Custom, Law, and Monarchy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Seong-Hak Kim
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
French History ◽  
Legislative Authority ◽  
The People ◽  
Modern France ◽  
Internal Coherence

Ancien régime France did not have a unified law. Legal relations of the people were governed by a disorganized amalgam of norms, including provincial and local customs (coutumes), elements of Roman law and canon law that together formed jus commune, royal edicts and ordinances, and judicial decisions, all coexisting with little apparent internal coherence. The multiplicity of laws and the fragmentation of jurisdiction were the defining features of the monarchical era. A key subject in European legal history is the metamorphosis of popular customs into customary law, which covered a broad spectrum of what we call today private law. This book sets forth the evolution of law in late medieval and early modern France, from the thirteenth through the end of the eighteenth century, with particular emphasis on the royal campaigns to record and reform customs in the sixteenth century. The codification of customs in the name of the king solidified the legislative authority of the crown, the essential element of the absolute monarchy. Achievements of French legal humanism brought French custom and Roman law together to lay the foundation for the French law. The Civil Code of 1804 was the culmination of these centuries of work. Juristic, political, and constitutional approaches to the early modern state allow an understanding of French history in a continuum.

The reception of Justinian's legislation on the Edict unde vir et uxor in the reformed statutes of certain provinces of the (northern) Netherlands in the 17th century

2012 ◽  
Vol 80 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 157-170
Author(s):  
Sebastiaan Roes
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Select Group

AbstractRoman law has always had a moderate influence on Dutch customary law. The reception of Roman law can be found mainly in the Dutch provinces of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, and most of all in Friesland. This was manifested inter alia by the reception of canonic testamentary law and Justinianic intestate succession law into the reformed statutes of certain provinces and cities in the Early modern period. In some cases even a reception of the Edict unde vir et uxor can be found, e.g. in the Dutch provinces of Groningen (1601, 1618), Drenthe (1712) and in the northern part of Limburg (upper Guelders, 1620). But generally speaking this Edict's claim to fame is limited to a select group of renowned 17th century Dutch jurists, who mentioned it in their scholarly works.

“The Jurisprudence of the Arrêts”: Marital Union, Civil Society, and State Formation in France, 1550–1650

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Hanley
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Western World ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
New Research ◽  
Marital Union

During the 1500s and 1600s when state building in France depended on the government's ability to staff administrative and judicial offices, prime candidates emerged from the famous law schools. Steeped in new research methods favoring a documentary base, Jurists focused legal studies on the French past, rather than a Roman one, and fostered historical and comparative views of society, law, and nation. Searching in archives for customs and laws, they wrote histories tracing the development of French institutions, including the Parlement of Paris, and devised civic rituals to articulate French constitutional precepts in that court. Practicing law as well, they collected “notable arrêts” (judicial decisions) on questions of law, advanced legal theories and legislative projects, and facilitated the circulation of legal knowledge within a general public caught up in judicial activism born of social change and political necessity. By challenging operative facets of two great legal systems in the western world, Roman law and Canon law, and by amending French Customary law, they developed a system of “French jurisprudence” and legally framed a “civil society” that underwrote the claim to political sovereignty as a nation.

War and Sovereignty in Medieval Roman Law

2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-63
Author(s):  
Ryan Greenwood
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Just War ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
War And Peace

The theory of just war in medieval canon law and theology has attracted to it a large body of scholarship, and is recognized as an important foundation for Western approaches to the study of ethics in war. By contrast, the tradition on war in medieval Roman law has not received much attention, although it developed doctrines that are distinct from those in canon law and theology. The oversight is notable because medieval Roman law on war influenced subsequent tradition, forming with canon law the essential basis for early modern legal thought on war and peace. While the main canonistic contributions to legal theory on war came in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Roman jurists added new opinion in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which can be related to the political life of Italy and to the growth of the independent cities. By the fourteenth century, Roman lawyers (or civilians) often considered licit war from a secular and pragmatic perspective, and associated a right of war with sovereignty. Here, I would like to trace the development of this theory, from roughly 1250 to 1450, and particularly a view that sovereigns licitly judged the justice of their own causes, as a remedy for a lack of superior authority.

Kultura prawna w Polsce przed założeniem Akademii Krakowskiej

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-60
Author(s):  
Artur Lis
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Legal Regulations ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Social Community ◽  
The Given

Culture is a very complex reality of human existence, which is comprehended in its different aspects. By the object of culture they are all products of human activity, events, behaviors ordered in certain examples present in societies in the form of rules of conduct which are determined by customs, morality and legal regulations. The acceptance of Baptism by Mieszko I of Poland in 966 was the turning point in the Polish history. The country of the first Polish Piast was rooted in the culture of the international community of European states. This situation favored the influence of certain rights of the foreign Polish legal system. In the then practice of Slavic states, the legal system was based on a tribal customary law (i.e., universally recognized, time-honored form of behaving, accepted in the given social community). From the 12th and 13th centuries the knowledge of Roman law and canon law broadened in Poland. During this period, developing the legal thought was based on both types of law. Knowledge of those systems derived from various sources. This process was used for the import of legal manuscripts of Roman and canonistic study to Poland. An example of the reception of Roman law and canon law in Poland until the beginning of the 13th century is the Chronicle of Poland by Master Vincent called Kadlubek (c. 1150–1223). The document is one of the most important and most abundant sources of law in this period.

Sola scriptura, An essay in comparative legal history on 'obligacions' in thirteenth century France and England

2012 ◽  
Vol 80 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 95-128
Author(s):  
W.J. Zwalve
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
English Law ◽  
National Boundaries

AbstractIt is contended in this article that the doctrine of litterarum obligatio, as developed by Jacques de Révigny on the basis of Inst. 3,21, was not inspired by Roman law, but by the 'lettre scellée' of contemporary French customary law. It is also argued, that the English deed is the equivalent of the 'lettre scellée' of medieval French customary law, like the English recognizance is the equal of the publicum instrumentum, the 'lettre de baillie', of French customary law. They were primarily executory instruments, devised to prevent litigation by allowing for executory proceedings to be initiated after a summary hearing in court. They were the products of a legal culture that did not, as yet, recognize national boundaries. Nevertheless, English law was about to break away from its continental origins, by continuing to employ legal expedients, such as the deed, which, on the continent, were beginning to become obsolete, or completely changed in character, on account of the persistent pressure of canon law and Roman law. The demise of the deed on the continent was mainly, if not exclusively, due to the influence of Roman law and canon law, which allowed for parole evidence to defeat any instrument. The persistence of the deed in English law was guaranteed by the fact that it did not allow this to happen.

Religion und Recht in der Frühen Neuzeit

2016 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Strohm
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
Religion And Law ◽  
Law Of Nations

AbstractReligion and Law in the Early Modern history. The devaluation of the canon law by Protestant Reformers promoted the system-oriented presentations of law based on Roman law. Also in ius publicum there is a significant majority of Protestant authors. The situation differs from natural law and law of nations where the discourse of the 16

Acts of Oblivion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Pollmann
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Wars Of Religion ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commissions ◽  
Modern France

Acts and peace treaties that ended civil wars and revolutionary upheaval in early modern Europe, routinely contained clauses in which former enemies or their victors declared that all that had happened in the past would be ‘forgotten’. Since memories did demonstrably persist, many scholars have concluded that such acts of oblivion did not work. Comparing the acts of oblivion agreed after wars of religion in early modern France, the Netherlands, and England, this chapter shows how acts of oblivion could nevertheless be a viable strategy for peacekeeping. Oblivion was never an end in itself. The acts aspired to a form of closure that relegated the past to the past and enabled both societies and the people in them to reinvent themselves along new lines. In this sense they bear an interesting resemblance to the Truth and Reconciliation commissions which modern societies use as a tool for peacemaking and transitional justice.

Alma Mater Studiorum. O genezie i początkach uniwersytetów

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-22
Author(s):  
Marek Maciejewski
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Institutions Of Higher Education ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
New Era ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
The 19Th Century

The origin of universities reaches the period of Ancient Greece when philosophy (sophists, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, stoics and others) – the “Queen of sciences”, and the first institutions of higher education (among others, Plato’s Academy, Cassiodorus’ Vivarium, gymnasia) came into existence. Even before the new era, schools having the nature of universities existed also beyond European borders, including those in China and India. In the early Middle Ages, those types of schools functioned in Northern Africa and in the Near East (Baghdad, Cairo, Constantinople, cities of Southern Spain). The first university in the full meaning of the word was founded at the end of the 11th century in Bologna. It was based on a two-tiered education cycle. Following its creation, soon new universities – at first – in Italy, then (in the 12th and 13th century) in other European cities – were established. The author of the article describes their modes of operation, the methods of conducting research and organizing students’ education, the existing student traditions and customs. From the very beginning of the universities’ existence the study of law was part of their curricula, based primarily on the teaching of Roman law and – with time – the canon law. The rise of universities can be dated from the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modernity. In the 17th and 18th century they underwent a crisis which was successfully overcome at the end of the 19th century and throughout the following one.

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