“Beds Inlaid With Silver”

2021 ◽  
pp. 121-132
Author(s):  
David Lloyd Dusenbury
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Paul's Letters ◽  
Medieval Canon Law

It is striking that none of pagan Rome’s jurists felt that the term ‘secularity’, or ‘secularization’, might be necessary to describe a mode of Roman life, or a function of Roman law. Where then do these words originate? ‘Secularity’ is a coinage of medieval Christian writers. When ‘secularity’ occurs in a text by a twelfth-century monk, for instance, it is sharply contrasted with the monastic form of life (conversatio monachorum). And ‘secularization’ is a creation of medieval canon law. Originally, ‘secularization’ signified the protocols for laicizing a monastic in the Roman Church. Though both terms are medieval, this chapter argues that they may ultimately derive from a European Ur-text in which the concept of an ‘age’, or saeculum, is decisive: the Latin New Testament. This chapter seeks to show that the saeculum is a motif in Jesus’ sayings in Luke and in Paul’s letters (in their continent-shaping Latin translations).

High and Late Medieval Scandinavia

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mia Korpiola
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Late Medieval

The region that later comprised the kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden was Christianized between 900 and 1200. A change from oral to written laws apparently took place first in twelfth-century Norway and Iceland, although the surviving legal manuscripts are some centuries later. Danish provincial laws were compiled c.1200–50 and the Swedish provincial laws only later. In all three Scandinavian kingdoms, royal and ecclesiastical statutes preceded the compilation of provincial laws. Precocious legal unification of the realms of Norway and Sweden was reached by nationwide law in 1274 (Norway) and Sweden (c.1350), supplemented in both kingdoms by town laws. In Denmark, the provincial laws remained in force until the 1680s. Roman law influences came mostly through canon law. Continental legal influences were also transmitted from Germany (feudal and town law). The universities of Uppsala and Copenhagen (1470s) had relatively little impact, clerics mostly studying law at Continental universities.

‘Tempering the Wind …’: Moderation and Discretion in Late Twelfth-Century Papal Decretals

2007 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 180-190
Author(s):  
Anne J. Duggan
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Analytical Method ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Law School ◽  
The People ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Medieval Canon Law

Medieval canon law has generally had a bad press. Its professionalization in the period c. 1140 to 1234 can easily be caricatured as the emergence of a rigid, centralized, and authoritarian system which paid small heed to the needs of the people it was supposed to serve. This conclusion is readily sustained by perusal of theLiber Extra, the GregorianDecretalesof 1234, which enshrined the legal developments of the period, from about 1140, which followed the establishment of Gratian’sDecretumas the principal authority for the teaching and practice of canon law. The genesis of theLiber Extrais well known. Pope Gregory IX commissioned Raymond of Peñafort to compile an authoritative collection of papal decretals and conciliar legislation to supplement Gratian’sDecretum, and it drew, principally but not exclusively, on the so-calledQuinqe compilationes antiquewhich had been compiled for teaching purposes in Bologna between c. 1189–91 and 1226.’ And when the work was completed, it was authorized by the bullRex pacificus, which ordered that ‘everyone should useonlythis compilation in judgements and in the schools (ut hactantumcompilatione universi utantur in iudiciis et in scholis); and a copy was duly dispatched to the canon law school in Bologna. The image of centralized, authoritarian lawmaking could not be clearer; and that perception is reinforced by an examination of its structure, where the individual extracts are organized systematically under Titles, which define the subject matter. Such a compilation, like theQuinque compilationesthemselves, was the result of an analytical method, which totally obscured the processes of consultation which had preceded many of the decisions, as well as depriving them, in many cases, of their historical context in terms of the identity of the pope, the recipient, the litigants, and the local circumstances. What emerged was a disembodied code, shorn of the nuances and hesitations which had characterized the decisions which it enshrined.

Structure of Medieval Roman Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Hallebeek
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Ius Commune ◽  
Northern Regions ◽  
Advisory Opinions

At the beginning of the twelfth century a university emerged at Bologna where the study of Roman law was taken up. The first generations of scholars, the glossators, interpreted the Corpus iuris civilis in its medieval shape (subdivided into five volumes) and produced various types of scholarly works: glosses, lecturae, summae, etc. Learned jurists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the commentators, continued the exegetical work of their predecessors. They no longer wrote glosses, but continuous commentaries. Moreover, they produced consilia, advisory opinions given in view of specific court cases. By this time the study of Roman law had spread over major parts of southern Europe. With the dissemination of canon law and the foundation of universities, the knowledge of Roman law could also spread to more northern regions, penetrate into legal practice, and lay the foundation of a common legal culture on the continent: the ius commune.

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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