Anton Matthew II.

Anton Matthäus

Anton Matthäus (also: Matthaeus ; born November 15, 1601 in Herborn , † December 25, 1654 in Utrecht ) was a German legal scholar .

Life

The son of the legal scholar Anton Matthäus I had his first training in Marburg and studied law with his father at the University of Marburg . In 1626 he moved to the University of Groningen , where he continued his studies. With the academic degree of Doctor of Law, he followed a call in 1628 as professor of civil law at the Harderwijk grammar school . Soon afterwards he became the first law teacher at the newly built grammar school in Utrecht. When the grammar school was elevated to the University of Utrecht on March 26, 1636 , he was one of its first teachers at the law faculty, an office he held until the end of his life. Here he also took part in the organizational tasks of the university and was rector of the alma mater in 1642/43 and 1653/55 .

Genealogically it should be noted that on February 13, 1633, he married Anna, the daughter of Johann Isaak Pontanus (born January 21, 1571 in Helsingør ; † October 6, 1639 [or 1640] in Harderwijk ). From this marriage there were nine children, two daughters and seven sons. The son Anton also achieved fame as a professor of law in Leiden and Utrecht.

Act

De criminibus , 1803

Anton Matthäus had with his Commentarius De Criminibus Ad Lib. XLVII. Et XLVIII created a work that was highly regarded in the following years, which was active in the treatment of criminal law into the 19th century. In the tradition of the Italians Hippolyt Marsilius (1450–1529), Aegidius Bossius (1487–1546), Giulio Claro (1525–1575) and Andreas Tiraquellus (1480–1558), as well as Didacus Covarruvias (1512–1577), in Spain and France standing, he was a representative of the new legal method of synthesis of the mos gallicus and advocated a more liberal criminal law. In his work, he reflected on a criminal justice system that agreed the basic features of Roman law with the Dutch penal code.

In this way he made progress in the subjective evaluation of the offenses in his work. When evaluating the guilt index in the repetition, Matthäus advocated that the psychological state as such, which forms the basis for the evaluation in the punishment, should be researched more closely and that the criminal judgment should not be passed on the basis of schematically treated presumptions. Even in his general doctrines, which were already permeated by Aristotelian ideas, he turned against an evaluation of human actions based solely on their real success, even if he also called for certain external actions as a means of cognition for the criminal disposition. When trying, however, it is also subject to the old standard of evaluation, which puts the main emphasis on what has been caused. More and more, the criminal judgments came to the German law faculties, particularly as a result of the files being sent. They soon began to dedicate special lectures to criminal law, first in Tübingen, Jena, Rostock and Ingolstadt. The connection between science and the administration of justice proved to be beneficial in both directions.

Selection of works

1. Commentarius De Criminibus Ad Lib. XLVII. Et XLVIII. Dig. Commentarius Antonii Matthaei, IC. In illustri Academia Ultraiectina Antecessoris. Adiecta est brevis & succincta Iuris Municipalis interpretatio, cum indice triplici; Titulorum, Rerum & Verborum, nec non Legum, qua strictius, qua fusius explicatarum. Utrecht 1644, Vesalia 1672, 1679, 1702, Col. Raurac. 1715, 1727, Düsseldorf 1732, 1745, Gen. 1760, Amsterdam 1761, 1803
2. Fundamentorum Iuris, Disputationes Viginti Publice from autore habitae in Academia Marpurgensi. Respondentibus Iuris & humaniorum literarum studiosis, quorum nomina singulis disputationibus ascripta sunt. Herborn 1623
3. De judiciis disputationes XVII. Utrecht 1639, 1645, Amsterdam 1640
4. Orationes, quarum pleraeque continent argumentum juridicum. Utrecht 1655
5. Carmen inaugurale. Utrecht 1636
6. Tractatus de jure gladii. Suffering 1686

literature

• Johann August Ritter von Eisenhart :  Matthäus, Anton (1601 to 1654) . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1884, pp. 617-619.
• Ottokar Tesař: The symptomatic significance of criminal behavior. In: Treatises of the criminology seminar at the University of Berlin. J. Guttenberg Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin, 1907, New Series 5th Vol. 3rd Issue, S 259/55
• Hugo Hälschner: History of the Brandenburg criminal law. A contribution to the history of German criminal law. Verlag Adolph Marcus, Bonn, 1855, p. 155 f ( online )

Web links

• Publications by and about Anton Matthäus II. In VD 17 .
• Biography dutch