Dedication

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The Dedition ( Latin for surrender, submission, surrender ) was originally an institution of ancient Roman international law.

Antiquity

The dedition was not a contract , but a process by which the power of rule over a foreign community was transferred to Rome. This process always represented, at least officially, the voluntary surrender of power to Rome. When a community dedicated itself, it ceased to exist as a subject of international law . In accordance with ancient Roman legal usage, it was tied to a strict question-and-answer scheme.

The formula deditionis laid down the actual course of the dedication act, in which, among other things, the legitimacy of those offering the dedition and the sovereignty of their community were checked. Only then did the community take over into absolute control of Rome. The different formulations in dicionem (into power), in potestatem (into power) and in fidem (into loyalty / trust) populi romani accipere / venire (accept or come to the Roman people) did not change the legal effect of the Dedition . It had practically the same effects as a conquest, but it eliminated the violent aspect. Then there was the complete handover of the community, with the country, cities, animals, people being precisely enumerated. The so-called receptio then designated the acceptance of the Dedition by a specially commissioned Roman magistrate.

Even if the subject (dediticii) were placed under the absolute power of disposal of Rome by the act of deduction, many researchers assume a minimum norm that at least guaranteed the life and freedom of these persons and should be expressed by the term fides .

When in 212 with the Constitutio Antoniniana all imperial residents were granted Roman citizenship , dediticii were excluded from this. The Dedition was also an important part of the settlement of foreign, non-sovereign ethnic groups, such as Teutons , on the soil of the empire. Theodosius I only broke with this when he settled the Goths in Thrace in 382 without a deditio preceding it, even if this topic is assessed differently in research.

The unilateral legal act of restitutio made it possible to restore the sovereignty of the subjugated community, whereby Rome just as meticulously returned everything that had been taken away.

middle Ages

Dedition was also the name of an act of submission in the Middle Ages . The defeated man threw himself barefoot and sometimes only in rags before his opponent and said something in the sense of: Do what you want with me. He often wore a sword and a rod as a sign of appropriate punishment: a sword indicated execution, a rod merely indicated physical punishment.

At first glance, such emotionally charged acts of submission seem to be spontaneous actions with an open outcome. The German historian Gerd Althoff showed, however, that this ritual and details of its implementation were planned by the conflicting parties with the help of mediators; Implementation and outcome were bindingly agreed. The event was staged, and those involved as well as most of the audience knew it. For example, from the walk to Canossa from Henry IV to Gregory VII, there are two sources, one from Pope Gregory VII himself, the other from Lampert comes from Hersfeld . The latter suggests that the process was agreed in advance. In one of the sources (Lampert von Hersfeld) the deditio develops through the following steps:

  1. Prior agreement on form and design (condicio or conditio)
  2. Creation of a public framework
  3. Footfall ( prostratio ) and self-blame
  4. Granting of grace / forgiveness (clementia, condonatio, reconciliatio pacis)

With the public act of submission and forgiveness, the former adversaries gave each other satisfaction (satisfactio). See z. B. Tuebingen feud . Also in the “Cologne Easter Rising” of 1074, the end of the conflict between Archbishop Anno II and the Cologne city population was symbolically accomplished through a deditio based on the Archbishop's satisfaction privilege. The larger the public, the greater the satisfactio. The subtlety of the communication can be seen here, as in other examples, in the details of the staging. So negotiators from the city of Milan offered Friedrich Barbarossa a large sum of money in vain so that as a sign of their special status they were allowed to do the act in shoes and not (as is usually the case) barefoot. Other such aspects are the communication via weapons or flags carried in a deditio.

literature

Antiquity

  • Alfred Heuss : The international law foundations of Roman foreign policy in republican times (Leipzig 1933 ND 1963) (fundamental for modern research)
  • Ernst Badian : Deditio , in: Der Neue Pauly 3, Stuttgart 1997, Sp. 361.
  • Peter Tasler : Ancient War Practice: Border Areas of War Reality, Martial Law and Ethical Reflection . In: Europe and the World in History. Festschrift for the 60th birthday of Dieter Berg , ed. v. R. Averkorn et al., Bochum 2004, pp. 1087-1121.
  • Okko Behrends , Peter Tasler:  Dediticii. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 5, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1984, ISBN 3-11-009635-8 , pp. 286-307.
  • Peter Kehne : The ancient people in their communities: International relations . In: Oldenbourg history textbook antiquity , ed. v. Eckhard Wirbelauer , Munich 2004, pp. 225–236.
  • Dieter Nörr : Aspects of Roman international law. The bronze plaque of Alcántara. Dep. Bavarian Acc. D. Knowledge phil.-hist. Class NF 101 (Munich 1989) (fundamental recent attempt at a political, historical and legal systematization)
  • Dieter Nörr: The fides in Roman international law (Heidelberg 1991)
  • Andreas Zack, research on the legal basis of Roman foreign relations during the republic up to the beginning of the principate. Part VIII: The legal form and the legal purpose of the inter-social deditio and the meaning of the fides in connection with the deditio, in: Göttinger Forum für Altertumswwissenschaft 19 (2016) 89-163 (offers a detailed description of the research discussion and the relevant sources Reconstruction of the legal form and the legal purpose of the deditio, partly based on Dieter Nörr and deviating from the text of the wikipedia article; URL: http://gfa.gbv.de/dr,gfa,019,2016,a,06. pdf ).

middle Ages

  • Gerd Althoff: The privilege of the 'Deditio'. Forms of amicable conflict resolution in medieval aristocratic society , in: Otto Gerhard Oexle (ed.): Nobilitas. Function and representation of the nobility in old Europe , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1997 (= publications of the Max Planck Institute for History 133), Göttingen 1997, pp. 27–52, ISBN 3-525-35448-7
  • Claudia Garnier : Signs and Writing. Symbolic acts and literary fixation using the example of peace agreements of the 13th century . In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien, Vol. 32 (1998), pp. 263-287.
  • Uwe Neddermeyer: Uprising against the Archbishop 1074: Lampert von Hersfeld reports , in: Wolfgang Rosen / Lars Wirtler (ed.): Sources for the history of the city of Cologne, vol. 1: Antiquity and the Middle Ages - From the beginnings to 1396/97 , Cologne 1999, pp. 109-129.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Neddermeyer, pp. 118f