Europe outside Italy

Outside Italy—the center from which the great European legal civ­ilization of the later Middle Ages radiated—the most frequendy re­curring typologies of the ius proprium were substantially analogous to the Italian ones, even when they were marked by variants and differ­ences and set off by a different terminology.^{[95] [96] Local custom always played a prominent role, and accompanying it (or placed above it) there were statutes, royal laws, and compilations of laws and customs.}

That relationship existed in part because of the circulation of the various Western anthologies discussed in chapter 2, but also because some provisions of the ius proprium were identical, in whole or in part, to dispositions in civil or canon law that, thanks to specific application of the same principle since ancient and even extremely ancient times, had become ingrained in local practice. It was also a relationship that existed throughout Europe—albeit at the lowest subsidiary level— inasmuch as the ius commune permeated every nook and cranny of local positive law. The relationship existed, primarily and above all, for an­other reason: without the theoretical focus provided by the ius com­mune-, without the doctrines and concepts that were its most signifi­cant patrimony; without the terminology of the ius commune, which was adopted, respected, or bent to represent functions that differed from the original ones but which was always kept in mind as a funda­mental instrument of expression; without the principles and the values incorporated in the ius commune—without this entire “structure” of thought, form, culture, and mind-set, we can understand neither the letter nor the spirit of the local laws. Indeed, we must think that such a “structure” was essential in the act and in the moment when jurists (or simple lawyers) composed the texts of the iusproprium.

4.