The Libri Feudorum is a twelfth-century collection, originating in Lombardy, of feudal customs. The work gained wide acceptance as a statement of the various rules governing the relation of lord and vassal. Later in the century it was integrated into civil law. [1] It is an example of the increased rationalization of the law in the high Middle Ages.
Its integration by civilians into the larger corpus of civil law demonstrates the interaction of Roman law concepts with local law. J. G. A. Pocock noted that "Lombard feudalism possessed, in the Libri Feodorum, the only written systematization of feudal law that had become part of the general legal heritage of Europe." [2]
Citizenship is a membership and allegiance to a sovereign state.
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.
A republic, based on the Latin phrase res publica, is a state in which political power rests with the public through their representatives—in contrast to a monarchy.
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables, to the Corpus Juris Civilis ordered by Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I. Roman law forms the basic framework for civil law, the most widely used legal system today, and the terms are sometimes used synonymously. The historical importance of Roman law is reflected by the continued use of Latin legal terminology in many legal systems influenced by it, including common law.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, sometimes shortened to Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. The six volumes cover, from 98 to 1590, the peak of the Roman Empire, the history of early Christianity and its emergence as the Roman state religion, the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, the rise of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane and the fall of Byzantium, as well as discussions on the ruins of Ancient Rome.
Baldus de Ubaldis was an Italian jurist, and a leading figure in Medieval Roman Law and the school of Postglossators.
Civil law is a legal tradition from continental Europe that evolved from Roman, Germanic, and other legal traditions, including ecclesiastical and customary laws. It is characterized by comprehensive codes and detailed statutes, with no emphasis on precedent, and where judges primarily focus on fact-finding and applying codified law in courts. It is the most common legal system in the world, widely adopted across Latin America and in parts of Asia and Africa.
Classical republicanism, also known as civic republicanism or civic humanism, is a form of republicanism developed in the Renaissance inspired by the governmental forms and writings of classical antiquity, especially such classical writers as Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero. Classical republicanism is built around concepts such as liberty as non-domination, self-government, rule of law, property-based personality, anti-corruption, abolition of monarchy, civics, civil society, common good, civic virtue, popular sovereignty, patriotism and mixed government.
High, middle and low justices are notions dating from Western feudalism to indicate descending degrees of judicial power to administer justice by the maximal punishment the holders could inflict upon their subjects and other dependents. The scale of punishment generally matched the scale of spectacle, so that in France, Paul Friedland argues: "The degree of spectacle [was] originally the basis for a distinction between high and low justice", with an intervening level of 'middle justice', characterised by limited or modest spectatorship, added around the end of the fourteenth century.
John Greville Agard Pocock was a New Zealand historian of political thought. He was especially known for his studies of republicanism in the early modern period, his work on the history of English common law, his treatment of Edward Gibbon and other Enlightenment historians, and, in historical method, for his contributions to the history of political discourse.
Roman-Dutch law is an uncodified, scholarship-driven, and judge-made legal system based on Roman law as applied in the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th centuries. As such, it is a variety of the European continental civil law or ius commune. While Roman-Dutch law was superseded by Napoleonic codal law in the Netherlands proper as early as the beginning of the 19th century, the legal practices and principles of the Roman-Dutch system are still applied actively and passively by the courts in countries that were part of the Dutch colonial empire, or countries which are influenced by former Dutch colonies: Guyana, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Suriname, and the formerly Indonesian-occupied East Timor. It also heavily influenced Scots law. It also had some minor impact on the laws of the American state of New York, especially in introducing the office of Prosecutor (schout-fiscaal).
The Machiavellian Moment is a work of intellectual history by J. G. A. Pocock. It posits a connection between republican thought in early 16th century Florence, English-Civil War Britain, and the American Revolution.
Giovanni Antonio Sangiorgio was an Italian canon lawyer and Cardinal. Agostino Oldoino calls him the leading jurisconsult of his age. Kenneth Pennington has called him one of the ‘last two great commentators on feudal law’.
Matteo D'Afflitto, also referred to as Matthaeus de Afflictis, was a Neapolitan jurist descending from the princely family d’Afflitto.
The Liber feudorum Ceritaniae is, as its Latin title indicates, a book registering the fiefs (feudi) within the counties of Cerdagne (Ceritania), Roussillon and Conflent, and the feudal obligations of the count and his vassals. It is preserved in the Arxiu de la Corona d'Aragó and consists of 272 charters in 379 folios with 32 colourful miniatures on a golden background. It was probably originally copied from a part of the Liber feudorum maior (LFM), which is several decades older. It contains all the documents pertaining to Cerdagne and Roussillon found in the LFM and in exactly the same order, as well as six documents more. Most of the charters in it cover the years 1172–6.
The Liber feudorum maior, originally called the Liber domini regis, is a late twelfth-century illuminated cartulary of the Crown of Aragon. It was compiled by the royal archivist Ramon de Caldes with the help of Guillem de Bassa for Alfonso II, beginning in 1192. It contained 902 documents dating as far back as the tenth century. It is profusely illustrated in a Romanesque style, a rarity for utilitarian documents. The LFM is an indispensable source for the institutional history of the emerging Principality of Catalonia. It is preserved as a file in the Arxiu de la Corona d'Aragó (ACA), Cancelleria reial, Registres no. 1, in Barcelona.
Scots law is the legal system of Scotland. It is a hybrid or mixed legal system containing civil law and common law elements, that traces its roots to a number of different historical sources. Together with English law and Northern Irish law, it is one of the three legal systems of the United Kingdom. Scots law recognises four sources of law: legislation, legal precedent, specific academic writings, and custom. Legislation affecting Scotland and Scots law is passed by the Scottish Parliament on all areas of devolved responsibility, and the United Kingdom Parliament on reserved matters. Some legislation passed by the pre-1707 Parliament of Scotland is still also valid.
The Constitutio de feudis, also known as the Edictum de beneficiis regni Italici, was a law regulating feudal contracts decreed by the Emperor Conrad II on 28 May 1037 at Pavia, during his siege of Milan. It "had wider and more lasting effects on Italian society than any other piece of imperial legislation," and by "attract[ing] to the cities [the moderately-wealthy landowner, it] built a bridge at a high social level between city and countryside." According to Susan Reynolds, it "mark[s] the foundation of the academic law of fiefs", as it formed the basis for the Libri feudorum.
Libri may refer to:
The ancient constitution of England was a 17th-century political theory about the common law, and the antiquity of the House of Commons, used at the time in particular to oppose the royal prerogative. It was developed initially by Sir Edward Coke, in his law reports; and has been analysed in modern times by J. G. A. Pocock in The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law. This is not to be conflated with Bancroft-Prize-winner Mary Sarah Bilder's "transatlantic constitution."