The postglossators or commentators formed a European legal school which arose in Italy and France in the fourteenth century. They form the highest point of development of medieval Roman law.
The school of the glossators in Bologna lost its vitality, resulting in the rise of a new school of legal thought in the 14th century, centred on Orléans in France. Bartolus and Baldus were the most famous of the commentators. Rather than simply seeking to explain the law, the commentators were more concerned with the potential for practical application of the law. Politically at this time, the idea of the Spirit of One – one church and one empire, was popular in Europe. Roman law thus appealed as bringing the potential for one law in addition. Roman law was written and certain as well as being generally consistent and complete. The educated liked its roots and saw the potential for application.
The commentators faced head on the conflict of law with custom as they saw the potential for practical application of the Roman law. They were opportunistic and as medieval Italy flourished, there were many opportunities to be the mediator between the developing political, scientific and economic spheres. Thus many of their ideas were based on practical morality, bold construction of the law and clever interpretations. For example, feudal law, which violated the absoluteness of dominium, was harmonised with Roman law by drawing links with the long lease, which gave rise to a vindicatio directa. The commentators argued that the vindicata directa was evidence of another type of ownership and that feudal ownership could fall within this category. This made Roman law more flexible, although was clearly a move away from the texts, and thus made it of greater practical use to rulers who were seeking a rational and coherent law.
The Commentators went beyond the glossators, who had treated each text separately. The commentators instead wrote prose commentaries on the texts (rather like lectures,) working through, book by book, through the Digest. Rather than simply taking individual Roman law texts at face value, making it useful for practical application involved considering the rationale and principles behind the law. Certain areas were thus not considered at all, for example, Bartolus makes no attempt to consider culpa. However, this general approach produced a far more sophisticated law and enabled harmonisation between Roman law and local law. For example, Roman law said that a will was valid if you had 5 witnesses and that Roman law superseded customary law, whilst Venice law only required 3 witnesses. Bartolus' approach was to consider why Roman law superseded custom. He concluded that this was because custom was presumed bad. However, in certain circumstances, custom would be allowed by the Emperor, where the law was considered good. Since the Venice law had come into practice after the Emperor, the Emperor had not considered if it were good law. However, it clearly was and therefore it should be allowed to continue. The Commentators also harmonised canon law with Roman law to some extent. Canonists argued that bare agreement could give rise to an action (but they only had jurisdiction where that agreement was made by oath.) The Commentators said that the canon law was simply a form of clothing which could make a bare pact enforceable.
The extraction of general principles allowed Roman law to be used in situations which were unfamiliar to the Romans, it provided a coherent and convenient set of rules, which could then be used to interpret local customs, which were given primacy but very narrowly interpreted. The impact of the commentators was thus substantial. Their commentaries were found throughout Europe, in fact it was said that if one was not a Bartolist (a commentator), one could not be a lawyer at all.
Manorialism, also known as seigneurialism, the manor system or manorial system, was the method of land ownership in parts of Europe, notably France and later England, during the Middle Ages. Its defining features included a large, sometimes fortified manor house in which the lord of the manor and his dependents lived and administered a rural estate, and a population of labourers who worked the surrounding land to support themselves and the lord. These labourers fulfilled their obligations with labour time or in-kind produce at first, and later by cash payment as commercial activity increased. Manorialism was part of the feudal system.
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 judiciary is the system of courts that adjudicates legal disputes/disagreements and interprets, defends, and applies the law in legal cases.
Baron is a rank of nobility or title of honour, often hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical. The female equivalent is baroness. Typically, the title denotes an aristocrat who ranks higher than a lord or knight, but lower than a viscount or count. Often, barons hold their fief – their lands and income – directly from the monarch. Barons are less often the vassals of other nobles. In many kingdoms, they were entitled to wear a smaller form of a crown called a coronet.
Imperial immediacy was a privileged constitutional and political status rooted in German feudal law under which the Imperial estates of the Holy Roman Empire such as Imperial cities, prince-bishoprics and secular principalities, and individuals such as the Imperial knights, were declared free from the authority of any local lord and placed under the direct authority of the Holy Roman Emperor, and later of the institutions of the Empire such as the Diet, the Imperial Chamber of Justice and the Aulic Council.
Anglo-Saxon law is a body of written rules and customs that were in place during the Anglo-Saxon period in England, before the Norman conquest. This body of law, along with early Medieval Scandinavian law and Germanic law, descended from a family of ancient Germanic custom and legal thought. However, Anglo-Saxon law codes are distinct from other early Germanic legal statements—known as the leges barbarorum, in part because they were written in Old English instead of in Latin. The laws of the Anglo-Saxons were the second in medieval Western Europe after those of the Irish to be expressed in a language other than Latin.
Bartolus de Saxoferrato was an Italian law professor and one of the most prominent continental jurists of Medieval Roman Law. He belonged to the school known as the commentators or postglossators. The admiration of later generations of civil lawyers is shown by the adage nemo bonus íurista nisi bartolista — no one is a good jurist unless he is a Bartolist.
The scholars of the 11th- and 12th-century legal schools in Italy, France and Germany are identified as glossators in a specific sense. They studied Roman law based on the Digesta, the Codex of Justinian, the Authenticum, and his law manual, the Institutiones Iustiniani, compiled together in the Corpus Iuris Civilis. Their work transformed the inherited ancient texts into a living tradition of medieval Roman law.
Irnerius, sometimes referred to as lucerna juris, was an Italian jurist, and founder of the School of Glossators and thus of the tradition of Medieval Roman Law.
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.
During the Middle Ages, an advocatus was an office-holder who was legally delegated to perform some of the secular responsibilities of a major feudal lord, or for an institution such as an abbey. Many such positions developed, especially in the Holy Roman Empire. Typically, these evolved to include responsibility for aspects of the daily management of agricultural lands, villages and cities. In some regions, advocates were governors of large provinces, sometimes distinguished by terms such as Landvogt.
The ohm is the unit of electrical resistance in the International System of Units (SI). It is named after German physicist Georg Simon Ohm. Various empirically derived standard units for electrical resistance were developed in connection with early telegraphy practice, and the British Association for the Advancement of Science proposed a unit derived from existing units of mass, length and time, and of a convenient scale for practical work as early as 1861.
The legal humanists were a group of scholars of Roman law, which arose in Italy during the Renaissance with the works of Lorenzo Valla and Andrea Alciato as a reaction against the Commentators. In the 16th century, the movement reached France, where it became very influential. They had a general disdain for the Middle Ages and felt nothing good could come from then. They also had a great love of antiquarianism and were greatly concerned with the authority and accuracy of the Corpus Iuris Civilis. Thus, they described the work of the glossators and commentators as a malignant cancer on the text. They particularly disliked the commentators because in their attempt to apply law in practice, they had moved further and further away from the texts.
The Carta de Logu was a legal code of the Judicate of Arborea, written in the Sardinian language and promulgated by the juighissa Eleanor of Arborea in 1392. It was in force in Sardinia until it was superseded by the Savoyard code of Charles Felix in April 1827.
In epistemology, criteria of truth are standards and rules used to judge the accuracy of statements and claims. They are tools of verification, and as in the problem of the criterion, the reliability of these tools is disputed. Understanding a philosophy's criteria of truth is fundamental to a clear evaluation of that philosophy. This necessity is driven by the varying, and conflicting, claims of different philosophies. The rules of logic have no ability to distinguish truth on their own. An individual must determine what standards distinguish truth from falsehood. Not all criteria are equally valid. Some standards are sufficient, while others are questionable.
Regarding the canon law of the Catholic Church, canonists provide and obey rules for the interpretation and acceptation of words, in order that legislation is correctly understood and the extent of its obligation is determined.
The Novellae Constitutiones, or Justinian's Novels, are now considered one of the four major units of Roman law initiated by Roman emperor Justinian I in the course of his long reign. The other three pieces are: the Codex Justinianus, the Digest, and the Institutes. Justinian's quaestor Tribonian was primarily responsible for compiling these last three. Together, the four parts are known as the Corpus Juris Civilis. Whereas the Code, Digest, and Institutes were designed by Justinian as coherent works, the Novels are diverse laws enacted after 534 that never were officially compiled during his reign.
Medieval Roman law is the continuation and development of ancient Roman law that developed in the European Late Middle Ages. Based on the ancient text of Roman law, Corpus iuris civilis, it added many new concepts, and formed the basis of the later civil law systems that prevail in the vast majority of countries.
Slavery was common in the early Roman Empire and Classical Greece. It was legal in the Byzantine Empire but it was transformed significantly from the 4th century onward as slavery came to play a diminished role in the economy. Laws gradually diminished the power of slaveholders and improved the rights of slaves by restricting a master’s right to abuse, prostitute, expose, and murder slaves. Slavery became rare after the first half of 7th century. From 11th century, semi-feudal relations largely replaced slavery. Under the influence of Christianity, views of slavery shifted: by the 10th century slaves were viewed as potential citizens, rather than property or chattel. Slavery was also seen as "an evil contrary to nature, created by man's selfishness", although it remained legal.
In the Roman Dominate and Latin jurisprudence down to the 18th century, the lex regia was the supposed law by which unlimited imperium or authority had been transferred from the Roman people to the emperor. Emperor Justinian summarised the law in the decree by which he established the commission to compile the Digest in AD 530, Deo auctore: "By an ancient law [lege antiqua], which was called 'royal' [regia], all the authority and all the power of the Roman people were transferred to the power of the emperor." The concept originates somewhat earlier, however: Ulpian, in the early 3rd century, may already have referred to the law, though the meaning and even the authenticity of his use of the term are contested.
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