FEUDAL LAW
14 From the eighth century, feudal law developed and spread first through the Frankish kingdom and subsequently through other western lands. It is an original system of law, which was not connected with any nation in particular and was created in the Middle Ages quite independently of Roman law or Germanic national laws.
Its general characteristics are none the less Germanic rather than Roman: the importance of personal relations and landed property; the absence of any abstract conception of the state; the lack of writing and formal legislation. Feudal law was a complex body of legal rules which, above all in the area of landed property, was sustained for several centuries. It took shape and developed for four centuries without the intervention of any significant legislation, and without any teaching or legal scholarship. Its development depended on customs, and occasionally on the involvement of a sovereign who was concerned to regulate a question of detail or to innovate on a particular point. The Leges feudorum, the first account of feudal (in fact Lombard) law, did not appear until the twelfth century.legislation: general points
15 The Roman emperors were great legislators. In promulgating their constitutions and in addressing their rescripts, they were conscious of taking an active part in the formation of law. By means of their legislation the emperors clarified, made more specific, and interpreted rules of law; they also gave new direction to the legal order. This legislative activity collapsed at the same time as did the Roman state in the West. Naturally the Germanic kings lent their authority to the process of writing down and promulgating traditioÂnal laws, and sometimes took the opportunity to innovate, but their primary aim was to set out the old law of the tribe. The decline of legislation at this time is not to be explained solely by the disappearÂance of the empire; it is also bound up with the conceptions of the Germanic peoples about royalty and law. In their view, law was not a social technique which could be manipulated and adapted just as the central authorities wished, but an eternal6 reality, a fixed and
6 Hence the expression ewa (cf. the German ewig, the Dutch eeuwig meaning â€?eternal’) for the old law. timeless guiding principle which could be clarified and interpreted but not fundamentally altered. It was recognized that the king had the power to declare the meaning of the law and to develop legal principles, while respecting the existing, unchallengeable foundaÂtions, but even he could not in any way alter the ancient law. It is therefore unsurprising that, right through the early Middle Ages, genuine statutes are encountered very rarely indeed, and even subsequently sovereigns were slow and indecisive in resuming legisÂlative activity.
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- Feudal Prerogative and Colonial Land
- OBJECTIVITY AND UNIVERSALITY
- The West European feudal system that followed the collapse of the Carolingian empire - itself a short-lived attempt to impose order on the disorder resulting from the barbarian invasion that had destroyed Rome - was decentralized even by the standards of similar regimes elsewhere.
- From the Feudal World to Urban Civilization
- THE GROWTH OF MERCANTILE LAW