Law book
In legal history, the term legal book denotes a private legal record from the Middle Ages or early modern times . The term defines itself as opposed to laws, ordinances and other legal texts written by holders of lordly or state power. However, mere textbooks and commentaries on sovereign law are also to be distinguished from the legal books.
content
In most cases, a legal book is a private collection of legal material that is already valid under customary law. But also the semi-academic, so-called "popular" writings of the reception era , which recorded Roman law , which was still foreign in Germany but was widely used with these books , are generally referred to as legal books. Basically, they too only wanted to convey applicable law, since they considered Roman law to be imperial and thus also legally binding in Germany.
Because the legal books were supposed to reflect mainly applicable law, they were often called "mirrors". The model here was the Sachsenspiegel , which stood at the beginning of the legal book tradition.
Some legal historians demand as a further criterion for a legal book that this later unfolded like a law, as was the case in particular in the case of the Sachsenspiegel. However, this criterion only applies to a rather small part of the legal books and is therefore largely rejected.
Major legal books
Important German legal books are in particular:
- the Sachsenspiegel from 1220/35 , the most important legal book of the German Middle Ages,
- the Schwabenspiegel , which was strongly influenced by this, but also already influenced by Roman law, written in Augsburg around 1275 ,
- other legal books dependent on the Sachsenspiegel, such as the so-called Thuringian Mirror and the Frankenspiegel ( Small Imperial Law ),
- the Mühlhausen Imperial Law Book ,
- the Herford legal book , written in 1375 in what was then Middle Low German (language of the Hanseatic League ) ,
- The complaint mirror of the Schwäbisch Hall city clerk Conrad Heyden , written around 1436, was the first legal book to deal with Roman law in German,
- the lay mirror, first printed in 1509 by Nördlingen town clerk Ulrich Tengler .
Examples of other European law books are:
- the early medieval Fénechas (English Brehon laws ) in Ireland,
- the medieval Cyfraith Hywel (10th century) in Wales ,
- the Très ancien coutumier (1200–1245) and the Summa de legibus Normanniae in curia laicali (1235–1258), two Norman law books,
- the Grágás , an Icelandic legal book from the end of the Free State.
- The Swedish provinces ( "Landskapen" ) had their own laws until 1350, which were written down in 1220. Those of Uppland and Södermanland were drawn up by a royal commission and established by the king. They are considered to be codes of law . The rest, e.g. B. those of Västergötland , Östergötland , Gotland and Västmanland were private legal records and are referred to as law books .
literature
- UD von Oppitz: German legal books of the Middle Ages . 3. Böhlau, Cologne / Vienna 1990–1992.
- Burghart Wachinger : Remissorien to the German legal books. In: Author's Lexicon . 2nd ed., Volume 7, Col. 1223-1231.
Individual evidence
- ^ Mirror of the Saxons . 1295-1363. Retrieved August 13, 2013.
