Lex Romana Visigothorum

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A manuscript from the Lex Romana Visigothorum . Munich, Bavarian State Library, Clm 22501, fol. 178v (6th century)

The Lex Romana Visigothorum (Roman Code of the Visigoths) from 506 , also called Breviarium Alarici (anum) (Breviary of Alaric), was an important compilation of imperial decrees and legal explanations. The Lex Romana Visigothorum represents a sum of Western Roman Vulgar law and had an impact in southwestern Europe that went back to the High Middle Ages .

Origin and content

Incipit of a manuscript of the Lex Romana Visigothorum (10th / 11th century)

At the beginning of the 6th century were under the name " Lex " in Visigothic (Breviary of Alaric) and in the Burgundy Empire ( Lex Romana Burgundionum compiled in the form of excerpts from older legal writings) Legal records, largely Roman law contained and probably just for the Romanesque and were no longer valid in the real sense of the Roman population. The legislative enactments or confirmations of the previously applicable law are likely to be related to the armed conflicts between the Germanic successor realms on the soil of the dissolved Roman Empire; As legal safeguards, they apparently served to solicit support for the respective new rule among the Catholic Church and the local population.

The Lex Romana Visigothorum was issued by the Visigoth king Alaric II in 506 and was first published in the town of Aire . This took place according to the form of imperial legislation customary in Roman late antiquity . The Gothic rulers' origin was shown in the “conmonitorium”, the foreword, only the multiple naming of “rex Alaricus” as legislative authority and a court official responsible for drafting the Codex, the “comes Goiaricus”; a politically sovereign King of the Visigoths now appeared as overlord to the Romansh population and gave them laws with the participation of the clergy and the nobility (“adhibitis sacerdotibus ac nobilibus viris”).

The Lex Romana Visigothorum consists of:

The Lex contains both actual legislative enactments and explanations. All parts with the exception of the epitome Gai are partly textual, partly detailed summaries of content, which probably date from the 5th century. The main legal historical value of the Lex Romana Visigothorum is that it is the only collection of Roman law in which the first five books of the Codex of Theodosius and the five books of the Sententiae Receptae by Julius Paulus have been preserved. Until a manuscript was discovered in the monastery library of Verona , which contains the greater part of the Institutiones des Gaius, it was also the only manuscript in which parts of the work of this central Roman jurist have been preserved.

Impact history

The Visigoth Empire under Alaric II.

The history of the impact of the Lex Romana Visigothorum extends spatially and temporally beyond the Visigoth Empire , which continued to exist in Spain until 711. Although most of the empire north of the Pyrenees fell to the Franks after the Battle of Vouillé in 507, the law originally written solely for the Romans apparently remained in use there, now or gradually with territorial validity. In 768, over 260 years after its creation, Charlemagne examined and approved the Lex Romana Visigothorum. A continuation of Roman law in its vulgarized form in the former Visigothic part of France was guaranteed by royal decree. In the Visigoth Empire itself, the Lex Romana Visigothorum was repealed by the introduction of the Lex Visigothorum 654, which was valid for the entire population .

On the basis of the Lex Romana Visigothorum, at least ten different excerpts and arrangements ( Epitomae Breviarii , not all of which have already been edited) were created between the 7th century and the 9th century, mostly in the Frankish Empire . Above all, the arrangements from the Lombardy - Rhaetian area, which date from the first half of the 8th century, and the name Lex Romana Curiensis (after its distribution in Churrätia , i.e. in the northern Italian-eastern Swiss-Vorarlberg region) or Lex Romana Utinensis are known (based on the place where a lost manuscript was found in Udine ). The name "Lex" introduced in the 19th century is misleading here. More recent research evaluates the text, which has been handed down in two Rhaetian and one Veronese manuscripts, as well as two Milanese fragments, as a literary reception of the Visigothic model, since no legislative will can be recognized. The submission did not influence the prevailing, anyway Roman customary law, but, as misinterpretations of the content show, it was rather alienated by it.

In terms of cultural and legal history, the Lex Romana Visigothorum is of outstanding importance. It does not seem to be accidental that the reception of Roman law in the High Middle Ages in the areas from which it began - northern Italy / Bologna - and where it first spread - southern France - was able to build on a legal culture that was actually unbroken by Roman law which it did not actually introduce there, but rather renewed it.

designation

The Breviary of Alaric is in an announcement of the royal scribe Anianus as Codex referred to, but different from the Codex Justinian , from the writings were excluded from lawyers, it includes imperial laws (leges) and legal treatises (Jura). Because the text is preceded by a royal conmonitorium with the stipulation that only copies certified by Anianus should have legal force, the compilation of the Codex is dedicated to Anianus by many scribes and this is more often referred to as the Breviary of Anianus (Breviarium Aniani) . It appears that the codex was known as Lex Romana or Lex Theodosii among the Visigoths . The name Breviarium Alarici or Breviarium Alaricianum was first given by the legal historian Tilius in the 16th century to distinguish it from the Lombard-Rhaetian arrangements. The first complete edition was provided by Johannes Sichard under the title: Codicis Theodosiani libri XVI , Basel 1528; the next new one, which is still relevant today (also with regard to the name Lex Romana Visigothorum ), was provided by Gustav Hänel in 1849.

swell

  • Gustav Hänel : Lex Romana Visigothorum. Teubner, Berlin 1849 (reprint: Scientia Verlag, Aalen 1962).

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