
and the secular spheres can truly be considered a fundamental and
speciﬁc characteristic of the European legal tradition.
2.6 The Benedictine Rule
The sphere of law was also to be enriched by the encounter between the
archaic Germanic culture and the more seasoned and complex civilisation of the Late Empire and by the profound inﬂuence exerted by
Christianity. The theological as well as political divisions which had
existed within the new religion from the fourth century on – in particular
In a letter of the year 494 to Atanasius, emperor of Constantinople, Gelasius wrote, ‘duo
quippe sunt, imperator auguste, quibus principaliter mundus hic regitur: auctoritas sacrata
pontiﬁcum et regalis potestas’ (Epistolae Romanorum Pontiﬁcum, ed. Thiel, Brunsbergae
1867, vol. I, p. 350). And in the Tractatus 4. 11: ‘Christus memor fragilitatis humanae [. . .]
sic actionibus propriis dignitatibusque distinctis oﬃcia potestatis utriusque discrevit [. . .] ut
et Christiani imperatores pro aeterna vita pontiﬁcibus indigerent, et pontiﬁces pro temporalium cursu rerum imperialibus dispositionibus uterentur [. . .]’ (ed. Thiel, p. 568; PL
59. 102).
This was also included in Gratian’s Decretum of 1140 (D. 96 c. 10).
Matthew 22.21; Mark 13.17; Luke 20.25.
c hr i s t i a n i t y, c hur ch an d l a w
between Arian Christianity and Catholic Christianity – continued for
centuries also in the West, although the ties with the Catholic papacy
were to prevail in Frankish Gaul, Visigoth Spain and Lombard Italy, and
later also in Christianised Ireland and England.
Among the spiritual forces, monasticism was especially signiﬁcant and
acted like leavening on every level of society within the new Germanic
kingdoms and throughout the Middle Ages. Originating in Egypt in the
third century, monasticism spread to Western Europe through the incentive of monks coming from afar: from the Byzantine East, from Africa
and from Ireland. In Italy a monk from Norcia called Benedict was to
found a monastery in Cassino after the year 529. The Rule dictated by
Benedict in the sixth century29 was to assume a preeminent role throughout Europe, where an extraordinary number of Benedictine monasteries
was founded in the successive centuries.
A remarkable aspect of the Benedictine rule is the precise instructions
given for the organisation of monastic life. A severe discipline of prayer
and work (‘ora et labora’)30 marked the days and nights of the monks.31
Manual labour went hand in hand with intellectual work, borne out by
the great number of manuscripts transcribed by the monks. It is to the
monasteries that we owe virtually all written testimony of antiquity
which has come down to us: manuscripts of poetic, philosophical, historical and scientiﬁc texts of ancient Greece and Rome were, almost without
exception, transcribed by monks and priests of the early and high Middle
Ages and then preserved for centuries in the libraries of churches and
monasteries in the East and the West.
The cardinal principles of the Benedictine Rule were the duties of
obedience,32 poverty – the monks could own nothing personally33 – and
chastity. The monastery was headed by an abbot nominated for life by the
monks, based on personal qualities, not on age.34 It was speciﬁed that the
choice must be voted by the ‘major and most solid part’ (maior et sanior
pars) of the community.35 The authority of the abbot was to be exercised in
S. Benedict, Regula, ed. R. Hanslik, Vindobonae, 1977. 30 S. Benedict, Regula, 48.
S. Benedict, Regula, 8–20. 32 S. Benedict, Regula, 5; 68 (impossible commands); 71.
S. Benedict, Regula, 33: ‘ne quis presumat aliquid habere proprium, nullam omnino rem,
neque codicem, neque tabulas [. . .]. Omnia omnium sint communia.’
S. Benedict, Regula, 64.2: ‘merito et sapientiae doctrina eligatur [. . .], etiam si ultimus
fuerit in ordine congregationis’.
S. Benedict, Regula, 64.1: ‘in abbatis ordinatione illa semper consideretur ratio, ut hic
constituatur quem sive omnis concors congregatio secundum timorem Dei, sive etiam pars
quamvis parva congregationis saniore consilio elegerit’. There was to be much discussion
later about this formula, which became classic in medieval canon law (Ruﬃni, 1976).
2.7 gregor y the great
the interest of the community.36 The evangelical source is clear and
expresses a new idea: the concept of power as service.37
2.7 Gregory the Great
Gregory, a Benedictine monk – also the ﬁrst biographer of Benedict – was
a Roman citizen from a patrician family, an imperial oﬃcial who at barely
thirty had risen to the important role of prefect in Rome (praefectus urbi),
but was later to retire to monastic life in the year 575. Elected in 590 to the
oﬃce of bishop of Rome, Pope Gregory I held the pontiﬁcate for fourteen
years, diligently working as teacher of the clergy and guide of the Church,
during a particularly diﬃcult period in which the Lombards repeatedly
attempted to seize the lands belonging to the Church. Pope Gregory left
a set of pastoral and ethical works, mainly written in the preceding years,
which were to be among the best-loved and most widely read medieval
Western works. He also left a huge Register of Epistles (Registrum) of his
papal service, containing more than 800 letters.38
Most cases reported in the Registrum were submitted by an administrator of the Church’s possessions, a bishop or a subject involved in an
ecclesiastical judgement concerning rights or property. The criteria
adopted by the Pope, both in deciding on a case directly and by giving
instructions to a delegate entrusted with the decision, may be summarised in the following basic principles:39 the judge’s duty was to
scrupulously ascertain the facts of the case; consistent respect for the
Roman law text (a ﬁeld with which Gregory was well acquainted) was
expected, except in cases where it was at variance with the lex divina; an
unfailingly impartial and fair approach on the part of the Pope, an
approach that often led to decisions contrary to the actual material
interests of the Church; and the tendency to suggest and apply equity
and misericordia, over and above the strict rules of civil law.
The inﬂuence of these principles was huge, as is clear in the fact that no
fewer than 250 texts of the Registrum were still present in Gratian’s
It was interpreted as meaning that the presence among the monks of censurable subjects
or ones who had sinned should not be counted in the computation of votes requested for
a decision or an election (see also Regula 64.3–6).
S. Benedict, Regula, 64.8: ‘sciat [. . .] sibi oportere prodesse magis quam praeesse’.
Mark 9.35: ‘si quis vult primus esse, erit omnium novissimus et omnium minister.’
Registrum Epistolarum, ed. Ewald-Hartmann, in MGH Epistolae I, 2 vols., Berolini 1957;
ed. Norberg, 2 vols., Turnholti 1982 (CCL, 140); cf. Detlev – Fuhrmann 2001, pp. 70–80.
On this, see Padoa-Schioppa, 2010, pp. 581–610, whose analysis is summarised here.
christianity, c hurch and law
Decretum of the twelfth century. Gregory was therefore a powerful
legislator, albeit unwittingly so, as he could not have foreseen that his
letters, each concerned with a speciﬁc case, were to become legal rules
lasting for centuries.
Ministering to both the clergy and the faithful, both in his writing and
in his letters, Gregory discussed and resolved a number of exegetical
questions, but also issues of religious and ecclesiastical practice. Also in
legal questions his judgement was self-assured and particularly conscientious in acquiring elements of proof before making a judgement. Respect
was shown for the distinction between secular and religious spheres, so as
to comply with both the leges and the canones. He made a concerted eﬀort
to lead the solution back to the dictates of the Holy Scriptures: it was from
the sacred text that the ethical rule of conduct had to be extracted, as it
contained the precepts given to man by God himself and from Christ to
the Church. The method consisted in leading a doubtful question back to
a text in the Scriptures, which had been suitably interpreted with contextual references to other passages and precepts:40 this was the approach,
for example, that Gregory took in answering a series of questions put to
him by Augustine, who had been sent by the Pope to evangelise
England.41
The method had begun with the vast work on the Holy Scripture of the
great Fathers of the Eastern and Western churches, which Gregory had
appropriated and followed. He did so only for questions of a pastoral and
religious nature, while for purely legal questions he simply referred back
to the laws and canons, without further speciﬁcation.42 As we shall see,
this method was to be adopted and developed in the twelfth century as an
essential instrument in the new legal science.
In this sense the Registrum epistolarum 3.62 is explicit: a passage must be intended ‘ex locis
circumstantibus’.
One of the questions concerns the applicability of a rule from Leviticus considering a new
mother impure for several weeks after giving birth. Augustine put a question to the Pope
as to whether the Christian new mother could enter the Church right after the birth. He
answered aﬃrmatively, in a way that is contrary to the letter of Leviticus, recalling other
passages from which it was to be understood that no one should be punished who is not at
fault, and giving birth is not a fault: cf. the Libellus responsionum ad Augustinum episcopum (ed. in Registrum epistolarum, MGH Epistolae I, lib. XI, 56a vol. II, pp. 331–343).
The Libellus is not part of the Registrum; however, it is to be considered authentic.
Reference to and interpretation of passages from Scripture to indicate religiously correct
conduct is frequent in the Registrum: see, e.g., Registrum II. 44; III. 52 (food and fasting).
See, e.g., in Registrum epistolarum (ed. Norberg), I. 9; I. 41; I. 59; III. 55; IV. 43, with
reference to secular law and conciliar canons.
2.8 penitentials
Irish monasticism also played an important role during these centuries
and not only on the religious front. Coming from Ireland, the followers of
Saint Columban spread throughout the continent, founding numerous
important monasteries, among which were those of Bobbio in Italy,
Luxeuil in France and Saint Gall in Switzerland. Beginning in the sixth
century, the Irish monks developed a particular literary form for the
speciﬁc use of the clergy; these texts were called Libri Poenitentiales,43 in
which for every sin a corresponding punishment was listed: fasting,
chastity, sexual abstinence, but also pecuniary sanctions, carefully calibrated according to the gravity of the sin committed. In the age of
Penitentials, the individual and habitual secret confession before
a priest had already been introduced and gradually replaced the original
form of public and solemn confession, admitted only once in a lifetime.
It is interesting to note that in the Irish Penitentials – the ‘tariﬀ rates’ of
punishments referred back to the Germanic models – the inﬂiction of
spiritual punishment and atonement addresses not simply the act committed, but the intention of the person committing the act.44 Whereas in
the Germanic custom both the feud (Fehde) and the amends were
determined by the simple act itself – with no distinction between
a fortuitous case, negligence and malice – in the Penitentials the subjective element (that is the intention of the person committing an illicit
act) was considered relevant to the spiritual atonement. It is an approach
that would later make its way into secular criminal law.
The Irish Penitentials, ed. L. Bieler, Dublin 1975; Die Bussordnungen der abendländischen
Kirche, Graz 1958. The oldest Penitentials are of Irish origin (e.g. that of Finnean from the
sixth century), whereas others came from England: in the seventh century that of
Cummean and Theodorus and in the eighth century those of Bede and Egbert.
An Irish Penitential makes the following distinction with regard to homicide: ‘si quis
clericus homicidium fecerit [. . .], si autem subito occiderit et non ex odio [. . .]’ (Penitentiale
Vinneani, 23–24, ed. Bieler, The Irish Penitentials, pp. 80–82).
For centuries the Germans had had their own laws, in part common to all
and in part speciﬁc to each clan. Tacitus clearly described the notable
aspects in his well-known Germany written at the end of the ﬁrst century,
a fascinating text no less so for its brief and synoptic form. Three
centuries later, on the eve of migration to the West, these features were
still mostly unchanged. Germanic clans were made up of a corresponding
number of nomadic tribes, unaccustomed to stopping for long in the
same place and the reason why intensive agriculture was not practised,
their primary source of subsistence being hunting and the spoils of war.1
Ownership of property was unknown, as in Tacitus’ time the ﬁelds were
still distributed annually on the basis of social status.2 It was a population
of warriors, for whom ﬁghting and bravery in battle constituted core
values: Tacitus had written that ‘for them it seems a sign of indolence to
get by means of the sweat of their brow what they can procure for
themselves with blood’.3
The armed militia was the fundamental and only public organisation.
Upon entering the army after puberty, boys attained the status of adults,
independent of parental authority. Only in the most critical of phases did
they grant themselves a king, whereas it was usually the most inﬂuential
men, military leaders belonging to the most respected families, who
proposed decisions at the assemblies, the approval of which was shown
by the striking of shields with a spear.4 It was therefore a military and
civilian system based on military assemblies, which in any case did not
constitute an egalitarian society [Much 1967]: Tacitus in fact mentions
Cesar had already written with regard to the Germans: ‘vita omnis in venationibus atque in
studiis rei militaris consistit [. . .]; agri culturae non student’ (De bello gallico, 6. 21–22).
Tacitus, Germania, 26 (see Much, 1967; Thompson, 1969). 3 Tacitus, Germania, 14.
Tacitus, Germania, 11: ‘Rex vel princeps audiuntur auctoritate suadendi magis quam
iubendi potestate. Si displicuerit sententia, fremitu aspernantur, sin placuit, frameas
concutiunt’.
3.1 t he origins
the nobilitas of the lineage and the authority of the principes.5 The
family – which was extensive and included all descendants of a common
founder, therefore with many family units that formed a closely knit clan
united in every sense, including the disposition in battle formation6 – was
in turn characterised by commonly held property: most of all domestic
animals, which were essential to a nomadic society. Wills were unknown
as only legitimate succession was in force.7 Grazing land was held in
common by the entire population. Women, though profoundly respected
and carefully safeguarded, had no rights of their own nor could they act
without the assistance of their fathers or brothers as long as they were
unmarried and otherwise of their husbands. Marriage consisted of the
sale of the bride to the groom’s family, with various rituals which
invariably involved the exchange of property so as to provide the new
family with the necessary resources, respectively in the form of a dowry
on the part of the family of the bride and of a marriage gift on the part of
the groom.8
Reparation for any personal oﬀence involved legitimate recourse to
private reprisal (faida) – the ties of friendship or enmity between clans
were indissoluble9 – therefore in general without intervention on the part
of the community. But at the time of Tacitus it was already possible to pay
amends for oﬀences, even of the gravest sort such as homicide, with
a payment calculated mostly in heads of livestock.10 Justice was administered by elected army leaders.11 Part of the dues went to the family of the
oﬀended party and part to the king or the community.12 The few trials
inﬂicted on traitors or deserters were held in public and inﬂicted the
death penalty,13 and were mostly founded on the trial by ordeal, hence by
invoking the intervention of God in establishing guilt or innocence.
These were also the grounds for judicial duels and oaths [La Giustizia
1995]. For a society that believed in the supernatural, the ordeal could be
anything but ineﬀectual at determining guilt or innocence: this is clearly
shown in early medieval judicial practice when, as a condition for issuing
Tacitus, Germania, 7: ‘Reges ex nobilitate, duces ex virtute sumunt’; cf. Germania 25.
Tacitus, Germania, 3; 7.
Tacitus, Germania, 20.
Tacitus, Germania, 18.
Tacitus, Germania, 21: ‘suscipere tam inimicitias seu patris seu propinqui quam amicitias
necesse est’.
Tacitus, Germania, 21 ‘luitur enim homicidium certo armentorum ac pecorum numero
recipitque satisfactionem universa domus’.
Tacitus, Germania, 12: ‘pars multae regi vel civitati, pars ipsi qui vendicatur vel propinquis
eius exsolvitur’.
Tacitus, Germania, 12.
law of t he germanic kingdoms
a judgement in his favour, the judge invited one of the parties to swear
under oath, at which point sometimes the party declared not to ‘dare’:
‘ausus non fuit iurare’.14 The trial was then decided in favour of the other
These few examples are perhaps suﬃcient in showing the nature of
juridical relations among the Germanic people during the historical
phase that preceded their dislocation towards the West. Legal norms
and customary norms were the same, nor could it be otherwise as writing
was unknown to them. The rules were not for this reason less cogent.
It was again Tacitus who wrote that customs were respected more among
the Germans, than were proper laws by other peoples.15
There is therefore evidence of some fundamental common features in
the Germanic laws and customs beginning in an era that preceded
migration to the West. Nevertheless the idea of a uniﬁed whole, which
scholarship in the past has sustained, is not supported by the sources.
In fact there were diﬀerences and these were signiﬁcant [Kroeschell
1980]. The comparative analysis of the laws of the diﬀerent populations
between the sixth and the ninth centuries demonstrates that there were
exchanges and contacts. Often these diﬀerences and inﬂuences were
revealed in legal practice more than in the laws themselves. For example
God’s judgement being a constant feature of primitive Germanic trials;
for centuries, the Lombards’ preference was for the judicial duel,
whereas the Anglo-Saxons’ custom preferred trial by ordeals with ﬁre
The recurrent and unremitting incursions on the part of innumerable
clusters of migrants from the Germanic clans within the conﬁnes of the
Roman Empire constituted one of the reasons for its crisis and fall in the
West. Once the newcomers had, with or without imperial consent,
permanently established themselves in many of the regions of the
Empire and created many new dominions – the Germanic kingdoms –
the entire legal system assumed diﬀerent characteristics. The historical
consequences of these changes were profound and permanent. It is not by
chance that many of the regions of Europe, from Bourgogne to Bavaria,
from Lombardy to Saxony, but also entire kingdoms such as France and
England – as well as Germany itself – derived their modern names from
the peoples who populated them at the end of antiquity.
This happened often. See, e.g., the trial in Spoleto of the year 777, in Codice diplomatico
Lombardo, IV/1, ed. C. Brühl (Rome, 1981), n. 29, p. 86.
Tacitus, Germany, 19: ‘plusque ibi boni mores valent quam alibi bonae leges’: with a critical
allusion to the Roman customs of his time.
3 . 2 th e p e r s o n a l i t y of th e l a w
3.2 The Personality of the Law
The Visigoths who took possession of southern Gaul and later of a part of
the Iberian Peninsula,16 the Burgundians who occupied the region
between Geneva and Lyon,17 the Franks who settled in northern Gaul
beginning in 481, the Lombards who descended into Italy in 568, the
Angles and the Saxons who landed in England in the sixth century and
the other Germanic tribes, having thus become masters of vast territories,
found themselves governing a population who until then had been living
under Roman law, whereas the victors practised completely diﬀerent
customs, as we have seen.
The radical change caused by the new settlements and the creation of
independent kingdoms therefore posed the complex problem of the
conquerors being a minority in control of occupied territories with vastly
more numerous native populations. It also posed the problem of how to
retain the legal traditions to which each of the Germanic races was so
strongly tied, and which for centuries had symbolised their identity and
the values they shared. The presence in the conquered territories of such
a diﬀerent, complex and sophisticated legal system as that established by
Roman law created constant justiﬁcation for confrontation with the new
rulers. This explains the choice of keeping the law of the victors and that
of the vanquished quite distinct. The German peoples kept their own
national juridical traditions alive as much as possible. The rest was
allowed to continue to regulate legal aﬀairs in line with their Roman
tradition but in any case subordinate to the authority of the newcomers.
Thus the legitimate existence was recognised within single kingdoms of
a plurality of laws, each of which was applicable to a speciﬁc ethnicity; it
was the beginning of the personality of the law, a fundamental feature in
this historical phase. This was also possible because the juridical relationships between the ethnicities – in the ﬁrst place between the victors and
the vanquished: mixed marriages, contracts, trade agreements – were for
a time almost non-existent.
The principle did not in any case apply to the fundamental rules of
public law, which gave the new rulers the assurance of control over the
territory and of being in command: in particular with regard to rules of
public order and of the judiciary. However, the relationship between the
The Visigoth kingdom lasted three centuries, from 418 to 711; after defeat at the hands of
the Franks in 507, the capital moved from Toulouse to Toledo; the kingdom fell with the
The kingdom of Burgundy, created in 443, ended with the conquest of the Franks in 534.
law of the germanic kingdo ms
new rulers and the population of the Empire within the diﬀerent kingdoms was anything but homogeneous. The principle of legal personality
itself was to know signiﬁcant derogations, for example in the Visigoth
In order to ensure a suﬃciently uniform hold on customs, though in
diﬀerent times and in diﬀerent ways, each of the new kingdoms came to
possess written legal texts, in which the national traditions were variously
explicated and supplemented with new elements, in part drawn from the
law of the vanquished, in part from the one newly established by the
sovereigns. It is highly signiﬁcant that these laws almost always adopted
the Latin language, even when their content was intended to have
a strictly Germanic stamp.
3.3 Visigoth Law
The ﬁrst to tackle the diﬃcult task of legislating were the Visigoths. It is
surprising that their most salient early codiﬁcations were in large measure, if not exclusively, inspired by post-classical Roman law. This goes
for the Eurician Code (476–479)18 and for the Alaric Breviary (Lex
Romana Visigothorum, 507),19 the latter composed exclusively of constitutions taken from the Theodosian Code, from the post-classical
Sententiae by Paul and other minor texts, accompanied by brief summaries and commentary, also mostly pre-Visigoth: texts which were often
far from oﬃcial law and conforming to contemporary practices, typical of
what has been deﬁned as ‘vulgar Roman law’. The Breviary was to have
a long-standing inﬂuence in the territory of Gaul (which had already
become the kingdom of the Franks and therefore France) and also in Italy
in the early Middle Ages, two Western regions which, as we have seen,
were left out of Justinian law.
It was only in a second phase that Visigoth law was to acquire greater
originality. King Liuvigild revised the Eurician Code at the end of the sixth
century, adding a number of laws, also retrieving elements of national
Visigoth and Germanic tradition, for example with the provision of ﬁnes
for certain types of oﬀences.20 In the seventh century Chindasvinth
A. d’Ors, El Codigo de Eurico (Rome-Madrid, 1960).
Lex Romana Wisigothorum, ed. G. Haenel (repr. Aalen 1962).
Leges Visigothorum [following note], 7. 3. 3 antiqua. For plagiarism at the expense of the
son of a freeman: the Lex romana Visigothorum prescribed capital punishment of
Theodosian origin, whereas Liuvigild leaves the choice between killing the culprit or
exacting a ﬁne up to the oﬀended party.
3.4 salic law
(642–653) and particularly his son Reccesvinth (649–672) – the capital
of the kingdom having in the meanwhile moved to Toledo in Spain –
furnished the kingdom with a text of laws (Liber iudiciorum, twelve
books)21 which reproduced Liuvigild’s text with the addition of a set of
new rules, for example concerning appeals.22 The Code maintained the
Roman imprint [Petit 2001, p. 334], but several customs of Germanic
origin were also retrieved. In this form the new Liber iudiciorum was
imposed on all subjects, without distinction of ethnical origin.23 Mixed
marriages were admitted as of the sixth century.24
Visigoth legislation was open to religious inﬂuence, in part inspired by
the writings of the great Bishop Isidore of Seville [Thomson 1969]. Some
laws of Chindasvinth and Reccesvinth – which invite the judges to
‘temper a little the severity of the law’25 or consent to the annulment of
a contract entered into for fear of the king26 – reveal an ecclesiastical
inﬂuence. The Hispana, one of the most important collections of canon
law of the late Middle Ages, was drafted during the Visigoth kingdom.27
Even after the year 711, when the kingdom of Toledo was crushed by
the overwhelming onslaught of Islam, the Liber iudiciorum survived –
until Christianity once again prevailed and Justinian law saw a revival in
the twelfth century – as a legal text for the non-Islamic population of
Spain. For some of the regions, for example Catalonia, the continuity of
its application through the early Middle Ages is clearly attested to in
documents [Iglesias Ferreiros 1977]. This also goes for other regions of
Spain. Even with regard to the Muslim population, parts of the rules in
the Liber seem to have been enlisted, while in turn Islamic law exercised
an inﬂuence on the whole population on some matters, for example
concerning water regulation and the agrarian system [Tomas y Valiente
1984, p. 133].
Between the end of the ﬁfth century and the beginning of the sixth
century, Clovis, king of the Germanic Frankish people, after crossing
Leges Visigothorum, ed. K. Zeumer, in MGH, Legum sectio I, vol. I (Hanover-Leipzig
1902). In this edition Liuvigild’s dispositions are said to be ‘antiquae’.
Leges Visigothorum, 2. 1. 24; 2. 1. 30 [cf. Petit, 1997].
Leges Visigothorum 2. 1. 10, of Reccesvinth. 24 Leges Visigothorum 3. 1. 1 antiqua.
‘Severitatem legis aliquantulum temperare’: Leges Visigothorum 12. 1. 1, of Chindaswinth.
Leges Visigothorum, 2. 1. 29, of Reccesvinth.
Pub. Gonzales, in PL 84. 93–848 [see Martinez-Diez, 1966–1982].
law of t he germanic kingdo ms
the Rhine occupied the vast region between the Rhine, the Seine and the
Loire and gave life to the Frank kingdom. Having then defeated the
Visigoths in 507, he conquered also the southern Gaul. In the year 534
the kingdom of the Burgundians was defeated and the Franks extended
their dominion to the region of the Rhône. In the years 507–511 Clovis
had converted to Catholicism from Arianism through the inﬂuence of his
wife, the Burgundian princess Clotilde: a crucial event not only for the
religious, but also the political history of Europe. In the same years the
Frankish king promoted the oﬃcial approbation of a text of laws that is
among the cornerstones of medieval European law, the Pactus Legis
Salicae.28
For the most part the contents of the Pactus originated in an age far
preceding the origins of the kingdom. It vividly reﬂects the legal customs
of the Salic Franks (the other branch of the same ethnicity being that of
the Ripuarians): many rules of law show this customary origin; they are in
great part made up of a catalogue of pecuniary sanctions for a set of
diﬀerent oﬀences. The purpose was that of substituting the original
reprisal or faida with the legal compositio, imposed in monetary terms.
It is worth noting that the Lex Salica was written in Latin, interlaced with
Germanic terms where the Latin was not adequate. The source of the text
is mainly customary, but it must be underlined that the customs, as
formulated in the law, had in fact been established by four ‘wise men’
who are named in the Pactus, and who had made decisions on a series of
cases according to rules that were subsequently put down in writing
[Guillot 1998]. This had all occurred in an age preceding that of Clovis.
Salic law presupposed an economy still predominantly based on
a nomadic way of life (there is very little on the possession of landed
property and no rules on the illicit occupation of land) with particular
attention paid to questions tied to domestic animals, as attested to by the
meticulousness of the rulings to do with as many as ﬁve breeds of pigs.29
In case of homicide the pecuniary ﬁnes are diﬀerentiated according to
whether the act of killing was manifest or covert,30 whether the victim
was a man or a woman,31 a soldier of war or a civilian, a follower of the
Pactus Legis Salicae, ed. K. A. Eckhardt, in MGH, Legum sectio I, vol. IV.1 (Hanover
Pactus Legis Salicae, 3, 4, 5, 6.
Pactus Legis Salicae, 41 §§ 2; 4. The more severe sanction for occult crimes is typical also
of other Germanic laws, such as the Lombard Edicts.
Pactus Legis Salicae, 24: for the killing of a woman or child the sanction is tripled from 200
to 600 silver coins.
3.5 l ombar d law
king, a Frank or a Roman, the landowner or a peasant.32 These last
distinctions are evidently tied to the recent age in which Gaul was
invaded and a kingdom created, but the former signiﬁcantly betray
archaic customs imbued with magical elements, clearly of pre-Christian
origin. They also governed family relations, for example establishing the
joint responsibility of the maternal and the paternal lines for pecuniary
sanctions.33 Also the rule which excludes women from inheritance in ‘Salic
territory’34 – revived centuries later when it was determined that the
succession to French throne should be limited to the male heirs – comes
from much earlier customs. The pattern of the dispositions in the Pactus is
certainly archaic, although there are aspects that point to a less primitive
framework, for example dealing with witness testimony. There are also
normative interventions by King Clovis, who in the years following the
approbation of the Pactus would intervene with important new rules, in
the same way that his successors would intervene with other edicts.35
3.5 Lombard Law
Having descended into Italy through Friaul in the year 568, the
Lombards – a people originally from Scandinavia, but having then lived
in Pannonia, a region of modern Hungary – after a three-year siege under
the guide of King Albonius, succeeded in expunging Pavia, already the
capital of the Ostrogoth kingdom during the age of Theodoric.
The kingdom was divided into thirty provinces under the authority of
as many dukes and in time was to extend to central and southern regions
of Italy, from Lombardy to Tuscany to Spoleto and Benevento.
The adoption of a military term of late antiquity, dux, means, however,
a completely diﬀerent kind of authority from the Byzantine one by the
same name. The Lombard duke – analogous with the Frankish count
which in turn is of Roman military origin: comes – at once held military,
civil and legal power. His status was also characterised by a high level of
autonomy with respect to the king. Family and clan were the sources of
his power, in accordance with Germanic tradition.
Pactus Legis Salicae, 41 §§ 1, 9, 10: the compositio is of 200 silver coins for the killing of
a Frank, 100 for a Roman proprietor, 62 for a Roman peasant.
Pactus Legis Salicae, 58.
Pactus Legis Salicae, 59 § 6: ‘de terra vero salica nulla in muliere hereditas est, sed ad
virilem sexum, qui fratres fuerint, tota terra pertineat’. Women were, however, not
excluded from all types of succession of property [Lévy-Castaldo 2002, p. 1106].
Capitularia I–VI, ed. in MGH, Legum sectio IV.1, pp. 238–250.
la w o f the germa n ic ki ng doms
Three quarters of a century would go by before the year 643 when
Rothari, a Lombard king, took the initiative of codifying the customs of
his people, which had until then remained unrecorded. In the same way
as with the Visigoth and the Franks the language used was Latin: evide