The Law Is Not an Autonomous Science

Furthermore, there could be no “jurists” where there was no au­tonomous “legal science.” The law, in fact, was seen as identical with the arts of reasoning and expression, on the one hand, and with ethi­cal standards, on the other.

This is a consistent point of view in both reflection and practice throughout the early Middle Ages (sixth to eleventh centuries). First and foremost, it is embodied in the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville (d. 636), a work that is a brief compendium of the culture of the age. This ideal encyclopedia of all sapientia was based on three basic disci­plines known collectively as the “arts of the trivium”—grammar, or the rules of discourse, dialectic, or rules of reasoning, and rhetoric, which gave structure, form, and elegance to exposition. Law was re­garded as subsumed under these branches of encyclopedic knowl­edge: technical terms and their primary meanings belonged to gram­mar; explanation of those terms and their logical concatenation belonged to dialectic; their explication was the province of rhetoric.

The law also meant rules for living, hence every precept (by cus­tom, by edict, or by legislation) must operate in the realm of ethics, which gave discipline to life and was the earthly projection of divine order.

Thus throughout Europe men of the early Middle Ages were con­stantly involved in evaluating the actions that created custom, and in evaluating them according to divine laws, deciding whether they were just or unjust, and discussing them (dialectically, if need be) when doubt arose or when opinions diverged or clashed. Further­more, they were motivated to do so not only because such acts had consequences of a terrestrial and social sort but also because they in­volved merits and responsibilities capable of saving (or losing) the human soul in the afterlife.

In short, the juridical realm took on a more varied coloring and became equated with the realms of ethics and theology.

This overall vision was crystallized and reinforced not only by the vast circulation throughout Europe of St. Isidore’s Etymolopfiae but also by the renewed energy that the Carolingians infused into the cul­tural tradition of Western Europe, in particular in the age of Charle­magne and of the empire that was reborn (in 8oo) as ^ccHoly⁵⁵ and “Ro­man.” It was perhaps Alcuin of York’s theoretical organization of the branches of human knowledge into one systematic oudine that estab­lished the position and significance of that vision. Those branches of knowledge, then more properly called “arts” (which combined sci­entia—knowledge—and sapientia—wisdom), were divided into two overall categories: artes reales and artes Sermocinales. The artes reales (the quadrivium) were mathematics, geometry, astronomy, and mu­sic; the artes Sermocinales (the trivium) were grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. Together they made up the seven artes liberales.

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