Plaintive mirror
The Klagspiegel is the oldest legal book that conveys Roman legal content in German, and is also considered the oldest comprehensive compendium of Roman law in German (according to Stintzing, see literature). It is therefore seen as an important pioneer in the practical reception of Roman law in Germany.
The legal book was written around 1436 by the Schwäbisch Hall town clerk Conrad Heyden . Heyden had studied law at the University of Erfurt from 1403 , before taking on this important position in the imperial city in 1413 after training as a town clerk . As a city clerk, he was not only an advisor to the city government, but also dealt with the editing of laws and other legal texts. The lament mirror can be considered a life's work.
The complaint is divided into two books (tracts). The “first treatise” contains civil law and civil procedural law . The “other part” deals with criminal law and criminal process . The content is essentially based on the works of the so-called glossators , important legal scholars of the Italian Middle Ages. The most important models were the works of Azo , Roffredus , Martinus de Fano , Gandinus and Durantis . But also the Corpus Iuris of Emperor Justinian was used.
The importance of the complaint table lies in the easily understandable, so-called "popular" communication of the complicated legal content. It helped the judges, lay judges, prosecutors and defense counsel, for the most part still unstudied, to better understand the newly adopted Roman law and then to apply it. As a result, Roman law was widely spread.
After the invention of the printing press , the Klagspiegel was reprinted over twenty times between approx. 1475 and 1612. Of central importance for this success was the fact that the famous humanist and town clerk Sebastian Brant appeared as editor of the Klagspiegel from 1516. He also gave the legal book its concise name "Klagspiegel" ("Der Richterlich Clagspiegel"), by which it is known today. In the text Brant - contrary to a widespread opinion in the literature - hardly changed anything.
The complaint mirror served as a template for numerous important legal texts of later times, namely the Worms Reformation (1498), the Constitutio Criminalis Bambergensis (1507) and thus indirectly also the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina (1532), Ulrich Tengler's Laienspiegel (1509), Justin Gobler's mirror of rights, Heinrich Rauchdorns Practica and others.
literature
- Andreas Deutsch: The Klagspiegel and its author Conrad Heyden. A legal book of the 15th century as a pioneer of reception (= research on German legal history. Vol. 23). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2004, ISBN 3-412-13003-6 (also: Heidelberg, University, dissertation, 2002/2003).
- Bernhard Koehler: Klagspiegel. In: Adalbert Erler , Ekkehard Kaufmann , Wolfgang Stammler (eds.): Concise dictionary on German legal history . Volume 2: Front door - Lippe. Schmidt, Berlin 1978, Col. 855-857.
- Roderich Stintzing : History of the popular literature of Roman canon law in Germany at the end of the fifteenth and in the beginning of the sixteenth century. Hirzel, Leipzig 1867, ( digitized ; reprint: Scientia, Aalen 1967).