Vulgar law

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Vulgar ( Latin vulgaris : common, usually) the emperor referred to time Diocletian Resulting Roman law .

It characterizes a classic civil law which, after its initial heyday, from the time of the revolutions of the 3rd century onwards, was so impoverished due to a general decline in culture that it was - hardly understood - only to be found in a plain and coarse state. This is particularly noticeable in the legal sources of Western Rome since Emperor Constantine .

meaning

In the three centuries following the end of the Severan emperors up to the codifications of Justinian , nothing more was legally produced in Rome. Instead, the writings of the classical lawyers were used, shortened and rewritten because the highly developed texts appeared too extensive and were no longer understood even in the imperial chancellery a libellis . As a result, many problems of understanding arose in legal practice. Defined legal figures, be it from litigation or property law, were mixed up or delimited from one another with weak contours. At times it was no longer possible to distinguish between possession and property .

The term Vulgarrecht goes back to Ernst Levy . Jurisprudence no longer influenced the imperial administration; it was more the military. The imperial chancellery remained responsible for inquiries in legal matters, but the lawyers, who performed the independent expert activities, were ousted. Although emerged still small and legal collections, however these were compared to the classical works meaningless, such as the post-classical verorteten today as Paul sentences . At best, such works gained weight in the sorting of the pre-Justinian source material.

The citation law is regarded as the lowest point in Roman legal development. It was created in 426 by the emperors Theodosius II for the Eastern Roman Empire and Valentinian III. for the Western Roman Empire . The emperors probably wanted to put a stop to the collapse of the law, because four years later they commissioned the compilation and codification of the Roman laws and the imperial constitutions from 312 onwards. The result was the Codex Theodosianus , which was completed and published in 438 .

The rise of Vulgar law went hand in hand with the economic decline from the 3rd century onwards. The trade in goods decreased and elaborate jurisprudence was required far less than before. However, material justice need not have suffered as a result.

On the other hand, Vulgar law had a great influence on the development of the law among the Germanic tribes . The codifications for this are the Edictum Theoderici , the Codex Euricianus , the Lex Romana Visigotorum (see also Breviarium Alaricianum of the Visigoth king Alaric II from the year 506 ) and the Lex Romana Burgundionum .

Criticism of the term

With the imperial crisis of the third century , the productivity of classical law passed. The post-classical period was and is therefore frequently in the legal field as "waned", sometimes "dried up" power source rezipiert . Until the 20th century, the prevailing teachings connoted the dwindling claims to the law very negatively as vulgar law and classicistic . Modern research is only recognizing again that such terms miss the point. They indicated that the need for more workable legal structures had only been insufficiently addressed. They are perceived as exaggerated and inadmissibly generalizing. Fritz Schulz tried to escape the term entirely. Instead, he referred to the distinctive structures of the civil service in the late Classical era, thus suggesting a “bureaucratic” understanding of law. Franz Wieacker coined the term “epiclassic” - at least for the first phase until the onset of the clearly noticeable Christianization . Detlef Liebs internalized this because he adopted it to describe (post-) Diocletian late antiquity. Liebs avoids the term vulgar law at all, because he focused on the realpolitical core features of the time, such as the advancing Christianization, the influences of the Ostrogoths and the Julian - Byzantine changes. Academic efforts to give the term meaningful structures, or even to replace it, are still in flux.

It is pointed out that there were specialist lawyers in late antiquity as well as in classical times. Jurists were even held in permanent positions in the state apparatus, there were professorships in law in Rome, Beirut and Constantinople, and Lyon and Narbonne were also centers for law. In late antiquity there was bureaucratic jurisprudence exercised by imperial dragonfly secretariats , prefects , provincial governors and diocesan vicars. Legal qualifications had to be presented to the higher courts as proof. There is news of freelance expert and consultant work up to the 7th century. Reference is also made to the fact that the Eastern Current, which was secondary until the 5th century, overtook the legal cultural landscape of the West from Theodosius II . Only at the end, however, from the beginning of the 7th century, did Roman legal theory leave something to be desired.

Works of the so-called Vulgar law

The Diocletian legal works can be assigned to the epiclassical context described above ; these are the private collections of the Codex Gregorianus , the Codex Hermogenianus and Hermogenians Iuris epitomae . The age of Constantine , which was already marked by Christianization, produced the so-called Fragmenta Vaticana , the Theodosian era the Collatio and the Codex Theodosianus . In the period from the fall of Rome to the Ostrogoth Empire, the Consultatio , interpretations of the Lex Romana Visigothorum and the Epitome Gai stand out, followed by the Leges novellae and the Edictum Theoderici . The legal environment for the Codex Iustinianus and the so-called Authenticum is of the classic Byzantine style .

literature

  • Ernst Levy : On the essence of western Roman vulgar law. In: Collected Writings I. (1963). P. 184 ff.
  • Ernst Levy: Western Roman vulgar law. The Code of Obligations. Volume 2. Weimar, Böhlau 1956.
  • Detlef Liebs : Jurisprudence in late antique Italy (260-640 AD) (= Freiburg legal-historical treatises. New series, volume 8). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, pp. 283-287 (abstract).
  • Detlef Liebs: Conflicts between Roman and Germanic legal concepts in late antiquity. IN: Festschrift Hermann Nehlsen , 2008. p. 99.
  • Fritz Schulz : History of Roman Law , Weimar 1961, pp. 335-420.
  • Dieter Simon : Marginalia on the discussion of vulgarism. In: Festschrift Wieacker. 1978, p. 154 ff.
  • WE Voss: Law and rhetoric in the imperial laws of late antiquity. An investigation into the post-classical sales and transfer rights , Frankfurt / Main, 1982, p. 31 f. (FN 107).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Max Kaser : Roman legal sources and applied legal method. In: Research on Roman Law , Vol. 36, Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Graz 1986, ISBN 3-205-05001-0 , pp. 114–116.
  2. ↑ a b Uwe Wesel : History of the law: From the early forms to the present. CH Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 978-3-406-54716-4 . P. 238 f.
  3. ^ WE Voss: Law and rhetoric in the imperial laws of late antiquity. An investigation into the post-classical sales and transfer rights , Frankfurt / Main, 1982, p. 31 f. (FN 107).
  4. ↑ a b Detlef Liebs : The jurisprudence in late antique Italy (260-640 AD) (= Freiburg legal-historical treatises. New series, volume 8). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, pp. 283-287 (abstract).
  5. ↑ Voss and Liebs turn against the basic views of Max Kaser and Ernst Levy , which are felt to be outdated
  6. ^ Fritz Schulz : History of Roman Law , Weimar 1961, pp. 335-420.
  7. ↑ The Fragmenta Vaticana and the Collatio were already shaped by the age of Christianization
  8. ^ Karlheinz Misera , Ralph Backhaus : In Semper apertus - Six Hundred Years of Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg 1386–1986, Berlin 1985, pp. 194–209.