In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the rise of nationalism and the consol­idation of royal power in Europe entailed an increased interest in the development of national law and thereby precipitated the movement towards codification.

The demand that law should be reduced to a code arose from two interrelated factors: the necessities to establish legal unity within the boundaries of a nation-state, and develop a rational, systematised and comprehensive legal system adapted to the conditions of the times.^[814] The School of Natural Law had a rationalist approach to institutional reform and emphasized comprehensive legal system building.

Thus, it provided the ideological and methodological basis to launch the codification move­ment. The unification of national law through codification engendered the eventual displacement of the ius commune and thus Roman law ceased to exist as a direct source of law. But as the drafters of the codes greatly relied on the ius commune, elements of Roman law were incorporated in different ways and to varying degrees into the legal systems of Continental Europe. The first national codes designed to achieve legal unity within one kingdom were compiled in Denmark (1683) and Sweden (1734). The process of codification continued in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with the introduction of codes in Bavaria (Codex Maxi- milianeus Bavaricus, 1756),^[815] Prussia (Allgemeines Landrecht für die Preussischen Staaten, 1794) and Austria (Allgemeines Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, 1811). The natu­ral law philosophy exercised a strong influence on both the contents and structure of these codes. However, the most important codificatory event of this period was Napoleon’s enactment in 1804 of the French Civil Code (Code civil des francais).

8.1.1      

More on the topic In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the rise of nationalism and the consol­idation of royal power in Europe entailed an increased interest in the development of national law and thereby precipitated the movement towards codification.:

1. THE CODIFICATION MOVEMENT
2. Chapter 8 Codification and the Rise of Modern Civil Law
3. National elite power studies
4. The Codification Movement
5. 9.4 A POWER CONVERGENCE FOR THE POOR IN EUROPE AND THE AMERINDIANS IN AMERICA
6. From the eleventh century, the improved political and economic conditions created a more favourable environment for cultural development in medieval Europe.
7. Deciphering Development: The Productive Power of Myths
8. 77 This book is primarily concerned with the development of the classical law, more specifically, with the sources from which that law derives and with the forces which were instrumental in its development.
9. ROMAN LAW AND NATIONAL LAWS
10. The Codification of Civil Law in Germany
11. The Law of the Twelve Tables and the Rise of Legislation
12. The Rise of Magisterial Law
13. ROMAN LAW IN MEDIAEVAL EUROPE
14. Vinogradoff P.. Roman law in Medieval Europe. London & New York: Harper & Brothers,1909. - 160 p., 1909
15. Custom and the Rise of ‘Vulgar Law'
16. Legal scholars use the term ‘civil law systems’ to describe the legal systems of all those nations predominantly within the historical tradition derived from Roman law as transmitted to Continental Europe through the Corpus Iuris Civilis of Emperor Justinian.[834]