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Throughout the centuries, the law relating to commodatum has seen little change. Certain marginal adjustments have been made: according to the German code, for instance, the lender is as a rule responsible not only for wilful conduct but also for gross negligence; the borrower is liable for dolus and culpa only (custodia having been transformed into and superseded by culpa liability already in post-classical Roman law); and the handing over of the object is now regarded as involving transfer of (direct) possession to the borrower.^[1074] By and large, though, Paulus or Gaius would find their way through the modern law of commodatum with ease.

In medieval English law—which had "but a meagre stock of words that can be used to describe dealings with movable goods"^{[1075] [1076] [1077] [1078]—a host of legal relationships were lumped together under the title of bailment.[1079] This term is derived from the French bailler, "to deliver"; originally it even covered cases where the transferor (bailor) was parting with ownership. In more modern times, however, it has been restricted to the "delivery of goods on a condition, expressed or implied, that they shall be restored by the bailee to the bailor",[1080] that is, to the temporary transfer of possession of a chattel which must ultimately be returned. Even in this limited form, therefore, it ranges from hire to mandate, from deposit to pledge, and it also includes gratuitous loans. To this day, bailment is a somewhat labyrinthine concept. It appears at various disjointed places in textbooks on personal property, torts and contracts. Bailment is often, or even generally, a contract, but it may also be independent of a contract.}